Upon arrival at the tournament site, we were assigned our rooms, which were scattered throughout the compound. My students were taken away to their rooms, and I was spirited off to an obscure corner of the resort. I entered the townhouse that I was assigned to find that it was full. One of the residents helpfully suggested that I could share a bed with a boy, but of course I declined and went searching for the tournament organisers who eventually told me that I was assigned to the wrong townhouse and then showed me to my coaches only house. I choose a bed at random and went off to find my students.
This was a harder process than it should be. I patiently explained that I needed to know where they were, since I was responsible for their safety as their teacher. (Before leaving Mongolia, I had signed three notarised documents that effectively said that I was their guardian for the duration.) Eventually, someone told me the answer and I found them getting settled into their rooms, and busy meeting other kids from around Asia.
As an Asian championships of a sort, this debate tournament featured teams from all around Asia, but with a concentration of teams from Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan were especially well represented) and South East Asia. No teams from East Asia (unless you counted us, which you might as well do) or South Asia. Pakistan had a couple teams apparently but they backed out after the funding was less than expected, and Nepal's visas were denied absurdly by Kyrgyzstan for unknown reasons. (Kyrgyzstan immigration procedures were the most lax ones I've ever experienced: no forms, no fees, no questions, just a stamp and you're in if you're from the developed world or the CIS.)
Debate tournaments are strange beasts, and our expectations going in wavered between modest goals (let's not come last) and delusions of grandeur (we should be able to easily win this thing). Perhaps I should have done some more research and watched some debates from Central Asia on YouTube beforehand, but we had little idea about the quality of competition, expectations of adjudicators or style of teams. I also didn't know that I was going to be a judge in the tournament until the day I arrived expecting to just coach my team to respectability. Instead, I was to judge at least 6 debates in 3 days in a format I was relatively unfamiliar, and with no real experience judging debates.
Our team survived the first debate with a clear win, but the adjudications were strange, obsessed with things like "clashes," devoid of mention of method (structure) or manner (way of speaking), and looking for refutation instead of rebuttal. Indeed, in the debate that I judged, the adjudication of another judge was from another world: in a debate where the negative team offered no rebuttal and did not engage with affirmative's team, she gave it to negative. As a team, we hunkered down and decided to ditch our thematic rebuttal, and instead renamed it "clashic rebuttal" and decided to play up "clashes" as judges (aside from me and a few others) did not seem to like a debate that weighed up competing arguments and models, instead preferring to see arguments taken down and refuted, as if it was a professional wrestling match with words.
With our adjustments, we ran the table to 4 and 0, before losing the final two debates of the round robin in close decisions against the top 2 teams. Basically, after each round teams were reseeded based on their results and so you constantly went up against teams that were at or above your level. This made for a bit of a wonky tournament that sacrificed the certainty of a draw, and allowed other teams to roll through to finals debating against other mediocre teams.
Regardless, we came into finals feeling as if we had a real shot at winning everything, Our team had a strong reputation for its precision in its arguments, closeness and ability to win at secret topics. We won the first final in a close one against a rapidly improving Malaysia and went into the quarter finals with dreams of victory in our heads. Unfortunately, the decision went against us unfairly, which happens in the randomness of debating and the style of adjudication which boggles my mind to this day.
One of the strangest features of the tournament was how we debated the same topic 3 times (!!) and only in the end did 3 secret topics, when we had extensively prepared for secret topics and won them all. The repetition of the same topic made for inaccurate judging, from my experience as a coach or judge, because by the time you've seen 2 of these debates, your mind wanders from the debate at hand and to the realm of what you've seen or heard before, especially when you have judged 7 or 8 debates total. I myself judged past the round robin and into the octofinals round, though thankfully I was finally taken off the roster for quarter finals. You can't help but have your mind not focus completely after debate #7 in 3 or 4 days.
In any case, coming 5th overall and having 2 speakers in the top 10 of the individual best speaker award (#3 and #8) was a very good achievement, especially for a team that had only really come together and gotten serious a couple months before the tournament. After a night where we tended to our psychical wounds and grievances, we breakfasted together and spoke to each other about how well we did, and how debate's a random game at the best of times. It was a cathartic and important moment and allowed us to look into the tournament and take from it what we had achieved.
