Smelly Cats?

10:00 27 July 2008

I had a conversation with my (US) family yesterday (it’s so weird having a cell phone call from the other side of the world!). Dad relayed to me Mr. Woodward’s comment on one of my previous entries. I had written that I was developing a routine and many of the things that initially had shocked and fascinated me about this country have become humdrum and ordinary. Therefore, I reasoned, they were not worth my time reporting about them or your time reading about them. However, Mr. Woodward replied with a very cogent point. As ordinary as these things become to me during my service now, in five or ten or twenty years looking back, I will probably value having a semi-complete log of my service, and that details that to me now seem boring may be fascinating to me later. So I will not completely abandon my day to day reporting, but will still try and keep my prose as fresh and interesting as possible. On that note, I had an entertaining experience yesterday, the main road to Bishkek, about the size of a large two lane road, was in a big traffic jam, the first I have seen in Kyrgyz Republic. Why? Because of a huge herd of cattle going home for the evening. It was hilarious. Having reported that, I wanted to try out my idea by writing about smell.

Olfactory Observations (part 1 of a five part sensory series)

Every place and every time has a unique scent. While I have not the super sensitivity of my mother’s proboscis, smells are some of the most powerful sensory experiences and I have often taken the note of them in my travels. I heard it reported that the sense of smell is the only sense that goes directly to the brain without being processed as a lower function… or some other medical and psychological explanation for its power. (I never realized how much I would miss instantaneous wikipedia/google by the way, it makes me sound so much smarter usually.)

Regardless, during my brief expedition into Istanbul, this was one of the first things I noticed. It was an unspecific smell, though one I must assume had to do with the combination of the delicious food, traffic, and environment. Istanbul just smelled different from home. It certainly wasn’t a bad smell, and the closer we ventured towards the restaurant district, the more appealing it became, but it was a completely different olfactory experience than any other city I have been in despite the fact that I was there less than six hours.

Kyrgyzstan has offered a similarly unique set of scents for my nose to experience. The altitude here is higher than at home, and I noticed this on the breeze at the hotel. You could also smell the oldness of the hotel. This was, after-all, a Soviet era hotel and the cement construction was not in the best of repair. This hotel is also first where I noticed the unmistakable hint of marijuana smoke on the air. While PCVs are forbidden to use it, and I would presume it is at least nominally illegal according to Kyrgyz law, weed does grow here like… well, a weed. And whether through its recreational use or simply its proximity to piles of burning trash, its unique scent is certainly a large part of the everyday smells in Kyrgyzstan.

In comparison with my host family house and village, Hotel Issyk-Kul was poverty stricken when it comes to its palate of smells. Each part of my house has new and exciting scents, and the village as a whole is fascinatingly varied. My nose here is never bored.

The first thing I noticed entering my village and house was the pervading smells of the country and rural life. Things are alive here. Cows, ducks, dogs, cats, chickens, rabbits, horses, and donkeys all have their individual additions to the overall bouquet, but I have found that it is the scents that come from plants that are the most pervading. Hay, corn, flour, chicken feed, grasses, trees, dirt, flowers, vegetables- these are the things which stand out most when I think about the smells of my house. Digging potatoes from the garden and smelling the fresh overturned earth, bailing hay and having its musk hang in the air for hours, bagging musty smelling chicken feed into dusty bags- all of these activities are strongly associated with their odors in my mind. Of course, the livestock have their active scents too. Poultry, I have learned, can be some of the most fowl (ugh) smelling creatures on earth. Cows don’t smell nearly as bad as I had anticipated, their dung is not nearly as offensive to smell as it is to look at. Pigs, on the other hand, despite being told that they are actually relatively clean animals, live up to their stereotype and reek.

Obviously, the smells at this house aren’t purely formed by its non-human residents. The smells of cooking vary day to day. Rarely a day goes by in which I do not eat onions and potatoes, so their scents generally remain in the kitchen. Similarly, the smell of fresh-baked bread is a welcome addition whenever I enter the part of the house where they keep the small electric oven. Sharing the space with the garage, the mixed odor of fresh cooked food in the kitchen and stale exhaust fumes has formed a completely new olfactory experience for me. Interestingly enough, despite the intensity and variety of smells, most of the habited rooms in the house have little to know scent, something that is welcome in my bedroom.

I reserved an entire paragraph for the outhouse, but I am sure by now you are tired of reading about my incessant scatological references so I will keep it brief. The smell of an outhouse is not what I had expected. An overpowering stench of ammonia, rather than what you might expect, is the overwhelming experience. Sometimes it is mild and almost seems as if someone had just come through and cleaned with Lysol, but sometimes it is so strong that it burns your nostrils. That is all I have to say about that.

The village I live in also has varied smells. These depend on both time and location. The customary way to dispose of trash, burning, has formed one of the scents I find most difficult to tolerate. The days are hot, and always dusty, and my own natural smells come forth most strongly during these hot periods which, combined with the dust, form a most interest scent. Rain is special. Much like at home, you can smell it on the air, but I feel it even stronger here, the water clears the dust from the air and leaves the village smelling entirely different and fresh in its wake. I love the rain.

This is by no means an all inclusive list of the incredibly varied olfactory experiences I have, but I do think it might give a little bit more depth to my previous and future hum-drum entries. Soon to come will be the other four parts of this self-imposed series.