"My father wishes I were bigger and had more energy because farming in mountainous Kyrgyzstan requires a lot of labor."
Rustam is a twenty-two year old young man from a mountainous region in northern Kyrgyzstan. He is the middle of five children and has three sisters and one brother. As a child, Rustam grew more slowly than his neighbors and classmates and is still much shorter than most young men his age. Rustam had difficulties learning in school. He was not able to focus on what was going on and had a hard time learning to read and do math. Rustam's older sister is even smaller for her age and the local nurse said she is mentally handicapped. Rustam remembers one of his schoolteachers complained that most students in this school seemed to learn more slowly than at the school he had come from in central Kyrgyzstan.
Rustam's parents are wheat farmers; they had initially farmed cotton before Kyrgyzstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Before, cotton was exported to other parts of the USSR and foods were imported into Kyrgyzstan from other parts of the USSR. Since then, the demand for cotton has fallen and there is a need to feed people within Kyrgyzstan. Many factories shut down during that time as well, and on the weekends youth would play in the lot next to an abandoned factory. Like many of their neighbors, Rustam's parents have struggled to support their family, particularly in the very difficult years when the country switched from a communist to market economy. Rustam helps out on the farm, but his father wishes Rustam had more energy and was more motivated because the farm requires a lot of labor to be successful.
Growing up on a farm, Rustam's family has always valued meal time. His mother tended a small garden next to the house and farmers at the local market seasonally sold fruits ranging from pomegranates to lemons to apples, as well as a variety of vegetables including squashes, eggplants and cucumbers. For meat Rustam's family would generally eat mutton as the main source of protein, although traditional sausages made from horsemeat and sometimes beef would also be on the table. Rustam and his family did not use much salt in their diets while Rustam was young but have used it more in the last few years.