Hot and Cold

People often ask me what surprised me the most about Kazakhstan. It's a hard question to answer because I came to this country without finely crafted expectations and after five months here, some of the strangeness has already faded into normality. There is, however, one thing that I still haven't come to terms with on a deeper level.

Culturally, it was hard to know what to expect. Weatherwise, it was not hard to know what to expect. With the exception of the milder southern belt, winters are brutal across the country. I was sure that I would be among a sea of hardy Kazakhs, laughing in the face of -20 F and wind. I couldn't have been further from the truth. Everyone in America has a friend who is always freezing, no matter what -- and in Kazakhstan, everyone is that person. Every building in Zhezkazgan feels like a furnace and people love it.

As wimpy as Kazakhstanis are (this attribute is universal and runs across ethnic lines) in the cold, the local population displays an inhuman tolerance for heat, which is why they will probably have the last laugh come the summer. On trains, in house, on buses, and everywhere else people can be seen luxuriating beneath mounds of clothes and blankets despite the stifling oppressiveness of the air -- all the while downing cup after cup of piping hot tea. I dread summer traveling because the trains are hot and stuffy enough in the dead of winter; in warmer times I expect sleeping to be nearly impossible for us colder-blooded Americans.

During Pre-Service Training we were told that heating in Kazakhstan can be iffy in the winter, which is the most utterly untrue thing I have been told by Peace Corps to date. Maybe Zhezkazgan is an exception -- most village homes are heated by coal-fed pechkas, so their warmth likely fluctuates depending on the diligence and determination of their occupants. While it's possible that this is simply a Zhezkazgan thing, I suspect that it's common throughout Kazakhstan. I think it must be because people here have no conception of, on a global scale, how warm their homes are or how bland their food is. I think it's safe to assume that there's a different scale for many things when a red bell pepper is viewed as the mother of all spicy foods.