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…