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Eagle Hunters in Kyrgyzstan: A Photo Essay
Blog: Brooke vs. the World | RTW Travel Blog - 10 January 2012
One of the best experiences I had on my past visit to Kyrgyzstan was being able to get up close and personal with Kyrgyz eagle hunters. Kyrgyz men have been hunting with eagles for 6,000 years.Eagle Hunters in Kyrgyzstan: A Photo Essay is a post from: Brooke vs. the World. Don't forget to check out more awesomely awesome travel goodness at Her Packing List.
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Updates from the Field: Mosquito Nets, Rock Climbing + Clearing the Air
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 13 June 2011
Compiled by Kate Bennett, KF15, Ecuador Kiva’s Field Partners are spread far and wide, from Nicaragua to Nepal, Afghanistan to America. As we lend $25 to a borrower in a distant land, we try to imagine what his or her life is like. This is one of Kiva’s greatest successes, in fact: it gives us [...]
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Kyrgyzstan – Five Reasons Why I Am Not As Brave As You Might Think
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 11 June 2011
By Miranda Phua, KF15 – Bai Tushum & Partners, Kyrgyzstan “Sorry, you’re moving to Fishcake?” To my family and friends (and possibly many of you) Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan is a mystery. Actually, until a couple of months ago, it was to me, too. Despite its noticeably disproportionate consonant to vowel ratio, Kyrgyzstan has never really been [...]
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The Silk Road: marketing spin or classic adventure?
Blog: 501 Places - 25 May 2011
You may remember a while back 501 Places featured an excellent guide to learning languages with a host of unorthodox but highly effective tips. James Willcox is back with a second post, this time on the subject of the famous Silk Road. He explores whether the route has managed to retain its sense of mystery and adventure despite [...]The Silk Road: marketing spin or classic adventure? is a post from: 501 Places
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Update from the Field: Man’s Day, Singing Fellows + Learning How to Count
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 7 March 2011
Compiled by Alexis Ditkowsky, KF14, South Africa The Fellows will be covering International Women's Day later this week but let's take a moment to acknowledge its lesser-known cousin in Kyrgyzstan, "Man's Day".
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Ensuring a manly man’s day
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 3 March 2011
February 23rd was man’s day here in Kyrgyzstan. Actually it was Defenders of the Fatherland Day throught the former Soviet Union, but here in Kyrgyzstan that has morphed into man’s day. Many of you might be familiar with International Women’s Day which is coming up on March 8th, but until I got here to Kyrgyzstan I [...]
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Kyrgyzstan post-revolution
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 28 December 2010
Unfortunately the only time many people hear about Kyrgyzstan is in relation to political upheaval – but I suppose that is what happens when a country of five million people has two revolutions in five years. In 2005 the Tulip Revolution ousted recently elected Askar Akayev and ushered in 5 years of Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s leadership. [...]
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Navigating the Social Performance Jungle
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 7 December 2010
By Charlie Wood, Kiva Fellow in Kyrgyzstan One of my first projects as a Kiva Fellow has been to work with MCC Mol Bulak Finance as they further develop their program of data gathering to quantify social performance. From my perspective as a lender, I imagined that measuring social performance would be a primary concern [...]
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Kiva Financed Loans at a Lower Interest Rate?
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 30 November 2010
By Charlie Wood, KF13, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan One of the more difficult concepts to understand in the Kiva process is that while lenders do not receive interest on their loans and often carry the risk of default, borrowers do pay interest on loans financed through Kiva capital. Most of the time these rates are the same as those paid by borrowers receiving loans financed by commercial capital and carrying default risk.
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How’s the weather?
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 12 November 2010
By Charlie Wood, Kiva Fellow in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan with Mol Bulak Finance (MCC) Preparing to move to Kyrgyzstan for an undetermined amount of time caused some anxiety to my house. Not the least of our concerns was what mother nature might dish out during the winter in a place so close to Siberia. The day before I left the U.S., wracked with an LSAT induced cold, my mom made sure I was ferried to the local REI to stock up on long underwear. Yet like with many things in life, the reality has been a bit underwhelming so far.
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Is the London School in Bishkek a real place?
Blog: Brooke vs. the World | RTW Travel Blog - 31 October 2010
I get quite a few emails asking me about The London School in Bishkek.
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An Inside Look at an MFI -En Espanol Tambien!
