end of summer

We’re having a cold snap here, and I love it. Jacket and jeans weather. I’d be happy if it really were fall, so long as winter doesn’t come a month early. A couple days ago, the morning was fresh and cool, and all day long, big Dutch-landscape-painting clouds blew in. Then the clouds got crowded and black. I went walking out on the steppe anyway and dead-headed a couple sunflowers, hoping to plant their seeds in our yard. I have an off-season sunburn. It never did rain, but the wind has been picking up steadily. The clouds blew over and it looks like the chill is here to stay. That must be one of the things about extremes of temperature and daylight hours: the peaks and the lows don’t hold for long, they have to change fast to get to where they’re going. So no more 10:30 sunsets, no more hot mornings.

We lost another two volunteers from my group this past week. This isn’t an easy time for teaching volunteers: we are dealing with the administration and have no students. The problems we set aside for the summer are popping up again. Both of my co-English teachers have left, with no one to replace them, I have no books, no rosters, no schedule, and no language tutor. There is one week left before the first day, and our time continues to be taken up urgently arranging books that aren’t ours on shelves that will be dismantled soon. We come to school early so that random troupes of principals and teachers can come through at random times and look at our plants. We are expected to look appealingly unoccupied in our neat little rooms. I have a sense that something's gonna hit the fan when the kids come in, but to be honest, I'm not sure how far from normal this is.

Kanipa apa

I neglected to mention that I moved. I’m now across the street from my first host family, and everyone is happy. While in America, I realized that I had a really good deal with them and that I would miss them. Upon returning to Kazakhstan, I told Dilda Apa this and asked if there were still room in her house for me. Nope. A sister is moving in from the city, a cousin is coming for college, Konis (papa) is on a different work schedule which will allow him to be home for 15 days at a time, and Damira, a 17-year-old, seems to really need space these days. What to do, what to do. I had already looked into all known babushkas who live alone, and they were all crazy (REALLY crazy, like the one with Bozo hair who reacted to me like people do to large insects, and doesn’t have a door), or had dirty houses, or lacked a nearby phone or bed, etc. I was a bit discouraged. Then, on my way back from missing the first train (yes, I missed two trains and almost missed a flight, but those are other stories), I met Katya/Kanipa Babulya.

I was carrying a couple giant bags (all my PC library books and clothes for a month) and was happy to be in the pathway between the cute picket fences, almost home. “Girl!” she shouted in Russian, “I hear you’re looking for a room!” So she showed me around her house. Tap taza. Very clean, with enough room, perfect location, phone and friends across the street.

She is the kind of old lady who wears four violently flowered clothing items together. She has sparkly black eyes, has the biggest, thickest square-frame glasses I’ve ever seen, and cackles at her own jokes and at my unwitting ones. And, in the way babushkas are, she’s tough. I’d bet she’s as strong as I am, but at about 4’10 and 110 lbs. She walks home alone at 11 every night. She moved the 16-inch TV and several trunks by herself. I told her a couple days ago the moon was beautiful - huge, full, and yellow – and she told me it’s just the moon. Kanipa Apa imitates the bearded lady who comes to get milk every morning: “Kaaaatyaaaa. Can I come in?” she says in the bearded lady’s witchy voice. I am slightly afraid of the bearded lady, not least because she assumes a raptured expression whenever she sees me.

Kanipa Apa decorates the way I do: improvised closet systems, involving old wallpaper, staples, unused wooden boards, and flea-market-style old furniture. She also drops the eggs she buys and burns the milk. She came back from the bazaar yesterday, all happy. I was cooking beans, and she pulled me over to look at her purchases and to gasp at hardware prices these days. She bought a cabinet that badly needs repair. It has one and a half drawers and triple-jointed hinges that make the doors stick out at wanton angles. “Look how I’m dressed!” she said, and pulled up her sweater so I could see she was wearing only a corduroy vest and the sweater. She cackled. We fixed the cabinet as best we could, although we need a few more hardware items, and we brought it inside together. And we watched an old Russian film together when she came home. She narrated events to me as if I were blind, and, thrilled to death that the good man was going to get the pretty woman, slapped me on the leg repeatedly.

top ten

The first 10 questions I get when I meet someone here:
1) You speak Kazakh?
2) You don’t speak Russian?
3) You speak Kazakh?
4) Are you single?
5) Do you give lessons?
6) What kind of lessons?
7) What is your salary?
8) Is Kazakhstan better or is America better?
9) Do you like beshbarmak?
10) Will you marry a Kazakh man?
You can imagine that most of these I answer indirectly or not at all.

shalkar

About an hour and a half away from my village, steppeward, there is a huge salt lake, Shalkar. It used to be part of an inland sea, some time before human memory. It’s quite crowded in July. In June, fewer people go. There are yurts for rent along the shore, so you can be in the shade, and often people rent one and spend the night there.

