kids in Koktube 2

A few people have wondered about what kids are like here. If anything, the youth of Kazakhstan are more steeped in TV and American pop stars than the youth of America. They are unburdened by understanding what Eminem, Nelly, and Britney are saying, but they memorize the words anyway. I was at a birthday party Wednesday night, and the girls asked me to translate the music they were dancing to. My Kazakh hasn’t reached so far – I don’t know the proper words to make people’s hair stand on end yet.
TV here is weird and certainly not as edgy as in America, but people sure watch a lot of it, maybe 5/6 hours a day. It’s not all innocence, though. There are some cable exports, such as “Sex and the City” and a number of South American soap operas. Film pirating is so efficient that my neighbor, Yerlan, was running around with a copy of “Troy” a month ago, and most people have seen “Shrek II” – not in theaters.
Kids here are well-loved, though not spoiled. I’ve not heard much praise or criticism. The situation for women is probably similar to the 1950’s in the US. Few work, and even those who do are fully responsible for feeding and cleaning for everyone. Children are courteous and affectionate with their parents, aunts, and uncles. I haven’t seen teenaged angst in anyone except a 21-year-old who goes to college in Houston.
All this doesn’t mean that the younger generations plan on staying in the villages. A few girls who just graduated from high school told us at tea about their plans for the future. They were all very ambitious, even if not likely: doctor, translator, etc. I have a couple host cousins who are in medical school. They’re 18. Here, you enter medical school out of high school and go for 6 years. Doctors here are younger, and many are women.
But back to the kids: they seem to have a lot of fun. There’s no school right now, so they’re running around in packs shouting three phrases in English. Some of the boys, headed by Narsultan, play bocce in the street. Lots of them also meet up for soccer in the field by the school. Some young girls were playing in a shallow ditch in the rain.
There are a million people named royally – Narsultan for boys and Sultanate for girls are especially popular. Which is interesting because they must have been named during the Soviet era, a brave new world with no end in sight and no love of kings.
Many 17-year-olds think I’m also about 17. It’s true, teenaged girls in KZ look much older than teenaged girls in America. 30-year-old women roughly correspond to American women in their 40’s. And my 70-year-old grandmas look like they could be the mothers of my American grandparents. It’s far more variable with the boys. Some are so thin! In fact, everyone except married women is thin. There’s quite a range for height. Most old men and women are quite short, but my 13-year-old host sister is taller than I am, and some of the boys in the local boxing club are absolutely huge.

New Information

The photo below is from our first week in Kaz, at a sanatorium in Turgen. Lovely, huh? The people are all trainees, from the left, Paul's back, Tim in suspenders, Ryan, Jay, and Yasameen.

I'm a bit wound up, since I just got my site assignment. There's a lot of useful information which I don't have yet, but I'll tell you what I know:

My post is in a village in Europe, technically, in northwest Kazakhstan. The town is named Budarino, and i don't know the spelling in Cyrillic. It is 90% Kazakh, and I'll be teaching at a Kazakh school, probably several grades from 2nd up to 8th. I will be about 1 hour by bus from Uralsk, and less than that from a couple friends from training, Ivy and Amber. We're pretty excited, since Ivy will have a flat to herself that we're welcome to stay at. I will be the first American in my village, I will have electricity, water, and a phone. Possibly the school will have internet - I really really hope the school will have internet. On August 20th, I'll hop on the train with my counterpart for about 70 hours.

Sorry this is so terse - I'm due at my house for lunch. Also, Mom and Dad, can you call me Sunday morning after 8 your time?

