A new group of Peace Corps Trainees just arrived in Kyrgyzstan, and since they’re discovering quickly how a traditional house is laid out in Kyrgyzstan, I thought that today I could tell you what makes up the places where we live here here in Kyrgyzstan.
A traditional Kyrgyz house:
Well, at least, it used be yurts for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years. As I’ve mentioned a few times before, the Kyrgyz (and the Kazakh as well) people were a nomadic people, moving every few months with the seasons and the condition of the pastures. Sadly, unlike PCV’s serving in Mongolia, none of us actually lives in a yurt.
Now, as I also mentioned and I’m sure you recall from world history, in 1876, the Russian Empire took control of Kyrgyzstan. And, in 1917, a man named Lenin overthrew that empire and took control of what was to become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And then in 1922, Joseph Stalin became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, and quickly through a variety of mechanisms consolidated his power to become de facto leader until his death in 1953.
As much as Lenin’s ideals were focused on causing the world to rise up in a communist revolution, Stalin’s ideals were focused on creating rapid modernization and industrialization within the Soviet Union. But, the framework of modernization favored by Marxism-Leninism focuses on industrial workers and an intelligentsia-bourgeoisie. Russia at the time didn’t have the industrial complex in the theory, so the Marxist idea was transposed onto peasant farmers. You’ll notice that there isn’t room anywhere in this for the diverse array of nomadic peoples across the USSR – an oversight that is understandable given the fact that these people lived several days or weeks’ travel from St. Petersburg and Moscow.
This sets the stage for the First Five-Year Plan, which ran from 1928-1932. The primary goals of the plan were to set the stage for rapid industrialization of the USSR to allow it to defend itself were it to be attacked by the far more industrialized European powers (which did actually happen in 1941). At the same time, demand for grain increased so much that in 1928, the government saw that there might not be enough grain sent to the cities to feed the urban population, which led them to seize grains from peasants and sanctions against them. This led them to drop production and hoard and hide their grain. Stalin interpreted the shortfall as politically motivated, and in 1929, a campaign to collectivize all farms into kolkhozes (collective farms with shared equipment so that everyone would benefit from a shared tractor and whatnot) was initiated.
In Central Asia, this was expanded to include full-scale “sedentarization” of the nomadic populations. Unfortunately for the Kyrgyz and Kazakh, whose livelihoods had been focused on livestock and animal husbandry, the plan’s focus on grain and cotton quotas led to some serious issues. Many were forced to kill their livestock for food, or to sell in order to meet their grain quotas, and there was widespread resistance. The sheep population fell by 92%, half a million fled to China, Afghanistan, and the Pamirs, and up to a million died as a part of the larger-scale Soviet famine of 1932-33. Eventually many were allowed back to animal husbandry, and that remains one of the country’s big industries today.
I would say that one of the biggest impacts of the collectivization and sedentarization of Kyrgyzstan is the village and the house as we currently know and see it in Kyrgyzstan. And a lot of how the house is organized and seen has to do with the way that yurts were used and yurt camps were organized.
So this takes us to the house today, which essentially derives from the functions of a yurt inside and the structure of a basic settled house outside.
Outside? All houses have four walls, windows, a door, and almost all of them have a roof that looks like this.
Doors and window frames are usually, but not always, painted a beautiful shade of light blue, while walls are whitewashed, and floors are usually painted bright or dark orange in most houses and buildings. Now, I assumed this had some sort of meaning, but I asked a bunch of local friends, and none of them seemed to know why (or even to have noticed that most window frames in Kyrgyzstan are painted light blue. This light blue also appears frequently in many Kazakh villages, and in some other national-identity imagery, including as the color of Kyrgyzstani passports.
Older houses have these kinds of wood doors, door frames, and window frames, while many newer houses use plastic and metal door frames with rubber seals that hopefully help insulate things inside during the winter.
