Biology Lesson

We find out our permanent sites on Friday morning, which is less than three days from now. It's tough to guess the field in which I will find myself or whether I will be placed in a city or a village. However, I've heard from the staff that there's a decent chance I will be doing at least some work with an environmental organization. That's a subject that I would be excited about even though I don't have a ton of practical experience in that line of work. Fortunately, however, I have been furnished with a real life laboratory in the comfort of my own home.

You see, my room is beginning to develop an ecosystem of its own now that the hot summer weather has been ushered out and the cold nights of autumn have begun. At first, I was simply bothered by flies who came in with the breeze that cooled my room. Not a big deal -- my host family has a fly swatter and frankly, swatting flies is the kind of six-year-old amusement that never really wears off...at least in my case. However, as time passed and the nights became chilly, more species took refuge in the nooks, crannies, walls, and ceilings of my aging Soviet-built apartment building. House centipedes began to appear on the ceiling and then I began to hear the listless rattle of pacing cockroaches somewhere in the dark recesses of the apartment paneling. But there's good news! I kill the flies and cockroaches love dead animal material. It turns out that house centipedes are one of the leading predators of cockroaches and it also turns out that I am one of the leading causes of death for house centipedes. As long as the house centipedes kill the cockroaches faster than I can kill the centipedes, I win. At least until the next generation of bugs establish a new homeland in the lofty fastness of my top-floor apartment ceiling.



The good news is that Africa would have been much, much worse.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend? For now....

Oddities

In the Russian language the @ symbol in email addresses are referred to as "sabaka" which is the word for dog. Nobody seems to know why this is the case. I can't figure it out.

I found out today that my language teacher got engaged after knowing her husband for one day. I knew that Kazakhstani dating operated on a different timetable, but yikes. To be fair, by local standards she was very old at the time of her engagement -- 28. And yes, every guy in the OCAP group is now somewhere from nervous to terrified of local women (and particularly, their families).

I get yelled at when I sit at the corner of a table because that apparently is a terrible omen for my marriage prospects. Damn.


There are two other things that I just can't understand why they seem to be exclusively the trait of English-speaking countries. First, screens. It's not like Kazakhstan doesn't have heaps of scrap metal. It would be nice to open windows without turning the room into an exact replica of Vietnam, unless you enjoy the exercise of killing 25 flies and several other large unidentified bugs.

Secondly, years. English is the only language I've run across that says "19-93" as two numbers. Why would you say "One thousand, nine hundred and ninety three" when you could simplify it so much? No wonder the Soviet Union collapsed.

С днем рождения

Last Friday happened to be the birthday of both my host mother and my host brother. Exciting stuff – they get to enjoy a birthday feast, right? Not exactly. As Kazakh tradition dictates, it was my host mother’s responsibility to throw a huge dinner party for the whole extended family. My host brother chatted with the family for a little bit before slinking off to carouse with his friends, like he does seven nights a week. He’s even worse than Tim, for christ’s sake.

I arrived home from training on Friday to a madhouse. My host mother, my host sister and the eldest daughter (now married and living in the next village) were crammed in the kitchen preparing all manner of food. The living room/storage room/three person bedroom took on yet another persona and had been transformed into a large dining room. The entire apartment was sweltering with the heat from the kitchen, primarily from that titan of Kazakh cuisine, beshbarmak (literally: five fingers). And yes, everything in the picture to the right was consumed -- even the fat, which was diced and tossed into the bowl.

Before long, the guests began to arrive in an unending stream. Everybody was speaking Kazakh, which immediately rendered me the functional equivalent of a two year old, but I was at least able to squeak through with a “Hello” and “How are you?”. We’ve only had about four hours of Kazakh, much of which was spent on numbers. That will be useful in the long run and in bazaars, but I don’t think listening to someone count to one hundred in Kazakh would really get their blood flowing. However, there was one spry old babushka sitting across from me who merrily chirped at me in Russian, trying to discuss something about languages and teaching but it was a little too much for me to understand.

I’m still on the fence with beshbarmak. The meat and noodles are ok, but the Kazakhstani obsession with eating animal fat is a little too much to bear. Other than shashlyk (basically all-meat shish kebabs), they don’t use anything to spice up the meat here so it’s really bland. As far as the alcohol here, most of the trainees in Issyk have yet to throw back their first vodka shot. I think the Peace Corps staff put the fear of God into these host families and led them to believe that we were the quintessential lightweights. However, I don’t think my family drinks that much, which is more typical of Kazakh families. One of the trainees, Mike, is even doing Ramadan with his family. Observance of Ramadan is unusual even among the Kazakhs of the town though. Kazakhstan’s relationship to Islam is encapsulated by the huge post-Ramadan feast that Kazakhs celebrate even though most of them don’t actually fast. On the whole, Kazakhstan is probably more secular than the United States.

