In an interview with a Turmush correspondent, she admitted that she prefers to count on the abacus rather than on a calculator.
“I was born on November 3, 1953, in Kichi-Kemin. After finishing school in 1971, I entered a trade and commercial technical school. Initially, I planned to enroll in an institute, but it turned out to be difficult, so I chose the technical school. After graduating in 1973, I got a job as an accountant at a vocational school in Altymysh, where I worked for 21 years. Then I started working in a local store, and I have been continuing this work for 30 years now,” Jumabaeva said.
Over her 51-year career, she has become so accustomed to working with the abacus that she cannot count without it—she starts making mistakes. Young people are surprised when they see her counting on the abacus and often ask questions. Some even request to be taught, but after trying, they say they “cannot manage.” The counting devices she uses now are about 40 years old, and she has another one at home,” she added.
“My mother worked on a collective farm, and my father was a war veteran. I am the fourth of five children in the family. Of my older sisters, three have already passed away; only my younger brother and I remain,” she noted.
“My husband and I studied in the same class. He worked as a master and driver at the same vocational school where I was. Later, he drove a minibus on the Bishkek-Kemin route, but he quit that job during the pandemic. Now he works as a taxi driver,” Jumabaeva added.
Chachikay Jumabaeva has three daughters, one son, 16 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren.
The abacus is a family of counting boards that have been used for arithmetic calculations since ancient times, including in Western Europe, for example, until the 18th century. The exact date and place of the abacus's origin are unknown. A user of the abacus is called an abacist, and this term also refers to a network nomogram used for solving equations.