I went to Lake Shalkar on Saturday. It happened like this: my host family asked me if I would be free to go to Shalkar with them on Saturday or Sunday, and I told my teachers my host family might take me. “Oh, let’s go to Shalkar!” said one of the teachers. “No, I can’t go with you, I’m going with my host family,” I said, but this was completely ignored. As it turned out, my host family decided on Friday night not to go, so I walked over to Zhopar’s house and we made arrangements. Her son, Aslan (26) was repairing the car, and her daughter, Camila (23) came home as we were looking at the watermelon plants in the garden. So, on Saturday morning, we went.

Aslan was loading the car with my backpack, as usual, containing way too many clothes and first aid products, and Zhopar Aizhan’s stuff, as usual, carrying tons of dairy products. Finally, we females came out in a line, empty handed (Aslan can’t stand to see anyone female carrying anything). Aslan, shoving things into the trunk, asked us if there wasn’t furniture, too. The dog, Druzhog, followed us and put his head on Camila’s lap as she sat in the car. “Oh, Aslan, can I take my dog?” “Yes, of course,” he said. “And I’ll get the chickens.” But it did all fit, as much as there was for a day trip.

After I’d eaten a good bit of khaimakh (like sweet cream/ sour cream, but soooo much better.) and something like cottage cheese, enjoying it very much, Zhopar Aizhan said, “I used to boil it, [i.e. pasteurize] but I like the flavor better when I don’t.” And, as I have so many times, I prayed that I wouldn’t get violently ill, at least not on the beach. And I didn’t. But it will be very hard not to eat Zhupar’s khaimakh.

lost my sausage

I've been cooking for myself, now that I live across the street with a babushka. I'm happy about it. I haven't eaten a single potato, and as much as Kata Babulya offers me fish brains - she just can't believe I don't want to share her gory fish head - I don't feel any obligation to eat or to try to eat it. But I do fall into some weird habits, due to the lack of a refrigerator and critics, as last night's popcorn and black bean dinner proves. And I can't find my sausage anywhere.

I'm taking the comments function off my blog. The advertisement is what really did it. But if you want to email me, I usually reply.

effort

I have a habit of staring someone in the face when I’m trying to understand, and I continue staring hard a few seconds after people do in normal conversation, trying to absorb some meaning from it. This freaks people out, even if you shoot a quick, strained smile when they look back at you funny. Also, when I’m trying hard, my facial expression looks to most people like abject fear, not effort. And then there’s the fact that some questions are just completely unexpected (“how many children do you have?”) and it takes some confirmation before I realize they’re serious.

hiking at camp

The second-to-last day at camp, I finally got to go on a hike. I was the caboose at the end of the 20 campers, beside the “shaping” (aerobics) instructor who, having been asked to walk behind all the campers, took her job very seriously and picked mushrooms the whole way, falling a good deal behind everyone else. Eventually Boy-who-ties-his-shoe-strings-too-often joined her, as did Small-child-with-pronounced-limp. I joined the next group up. I’ve got to give the kids a lot of credit: loaded down with cauldrons, boiled eggs, pre-cooked buckwheat, and vegetables, they kept up a clipping pace and made it up some really steep parts, all the way to our lunch scene. Our fearless leader smoked cigarettes the whole time and tossed them into the undergrowth. We ate berries– raspberries, sweet little mountain blueberries, currants – and then pine nuts. I ate more on that hike than I usually eat in a week of hiking. It was beautiful. The mountains were misty and jagged, and a falcon spent a long time flying just for fun, it looked like. You could see her tail rotate to catch the wind, then she’d let herself drop for a second and swoop off on some lower current.

We went down the mountain by a different route, in the rain. Smokes isn’t really a good leader – never stopped for head counts or anything and decided to take the fast way down the mountain: a natural slip and slide. I could hardly believe it when I saw it. He cut a path straight down, a path any beast of burden would balk at. From near the back of the line, I heard kids screaming the whole way down. The only real way to go was to squat and ski, grabbing at passing branches. I, who will never win any awards for Best Footing, think I should get something for Best Indiana Jones Move: grabbing an overhead branch just in time and swinging spectacularly over a deep black pit to the other side, where I landed and skidded down 10 feet before actually wiping out. No one saw this. I will also not win an award for Best Choice of Plant to Grasp. I now have mysterious dark scrapes and boils all over my arms and neck. I do confer upon myself a citizenship award for Following at a Safe Distance, Notices When Children Leave the Group, and Willing to Fish Campers’ Trash Out of Fresh Mountain Streams. There were two kids behind me, who were helping the shaping instructor gather mushrooms. One of them came down the mountain alternating screams with Tarzan howls and ran/fell past me and into the clot of kids who were trying to be cautious. I was really enjoying myself. We got to the bottom after more than 30 minutes of sliding down. We were impressed with the steepness and the height, quite proud of ourselves, and walked the hour back to camp on noodle legs.

contests at camp

There is some kind of outdoor camp competition every afternoon, and everyone gathers to watch. There was a contest where the children were finding their love matches. There were garlands on a table to the side for the four finalist boys to give their girlfriends. Just when it was getting hard to sit still, the white goat fell off the bleachers, staggered a couple yards, and took off running toward the flowers. The black goat came out of the woods at a gallop, center stage, and they chomped for a while, as the boys stopped acting romantic and got switches from the bushes. The The goats often interrupt concerts, wander into the dining hall or my cabin, as I’m sleeping. The kids love them, in the way that one loves a goat, and try to make the black goat head-butt them. He doesn’t do it too hard, even when he really wants to eat my soap. There are also a lot of large bunnies and chickens that live under some of the cabins.