The Sights and Sounds of Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is a strange place. Every day as I walk to and from school, I see all manner of animals – cows, dogs, cats, donkeys, horses, and sheep, often eating the trash that hasn’t been set on fire at that particular moment. At the same time, I’ve lost count of the number of BMWs and Mercedes I have seen, even though our training town is about an hour outside Almaty. There are Trainees whose families do not have a flush toilet, but do have washing machines. Despite the fact that I have worn a collared shirt every day of my existence in Kazakhstan, my dressing habits are upstaged by the eight year olds walking to school in suits – seriously. These are the signs of a country in transition. People have the disposable income to buy nice cars, nice clothes, and unnecessary appliances, but the country is not yet wealthy enough to provide the kind of infrastructure that you’ll find in the United States or Western Europe. For example, the Soviets installed above-ground water pipes in parts of Almaty because it was cheaper. I’ve never seen anything like it. This kind of cheap-o solution might fly in Africa, but it is idiotic in a place with the kind of winters that Kazakhstan suffers. The cost to heat the water so the pipes aren’t frozen for five months must be tremendous.

Another quirk of Kazakhstan is the transportation system. Like any other place, they have airports, bus stations, and train stations. These are all pretty normal; what stands out is the fact that every car is a potential taxi. There are ‘regular’ taxis, but most of the taxi business is handled unofficially. You just stick your arm out as if you are hitching hiking (no thumb) and within a few minutes someone will stop. Within my town the standard fare seems to be 100 tenge (about 85 cents). It’s pretty convenient although I never need to take a taxi anywhere in town.

Yesterday we explored Almaty for the first time. We technically had been to Almaty during our first two days in country, but we did not have any time to go anywhere outside the grounds of the hotel. Almaty sprawled out more than I expected although (obviously) I was well aware that it is the largest city in Kazakhstan. The Peace Corps office in Almaty was literally miles away from the center, hidden away in a small corner at the end of a narrow alley. Apparently they are trying to move to a more convenient location, which would be nice because it will be hard to find again. The city feels rather European and yes, Kazakhstan’s largest city has its very own Tiffany’s and Cartier. We saw some of the major sites like the huge mosque and the large Orthodox church, as well as the Green Bazaar, which was a honeycomb of small stalls that seemed to go on forever. Over the course of the day we ran into each of the EDU groups who were roaming around town as well. It was nice to catch up with some of them although there wasn’t too much time to chat.

We also ran into two current volunteers. One of them was a Kaz-18 who is serving in the northeast part of the country working on developing ecotourism in the Altay Mountains and giving seminars on cabin building. He cross-country skis all the time and his town is supposed to be one of the prettier spots in the country. Who knows if that will be a Kaz-20 post, but I told Andrew that I would fight him for the spot if it came down to it… More seriously, we will find out our assignments in three to five weeks, which is a very exciting prospect.

Live from Kazakhstan

Hello! I am in the process of settling in to our training site. It is a town of, I’m told, approximately 50,000 people a little to the east of Almaty, lying in the shadows of snow-capped mountains to the south. It’s big enough to have shed the ambiance of a small town or village, but it doesn’t feel like a large town in a lot of ways. There is a huge bazaar in one section, but beyond that it feels very decentralized with various commercial establishments randomly placed in residential sections. I am still learning the layout of the town; I’m pretty sure no map exists (which obviously bothers me) and there are more unofficial roads than real roads. For example, my address begins with “Microregion” instead of a road because our apartment complex is in the middle of an ad hoc road network. There are many microregions to which scattershot groups of apartment buildings and houses are assigned. The town itself is just a town. It seems that everybody has electricity and running water. Some have hot showers and a washing machine (like my family). The architecture is pretty ramshackle – lots of corrugated iron, but not in a slum/refugee camp sort of way. I have never seen so many stray cats and dogs. The worst part of the town is the trash; anybody who is reasonably Green would have a heart attack. Hopefully I will post some pictures, but our internet connection is way too slow for that right now.

So far the Kaz-20 group has lost five people. One guy never made it to staging in Philadelphia, one girl left halfway through and three girls have already gone back home after a brief stay in Kazakhstan. Out of a group of 64, I imagine this is pretty typical. The 20 of us left in the OCAP group in this town are doing well, however, and it feels like we have known each other for much longer than a week and a half. In addition to technical training, we have Russian six mornings a week for four hours so we’ll be spending plenty of time together.

The host family experience has been interesting for all of us. Since we arrived completely non-functional in Russian, it has been a challenge to communicate although we are slowly improving our speech. Nonetheless, the families are very hospitable and many of them have hosted Peace Corps Trainees before, so the cultural quirks that Americans bring into their homes are not a surprise. The host families comprise of Russians, Kazakhs, Turks, Chechens, and possibly a few other ethnicities, which served as a quick validation of the assertion that Kazakhstan is a fairly diverse country. Thanks, Stalin! And Khrushchev, too, for that matter.

