Five Days in the Steppe

To be honest, there's a lot of doom and gloom about Zhezkazgan among volunteer circles. They say a lot of things. It's the most isolated site in the country, which makes traveling in-country difficult. It's small and there isn't a ton to do. It's a provincial city with provincially-minded people. It's expensive relative to it's place on PC-Kaz's five-tier scale. The city shuts down in the winter. OCAP (non-teacher) volunteers sometime lack the quantity of work they were expecting.

And to be honest, I had a pretty good time. Admittedly, it's a long road and I'll have plenty of time to change my mind -- but it seems to be a Peace Corps tradition to have a love-hate relationship with one's site. I'll make that decision for myself. Site visit certainly does not provide the most realistic view of what daily life will hold because it's a whirlwhind of meeting people and touring local sites. My novelty factor was at its peak. Still, I have a number of reasons to be optimistic. My two organizations are very small, consisting of only two people each. I did not have a chance to talk with my health organization much at all, but the environmental organization seems to be staffed by people who are very interested and proactive, albeit a little bit directionless. That's not a problem -- if people care, that's all that matters.

I will greatly benefit from the networks in Zhezkazgan established by previous volunteers. There are two great tutors and a very good translator who are well known to PCVs. The education volunteers run a large English club that may be a source of participation and volunteerism for any of my eco or health related projects. I'll have three sitemates in the city and two in a town a short while away.

My counterpart, Bulat, who is also the head of the Damu-Ulytau ecological NGO is very active in the community. On Wednesday I arrived at the office expecting to speak with him with a translator. To my surprise, the translator was there for what was essentially a community press conference, with about 12 locals from schools and NGOs as well as a reporter from the Zhezkazganskaya Gazeta. And yes, the older men suspected that I am secretly a CIA agent. Zhezkazgan is a global hotspot, after all.

The trip home was only 30 hours instead of 39, but it felt longer because it lacked the stopover in Karaganda. Karaganda is the only city in weekend-visit range from Zhezkazgan, but at least it's one of Kazakhstan's larger hubs and is home to several volunteers. I won't be completely isolated -- especially because I've learned there are frequent 10-hour buses that make a weekend trip possible.

For now, we are riding out the rest of PST. Having had a taste of our permanent sites, staying focused is difficult. Fortunately, I feel like I am really breaking through with my Russian, which is a big help mentally. It's getting cold and we have two and a half weeks. We're eager to get going, but I know we'll all look back at PST fondly. Especially during our first months at site in the dark cold of the Kazakhstani winter.