From Steppe to Shining Sea

They say the post-Peace Corps/returning-to-America culture shock is often tougher than the initial foreign culture adjustment. They say this is especially true when you're evacuated from a country in the middle of your service. But in all the "How to not freak out at Costco" presentations and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer blogs, not one offered me any advice on how to transition from down coat to swimsuit, from snow to sun, from bracing on the steppe to stepping on the beach. Perhaps not everyone leaves their service and flies to a tropical paradise...?

I'm fortunate to have parents who are currently living on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean (working for the US Foreign Service). They welcomed their wandering daughter with open arms, tropical flowers, and mango chutney!

I still miss my Kazakh home--my friends, family, and students--but I'm grateful to have come "home" to a place I've never been before, glad to be spending the holidays with my wonderful family in a beautiful country.

Dear Friends,

 

Three days ago I was sitting in my classroom, sorting (new!) books for our school's growing English library when my Regional Manager from Peace Corps called and read to me a carefully worded message from our Country Director: the Peace Corps program in Kazakhstan is closing. Following a number of individual assaults on volunteers, some possible terrorist attacks scattered around the country, underhanded local political smears on Peace Corps Kazakhstan, and a long-awaited meeting with a recalcitrant Minister of Education, the director of Peace Corps world-wide has determined that we "can no longer maintain a program in Kazakhstan that meets Peace Corps' standards for volunteer safety and programmatic effectiveness."

 

So I'm leaving.

 

I don't know exactly what comes next. I have hugged all my co-teachers and held back tears as they each separately exclaimed, "But we had so many plans! So many ideas!" I have explained to classes of wide-eyed students that I must leave for America, promising that indeed I will not "forget to them" (their prepositions perhaps highlighting my unfinished work?). I have sat for my last tea with my Kazakh mother who worries that I'll get too skinny when I'm no longer eating her manta and plov. On Tuesday I will get on a bus and leave Zhetisai—nineteen months earlier than I had expected. I'm sure that there are other doors opening even as this one swings shut in my face, but I worry more about the doors available to my students, to my Kazakh colleagues, to my new friends.

 

I'm moving through these days with a somewhat surreal hovering feeling, a bit numb to the unreal-ness of the situation. Fortunately in a bizarre stroke of luck, my mother and dearest friend had been planning for months to visit me this November and are here (though leaving on flights today) to help me process, to help me pack, and to take a bushel of photos of the life I've been living for the past 8 months.

 

I'm sure I'll write more once I've landed firmly on new ground—I have so many stories and photos for blog posts that I've been mentally composing in hopes of stable internet! So check back in, but this will be the last blog "post-marked" from Kazakhstan.

Love,

Heather

Cotton Pickin'

On Sunday morning I woke for the last time in my host family's house (I moved into my own two-room house the next day!—more on that later), drank tea, then left with my mama Aigul to learn first-hand about the cotton fields my host mother and father have been going to every day for the past week.

 

We went first to the bazaar, where we bought 100 round loaves of bread to take to the fields. Aigul and Muktar have about 65 people picking cotton in their fields (mostly Uzbek families that come 20km across the border for cotton season), which means they serve a lot of bread and ramen noodles every day for lunch. Then we continued out to the village. For most of the thirty minute drive, our taxi driver repeated how thrilled he was to have an American girl sitting in his car—"You know," he said, "in school they taught us that America was bad. That was the USSR." Sometimes I too marvel that just twenty years ago school children here were learning anti-western slogans, and now my students know more American pop songs than I do.

 

In the cotton fields, pickers were already hard at work, their scarf-covered heads bent over cotton plants. They work long days in the glaring sun and dusty fields, so the women cover themselves from head to toe in brightly patterned layers.

 

Aigul pointed out the extent of their fields, explained the process of gathering the cotton picked, weighing it, recording who has picked how much, and trucking it all over to the centralized collection area, where cotton from many growers in the area is mounded into gargantuan cotton piles. My technical and economic Kazakh is a bit fuzzy, so I can't tell you much about what happens to the cotton from there; I know it gets cleaned, the seed is used to make oil, the plants are chopped down for firewood, and the fluff probably ends up in China where it is made into cheap housedresses with "Diva" sequined on the back, then sold to Kazakh housewives in the Zhetisai bazaar.