Inside the house, there’s usually a few familiar rooms, like the kitchen and dining room, and a living room. In a yurt setting, the single yurt would have its spaces transformed to fulfill all the general functions (eating, sitting, sleeping, welcoming guests), with zones delineated for cooking, men, women, and guests, but houses, with their permanence and additional space, allow individual rooms to retain more singular functions (in the same way we think about having a separate kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom, and bathroom, and for bougie people, tv rooms, fitness rooms, etc.).
A basic house, like my teacher’s old house, has 3 or 4 main rooms. The kitchen and dining room usually has a refrigerator, a hot plate or a stove, dishes and prep areas, and a small table where you can sit, drink, eat, do prep work for your meal, or just relax. Many houses also feature a “summer kitchen,” which is outside the house in the courtyard, or in a separate shack across the yard, and which is large enough to prepare
There’s also usually a “guesting room.” Welcoming guests is an important part of Central Asian culture (that I’ll blog about soon I promise!), and a lot of families keep an entire room that is nicely decorated with tyshyks and perhaps a table or tablecloth on the floor for meals. These rooms are very easy to reconfigure into sleeping rooms (we fit 7 or 8 people into one easily), and in some houses, these rooms double as bedrooms for the family itself.
When it’s time to go to bed, a guesting room can be easily converted into a bedroom, or in fancier houses, guests might get a separate bedroom to themselves. In both cases, the family will roll out tyshyks to make beds on the floor for guests.
In America, it’s a big deal if you have an AeroBed and a couch for guests. You can host two whole people! Well here, in a three bedroom house, there were enough tyshyks for at least 10 guests, most of whom slept in the guesting room. In case you had any questions about Central Asian hospitality, that should tell you everything you need to know!
What about the bathroom? Bathrooms are, I think in most cultures, considered a “dirty space,” specifically the toilet. So in Kyrgyzstan, even if there’s a room in the house with a sink, shower, and washing machine, the toilet is almost always in a separate building across the yard, and is usually an outhouse (just as it is in yurt camps). Even houses that are connected to the sewer and have a flush toilet might house it in a separate hut across the yard (like mine). This was definitely an adjustment for me (even though I grew up regularly using outhouses in Alaska), but I got used to it within a few weeks.
What about bathing? Most houses have a special room called a banya, which is often translated as “sauna” by some, but it’s basically a room with a heater that heats water, so you sit in the heat, sweat, rinse, scrub, and do all your washing needs in a comforting steamy embrace. There are also public banyas that perform an important social function for many people. For the purposes of this blog, it’s rather unfortunate that neither of my host families has had a banya for me to experience or photograph (but for the purposes of my…er…body odor, our showers have been absolutely glorious). Most families only light the banya once a week, so that’s the standard bathing interval. Luckily, it’s quite easy to get very clean and refreshed in there, so most people still enjoy them.
Many if not most houses are surrounded by walls along the property line that are high enough to not be seen over. Inside the walls are often gardens, carports, and outdoor sitting areas. The purpose of walls is varied by family. Some it’s just because the property had them when they bought them, while some more conservative families appreciate the privacy afforded. Sometimes, if my family locks the gates too early in the evening, I’ve had to climb over them to get inside!
What about apartments? Well, they’re pretty similar to small houses, both in terms of size and room layout. There’ll be a bedroom for the parents, possibly a separate one for the kids, and a kitchen-dining-living room/area. Some will also have a guesting room, but apartments are often smaller and more expensive, so some families will simply use their normal dining/living room for guesting. Unlike American apartment buildings, Kyrgyzstan’s are built with “vertical entryways,” as we used to say at Harvard. That is to say, each door opens onto a staircase, and there are 2-4 apartments off each landing, and each building has multiple entrances which are not connected inside the building.
Living in these houses isn’t actually that different from life in other places. After all, sitting and watching TV together, or drinking tea in the kitchen is a common pastime across the world. The decor may be different, and the base configuration may be different, but with a little time, these houses can very easily become home. I know they have for me.
Still curious about traditional houses? Expect a bunch more blogs to go up from our new group of volunteers as they explore their new digs! And be sure to look up Peace Corps Digs on YouTube as well to see what other people experience here and around the world!