A picture of some stuff and stuff

nights

The sun sets at 9:45 here.  I can tell that the days are getting shorter - it's almost dark when we eat dinner these days.  At evening, the sky is often cloudy, and you really have to go out of your way to see the sunset, since there are trees to the west of Koktube 2.  If you wait a couple hours, though, the night wind from the mountain blows the clouds away, and the show begins.  The moon casts hazy shadows only because the stars are so bright.  It's not spooky though, since you can tell if someone's coming by the cigarette, and the animals are all within gates for the night. People here don't use flashlights.  Sometimes, you truly don't need them, but sometimes - well, I fell in a pit of mud at midnight a couple days ago.  

spider

There’s a very very big spider that lives in our outhouse.  Shockingly big, yet somehow I never notice him until it’s a bad time to move.  He’s quite striking, even from a distance.  Tonight, his giant body was wedged between the top of the door and the doorframe.  With his legs, it made a pattern a lot like the sun pattern many people have on the tops of their gates.  Pretty.  Augh.

future bliss

I’ve been to a few big parties/ dinners, and I know there are a few more on the way.  There are several traditions made, it seems, to get people to clean their plates.  One of these is that once a group of people finishes a bottle of anything, the man who is serving (men are to serve all beverages except tea) will marry a beautiful wife.  Another tradition says that the more you eat off the bone you’ve been served (so far, sheep), the more attractive your future spouse will be.  We volunteers were under much scrutiny on this account at the feast for Dastan’s circumcision.  Everyone wanted to see how beautiful our wives/husbands would be.  At this point, our host moms are trying to marry us off to each other.  Ryan cleaned his section of spinal cord, Tim did okay with his rib, Teresa and I quickly decided we would rather marry ugly men that eat pure fat, but on Jon’s plate wriggled something unmentionable.  “Jon, we don’t even have to tell you how beautiful your wife will be if you eat the sphincter.”  Jon ate the sphincter.  I won’t be marrying Jon.
 
It clearly wasn’t a sphincter, but we like to pretend it was.  Unless it was an extraordinarily loose sphincter.  Hope I didn’t ruin anything.  In the interest of accuracy, you know.

staff

Our training staff, with one exception, are Kazakhstanis.  Most all of them have blond hair, cool hipster reading glasses and are named Natalia.  Only sometimes they want to be called “Nina” or “Lena” or “Natasya.”  Most of these women were once counterparts of PCV’s.  This means that they worked as English teachers at a school where a PCV was placed, and they were paired with the PCV to coordinate lesson plans and give support.  Many PCV counterparts are invited to the US through a teacher exchange program called Accels.  Our staff speak with utter confidence and difficult accents.  They often use words like “disseminate” perfectly. 
            We go to Ecik to fulfill a couple components of PST.  One is technical training.  We’re learning how to use progressive teaching methods in KZ, where progressive teaching methods aren’t common.  People here are educated, but often their knowledge isn’t functional.  While some PCV’s teach economics as well as English, our main roles are to get our classes to actually speak English, and especially to get our teachers to speak English.  There are stories of PCV’s who realize that their counterparts can only say greetings and a couple key phrases.              Medical sessions are exciting.  We have two PCMO’s (Peace Corps Medical Officers), Pam and Victor.  Pam is all-American, a small woman with a curly mullet who runs 14 miles a day and then bikes to work.  She heads an NGO which does hurricane relief in Central America. 
            Victor is something else.  He was born in Moldova and has been working with Peace Corps since the fall of the USSR (I think . . .).  Before the fall of the USSR, he was in the Soviet army doing similar work.  We all adore Victor, partly because he’s terrifying, partly because he’s nice.  He has a thick accent, which makes him both self-conscious and endearing.  He has very twinkly eyes.  Pam will say something about tapeworms for example, and Victor will chime in with “in Angola . . . .” it’s always an impressive cautionary tale about extreme cases of anything.  Madagascar also has provided its share of Reasons To Listen To Victor: a volunteer told her host family once that she didn’t drink alcohol because was is taboo for her, then she drank at someone else’s house, and as Victor had warned, she was abhorrent to the local people.  “It was like she had no soul.”  The room we were in was dead quiet.  No soul, huh?  Brrr.  He’s the sort of guy you don’t want to hear ghost stories from, if you believe them.  Later, Pam was telling us about getting administrative separation (admin sep, sent home) for inappropriate behavior.  It takes quite a bit to get admin sep, according to me.  According to Victor also: “In Angola . . . . just wanted to talk with a local woman at a bar.  The next day, someone came from Moscow.  We never saw Dimitri again.  Ever.”  Victor likes ice cream and excerpts from “Anguished English.” 
            All of us who went to the big banya in Almaty want to go back and take more staff with us.  A few of the language teachers and Nina came with the women, but the guys had no staff on their side.  They want Victor to come with them.  Banya is fun. I’m sure an internet search would turn up a lot of interesting articles.  Basically, it can be one or two of several kinds of sauna.  Only in KZ, it involves drinking tea.  Everything here involves drinking tea.  We all had a great time at banya and would like to whack more authority figures with bundles of leaves.
            In addition to these regular sessions, we teach 4 35-minute sessions at a school in Ecik, do a practicum for 2 weeks at a local school, and complete a secondary project.  Our (7 PCT’s here in Koktube 2) secondary project was cut off halfway through by the darling principal who told us he didn’t care.  He also says he doesn’t care if our neighborhood doesn’t get running water again.  All our host parents made the international crazy sign when we told them about him. 
            In addition to all this, another PCT and I have designed a tertiary project which we hope will benefit future PCT’s.  We are going to buy 2 or 3 of every kind of chocolate and candy we can find and make an index of them.  We’ll rate them and describe their flavor.  This will take us a while, but we must press on: too many of our comrades have accidentally eaten the nasty kind with fake strawberry filling or overlooked the plain but wonderful Kix-flavored Molocho.  You can see how strong the Volunteer spirit is within us.

