Revolution and natural disaster

English professor William McRae witnessed an overthrow of the government in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan in 2005, and biology professor S.K. Ballal had returned from a 2004 Fulbright assignment to Sri Lanka less than two months before an Indian Ocean tsunami devastated much of the island nation.

McRae, who was teaching at the American University of Central Asia in the capital city of Bishkek at the time, documented his Kyrgyzstan experience in an e-mail correspondence to his colleagues.

On Thursday afternoon, March 24, McRae wrote, “There is growing political unrest in the country.” The issue in question was the legitimacy of recent parliamentary elections, and the ensuing revolt ousted unpopular president Askar Akayev.

By that evening, the outright revolution was obvious. “So, here I am, trying to teach in the middle of a revolution — quite literally a block away. I can watch it all from my balcony,” McRae wrote.

The following day, he provided a firsthand account of looting in the city. “The ethnic Kyrgyz predominate among the looters, and you can see the fractured expressions of basically honest people denied everything for too long,” he wrote.

“This is as close to hell as I have ever been, and it’s all the more reason that I know I am exactly where I should be and that I must stay,” McRae’s correspondence for that day concluded. “We have to help. All my values mean everything here, or they mean nothing. I was able to buy water. Little things mean everything.”

By Sunday at noon, the Tulip Revolution was complete, the looting had stopped, and McRae reported that a return to normal was already beginning.

“Perhaps because the collapse of the government took less than an hour, the return to normal has been just as quick,” he wrote.

The rapidity didn’t diminish the impact, however. “It really is a quite remarkable thing to watch a government taken back by its citizens, the vast majority of whom feel enormous pride in their achievement, and a willingness to take on the responsibility of turning their country around,” he wrote. “When you think about what has happened in this apparently out-ofthe- way and insignificant country, you must step back in amazement.”

Six days after the overthrow of the government, McRae wrote, “The universities are open. The trash from the riots is slowly being cleared away. Embassy parties are planned. Bread is in the markets. And the weather is glorious in the aftermath of a cold spring snow.”

But there was nothing glorious about the weather that devastated the equatorial island of Sri Lanka, killing more than 46,000 people in a tsunami that struck in December 2004, about two months after biology professor Ballal returned from his Fulbright assignment in that country.

“Sri Lanka is such a beautiful country. I couldn’t believe the fate of the beaches, where I spent some memorable time just a few months before the tsunami struck,” Ballal said. “The pictures I brought back with me are of places that will never be the same again, places that have been captured on video being washed away.”

He estimates that the damage done to the coast of Sri Lanka and the other South Asian countries hit by the natural disaster will likely take a decade or longer to repair.

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