Water Stories
Portrait
bakyt
ibraimov
Age: Born 07/09/1967.
Town and country: I was born and live in Osh, Kyrgyzstan.
Who do you live with? My family consists of myself, my beloved wife,
two gentle daughters, and two courageous sons.
Nationality and citizenship: Kyrgyzstani.
Identity: Man of the world.
Why are you interested in water issues? This topical issue affects the lives of
ordinary people: their health, crop yields, and hence their well-being and tranquillity all depend on the quality of and access to drinking and irrigation water.
What was your most interesting or surprising experience with water? After our
wedding my wife and I rented a very cheap flat on the top floor of a four storey
building. Water almost never reached the level of our home and we had to draw water
at night. One evening there was torrential rain. We put out basins and buckets and
by morning we had plenty of rain water, which we used to drain the toilet. That’s
how we solved our own water problem.
What does the world think about your country? My tiny mountainous country, lost
amongst the peaks of the Tian Shan, could make a fantastic tourist destination, but
the absence of infrastructure and decent services hinders development of that sector
of the economy.
If I hadn’t been a journalist, I’d have been... an ecologist, obviously!
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