 

Then we started picking. Aigul laid out a sheet between two rows of plants and showed me how to pull the soft cotton from its splayed shell. The first hour was fun. We picked and talked. This patient woman is one of the few people with whom I can have an extended conversation in Kazakh. I paused to photograph the surprisingly beautiful cotton blossoms and take in the expansive fields dotted by hunched backs and waiting trucks. We collected a sizeable mound of cotton fluff on our sheet, which we squished down and pulled further into the field to pick more.

 

In the second and third hours, I became more aware of the heat of the sun and the bend of my back, so I was relieved when my host mother insisted that we tie up the corners of the sheet to make a poof big enough for both of us to sit on. In the shade.

 

We (but mostly she) looked over the books where the kilos of cotton picked by each person are recorded, drank some water, ate some rice plov, and waited for the lunchtime hour. At 1:00 the pickers would lug in their morning cotton, fill their bowls and teapots with boiling water from large wood-burning samovars, and eat together before another 5 or 6 hours of picking.

 

Their cotton is weighed and collected at lunchtime and then again at the end of the day. Each kilo earns them about 20 tenge, and each day a person picks between 45 and 80 kilos. The current exchange rate is at about 147 tenge to the dollar, but since I've shaken the habit of translating tenge into dollars (it invariably makes me spend more than I can actually afford on my local salary), I'll say it this way: I picked about 10 kilos of cotton (which my fellow teachers think is hilariously adorable), so I would have earned about 200 tenge. Tonight, on my way home from school, I bought 6 eggs, 1 yogurt, and a round loaf of bread for 210 tenge.

 

Let's just say I'm glad the Peace Corps isn't paying me by the kilo.

 

First Bell

Today was my 19th first-day-of-school. And though by now I'm an old hand at starting school years, I still woke with the same excited and nervous energy—Oh boy! Classes! Books! Homework! Will I like the teachers? Will I like the other kids? Will they like me? Did I remember everything? Is this dress ok?—that has characterized the beginning of each September (actually mid-August in Albuquerque) since I was 5. Each year my dad would arrange my brother and me, with backpacks and back-to-school outfits and smiles, in front of the front gate for a first day of school photo. (The front gate is important here, because how else are you supposed to know how big we've grown since last year?) This year, I'm half a world away from that particular front gate, so for comparison's sake I stood by my 6 year old host brother. I think I've grown a lot, don't you?

September 1st marks the first day of school for every child in the former Soviet Union. (It seems the USSR was big on consistency…) On this "Day of Knowledge" in Kazakhstan, schools literally ring in the new year with a "First Bell" ceremony. Darling 1st form students in little suits, black and white school uniforms, and poofy, white hair ribbons are welcomed to school; 11th form students in bigger suits, more fashion-conscious uniforms, and the same poofy, white hair ribbons are celebrated and reminded that much is expected of them in their last year. (Kazakhstani schools only have 11 grades—most of their 11th grade year is spent preparing for national tests that will determine whether and where they can attend university.) And teachers are applauded and given bouquets of flowers that are sometimes bigger than the children giving them.

At my school, the First Bell ceremony as well as weekly school assemblies take place on the front steps of the school. Students stand with their home-room classes around three sides of a large square in the school's front yard, and from a podium on the steps they are addressed by the school director, teachers, and any other dignitaries that happen to be in attendance. Today two 1st form girls performed songs they had obviously practiced (with hip-swinging choreography) all summer, and other 1st formers recited wishes for the school year in the strong lilting rhythm characteristic of all Kazakh recitations and toasts. At the end of the 40 minute ceremony, four 1st form students, carried on the shoulders of 11th form boys around the square, proudly rang the first bell of the year (the rest of the school bells will be rung electronically, but this first one gets a personal touch).

The rest of the day was spent in a bustle of activity that is largely opaque to a foreigner like me—no real lessons to speak of, but lots of getting books, checking schedules, changing schedules, sitting and talking, etc. Peace Corps training has taught us that flexibility, above all, is a volunteer's most valuable skill, and I am fortunate to have it in abundance. So, with a smile, I left my American expectations of a planned, productive, and structured first day of school behind, wrote down the schedule of classes for tomorrow, noting to check back in the morning because they will likely have changed, hung a world map in my classroom, said "Hello" and "How are you?" to at least 20 students, and sat down to tea with three English teachers. All around, a successful day. Tomorrow maybe I'll even get to teach.

