Category: default || By jt3y

Western Pennsylvania has a lot of ethnic social clubs, but the other day out in Wallboard Township I ran across what I think is the region's only Kyrgyz-American Social Club. It's three miles south of the Business Route 31 Bypass on Shun Pike Road.

If you decide to visit, you can't miss it; it's a one-story cinderblock building with a Diet Rite Cola sign and a statue of Attila the Hun.

The only person there when I stopped was the club president, Zbigniew Czolgosz, who told me that he was working on the annual charity drive.

"The collapse of the Kyrgyzstan government has only made the collection more necessary than ever," he said. "We want to complete this year's drive in time for Kyrgyz Independence Day."

I interrupted him. "When's that?"

"August 31. That's when Kyrgyzstan declared independence back in 1991. Every year we hold a traditional Kyrgyz folk festival where we dance to traditional Kyrgyz melodies and old favorites like "Shüüdüngüttün Jürüshü. We also eat traditional Kyrgyz foods like assip, shurpa and besh barmak."

"That must be popular. Who doesn't enjoy a good besh barmak?"

"You'd think that, but the festival isn't as successful as we'd like," he said. "And of course, we always sing the Kyrgyz National Anthem."

Czolgosz handed me a copy of the sheet music for "Vpered Kyrgzskii Narod."

"How is this pronounced?" I asked.

"With great difficulty," he said.

Czolgosz showed me some of the club's exhibits that document life in Kyrgyzstan, like the dioramas showing sheepherders working beneath high-tension power lines.

"I understand the land of the Kyrgyz people was occupied by the Russians for more than 700 years," I said.

"That's right," he said. "And Kyrgyz culture was brutally oppressed by the czarists and the Soviets. That's why so few people have ever heard of Kyrgyzstan's great artists and composers. Everyone knows about Tschiakovsky, but how many people have ever heard of Sagïmbay Orozbak uulu? How about the great Kyrgyz inventor Tkszycky Fydrzyksy?"

"What did he develop?" I asked.

"The reversible fabric belt. But the Soviets thought he represented a dangerous threat to the native Russian pleather reversible belt industry, so they deported him to a gulag, where he was forced to make double-knit polyester suits for high-ranking Communist party officials. It's a miracle that he was able to get his life story out to the people."

"How was that?"

"A lime-green leisure suit with two pairs of pants was to be sent to the head of the Communist Party in Osh, so Fydrzyksy embroidered his autobiography into one of the pairs of pants. That pair of pants was diverted into the Kyrgyz resistance movement."

"When did you become interested in your Kyrgyz heritage?" I asked.

"Right after I discovered that I can claim to be one-thirty-second Kyrgyz on my mother's side."

"So I take it your great, great, grandfather was Kyrgyz."

"No, but my great, great, grandmother changed trains in Pulgon in 1918, and that's about as close as anyone else here in Wallboard Township."

We walked to the lobby, where a large oil painting depicts a barge laden with cement --- the product of one of Kyrgyzstan's top industries --- on Lake Issyk-Kul.

"How many people are in the Kyrgyz-American Social Club here?"

"Well, counting me, my wife, my mother, my kids, my cousins, the people who own the building --- we gave them honorary memberships --- and, um ... well, you're not Kyrgyz, are you?"

"No," I said.

"Seventeen, then," he said.

"When I first walked in, you said you were collecting for Kyrgyz relief," I said. "What type of clothes are in most demand?"

"Not clothes," he said.

"Well, Kyrgyzstan sounds like it's still mostly agrarian," I said. "Surely you're not collecting food."

"Nope, not food ..."

"Medicine? Money?"

"No, although those are always in demand," he said. "But that isn't the most pressing need."

"And that would be ... ?"

"Vowels," he said. "The entire country is suffering from a severe vowel obstruction. Until the recent trouble in Kyrgyzstan, the government was close to a trade agreement with Tahiti --- Kyrgyzstan was going to send Tahiti consonants in exchange for Tahiti's loose vowels."

I started heading for the car. Czolgosz followed me.

"Up to 45 percent of Kyrgyz suffer from irritable vowel syndrome, and each year 1 in 1,000 children choke on a glottal stop while saying their own names," he said as I tried to unlock the car door.

"That's fascinating," I said, opening the door and getting in. "Listen, good luck."

"Can't you please help?" he said, blocking the doorjamb with his elbow. "Just one ouguiya a day can help a family of four."

I started the car and put it into gear. "That's amazing," I said.

"We're also accepting oolong, unguent and auks!" he shouted as I drove away.

But as I left, I wondered if I hadn't left too hastily.

After all, even if I didn't have any extra vowels with me, I'm sure he would have accepted an IOU.

...

(P.S. Tip of the Tube City hard hat to Officer Jim for the idea.)