running

I haven’t run the same route yet.  Mostly, this is intentional.  I have to think about a number of factors.  In town, I want people in town to know me.  I greet them, and they recognize me.  I know which streets the sheep go down and which streets the cows go down.  As soon as I cross the pastures to the feet of the mountains (about 5 minutes out, if that) I don’t want people to expect me.   Also, I’m still looking for a path wide enough to escape from the remarkable thorns.  
 
I have tried to run the same route twice, and unintentionally found myself somewhere else.  I like a short path on a ledge that looks down on the village.  It smells like apricots. This area of Kazakhstan is one giant orchard.  Every living thing that’s not an animal is sprouting fruit all over the place.  Except the thorn bushes.  I run along that path for 1K or so, then it turns off into a cemetery.  Below the cemetery is a fallow vineyard and a bit beyond it is an enormous scary ghost gas-station-type-thing which I avoid.  The water never runs the same route, either.  Here, in the mountains, everything is complicated by the water.  There are few creeks that are always creeks, and few dry paths that are always dry paths.  Few bridges always link two shores together, and most rocks travel a bit each day; sometimes, you just have to find a different way home.

 Today, I ran a bit south to see if I could catch one of my favorite trails from a different angle.  As it turns out, there is only one crossing for the river that separates the pastures and the city.  I had to find a new way.  As I was coming home again, the neighbor’s cow was mooing and banging her head against the gate, wanting to be let in again. She doesn’t like being out to pasture and often tries to follow people or to go home. Today, she was limping heavily (there was a lot of broken glass on our street) and I wished I could help her.  There’s a pretty strict rule against messing with other people’s livestock, though, and I couldn’t imagine what would happen after I pulled the glass out of her foot and found myself with a bleeding cow on my hands.   

