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Monday, January 30, 2017

Kyrgyzstan: Yurt Preschools Reach Nomadic Children

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Yurt preschool in the summer jailoo
At first glance, it looks like another iconic felt yurt in a remote pasture high in Kyrgyzstan’s mountains. But step through the door and a visitor can quickly see it is no ordinary nomadic dwelling.

Tiny desks are arranged on the carpeted floor. The curved walls are festooned with fairytale characters. A whiteboard stands at one end.

This yurt has been converted into something new for semi-nomadic Kyrgyz who spend the warmer months on the Aktash jailoo, or highland pasture: a school.

Fifteen families from the jailoo, perched in the mountains south of Lake Issyk-Kul, send their 26 children to the Ananaika preschool for three hours a day to help them make friends and prepare for elementary school. (Ananaika roughly means “sweetheart.”) Most are aged three to six.

During the school’s first weeks in operation, some children had trouble socializing, according to Jenishgul Sharsheeva, 45, the teacher.

“When they stay at the jailoo, where the nearest family can be more than a kilometer away, children hardly make any friends,” Sharsheeva explained, adding that even with her 18 years’ experience in teaching preschool in a village below the mountains, working with jailoo children was a challenge.

“Many of them have never seen basic things like modeling clay and colorful pencils. For the first few days, some would try to eat the modeling clay; others would only draw with a black pencil.”

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Jenishgul Sharsheeva and her pupils in the high mountain pasture

Over the course of the summer her students have learned to count to 10, differentiate colors, geometrical shapes and do some basic spelling.

The Soviet collectivization drive during the 1920’s and 30’s forced most Kyrgyz to abandon their traditional nomadic lifestyle.

Yet, today some families still lead semi-nomadic lives, travelling into the mountains with their cows, horses and sheep to graze during the summer months.

Few stay in the jailoo year-round; the semi-nomadic herder families mostly hail from remote villages, where their children receive only a rudimentary education. And few have the opportunity to attend preschool.

“Preschool is crucial for a child’s development,” said Burulai Aitikulova, education program officer at the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), a non-profit that piloted the idea of jailoo-based preschools in 2006. “That’s why we decided to follow the children wherever they are to give them access to education.”

AKF has opened 20 jailoo preschools around Kyrgyzstan since 2006. Their idea is now being replicated by a local foundation run by former interim president Roza Otunbayeva. That initiative oversaw the opening of 100 jailoo preschools in 2016, including Ananaika.

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Children using colouring books in the preschool yurt
Asylbek Zhoodonbekov, a program coordinator at the Otunbayeva Initiative, explains that some families live far from the jailoo preschools, but still bring their children each morning on horseback. “That’s how much people want to educate [their kids],” he said.

Five-year-old Aelina walks more than a kilometer every day with two siblings and her grandmother, Chinar Chikeeva, to get to Ananaika. “In the mornings the children are so excited that they don’t want to have breakfast, they just want to go see their teacher and their new friends,” said Chikeeva, 52.

Chikeeva’s family stays at the jailoo for four months every year. There is no preschool near their winter village, but there is an elementary school. Aelina says she is especially excited to attend that school in two years’ time, “especially now that I know how to count.”

But for some children, the yurt may be the only schoolhouse they ever see. Thirty-nine-year old Gulzat Ishembaeva migrates year-round among pastures with her husband and seven children. None of her kids – the oldest is 21 – finished middle school. She’s not sure if her six-year-old son, Beksultan, who also attends Ananaika, will be able to attend school next year. “It’s far, and we don’t have a car,” said Ishembaeva. “But at least he joined this preschool. I can see him learning; I’m very happy about it.”

Less than a fifth of Kyrgyz children attend preschool, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Education and Science; most of them live in urban areas. The quality of Kyrgyz education has fallen since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, but even then, only 35 percent of children had access to preschool, says Aigul Kamalova, an expert on preschool education at the ministry. Kamalova says that the ministry is open to creative solutions, and hails the innovation of jailoo preschools.

Up in the jailoo, at Ananaika, the children are learning to differentiate a triangle from a circle by constructing the shapes with pinecones on the grass. “These children are so thirsty for education, for knowledge,” Sharsheeva, the teacher, said. “Teaching a kid who is seeing a book for the first time in his life is a different experience for me, but I love it and I hope that next year we can take more children.

