Everyday life in Osh

In Osh, new things happens all the time and we meet new people everyday. After a few weeks of acclimatizing we have started to get some routines in our life and Osh finally is feeling more like my – at least, second home. In this blogpost I will talk about everyday life in Osh and give example of what we do during our days here.

The day usually starts around 08.00 when me and Amanda gets up and we have breakfast in our house. After that we usually head to the gym. We have a really nice gym and since both me and Amanda likes to exercise, its good to keep that routine here as it keeps us mentally stable and physical strong 🙂

Here’s “our” street in Osh.

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Our working days are 6 hours long and we usually start working at 12.00 and finish around 18.00. Depending on what we have on the agenda, we’re sometimes going to Novi Ritm’s office, participating in meetings or in different clubs – sometimes we facilitate discussions and workshops! Novi Ritm have a lot of clubs facilitated by and for youth, in thematic areas such as: environment, girls group (discussing gender), health, movie club, comics and so on. We’re planning to start a group for boys as well! Other times, we’re participating in or assists in workshops and trainings.

Here’s some of the staff from Novi Ritm, having a staff meeting at the office. From left: Salima, Baktygul, Ainagul, Saltanat and Amanda.

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Here’s me (Emma) with group-leaders and co-leaders from the different groups, and also Ainagul (Chairperson).

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We usually walk everywhere – or take a Taxi if we’re tired. Taxis in Kyrgyzstan are very cheap.

Sometimes we’re working from home, especially if we want to really focus on tasks such as creating materials, writing articles and blogposts. From home I also work with my mini project. As an intern you have your own mini project for 20 % of your working time. I’m currently working on a material related to Logical Framework Approach (LFA) which is a method that can be used when writing a project plan.

If we’re having online meetings with Sweden, we’re usually going to a café called Brio, a café were we also works sometimes. What we’ve learned is that you should never trust the internet connection in Kyrgyzstan! Even at Brio we have some troubles and we’re trying all different online platforms until we finally find something that’ll work, otherwise we have to give up and re-schedule the meeting. This can be very frustrating and problematic, but I guess Novi Ritm and CAG aren’t the only partner organisations facing this problems. The time-difference also creates problems sometimes and I guess it can be even more problematic with partnerships in other parts of the world. When building partnerships you have to be patient!

At Brio we also arrange meetings sometimes. The second picture shows a meeting of group-leaders and co-leaders from the different groups mentioned above. Here we are discussing an exchange with Sweden which the group-leaders and co-leaders can apply for.

Here’s a picture of me (Emma) and Ainagul (chairperson of Novi Ritm) having a meeting at Brio

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Even though Osh is small city, we usually have a lot of things to do in our spare time. Except for hanging out with friends, there are a lot of things to explore. Walking up the mountain which is situated near the centre, is for example a nice activity.

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Eating is also one of our favourite activity. Kyrgyzs food is amazing!

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Shopping at all the different bazaars to buy souvenirs for family, friends and yourself is also an activity. Here’s “piallas”, which is tea cups kyrgyzs people usually drink tea from, so beautiful.

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Osh also have an international community of people all over the world which we usually hang out with. Getting friends in Kyrgyzstan is easy.

Tomorrow Kyrgyzstan is celebrating Norouz, which is the Kyrgyzs new year. Therefore, tonight we are going with one of our friends to Jalal Abad (1,5 hour from Osh) to visit her relatives, eat plov (a kyrgyzs dish) and just hang out! It’s going to be so fun.

Hugs,

Emma