Headline

Dogdurbai Kachikeev, who is Kyrgyz, was born in 1931 in the city of Karakol, on the east end of Lake Issyk-Kul, in Kyrgyzstan. He is a shepherd, from a family of shepherds. Kashymkan Kachikeeva, who is also Kyrgyz, was born in 1932 in the village of Munduz, Kyrgyzstan. They married in 1949. Dovlet Hojamuradov and Gulzara Hayytmuradova interviewed them in the city of Karakol on March 15, 2009.

Mr. Dogdurbai Kachikeev

I was born in the 1930s. Back then, people did not keep track of time accurately. My mom used to say that the official data was always off by at least one year. We had a neighbor who worked as the head of the passport agency. She made passports for us. So whatever dates we needed, we named, and she could work it out and bring the passports to us. Lots of people changed their dates of birth to skip the army or to get benefits like early pensions.

My childhood was harsh. There was a famine and times were bad and we cried. For meals, we would drink one spoonful of talkan [oats] mixed into one piala [bowl] of tea. We would eat potatoes from time to time. Also, we would eat dried peaches from time to time. Our elders were shepherds. We were young and didn’t know how to do that work, so we worked in the city [Karakol]. We started working at 5 or 6. We worked long days and nights.

I took evening classes. The way I learned was through reading newspapers and writing on them. For example, I would read the paper and then practice writing on it, on the corner. That’s how I learned and became a little bit literate. I didn’t have a pen, so I dipped a big thorn in ink to write. I took what I had written to the teacher of my evening classes and asked him to check it. He showed me my mistakes and commented on what I had done correctly. I wrote and read every day. I finished five grades, officially.

Evening school was serious. If we didn’t come to class, they asked us where we were. They would punish us if we were late or if we skipped classes. The punishment could be the loss of an entire [monthly] salary [from the collective farm], or even jail.

World War II did not touch Central Asia directly. But we helped the war effort by making socks and coats and by harvesting wheat and sending it to the front. This resulted in a scarcity of clothing and food here in Central Asia. And there were lots of sick people – kids especially. There was an epidemic of typhus. Ten to 20 people died and they were buried in their clothing because there was nothing else to wrap them in. I saw it with my own eyes.

My parents were shepherds. My relatives are shepherds. When I was young, I worked on the collective farm as shepherd. Then I went to the army and helped guard a jail in a city called Cirulnik. There was an underground military factory there. I served there from 1951 to 1954. Stalin died in 1953, while I was in the army. We cried and we thought there might be a war after his death. After the army, I came back home and worked in the militia. Later, I served as a brigadier on the collective farm.

My family is respected in our neighborhood now. If you respect yourself everyone will respect you, in return. Now, all the people come to me when they want to organize funerals or marriages or other social gatherings. Russian or Kyrgyz, it doesn’t matter – all of them respect me. There is a group of elders like me and they have trusted me with leadership. Materially, we are satisfied. We have a car, a house, livestock. But that is not our wealth. Our wealth is our children.

Mrs. Kashymkan Kachikeeva:

I was born in the village of Jeti Oguz in 1932. My mother died in 1933. Our father brought us up – there were six of us. Later, two joined the army, so there were four left.

I was 9 when the war broke out. The actual war did not happen here, but we had hard times during the war, anyway. We saw the war in the movies, but it did not happen here. We had famine and scarcity, though. We ate spoiled potatoes. The barley crop was harvested in the spring. We would gather the leftovers grains of barley one by one, like crows. Then from those gathered grains, we would make talkan. We lived fine until 1942, but the cruel times began in 1943 and lasted until 1946, because everything was going to the front line.

The two leaders [Hitler and Stalin] could not get along so they fought. But Germans are the same people as we are. They wanted to occupy Moscow; ours did not want to let that happen. That is all. They also wanted to get rid of Kyrgyz-myrgyz, [1] so they could live alone in this world. And we did not want that, of course. That is why they fought and we won. Our girls are getting married to them [Germans] now. So what? We are at peace with the Germans now. Like it or not, all that has passed now. Two leaders fought and that’s all there is to say about that.

In 1945, after the victory, we needed to rebuild everything that had been destroyed. We had hard lives. I think I saw nothing good during my life. I got into the local college here and studied there for two months, but then the weather got worse and I had no shoes. I was barefoot. So I had to stop going to study. I wanted an education, though.

Now, though, we have a normal life. I was 17 when I met my husband and he was 19. His family came to the village and we met each other and got married. We did not have wedding or kalym [bride price] then. We just signed a certificate and that was it. Now people have the resources to pay for weddings and kalyms and all that. When we marry him [indicating her grandson], we will have a wedding. We did not have weddings back in our time. I had our first daughter when I was 20. Over time, I had eight children, but two of them died – one at six months and the other in her 40s – so six remain: four boys and two girls.

We had good times during Khrushchev’s rule. He allowed us to keep livestock, whereas, during the war, everything was sent to the front. The 1960s were better times. There were hard, bad times before then.

During the Soviet period, the government said that there was no God. They taught us in history classes that there was no God. During funerals, they said there was no God. If you believed, they sentenced you to jail. But, of course, I believed in God. Muslims believed the whole time. Muslims are Muslim and our people are Muslim. They believed in God all the time. And now the government encourages you to believe, saying “Please support us, God!” Before, to get accepted to the party you had to deny the existence of God. Now, to be part of the party, you ask God for support. Now everyone goes to the mosques freely.

I’m not sure if we had religious schools during the war. During the war, though, there were moldos [mullahs]. They were in the communities all the time, but there were no special schools for them. The young men went to the war when they were 15 or 16 and the girls worked hard in the fields. So there was no time to study. But, after the war, by the 1960s, people started learning, little by little. Before, no one would pay attention to the mosques, but later, people started to inside the mosques.

We had opium plantations here. [2] We planted it, raised it, and harvested it. The fields were government-controlled. We turned in the harvest and, based on the amount we had gathered, we were paid. In the 1960s and 1970s, the opium plantations were destroyed and the fields were used for other crops. When people worked in the opium fields, no one was sick; now we don’t have the opium fields and everyone is sick. Then we didn’t have cancer and now people die because of it. We didn’t use the opium, but the process of raising it, the smell in the air, affected us.

There was no TV when I was young. We’ve only had TV for the past 30 years. We didn’t gather with our friends to sing or dance or anything, either. How could we dance or sing when we were living in poverty, going barefoot, and we had to build our households? Once I went to my friend’s wedding. I spent three days there. When I returned, my mother-in-law beat me with a stick because I had left my 6-month-old child home alone and the baby had gotten sick. So, one time dancing and singing was enough for my entire life. Now I can sing and dance, because my children are grown up. But if you have children, you’d better take care of them.

I started out working on the collective farm as a regular worker. And then I worked in the wine factory as a regular worker for 20 years. We also worked in our yard. We planted potatoes, carrots, salad, tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbage. We worked on the land all our lives. It would have been impossible to survive otherwise. In addition to vegetables, we grew fruits like peaches, grapes, and apples. Our wages alone were not enough to support a big family like mine. Now we even use tractors on our own land, n our backyard.

My oldest daughter is married. She has 14 kids. So I consider myself happy. My great-grandson is 11 or 12. Why am I a happy person? I have children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and I live well and therefore I am happy. I don’t live a rich life or a poor life – I have a normal lifestyle. I don’t want to live a rich life, because people get scared about their money when they live rich lives. We don’t even have a lock on our house, because we don’t have many valuable things anyway.