Britta Seifert: In Kyrgyzstan, they can get your goat

We arrived in the morning, but already the field-turned-parking-lot was filled with cars.

It was a crisp, clear autumn day and leaves crunched underfoot as Nuris, my host father, and I joined the stream of spectators headed to the ulak tartysh game, one of the strangest events I've ever seen.

The crowd thickened as we approached the field; tailgaters were gathered around their grills and kids chased each other through the throng.

For a moment, I thought I caught a whiff of a hamburger and I thought I might actually be back in the United States watching a football game.

But it definitely wasn't a hamburger, and despite my strong feeling of déjà vu, I wasn't at a football game. There was a skin being thrown around, but it wasn't a pigskin. It was, in fact, the headless carcass of a goat.

In my first-ever Google search of "Kyrgyzstan," I learned about ulak tartysh, the traditional Central Asian game played on horseback, in which points are scored with the above-mentioned animal carcass.

It is 22 months later and I was finally watching my first game.

Like football, ulak tartysh is a fall sport, usually played as part of harvest celebrations. There are ring-shaped goals — about five feet in diameter — at either end of the playing field, and the rules are pretty simple: get the goat in the goal.

Of course, this is easier said than done when the goat carcass weighs more than 80 pounds and 10 men on horseback are battling for it.

The game can get pretty rough and so spectators are kept at a distance.

Nuris and I joined the crowd, mostly men, perched on a bank above the field. We could see the red-shirted players from a village called Terek Suu. Several of Nuris' friends were playing on that team, and we squinted to identify them.

"Let's get closer," Nuris said, so we headed down the bank.

Several policemen stood at the edge of the field, keeping spectators at bay.

"This girl came from America. She needs to get closer to take pictures," Nuris said to one of the policeman.

With a blink and a nod, the policeman motioned us onward. We made our way around the field, to where the Terek Suu players stood on the sidelines.

On the field, the excitement was building. It was close, but our team was winning. Time was almost up. I watched as one of our horsemen deftly picked the carcass off the ground and spurred his horse to a gallop. In a cloud of dust, his rivals chased after him, but our man was in the lead. He managed to reach the ring first and heave the carcass in.

Goal!

A few minutes later, the game was over. Terek Suu was victorious.

With whoops and hollers, they headed back to their yurt (a portable dwelling common in the Central Asian steppe) to celebrate and rest up for the next game.

Next to the yurt, over an open fire, an older woman stirred what appeared to be a giant pot of boiling sheep intestines.

For a moment, I imagined the reaction of an American football team if somebody tried to feed them boiled sheep guts as a post-game snack.

Having lived in Kyrgyzstan for a year and a half, being here has become normal and I often recognize the parallels between the Kyrgyz and American ways of life more quickly than the differences.

But every once in a while, I get a pungent reminder that I am, in fact, on the opposite side of the world.

And, usually, it smells like sheep.

Britta Seifert is a Marshall native and Kalamazoo College graduate who is a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Central Asian county of Kyrgyzstan. Contact her at brittaaseifert@gmail.com