Spend 10 minutes enjoying this inspiring video of a yurt pre-school. Listen to the children, parents and teachers as they share their enthusiasm and joy. (In Kyrgyz and Russian with English subtitles)

If the video does not appear on your screen, please do directly to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBUCsU1sYg



This article, written by Asel Kalybekova, was originally published on EurasiaNet.org

Since then, many more yurt preschools have been established with the assistance of the Roza Otunbayeva Initiative and the Aga Khan Foundation.
 

Related posts:
Yurts of Central Asia
Kyrgyz Chii - Yurt Screens and Mats
Manaschi - Bards of Kyrgyzstan
Felted Carpets of Kyrgyzstan

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

New Silk Roads: Fresh Perspectives Through Art

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Alexandr Barkovskiy's photocollage
Based in Singapore, ENECAA is a fresh, exciting, online gallery, art advisory and research company specialising in Central Asia.

Founder Sally J. Clarke has developed an art course that explores the revitalisation of the new silk roads through the region's artistic practices.

This seven week course combines lectures with debates, as participants explore over 120 paintings, depicting subjects ranging from metaphorical landscapes, traditional symbols, abstract and semi-abstract compositions to portraits.

The course is open to everyone who has an interest in learning more about modern and contemporary art. It starts on 20th April 2017.

Many of the artworks examine subjects distinct to Central Asia yet universal in their discussion of human experience. Executed in styles ranging from the photo-realistic and figurative to the narrative or naive, to the surrealistic and abstract, they highlight the sophisticated breadth and depth of post-Soviet Central Asian art practices.

It was only in 1991 that the post-Soviet states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were founded.  Timur, the merciless conqueror chiefly remembered for his barbarity, is revered today in modern day Uzbekistan where mythologies are created enforcing the concept of the Uzbek nation.

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Uzbek painter Mukhtar Khan's "Sunduk (Trousseau) Wishes"
Similarly in modern day Kazakhstan stories are woven around the Golden Horde and the identity created by the nomadic cultures.

Since that time art movements have notable twists and turns: a rejection of Soviet art styles, and renaissance of nomadic related art themes, an exploration of sensual forms and a revisiting of Sufi tales.

Kazakh artists such as Leyla Mahat and Almagul Menlibayeva explore the ancient cultures of the steppe.  Simultaneously challenging the exoticisation of the Kazakh people while embracing contemporary themes and developing new ways of seeing.

Uzbek artists are considered exceptional painters and colourists.  In the early 1920s artists such as Alexander Volkov and Usto Mumin worked in Tashkent.  It was also in the autonomous region of Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan that the famous Nukus Museum was founded by Igor Savitsky. To this day the Nukus Museum houses the world’s arguably most important Russian avant-garde art collection.

In the works of Alexandr Barkovskiy we experience a visual paradigm for whoever seeks to understand the contemporary cultural scene in Uzbekistan and Central Asia at large.

Having recently exhibited at the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and Gallery Andakulovoy in Dubai and been honoured by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and by the Contemporary Art Museum ART4.ru, this 37-year-old artist encapsulates the key cultural transformations Uzbekistan has been undergoing in recent years.

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Almagul Menlibayeva's "My Silk Road to You"
In Sally's quest to make Central Asian art more accessible, her work has recently involved theatre. She is collaborating on a production of Hamlet, which fuses Central Asian visual arts, theatre, fashion and contemporary music.

Hamlet will be staged February 2 and 3 in Singapore. Maximum audience numbers will be 25. It would be fascinating to see how they have reinterpreted the works of leading Tashkent artists into costumes for the actors and scenery.

Below is an image of Timur Akhemdov's reinterpretation of the forest scene with Ophelia.

The art course will be held on Thursday evenings at La Salle College of the Arts, Singapore, starting 20 April for seven weeks.

For further details about the course and Hamlet, contact Sally Clarke at:



Related posts:
Central Asia in Art: From Soviet Orientalism to the New Republics 
Tashkent Nostalgie - Eugene Panov's Exhibition, Tashkent
Homage to Savitsky
Bukhara's Contemporary Art Museum
Alexander Volkov: Of Sand and Silk, an Exhibition at Christie's

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Timur Akhemdov's reinterpretation of the forest scene with Ophelia. Oil on canvas.