My name Shirin is translated as sweet – originally it is Persian. In my country we have lots of Persian words integrated into our language.
Kyrgyzstan where I come from used to be Kirgiziya (translated in to 40 girls). Forty tribes came together to form a nation – very ancient nomadic culture.

It is close to Kazakhstan and a country of 5million people. Ninety per cent of the land is mountainous with some of the highest peaks in the world – they reach 7,000 metres above sea level.

I come from a small town called Osh with a population of 300,000 people.
In my country we have Kindergarten, then you go to High school which includes Primary, Secondary and High school together and you go there and study for 10 /11 years.

In Kindergarten I used to be bullied and when I was 6 years old (I was supposed to be there until I was 7) I couldn’t stand it any more so I said to my father, so he said lets go to school…………

One of the things I did in my country I helped in a project called PSBH which stands for Problem Solving For Better Health. The main idea of this project to involve people in public health area and help people to come up with projects where they can improve their own health. We would monitor these projects and follow up these projects.

For example one of the projects was about drug rehabilitation centre for former drug users and the problem in that centre was the immune system of the people and was hygiene connected. Heroin was the drug used because that is the thing which is transported from Afghanistan to Europe now.

They thought they needed to improve the hygiene in the Centre.
The addicts would stay for 1 month at the Centre in a closed area, and then they would proceed with this programme and come out of the rehabilitation centre but would regularly visit groups where they would continue the programme.

Talking about what they did with their project they decided they need to install a boiler for heating the water and they need to build a sauna – and they did it with our project so the connection was between hygiene improving their health and immune system.

I can give you an example of my brother who will now be 33 and he started using drugs when he was 13. Twenty years ago he started. He was rehabilitated in this centre mentioned and now he has going through this process of rehabilitation. It is already 1 year since he has been rehabilitated and I still keep my fingers crossed and hope that he will be alright. I think he’s doing fine.

He started it 10 years ago and that’s the time the collapse of the Soviet Union happened and I think the country was in crisis and the vulnerable age group would be teenagers. Unfortunately Osh is south in my country and a transit place from Afghanistan and all the drugs would come through my town.

My friend worked in drug control and she used to tell me that in Osh my town, official statistics show 1 in 6 young people would be a drug user so unofficially it would be 1 in 3. I can witness this through my brother, my friend’s brother and neighbours – some of them died.

When I was in PSBH in our workshops we found out the most widespread diseases include TB, Hepatitis B and C among drug users and also STD’s, again because of the crisis in the country and poverty.

Asian Connections Book