Updates from the BoonEx .... War Zone?

After checking my redundant array of internet services this morning (3), my last attempt finally linked with an out-of-country connection and I still had paid up units left - hurrah. Ok - to work... While busily answering mails, arranging installations for customers and listening to yet another fireworks celebration outside the window, my wife called from the university classes she was attending. Her classes were canceled. Huh? What? That wasn't fireworks this time, at least not the kind you light a match to. Another revolution attempt was in progress (vis-a-vis spring of 2005)!

"PLEASE hurry to school and get Sabrina (our daughter) and take her home", she pleaded. I blurted out an involuntary "Oh S**T" before collecting myself and hurriedly getting ready to go when the school called. The Russian gushing urgently out of the phone was intense and fast - but I knew what they wanted and in MY best (poor) Russian replied that I was on the way.

Her school is about 4 blocks away, through a park (we always swing on the playground equipment there on a normal day coming home). This was hours earlier and vacant - no kids or parents - just people streaming in 3 times normal numbers coming toward and past me continuously. I was quickly walking into more and more intense and frequent gunfire - not seen, but heard, and the people and traffic continued to stream away from where I was headed... a little unsettling.

My daughter's school is merely 1 and a half blocks from the traditional launching place for revolutions and protests. I hurried inside the school and found her teachers and one other little girl whose parents hadn't arrived yet to retrieve her. Assured that the teachers would take her with them if no one came (my garbled Russian again) I recovered my little girl and departed.

On the way home, heart in throat, I kept up a nonchalant banter with her like we usually did on a "normal" day, while we eased our way in the same direction as the general population this time. I was taking note of the intensity (and of the proximity) as the sounds of gunfire echoed off the walls of the surrounding buildings. She seemed blithely and thankfully unaffected by it as we drew away from the area and made our way home.

My wife and her friends, trapped at the university, finally managed a taxi (no other usual transportation available) and made her way home. I'm fond of shaking my head and saying - "Only in Bishkek, " usually while watching someone attempt to drive here. I guess now I can add to that.

You know, some days really aren't like all the rest!