cultural stuff

I’ve not experienced culture shock – at least, I don’t think I have.  Some of the adjustments – like the outhouses or washing with tin cups – are very similar to the ones I make when car camping.  Not everyday, but not foreign.  Other things, like eating from the same plate, I expected.  I’ve never been a germ freak, so it doesn’t bother me.  Of course, I have now been sick two weekends in a row.  All of the volunteers have noticed that our hygiene habits are very different from our host families’, but no one makes any trouble about that.  Amanda’s family did ask her if she preferred to brush her teeth in the morning or at night.  We wash our hands with soap and water, instead of just water and bathe once every 3 days and wash up more often than that.   
            Drinking is part of the culture here, certainly, but it usually amounts to a glass or two of wine with your family.  In other words, this isn’t college. People who know me aren’t pushy about it.  For instance, my family never offers me alcohol, although my host Dad likes to tease me about horse milk (I can’t quite describe it – awful).  Other host families offer once or twice out of politeness (in Kazakh culture, “no” isn’t “no” until the second or third time you say it).  I went to a wedding where the man, the head of the table, kept dumping out my juice and refilling my glass with vodka, despite my objections.  Not a big problem – I’d dump the vodka into an empty cup and refill my glass with juice.  But the culture doesn’t encourage binge drinking.  It seems to me that the only people I’ve seen very drunk aren’t locals.  
            The food here is very yummy, although it’s shockingly fattening.  Most people here aren’t fat at all, despite eating 5% fat yogurt, 4 pieces of bread/ meal slathered with butter, condensed milk in their tea, etc.  I think my secondary project should be a series of short cookbooks, beginning with “Potatoes CAN Be Healthy,” then “Fried Eggs – Every Once-In-A-While, They’re Great.”  There’s also an odd phenomenon we call “rock cheese.”  Several of us have moms who pack it in our lunches.  Mostly, we use it to impress other people with its unfoodlike qualities, but Ryan has recently developed a taste for it.  You have to break it up by first wedging in a knife, then sticking in another and seeing if you can pull the two halves apart.  Chris Besch, the PC Country Director told me her plan is to not eat anything white here.

            The language barrier has been the toughest.  I suppose people have culture shock where they are fluent in the national language (PCV’s in some African countries, esp.) but they don’t have the experience of trying unsuccessfully to tell people they’re sick or of being the brunt of jokes they don’t understand.  There are some other things about the language that can be difficult.  You just have to keep in mind what’s normal and what isn’t.  For instance, the way the language is constructed, most imperatives sound quite rude.  Sit. Stand.  Give me.  Enough/ you’re done.  But you can tell from someone’s manner whether they are being rude when saying these things.  One of my cousins either gives me dog commands or doesn’t talk at all – not nice.  But my sister tells me sit, stop, go, and it’s not a problem.  Another thing is that people shout when they’re not angry.  We were digging a ditch with some neighbors, and the apa (babushka) who was in charge kept shouting.  Tim thought he was doing something wrong and didn’t know what, but Saltanat told him that was just her way of cheerleading. 

            So, now that I’ve said I’m not having culture shock and gone on to tell you about culture shock, everything feels pretty normal.  My family is just a family – a very very nice one.  At this point, I’m a student teacher, I’m with English speakers for part of every day, and there are no inconvenient limitations (such as not having enough water).
           
            That’s all here, in Koktube Yeki (Sovet’s earlier name).  In two weeks, I’ll find out where my post is for the 2 years (until June 2006).  I’ll most likely be in the south of the country, in a Kazakh (not Russian) community in some degree of desert.  The main cities I might be centered around are Turkistan (my first choice, I think), Shimkent, Kuzlorda, and in the North, Akhtube.  Having said that, I’ll probably be put somewhere else entirely. 

host family

My host mother is pregnant with her third child.  She works in a doctors’ office that has psychiatry, gynecology, dental, and something else that doesn’t match patients.  My dad drives a cherry truck.  He tells all dinner guests that I’m a bad daughter because I don’t eat enough, and then he tells them that I love mare’s milk, at which time I’m expected to deny it all and puff out my cheeks to show how fat I’ve gotten off of mare’s milk.  Dimir, my brother is a progressive sort of 16-year-old.  He’s extremely considerate, always the one to answer the door and sees my friends all the way to the gate.  He even puts water on the burner for tea.  It’s fairly unheard-of for any sort of male to deal with food preparation or clean-up.  He plays the guitar and is obsessed with a Kazakh version of American Idol.  Dinara, my sister, is 13.  She’s shy around me, but very sweet.  She’s usually with 3 or 4 younger cousins, babysitting.  I like my host family a lot, and I like the various relatives who pop in.  They’re all very nice, all of the women come over wearing housecoats.  Women here, as soon as they come home from work (if they work) or shopping, put on a housecoat, and also funny socks.  There are a lot of socks with strawberries, many green striped socks, some polka-dotted socks. 
 
