02 Nov Kyrgyzstan — Kok-Boru: the Dead Goat Game

If you had to guess which country’s national sport involved teams of horsemen tossing dead goats into cisterns, you might come up with Kyrgyzstan. It’s the centralest of Central Asia Stans, a landlocked former Soviet republic wedged between Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, China and Tajikistan.

For thousands of years Bishkek, the capital city, was one of the nodes on the Silk Road. But after two generations of Soviet rule, the mosques and caravansaries and noisy, chaotic alleys have given way to pompous government buildings

 

 

guarded by goose-stepping soldiers

 

 

sporting the comical, high-peaked military hats made famous by North Korea.

And run by a dictator who, every morning, shuts the city down so he can walk to work without rubbing elbows with any actual citizens. Then shuts it down all over again in the afternoon so he can walk back to his palace . . . at least when he’s not having his soldiers shoot unarmed demonstrators.

There’s a statue in the main square of people pushing against an immovable wall

 

 

or, maybe, a movable wall pushing against people. It’s hard to tell but, either way, the statue pretty much catches the spirit of what living in Bishkek must be like, although I’m not sure the president is enough of an art appreciator to have caught the subtleties.

But that’s just Bishkek. Outside of town, out in the shadow of the Ala-Too Mountains,

 

 

Central Asia remains what it’s always been. Big and wild and windswept where people hang onto the old ways. And play games that involve depositing dead goats in cisterns. Even the Soviets couldn’t change that.

The dead goat game is called Kok-Boru which means “blue wolf” in Kyrgyz and might have something to do with the herding culture of the steppes. Or might not. Nobody knows where the name came from.

When you first hear about Kok-Boru, you imagine a primordial version of polo. But in real life it’s more like rugby on horseback. Or some form of full-contact rodeo that wouldn’t be countenanced in today’s America.

Action kicks off when a man gallops by

 

 

and drops a decapitated goat in the center of a long, flat playing field. If this were basketball it would be a jump goat with the players not allowed to so much as touch one another. But this is Kok-Boru, and the players seem to care a lot less about the goat than snatching each other off their horses.

 

 

The horses know what’s expected or, maybe, just shy apart, stretching the guy caught in the middle

 

 

until somebody gains control, reaches down, grabs the goat, makes a fast break for the far end of the field

 

 

and if he isn’t run down and unhorsed along the way, dunks the goat into the opposing team’s cistern.

 

 

Girlfriends and wives cheer, somebody carries the wet goat back to the center of the field, guys ride up

 

 

and the wrestling starts again.

 

 

I never learned the purpose of the cistern because sometimes they don’t bother with it. A rider just carries the goat into the opposing end zone, girlfriends and wives cheer, the goat moves back to the middle of the field and play begins again.

Or how points are scored.

Or how anybody knows when the game is over but, after a while they do, and a thoroughly tenderized goat is sent to the cooking spit.

It’s the kind of thing that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are prone to issuing stiffly-worded broadsides about, calling Kok-Boru “a game of sadistic savagery . . . with the lesson being that pastimes involving cruelty belong in the past – as they are games of shame that spotlight callousness rather than skill.”

I’m not sure they’re right about the cruelty part. I mean, it’s hard to get into the head of a dead goat, especially when the head is somewhere far away and the goat is already headed for the cooking spit.

And as for Kok-Boru not being a game of skill, Virginia is horse country and PETA is headquartered in Virginia so, maybe, they know better than me. But watching from the sidelines it’s hard to think those guys don’t know how to ride.

Regardless of what PETA thinks, it all looked like so much fun you’d think there’d be horse games for the ladies, too. And it turns out there are. There’s kyz-kuumai, which means “catch the girl.” The point being, at least from the point of view of the guys, to catch the girl and kiss her. She has a different idea . . . her job is to hit anybody who comes too close with a whip.

As far as I know, PETA hasn’t taken a position on the sadistic savagery, the shame and callousness of women participating in a sport whose only point is to hit hopeful young men with whips.