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 6 August 2010
As I sit on my semi-comfy coach listening to some buoyant Central Asian tunes I try to reflect on my three months gone past. How can I begin to explain the world Kyrgyzstan has opened for me? Through my past blogs and my sharing of my Microfinance Institute’s (Mol Bulak Finance) work I have attempted to show you. There is one more important item left for me to discuss, and that is the subject of employees at Mol Bulak Finance (MBF).
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A blog can only give you so much
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 28 July 2010
My six months as a Kiva Fellow made me realize how privileged I am. Reading this might not be spectacular. Writing it is! Have a go!
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Corruption? No thanks!
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 19 July 2010
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." Friedrich Nietzsche
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10 Things You Didn’t Know in Kyrgyzstan –En español también
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 13 July 2010
Let’s talk about cultural differences, my favorite topic! After having lived in Kyrgyzstan for over two months, I have come across hundreds of differences between what I consider the norm and what I have witnessed here. Let me share just ten unique things about this country:
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Praying for peace in Kyrgyzstan
Blog: PocketCultures - 6 July 2010
In the current times of turbulence in my country, when you all have chance to watch television news and see all the hostility, I feel like praising it, I feel like speaking up about its beauty and hospitality. About how genuine and beautiful its citizens are. In other words, I feel like loving this country as I always have for being unique and beautiful, for its flexibility and ability to unite so much diversity and controversy.
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Kyrgyzstan Report –En español también
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 26 June 2010
For the first time in my life, I am living in a country with serious national strife. If I ever thought about a developing country with ethnic tensions and no governing body, I imagined chaos. I imagined people screaming and running with complete disregard for civilized life.
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Developing Country Knowledge –En español también
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 12 June 2010
By Eva Nemirovsky, KF11 Kyrgyzstan Maybe you want to improve the world. This is why you read Muhammad Yunus’ books and the End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs. You have a perfect project in mind that could help alleviate poverty in Tanzania. The only issue is that you have never been there.
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Are Pictures Really Worth More Than a Thousand Words? –En español también
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 30 May 2010
By Eva Nemirovsky, KF11 Kyrgyzstan Sometimes. But, maybe not for Kyrgyz microfinance borrower using the Kiva platform. Poor Kyrgyz people make sure to look good for pictures, so good, in fact, that one may misleadingly think: “these people don’t need a loan!” One issue that Kiva often discusses is why some loans are funded faster [...]
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Why I’m Not Eating a Kyrgyz Chocolate Bar/La razón que no como un chocolate kirguiz
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 15 May 2010
By Eva Nemirovsky, KF11 Kyrgyzstan It’s Friday night and I’m eating a Cliff bar writing in my Bishkek apartment. I arrived two weeks ago, so I still have a few Cliff bars left. Truthfully, I would rather go outside to the kiosk and buy some Kyrgyz chocolate, but everyone has warned me not to go [...]
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Day 456: Bish Bash Bosh
Blog: The Odyssey Expedition - 1 May 2010
Thu 1st Apr: Sorry about the lack of blog updates this month – I’ve been hammering the website to make it all fabby and groovy for when the telly show starts in July and people pop in for a visit! So, where I was I? Oh yeah, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan!! So I was up and at ’em at [...]
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Learning Like a Child: Host Family Flashback Part 1
Blog: Brooke vs. the World | RTW Travel Blog - 19 April 2010
When a language is just so different from your native tongue, the best thing you can do is to forget about any preconceived notions you have about language structure and just attempt to learn it like a child. I learned my lesson the hard way – by spending countless portions of class time hounding my poor teachers as to why things were said one way in English, but another in… Read more
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Day 455: Digging For Fire
Blog: The Odyssey Expedition - 18 April 2010
Wed 31st Mar: I left in the morning with Nazik and did a bit of blah before meeting up with Aima again. I needed to buy a present for my girlfriend’s birthday, and I wanted to get something exceptionally cool and Kyrgyz-Rhymes-With-Burgers. Aima helped me out, and in typically boy-buying-things style I had found [...]
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Day 454: Unpronounceabilistan
Blog: The Odyssey Expedition - 18 April 2010
Tue 30th Mar: Wasn’t too happy when the guy from Vladivostok whom I was sharing the taxi with (and someone I thought was a friend) whipped out my passport and claimed I had dropped it in the night and he had ‘found’ it for me. I would have been happy if a) I believed him [...]
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Day 453: My Kingdom For A Biro
Blog: The Odyssey Expedition - 16 April 2010
Mon 29th Mar: By 9am I was back outside the Kyrgyzstan embassy. I put my name down on the list and headed over to the DHL office to see if my replacement camcorder had arrived. It was still being held in customs. Frustratingly, this meant I would be without a decent video camera [...]