In the days following the tournament, the labs started and these days rounded off our trip on a positive and educational note. The kids moved into their debating labs, and I went into the coaches/judges stream where we discussed strategy, organisation of tournaments, breaking down topics, educational possibilities, and more. I wished these sessions came earlier because Central Asian approaches to debate differed substantially from the Australian tradition that my knowledge comes from and which, strangely enough, Mongolian debating now revolves around (especially taking into account the debate tournament we've organised in UB that uses almost exclusively Australian rules, scoring methods and expectations).
We left the tournament before it was over. We had planned this for months, since our students had to get back for exams and the school was rightly reticent to have students away for almost half a month. In the planning stages, leaving early always seemed a prudent decision, both in terms of costs and sanity. Like, how could you talk and live and breathe debating for more than 10 days at a time and not go crazy? But, as the date of our departure approached, our thoughts all turned to how we wish we could have stayed for longer and for the second part of the tournament, a mixed teams challenge.
There was more than a hint of sadness on our final day at the tournament. It was also the excursion and games day. We left the resort for a crazy religious tourist attraction on the lake, which featured mini temples to all the major world religions (except hinduism), as well as extensive art galleries and a monument and building dedicated to a great Kyrgyz poet. We walked around the park in a bit of a daze, feeling wistful and already nostalgic for the time we had spent here. Returning to the resort, we packed our bags, the kids played games on the beach, and I read a book quietly in my room.
Our ride picked us up at 9:30 PM. We had a flight at 4 AM the next morning and I decided to go directly from the lake to the airport, instead of spending an evening with our bags in Bishkek and leaving earlier in the day. As we left, a large group of Tajik and Kyrgyz debaters showered us with songs and handshakes and, for our kids, wrote their email addresses and facebook profiles on whatever they could find, whether it be a scrap of paper, or a hand or a forearm, so that one of my students left with sharpie markings all over her arms from the boys and girls of Central Asia.
In retrospect, my night time escape from Lake Issyk Kul was not the best plan that I've ever devised. We left in pitch blackness and the road around the lake was perfectly acceptable. On the way in, I found out that the road through the mountains though was being repaved and widened. In the middle of the day, the road was passable but not great, but in dark it was shockingly and scarily unsafe especially as cars in both directions shared a one lane highway that snaked its way up and down the Tien Shan mountains. To make matters worse, a slight drizzle started, which soon developed into an outright torrential downpour.
Our Kyrgyz driver did his best to pilot us safely, and he turned out to be a safe, cautious and excellent driver. (Other cars seemed to hurtle themselves through the road at ridiculous velocities. We later passed them as their vans' engines billowed out smoke.) That didn't though stop me from picturing in lurid detail our death in the Tien Shan. At times, to make matters even worse, the driver would stop the car, pull over, kick the tires, tighten the nuts on the tires and tinker with the engine in the pouring rain. There were perhaps 4 of these stops, each becoming more and more frightening than the last, especially as I coudn't communicate with him as he didn't speak English and I can't speak Russian or Kyrgyz.
After an hour and a half, we made it through the mountains and found ourselves in the plains of Northern Kyrgyztsan. By the time, we made it to the airport at 2 AM, I had finally fallen asleep. Awakened by the bright lights of the airport, I silently said a prayer and woke up the kids, who had slept the entire trip (as I had advised them to). As we got out of the van at the departures level of Manas airport, I thrust 2000 som (about $40) into our driver's fist, thanking him in my worse than elementary Russian for his efforts in getting us safely to the airport.
We walked into the airport, which is an even more dreary and horrible spot at 2 AM than Chinggis Khan International in UB, and breathed a sigh of relief. Eventually we went through to the gates and then tried our best to spend the rest of our money, before boarding the plane back to Mongolia in the dead of the Kyrgyz night as it continued to pour down endless sheets of rain.
You have to be hard in Central Asia.
