Ferganalicious

I get it now.  She's singing about the allure of the Fergana Valley as a historical crossroads for silks, spices, and learning, the desire of control for which (cue MacKinder) led the "boys" (British and Russians during the Great Game and  the Soviets during the Cold War, and Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and Tajiks) to "go loco."  T-t-t-t-t-tasty, tasty!

I don’t know whose sick idea it was to put Fergie on my iPod* but joke’s on you because it provided the perfect soundtrack to my long trek across the Fergana Valley.  And since my camera batteries died halfway through the trip, I have very little timestamped on my brain from this great traverse aside from Fergie repeatedly telling me that “[Fergie-Ferg] will love [me] long time.”  If you've never heard of the Fergana Valley then let me assure you there is nothing more reassuring than the prospect of a warm embrace when you're in some of the most desolate parts of Fergana.  And if you've heard of the Fergana Valley then it can be deduced you've never actually listened to, nor heard of, Fergalicious.  Just so we're clear, I felt pretty smug and self-aware about being the sole occupant in the centre of this Vehn Diagram** as the dusty landscape breezed past.

Let me just be real here for a second: I love the Fergana Valley.  This is a very special place full of amazing cultural and bio-diversity, so it’s no wonder that when the Russians invaded in the mid-19^th century they embarked on a wholesale rebranding of the region by making everyone grow cotton in the interests of a domestic supply for northern mills choked out by the global stranglehold on cotton during the US civil war.   They also wanted to flex their World Island muscle in the face of the advancing British during the Tournament of Shadows.  And, if we’re honest, they could. They could subjugate a people, reorient an economy, and pit tribal nomads and khanates against each other, so why not, right?  And so, what was and is easily one of the most inaccessible places on the planet was once again dredged up and made to perform the Orientalist*** sideshow we have all come to know and love. 

I actually have so much to say about the Fergana Valley that I don’t even know where to begin or what to say.  Instead I think I will just make casual references to things throughout my posts and let you Wikipedia them at your own volition if you so choose because just thinking about the Fergana Valley sends me into a tizzy and my thoughts are so disjointed that that I couldn’t possibly articulate myself in a coherent manner and end up forgetting what I was actually talking about in the first place.  Which is probably the most accurate analogy for the political situation in the Fergana valley at present. 

looooooool now I get why they call Kyrgyzstan the "Switzerland of Central Asia" because this place looks like Swiss Cheese. (Do they call it that?  I think my mom once referred to it as that years ago and I just believed everything she said because that's what you do when you have a mom.)

*seriously, who did this?

** in the marketing biz they call this the "double bubble" ;)
***I actually know very little about Marco Polo and from what I do know he didn’t actually pass through the Fergana Valley.  And with good reason.  First of all, it is a bowl-shaped valley**** with no outlet to the east.  Second, there were many silk roads, and I believe they are calling them “routes” now, so he had so many options.  When I was little I thought there was one long highway either lined with or entirely composed of silk and I was thinking, “Yeah, no wonder it no longer exists” but then discovering that the phrase was figurative and that there wasn’t even one simple road has ultimately led me to resent growing old and the entire institution of learning altogether.

**** You might well ask, "Find me a valley that's not bowl-shaped."  Touche.