Reunion

I spent the last two weeks in Almaty, for some more Peace Corps
training before the school year begins. Since I won't be making the 18
hour journey often, I decided to go in a day early to spend some time
with my first host family. When I left my family in May, the snow had
just melted, but now the yard and house are full of life. My little
siblings and I played outside in the yard, picking apples and
cucumbers, drawing with sidewalk chalk, and cradling a new kitten.
Inside, my "Appa" greeted me as if I were a long lost child, her
toothless grin spreading all the way from one ear to the other as she
clasped my hands in hers. A family friend, who was very pregnant when
I last saw her, hugged me and immediately laid a sleeping baby girl
into my arms. We laughed over watermelon and bubbly water, and with
two months more Kazakh now under my belt, I even got some of the
jokes. In the morning, laden with a bag full of home-grown produce,
hugging my family good-bye, and promising to call often and visit
soon, I hailed a taxi into the city.

Mare’s Milk

Yesterday I learned something that will shock my rancher uncle and my
equestrian cousin. I learned how to milk a horse!

Khumuz, fermented mare's milk, is one of the specialty drinks of
Kazakhstan. I have been educated on several occasions of its healthful
properties—usually an explanation accompanied by a downward sweeping
hand motion, which I interpret to be a bodily cleaning out of sorts,
and a clenched fist, which I take to be a sign of vigour.
Unfortunately for the vigour of my internal organs, I struggle even to
politely sip the stuff…

But a distaste for sour milk won't keep me from a village party and a
milking lesson! Yesterday I went with my host parents to a neighboring
village (Zhetisai is a town, surrounded by cotton fields and many
little villages) to visit the home of my "host aunt"—my host father's
sister. One of the family's two mares had recently birthed a colt, so
the mare milk was plentiful, and they were having a party to
celebrate. We enjoyed a big meal, with an insistant hostess ladling
bowls of Khumuz for all 12 around the table. (Kazakh party meals
deserve a separate explanation, and I'm eager to get to the horses and
photos, so I'll skip ahead.)

After eating, my "aunt" offered to show me how Khumuz is made. I
nodded excitedly and pulled out my camera. So here's how you do it
(pretty simple actually): 1) get a bucket, 2) milk a mare (or two), 3)
churn the milk in a tall wooden churn, 4) cool it and stir
continually. Enjoy!

P.S. And the adventures in unusual milk are not over yet. Some time in
my two year service, I will hopefully learn similar lessons about
fermented camel's milk, which I have yet to try…

Language Lesson #1: The Conversation

I've been working hard this summer to expand my Kazakh vocabulary and
practice more complicated grammatical structures (and by more
complicated, I mean I've started trying to form sentences instead of
two-word fragments…). I practice with my Kazakh tutor, then go home
and fill a page with sentences for her to correct in red ink the next
day. I repeat my host mother's instructions: "Hezer, cut the potatoes
please." "Yes. I cut the potatoes. I am cutting the potatoes.
Potatoes. Potatoes. I cut. I am cutting."

Unfortunately, despite my practice, progress is slow-going. If I
understand someone's question after only one repetition, I pat myself
on the back. And I get a gold star if I can give a complete and
comprehensible answer that doesn't send my host family into a laughing
fit. Most of the time, I feel like a 3 year old bumbling around
pointing, miming, and mispronouncing.

But when I start to feel hopeless, there is one foolproof way to raise
my linguistic self-esteem: get in a taxi*. Why a taxi? Because in a
taxi I am guaranteed to have The Conversation. And I am a master of
The Conversation. It turns out that for about 70% of my Kazakh
interactions, I only need to know how to respond to a particular set
of predictable questions. After four months, I hardly need to listen
to the questions any more…I just fluidly rattle off the answers. My
side of The Conversation goes something like this (translated into
English for your reading convenience):

"I'm sorry, I don't speak Russian. Do you speak Kazakh?"
…
"Yes, I do speak a little Kazakh!"
…
"I came from America." (and sometimes: "I am from the state New
Mexico. Near Texas.")
…
"I work at the school. I am an English teacher."
…
"Eighty eight." (in Kazakhstan, people often ask what year you were
born instead of how old you are)
…
"No, I'm not married. I have a boyfriend."
…
"He lives in America."
…
"No, not in Kazakhstan."
…
"No, I don't need another one in Kazakhstan. I only want one."
…
"No, you (or your son/friend) can't be my boyfriend in Kazakhstan."
…
"Yes, I'm sure."**
…
"Yes, I have eaten Kazakhstan's national food, Beshbarmak."
…
"Yes, I like it!"
…
"Yes, I like Zhetysai. It's very nice!"
…
"Ok, this place will be good. Please stop here. Thank you."