But, back to the afternoon contests: the last one I saw was a Miss Lager (Lager = camp) contest. Because there is nothing funnier to people here than boys/men dressed as girls/women, it was a drag Miss Lager contest. The contestants were boys wearing shocking short skirts and water balloons. They chose identities and said a little rhyme about themselves, just like the real girls. Alyosha, who managed to strut for short distances in 4-inch heels, chose to be Susan from America. Should I be flattered?

dances at camp

There is a discotech (a dance, outside) every night, and the kids can use their tokens to pay for songs they want. The 16-year-old boys take turns requesting “Du Hast.” They are very happy because they have come up with what teenaged boys love: a successful social routine with their best friends. As the song begins, they put their arms around each other’s shoulders and bow to the waist. Then, they headbang in unison. Vot! Automatic coolness.

I go to the discotechs sit with the counselors or dance with the kids. I spent about half an hour dancing with a 4th grade girl who didn’t want to join a circle, and then moved on to the 6th graders who are considerably less innocent than the American 6th graders I last dealt with (and far, far less innocent than my Gymnasium students). The slow dances are kind of pathetic. All of the girls are a foot taller than the boys. The campers seem to think you’re supposed to make as much surface-area contact as possible, rest your head somewhere on your partner, and kick each other in the shins. And they all look kind of worried while they’re doing it, too.

more errors

I have been confusing the words for “mosquito” and “husband” in Russian, although they’re not very similar. I say da sometimes and nyet sometimes. So there are some kids who mistakenly think that there are no mosquitoes in America and some who mistakenly think that I have a husband.

grumpy

In America, when someone is lazy and doesn’t want to unlock the bathroom, he or she will usually tell you to do it yourself. Here, someone will usually tell you there is no key, with a straight face and no shame, like what happened to me this morning. Thanks, key lady. (The same lady who controls the little shop with water and m&m’s that is never open, no matter how many little chants I say in my head).

camp, part 1

There are many stories to tell since the last time I logged in. Most of these stories are personally embarrassing. We’ll see if they make it onto the blog or just sit on a disk somewhere. I’ll start backwards.

I’m at a camp up in the mountains near Kazakhstan’s eastern border with Russia. Ace of base is blaring (my deja vooooo, you’re my obsession, like dejavu, everything is up to you, my deja vuuuoouuoouuoouu) and the second group of campers just went in for dinner.

The food here is okay, but I generally skip two to three items per meal (5 meals/day at 3-hour intervals). Today, I skipped the wretched orange soda/poison and also, after deciding that I would never successfully eat meat from it, the “chicken” that seemed to have a good many more than the average number of vertebrae. The breakfast fluid is okay with me, although I haven’t figured out if it’s supposed to be coffee or hot chocolate. It’s a soothing bluish color.

The campers have been alternating between blowing me kisses and trying to me bad words. The favorite, a repeat vocab word, is the Russian for “panties.” The counselors are trying to get a handle on this (teaching the American bad words), but it’s very grass roots and endlessly amusing. And my Russian is much worse than I thought. I have been continually kicking myself for not being more aggressive about it, but of course, I also need a lot of help with Kazakh. The situation I’m in now is even harder than last summer: I have to use (bless her) Almira to translate everything into and from Kazakh so that I can understand. Everyone, everyone speaks only Russian here, except for two boys who speak some Kazakh (mostly calling their friends names to me) and Almira. There are a couple people who speak some English.

Peace Corps magic – the instantaneous increase in volunteers’ perceived attractiveness/ coolness (to locals) – is at work in my life once again. I can grin like a fool and shake my head “yes” or “no” all day long and attract swarms of children who tell me everything I do is cool, that I’m beautiful, that it’s SO COOL I can swim. I seem to be especially popular with the baddest of the bad, the boys who drink vodka and the girls who reject them. A couple of these girls took me up on a piece of amazing Soviet playground equipment that is like a swing and a ship combined. They made it swing much higher than they’re supposed to. They all want my autograph.

But this is my second session at camp. The first was unscheduled, or rather, scheduled over what I really intended to do. I was going to go hiking here for two weeks, but I missed my train for the first week and was told, on my (expensive) way to make the second week, that it was cancelled. Agh. In five minutes, my regional manager had me hooked up with another camp in the same region. And I continue to depend on the mercy of strangers.