            I’m not quite sure how many aunts there are, but I believe the number of grandmothers has leveled out at two.  My host father’s (Kanuk) mother is a very good cook.  She has a long gray braid.  She likes soap operas.  My host mother’s (Elmira) mother lives on the other side of town.  She’s fantastic.  Apa was wearing about 7 layers of green things, with a shiny green velvet vest on top.  She wore a white wool headscarf, several skirts, funny socks, and boots of a make not seen for many a year.  She’s very short.  Apa delights everyone, intentionally, I think, but spends a lot of time wandering.  She says she doesn’t have anything to do, but really means that no one is talking to her.  She is the only person I’ve seen pray at a meal, except the head of the mosque who prayed at poor little Dastan’s circumcision feast (Dastan didn’t attend). 
 
On Wednesday, Apa slept over at our house on Zhandosova street.  Everyone had gathered to watch La Venganza (soap opera) in the TV room, and my cousin and my sister noticed that she had burrs all over her clothing.  So, Apa stood in the middle of the room laughing, with her arms out as if she was at an airport security check, while Dinara and M . . (I can’t remember my cousin’s name!) picked the burrs off of her.  Later on, as I was packing my Kazakh flashcards up for the night, Apa came into my room and sat on the bed to talk to me. She asked me when I would come back to Koktube 2 (Sovet).  Apparently, I answered in all the wrong ways.  My Kazakh wasn’t good enough to correct the misunderstanding.  She laughed and said “We are talking about two different things,” then asked the same question.   Twice my host-cousin came in the room and said “Grandma!  Susan wants to go to sleep!”  It was midnight before she left.  Who knows where she got those burrs.  I think she may be going feral.  If she is, I’ll join her.

Shai sh

During the mapmaking excursion, when we picked up a number of meals, we were actually "ghosting," or visiting. In Kazakh, Konikka barduk. This is pretty common, but the seven of us (Amanda, Yasameen, Teresa, Jon, Ryan, Tim, and I) were particularly well treated because we're American guests. For tea, the women and girls prepare a main course, usually a combination of grain products and meat. The rest of the table is covered in cookies, chocolates, jams of all kinds, honey, bread, sausage, cheese, Korean Salad, cucumbers, tomatoes, and tea cups. It's AMAZING. Everyone spoons jam. That's the best thing about Kazakhstan: eating as much raspberry jam straight from the spoon as you want. We do it with honey, too, and there's always more, because people make gallons of jam every Sunday. The hostess serves tea. It's black tea, sometimes with milk, sometimes without. As soon as you're done with a cup, she'll hold out her hand and say: "Shai sh." Which means "drink more tea." It's a splendid life we live.

Sometimes I like to walk

I know I'd planned on telling you about having tea (shai), but transportation seems more interesting to me today. There are lots of ways to get where you want to go. It's about 3 miles from my village to the Training Hub Site in Ecik (Issyk).

Sometimes I take a bus. A couple days ago, Ryan, Jon, and I were on the bus on the way to Esik. This driver was better than most and hasn't contributed to future spinal problems, but the roads were busy. Oh, the roads: they vary in width, but very few have any markings. There are no stop signs, no speed limit signs, no nothing. So, one often finds onself as part of a phalanx of cars (2 or 3 abreast) going 50mph toward other cars on what ought to be a one-way road. Fortunately, there's always a shoulder. Regrettably, people and animals are often on that shoulder.

