Thinking about Thinking

I've heard culture compared to an iceberg several times. It's a corny analogy but it persists because, sadly, it's fairly apt. The small, visible tip of iceberg conceals and draws attention away from the vastness submerged away from sight. It's easy to identify the music, art, language, architecture, food, dress, and even customs of a culture. A more difficult element of culture to grasp is the set of values that gives rise to those visible elements of culture. And more importantly, those values that comprise the foundation of a culture are inextricably intertwined with a cultural mindset, although I believe they are distinct. Combined, they result in the everyday attitudes, beliefs, and decision-making of a culture.

Of all the things I could possibly be thinking about on the subject of Kazakhstan, I dwell more on this than anything else. The way people think here is fundamentally different from the way an American thinks and this difference can be seen on a daily basis. The way kids behave in classrooms and in English club, the way people discuss relationships, the sort of questions they ask me and all the other volunteers, all the small cultural quirks people care strongly about (SHAVE your goddamn stubble for the love of GOD!!!), and many others things that I've gotten so used to that I am starting forget they are different -- they all belie not just different cultural values, but a different method of approaching fundamental things in life.

I haven't been here nearly long enough to make any sort of dramatic proclamations about Kazakhstani society because I am still learning and I still have more to learn before I can start to digest it all and really sort it out. At the moment, I am most fascinated by the challenge of explaining concepts that do not exist here. By concepts, I am not referring to discussing the finer points of Nietzsche or something -- I'm talking about trying to explain what a suburb is. Suburbs certainly do not exist in Kazakhstan, the 9th largest country in the world despite having a population less than half that of metropolitan Tokyo. (I don't think there's a word for "metropolitan" in Kazakh, either). That's not to say that an American wouldn't have some difficulty understanding some aspect of Kazakhstan that is foreign to us, but I do believe that this culture is a little less suited to that sort of thing. It's been isolated for a long time and only now do people have the freedom and in some cases, the money to travel.

On a micro level -- in a classroom, for example -- the kids are a strange mix of unadulterated enthusiasm and instinctive reticence that I suppose is an indication of the times; the first generation to have no living memory of the Soviet Union. They show up in big numbers and most of them are quite interested in learning English. When we run activities though, it's always hard to scrounge up volunteers to participate. They know the answers, but there's some instinctual nervousness preventing them, which isn't a huge surprise considering the rigidity and authoritarianism of the school system here. The worst aspect about it, to me, is that it really drills the creativity right out of these kids. Those kinds of activities are the toughest.

--

On Thanksgiving I was invited to a class of roughly 16 year olds who were studying to be English teachers (all girls -- any boy studying to be a teacher would be run ragged by his friends). The girls put on a presentation with a short play and some games. This school has had a series of volunteers spanning six years and ending this past October and it showed. They spoke good English, but what really stood out were several things -- the no-hands-baursak (pastry-ish) eating contest and a bake sale fundraiser for a local organization for disabled children.

On their face, those things are silly and mean nothing, but they do represent a creativity and an ability to think outside the box. If you take that creativity and willingness to delve into the unknown and uncertain and apply that to teaching or to running an NGO, you can accomplish anything. America is rife with the entrepreneurial spirit and as far as business ventures, marketing, fundraisers, and gimmicks, we've seen it all and we take it for granted, but it's not like that everywhere. Part of the reason we are so good at it is because we grow up with it and we are exposed to it from the day we are born. When it's just not there, it's a fitful learning process and one that isn't always successful. After the first wheel was invented, I'm sure everyone said "I should have thought of that!". That's easy to say, but as simple as that is, it took a sort of small brilliance to conceptualize something that had never previously existed.

I don't mean to paint a picture of extremes here and I hope that I haven't because that's clearly not true. Nonetheless, Kazakhstan is a country with ambitious plans and a promising future, but at the moment they aren't quite equipped on a societal level to drag their institutions (particularly education) forward. The average American's jaw would hit the floor if they were transported to Almaty or Astana, which are thoroughly cosmopolitan cities that couldn't be any more contradicting of Borat. However, the rest of the country needs to catch up to the city elite and building critical thinking skills is the best long-term way to do it.

The encouragement of that mental flexibility -- the willingness and ability to be creative and to critically analyze something and make it better -- is one of the pillars of every volunteer's job here. Even sitting at the kitchen table with my host mother, I frequently ask "why?". The question and the answer usually make both of us think about something in a new light.