Photograph of Naryn city map by Flickr user ecololo (CC-usage).

Living in Naryn city, I’ve gotten a lot of letters asking for my status, and I’m pleased to report no bodily harm, and hardly any harm done to the beautiful, Sunny Naryn. One letter though, stuck out to me in particular. “Carl,” it said, “you write of such a peaceful place, when I saw the news, I was caught totally off guard.” With this comment in mind, folks, I’d like to explain myself.

The press will corroborate that Naryn had it’s share of demonstrations leading up to the events of last week. As you might imagine, I was well aware of them. While Peace Corps does insist that I avoid anything political, that’s not exactly why I didn’t mention them.

See, I’ve heard the international news paint a grim picture of a poverty stricken country, strife with political upheaval. While in a way (especially numerically) that is true, it’s hardly the whole story. There are also people here, smart, honest, hard working people. People who want to get ahead.

On April 8th, 2010, a day that will surely be remembered in Kyrgyz history, while some people were making a ruckus in the center of Naryn city, others were taking out their garbage, and filling water pails for their homes. My homestay siblings were in school, studying, until the teachers, sick from teargas, sent everyone home. While some shopkeepers had shut their gates, others’ stayed open all day.

The next day, most of the city just took a day of rest. The weather was nice, and in the park in the center of town, across the street from the government building that had taken so much grief the day before, people just gathered. The dozens of benches were full of people, just sitting. While on my sanctioned one trip out for food that day, one drunk man came up behind me. “Do you understand Kyrgyz?” He asked.

“A little,” I replied.

He then had trouble making sentences, but his intentions were clear, “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he repeated himself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We’re a peaceful people.” When the stories of violence in Bishkek recede, I’m afraid, so will the consciousness on Kyrgyzstan. For this, who will be there to apologize to them?

A few days later, after Peace Corps cleared us to leave our homes, I noticed a black circle out behind an apartment block with lots and lots of metal wires in it. I’d seen this kind of thing before. “Was this a tire?” I asked a woman passing by.

“Yes,” she said, “but it was just from boys, playing.”

“Right, but did they burn it?” I asked, imagining what fun I would have had burning a tire when I was little.

“Yes, but this was not from the revolution,” were her exact words, “they were just boys, just playing. We are not like that.”

And everyone I meet, it seems, wants to make sure I know this, the one thing I’ve known for so long. These people are kind, warm, hardworking and smart. They’ve got hard lives, but work hard to get ahead. They’ve got their problems, but so does everyone. This event should not define them, but they are plenty smart enough to know that to foreigners, it very well may.

I don’t write about the negatives I see out here, folks, because as enticing and newsworthy as they may be, they would do a disservice to a people and a culture I so passionately respect, and desperately want to help. For every story of disobedience, drunkenness or violence, there are hundreds of patience, generosity and common humanity.

If we don’t work to tell those stories, who will?