And I step out of the taxi, feeling like a pro—a smooth conversation,
seamless transitions, no befuddled pauses—I might be getting the hang
of this language after all!

*It may be worth noting that taxis in Kazakhstan are not like the
yellow unionized and regulated fleets in American cities, but
something more along the lines of standardized (and safe) hitchhiking.
I can stand on the side of any "major" road in Zhetysai, a car will
stop, I tell the driver where I'm going, and he will take me there for
50 tenge (about 35 cents).

**The marriage/boyfriend line of questioning used to make me squirm in
my seat, but once I realized that for the next two years, every person
I meet is going to ask me if I am married and then offer to set me up
with a Kazakh boy—I am 23 after all…almost past my prime—I decided it
would be better for my sanity to laugh internally rather than grit my
teeth.

A Modern Ghost Town

Walking through tree-lined pathways that cris-cross Zhanatas,
Kazakhstan you peer into block after block of concrete soviet
apartment buildings—empty apartment buildings. Twenty one years ago,
Zhanatas was a bustling town of 55,000 people. Many worked in the
phosphorous mines and plant at the edge of town; Zhanatas was proud to
provide much of the phosphorus for the Soviet Union. But in 1991, when
Kazakhstan was handed its independence by a crumbling USSR, Zhanatas's
population underwent a dramatic change: everyone left. Ok, not
everyone…Zhanatas now has a population of about 12,000 ethnic Kazakhs
and a few resilient (or stubborn) ethnic Russians.

Explanations of the exodus vary based on who you ask (I asked my
friend Chris, who has questioned many different locals in his two
years as volunteer in one of Zhanatas's schools). Kazakhs will paint a
picture of a Russian population that didn't want to be a part of an
independent Kazakhstan, families that up and left when faced with
becoming Kazakhstani citizens and demolished more than a few buildings
on their way out. Ethnic Russians and a few sympathetic Kazakhs will
tell you about the changes that swept through Zhanatas immediately
following independence—a new Kazakh mayor and leadership in the Akimat
(city hall), bottled up resentment given free reign, unfair policies,
maybe violence—all of which made it almost impossible for non-Kazakhs
to stay in Zhanatas.

In all likelihood it was a combination of all these reasons. Add in an
economy that had just had the rug pulled out from underneath it, and
in just a couple years you have a village worth of people going about
life in the broken-down shell of a middle-sized city.

It's difficult to describe the eerie beauty of the concrete skeletons
that populate Zhanatas, but the other Americans I spent the week with
quickly fell under the same enchantment. Sitting by myself on a rock
surrounded by a surprisingly New Mexico-esque landscape and appraising
the silent 9th Microregion—an entire abandoned district set apart from
the rest of the city—I felt an unexpected calm. I was looking at a
real-life surrealist painting, one I would have visited every day if I
could.

It's a place where your imagination can go wild: What was the family
in that apartment like? Did people sit on that balcony? Dry their
clothes on strings outside that window? Who painted the ornate pattern
on that one unique ceiling? Relics of Soviet times are rich with
possible stories: the mosaic fish fountain and Snow White statues in
the weed and broken-glass filled park, the tilted smile on the ferris
wheel(?), and the giant concrete octopus all point to a city life that
was a bit more…well, lively. Or you can ignore the past and imagine
into the future: Will these apartments ever be filled? Will people
continue to leave until this town is entirely empty? What would
archeologists 100 years from now think? What could I do if I had a set
of paints and an empty building all to myself?

Unfortunately reality is likely much less enchanting. The buildings
will probably stay empty apart from late-night drinkers. Crime in
Zhanatas will continue to climb. Chris and his site-mate Laura will be
the last American volunteers in the city—Peace Corps has decided it's
not safe enough to send more. The copper wiring encased in concrete
walls will continue to attract those who need some extra cash—Chris
and Laura have both had students killed in collapsing buildings where
their parents sent them to scavenge for wire.

I hope I'm a pessimist; I hope that I just don't have the imagination
it takes to see a brighter future for this town and for others like it
scattered across the former Soviet Union. In fact, isn't that why I'm
here? To remind my students, teachers, and community of other possible
worlds; to foster critical and creative thinking; to be an example of
someone who is not resigned to the reality of what exists now, but who
imagines, believes in the possibility of, and flies around the world
to work towards something new?

Beyond Diane throwing a baseball, you can see abandoned and partially
inhabited buildings side by side.

The abandoned 9th Microregion

Relics of a different time.