Balykchy lies at the western tip of Lake Issyk-Kul. It has a sublimely beautiful piece of water in Central Asia that meshes with frequent banks of parched landscape to create a soft atmosphere in the summer heat. With an area of 6236 square kilometres, it is the second largest mountain lake in the world.
Kazbek Abraliev, information officer for the International NGO Training and Research Centre in Central Asia, says, "Everyone in Kyrgyzstan wants to get away from the sweltering summer heat and cool off in the lovely waters here." The surface of the lake lies at an altitude of 1606 metres, and cool breezes blow from surrounding mountains always capped with snow.
But some of the elderly Russian-speaking pensioners retired in this rail junction town that has about 45 000 inhabitants, are angry that for a third year running they cannot get water in their apartment blocks, despite having made strong efforts to do so.
Pensioners from a federation of self-help groups attached to the Resource Centre to the Elderly, which gets backing from the Ecumenical Consortium for Central Asia and other NGOs, gathered to discuss their activities early in July, and for many of them water was on their minds.
Lydmila, who says she is in her late 70s, told ENI, "This is especially a problem in summer time, and has been in recent years. We are charged for using 180 litres a day, but we don't get any water." The woman explains that such a problem would never have occurred before 1991, when Kyrgyzstan was part of the Soviet Union and local services worked.
In the days under communist rule, Soviet armed forces used Issyk-Kul to test nuclear submarines away from prying eyes in a piece of water 182 kilometres long, 60 kilometres wide, and that reaches a depth of 668 metres.
"We are using these groups of ours to lobby to get water flowing back in our apartments. It's been difficult this summer," says another elderly woman who says her name is Galina.
Most of the elderly, many of them widowed, in the self-help federation are on their own; their children have gone to work in Russia where opportunities are greater. Such was the growth in the self-help groups that they were able to united to form their federation. The Russian Orthodox Church provides the groups with spiritual backing, while European churches provide resources as part of their drive to develop civil society in Kyrgyzstan.