The bus Ryan, Jon, and I were on was a pretty responsible bus. It is - as they all are - unique. This one had blue curtains and a camel toy dangling from the rear view mirror. Kazakh rap for once was not playing loudly. We gave old ladies a wide berth. However, as the bus pulled up to make a left turn, a donkey cart also drew up to turn. There were two donkeys, one of which was unmistakably Rasta Donkey (he'd been lying in the street looking pretty dead last week, so I was glad to see his shaggy little head). Rasta Donkey is an erratic steed(he munches on hemp all day). He took an unexpected turn into our bus, and the cart made an awful sound grating up against the metal. So, the bus driver and the donkey cart driver shouted for a while. Much to our relief, the donkeys are fine, and the donkey cart was undamaged.


Today, Tim and I got on a bus with red curtains and were doing fine until the driver stopped the bus on the main road in Koktube. He opened the hood. People are always opening hoods around here. A car that is not being driven (and some that are) have their hoods open. But, apparently, he really couldn't get it to start again. He let it roll backwards down the hill for a while, then jerked it into second gear. He did this maneuver several times, before everyone got off and walked to the main road to pick up a cab.

Anything with wheels is a cab here. All you have to do is stick out your arm until someone pulls up. You ask how much to the gymnasium, and if it's reasonable (up to 40 tenge, or .3 cents) you get in the back, often with others. Tim managed to flag down a Mercedes. The driver was thrilled to have us. He asked if we were Americans, then turned up the music and flew down the road, humming to himself . . . until he was pulled over by a bunch of policemen. They asked for his papers and looked under the hood. I needed them to hurry; I have food poisioning, and was really wondering what would happen if I needed to run for the woods. They wrapped it up, quite legally, it seemed, and we were on our way. The driver wouldn't let us pay. Among the 7 of us Kazakh speakers, we've had quite a few free rides. People are very very hospitable.

There are also marshrutkas - private vans that we take to Almaty, but these aren't as remarkable as local transportation.

Okay, I'm off to buy bananas.

July 1

Hey! I really appreciate the emails some of you've sent me. It's always fun to hear from you.

When I do anything on the internet, I'm at the Peace Corps Pre-Service Training site in Ecik (Yssik). This is usually a 10-minute bus ride from my host family's house in Sovet, but today the ride took 20. We stopped for a number of people walking along the street, while for others we accelerated, careening dangerously close to donkeys and small children. Augh.

I'm quite busy, though. On Mondays, I have Kazakh language classes from 9 - 1pm, then my group teaches computer classes, then we have Kazakh again from 4:30 - 6:30. On Tuesday, we come to the hub site for lessons in teaching techniques and medical sessions (today: parasites) until about 6. Wednesdays, we have Kazakh and Russian and are done at 5; Thursday, we're at the hubsites; Fridays and Saturdays are language days. On Sundays, we try desperately to catch up on the homework and vocabulary we've not been able to do yet. I'm learning on average one or two major grammatical concepts and 40 words a day. It's mostly sifting right through the holes in my poor little brain. But I had a request for information on the bathrooms, so I think I'll get on to that.

There are bath rooms, and there are showers, and there are toilets, and these are in very different places. Bath rooms (banas)are tiled rooms that function as saunas when the family really wants to get clean. I use mine like a utility room, to wash my feet off when they're really dirty, and to bathe. For me, bathing involves dumping water on myself from a tin cup. My family has no running water until construction (mysterious, invisible construction) on the school is completed. Showers often look like outhouses. They're top-loaded with water, so the best time to shower is in the evening, when the sun has warmed it a bit. Otherwise . . . imagine having to pull the string that dumps a certain amount of very cold water on you as you stand naked in a phone booth. That's kind of the experience. But one we PCT's are thankful for. As for the outhouses/toilets, they're no big deal, especially for the men. There are a few tricks and things to consider. Sometimes, the hole is very small. Sometimes the hole is so close to a wall that one has to consider very carefully how to stand. Sometimes there is no toilet paper. As I discovered yesterday, sometimes an outhouse is at the bottom of a rerouted stream. But really, it's okay. My outhouse has very large gaps in its slats, and I realized one night that anyone who cared to could see a striped silhouette of me, wearing my flashlight around my neck. Now I turn the flashlight off.