It all started almost two years ago when I first moved here, when one of the junior administrators asked me to come up with a list of stations that we would want to have on our satellite system. "You name it. The sky's the limit," he told me.
What an amazing list I created of entertaining and educational stations.
Little did I know at the time that indeed the sky was the limit, as satellites operate out in space well beyond the sky, for when we arrived on campus, no satellite TV at all.
The weeks went by and finally satellite TV came flickering across my screen. 40 Russian stations, 25 Turkish stations, and two English stations. Not just any English stations, mind you, but two of the worst English language stations known to humankind. In our secular university, we received two Christian Evangelical stations that, among other offenses, engaged in persistent attacks on Islam, here on our campus where probably 90% of the community can claim Islamic heritage. Cool! And even better, no Kyrgyz stations on our televisions, in this land of Kyrgyzstan.
I will spare everyone the list of harangues and strategies and actions and growling and grumbling I engaged in over the next 13 months in my efforts to get some sort of satellite TV installed. The problem, I was told was sub-contractors who couldn't deliver, the angle of satellites, the height of the mountains, the hardness of the rocky soil where no fiber optic cable could be installed, the phases of the moon, the general condition of human existence. "People will be walking the surface of the planet Mars before we get satellite TV," was my common response to these explanations.
To make a long story short, I returned from an extremely brief vacation yesterday to find that finally we have satellite TV. With English language stations. And no tele-evangelism on our strictly secular campus.
Only one downside. I had promised the ever-intrepid operations manager, Kuban-baike, that I would do a Kyrgyz dance and buy the staff pizza the day that English satellite tv arrived to campus. Not ever expecting such an eventuality, I now have to get out my Kyrgyz dancing shoes and pizza money. But, in the end, it is all worth it, as last night, after watching the news on BBC World Service and viewing the end of a scintillating NBA match-up, I got to watch game 5 of the World Series, where the Astros beat the Dodgers in one of the most exciting baseball games I have ever witnessed. All good things come to those who wait?
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