My host family is Kazakh and consists of a mother, daughter and son. They do know a few English phrases, but their command of the language trumped even my command of Russian in its inadequacy. Kazakh cuisine and culture dictates that they try to feed me as much food as possible, which is daunting at times. Most of their food is meat-based and green vegetables are lacking. They do frequently have sliced tomatoes and cucumbers which would be good news if they were not smothered in mayonnaise. And I mean drenched – it’s nasty stuff. The mayo fetish aside, the food is generally good and the family friendly. Lastly, I have consumed more hot tea in the last five days than the rest of my life combined. Due to the jet lag and caffeine that comes with drinking about 12 cups of chai a day, my sleep schedule has been awful. I have been exhausted by 9pm and my four mornings here, I have awoken at 3am, 4am, 4am and 5:30am respectively. Sounds like several people I know…

Arrival Musings

I wrote this on 8/21 -- the night of our first day -- but this is the first time I've had any sort of internet access.

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I’m so tired that it’s a mircle I can even muster the energy to type this.

Our plane from JFK was an hour late, but we gained back the whole hour in the air(!). This fact was rendered painfully irrelevant when we learned our flight to Almaty was five hours late and later extended to 7.5 hours late. Instead of arriving in Kazakhstan at 11:40pm on Wednesday, we arrived at about 7:30am on Thursday. All told, it was a 32 hour trip from Philadelphia to Almaty. We were driven to the hotel, we dropped our baggage in our rooms and neither passed go nor collected $200; we went right to training. Needless to say, it has been a difficult day, but it could have been a lot worse considering that PC-Kaz has done a great job keeping the schedule as entertaining as possible. Logistics, heaps of paperwork, and medical business has filled our day. There was an optional language session that I used to keep me awake before my medical interview. It turned out to be quite useful and bizarrely similar to Dartmouth’s “drill” system. Of course, the guy who designed drill – John Rassias – was a Peace Corps guy.

We have also had our first taste of Kazakhstani cuisine. Breakfast at the hotel consisted of several pieces of some soft cheese, tea, and porridge with white sugar and jam accompanied by a hard boiled egg served on a small plate with a small mound of salt. Lunch was comprised of some sort of innocuous soup, a small meat-and-rice dish and a very uninspiring salad. The really exciting stuff is dinner material, I think.

Now that our schedule is done for the day, most people are sleeping. It has been a struggle to stay awake for many people and I can sense that some here are very stressed out. We have an early wakeup tomorrow and a lot of tasks to complete before meeting our host families in the afternoon. Really, we are jumping straight into the fire considering how little language ability we have at this time, but we will be too busy over the next week to stop and reflect on it.

There And Gone Again

The first part of our epic 24 hour journey to Almaty is underway. The bus left Philadelphia at 1pm and left us with a five hour wait for our 9:35pm flight from JFK to Frankfurt. From there, we have a 90 minute layover, followed by an eight hour flight to Almaty. Arrival time: 11:40pm local time -- or 1:40pm EDT on Wednesday. It's going to be a rough transition, especially because I am guaranteed to completely botch sleeping at the opportune time on the plane.

Staging flew by. Fears were lessened, anxieties assuaged, jitters calmed, and butterflies minimized. I have an advantage over many of the people in my group because I have traveled fairly extensively abroad and more importantly, I have experience in a homestay from my Italian study abroad program. There is still the minor of issue of language and communication and the fact that we all know basically nothing, but it does sound like the Kazakhstani host families know what they are getting into.

We covered a lot of standard Peace Corps topics that every PCV has to learn whether they are going to Kazakhstan or Vanuatu or Cape Verde. Obviously, the more interesting part was getting to know the other 61 PCVs in my training group. It's a young group with nobody older than 29, so everybody is in a relatively similar stage of life, although we have come from many different places across the country. I think everybody has been encouraged and inspired by the friendliness and level of enthusiasm we have found in each other. It's the first time any of us have been completely surrounded by people who don't think we are crazy or who ask us why or what we are doing. Borat jokes have been extremely minimal.

By Saturday will we be living in host families outside Almaty. Our Kaz-20 group will be divided into training groups, each of which will train in their own village. I will be training with the entire OCAP group, which seems to be somewhere between a quarter and a third of the whole group. I've heard that the teaching groups will be much smaller, so I am looking forward to the opportunity to get to know a larger group of PCVs well during training. We have heard rumors of an epic feast that will occur when we arrive in the home of our host family. Let's hope it isn't as hard to convince Kazakhstanis that I am not, in fact, still hungry as it was to convince Antonietta Esposito, my Italian host mother, of the same idea. Let the clash of cultures begin!