So, What Is It That You Actually Do?

Instead of babbling inanely about Kazakh culture, for once I'll write about what, exactly, I am doing in Zhezkazgan.

Peace Corps in Kazakhstan currently maintains two programs: Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and Organization and Community Assistance Program (OCAP). TEFL claims about twice as many volunteers as the OCAP program. In some ways it is a very simple program – they teach English! That does not mean it is not a big challenge and in truth it is not nearly that simple. The problems with the education system in Kazakhstan are, to be charitable, byzantine. In a school, a TEFL volunteer's task is not only to teach classes, but to train teachers. The ethical problems in schools are simply shocking, but the system is deeply engrained; each element of the system is so interconnected that it is extremely difficult to isolate and improve one area without disrupting the entire machine. It is also very difficult to be a maverick and try to implement something new when your ability to work effectively depends on personal relationships. I think I would have found life as a TEFL volunteer very frustrating and I probably would have firebombed a few too many bridges along the way. TEFL work is a long, slow process and admire those who can really get through to a group of teachers.

The OCAP program is very different. TEFL volunteers have a relatively steady flow of work. On this side of the fence, it can be feast-or-famine because each OCAP volunteer is in a very different situation. Some organizations are great and some organizations are not. Some are big and some are small. Some are busy and some are essentially vacant. That's the great thing and the terrifying thing about OCAP. There is a huge range of outcomes from our work -- so much is possible, yet it is also possible to accomplish nothing. We are community volunteers so although we are assigned to an organization, we are not chained to them and we can leave if there is no work. At least, I could because I live in a city and there are many NGOs. Village volunteers have fewer options.

In Zhezkazgan, I have been assigned to two NGOs: a health organization and another organization that is nominally ecological, but currently suffers from an identity crisis. Both are quite small and both are very different. The health NGO has an established track record and full-time employees. At the moment, we are trying to find funding for an oncology seminar for about 30 local family physicians – in Kazakhstan, doctors are not prestigious and the standard of practice is not the best. In Damu-Ulytau, the organization is the project; they are ambitious and passionate but inexperienced and unrealistic. I am planning to facilitate a project-planning and NGO management seminar to improve our organizational capacity. If the long process of building an NGO is a marathon then, essentially, my director is a pure sprinter.

Sometimes work is easy and sometimes it is a big challenge. There's nothing better than a good Russian-language strategic/philosophic argument on organizational strategy. Needless to say, it is easy for things to get lost in translation – or at least lost in the wild jungle of Russian case endings and verb aspect. In the grand scheme of things in PC-Kazakhstan, I have a good situation. I am working with two organizations who are active and who care. An apathetic organization is the kiss of death, but if there is motivation, progress can be made, no matter how grim the situation may appear. It is a process and that is why we are here for two years.

Kazakhstan in Love

Last Sunday was a momentous occasion for my host family: the younger of their two daughters got engaged. The Kazakh engagement is definitely not the typical American on-bended-knee type of proposal. In fact, the engagement itself is a long, planned-out party. The whole process felt more like Sonia was getting engaged to her boyfriend's family rather than her boyfriend himself, a feeling that was fueled by the fact that the groom-to-be wasn't even present! It's tradition, I'm told.

(Sheep's head is one of the most notorious delicacies in Kazakhstan. Thankfully I wasn't deemed important enough to partake.)

The festivities began around 3pm in the afternoon in the same fashion of every social function in Kazakh culture. The guests came and everyone took their seat around the table and began tucking in to the disconcertingly huge piles of food heaped everywhere. My host mother then brought out several huge platters of beshbarmak, the Kazakh national dish. Kazakh women seem to gain a great deal of personal satisfaction by exhorting me to eat as much as I possibly can. The only way to cope with such a gastronomic onslaught is to leave something, anything, on your plate. This method works nicely for me because that "something" is usually the huge mess of horse fat, tendons, and arteries that inevitably sneaks onto my plate. While that may be appealing to some people at the table, I call that killing two birds with one stone.

(One of many heart-felt toasts, I'm sure, but I wouldn't really know because everything was in Kazakh)

The whole event lasted about six hours, which for me is pretty intimidating. Kazakhs are perfectly content to sit around a table for hours on end, but I became unbearably restless by the end of the third hour, especially because all conversation was in Kazakh, except for my toast in Russian. Fortunately I had home-field advantage and I was able to wander around the few other rooms in the apartment to stretch my legs. This also served a dual purpose because I was able to keep my soon-to-be-engaged sister company while she wasn't allowed in the dining room! While the two extended families were meeting each other for the first time, Sonia was biding her time in the next room. Eventually, her older sister brought her into the room to officially meet all of her in-laws.



Instead of a ring, the engagement was made official by two earrings, a gift from the groom's family. After this little ceremony, everybody stayed for another few hours. A few hours and countless bottles of vodka and cognac later, the visiting family finally departed.

(A proud father makes a final toast)

The wedding is in early April and that should be really interesting. Sheep's head for everybody! Hopefully the groom will show up for that one.

There's Trouble In Paradise

The economic crisis officially hits Kazakhstan.

I'm not well-versed in macroeconomics, but this comes at a very unfortunate time for Zhezkazgan. The Kazakhmys corporation was laying off miners and limiting the hours of others before this even happened. The devaluation of the tenge has already led to some price increases in stores here, which is unfortunate considering the declining incomes and unwise spending habits of many families here. From what I can tell, saving money isn't very popular and most people seem to live paycheck-to-paycheck even when times are good.

At least takes a whole lot of pressure off the Peace Corps Kazakhstan budget...

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.

A Very Kazakh Christmas

I didn't know what to expect Christmas to be like in Kazakhstan. Kazakhs are Muslims and Russians are Orthodox Christians, neither of whom celebrate Christmas on December 25. Furthermore, Russian or Kazakh, this country is possibly the most secular I have ever seen -- Islam is very weak in Central Asia except for Uzbekistan. Nonetheless, the locals here know not to waste a good religious holiday and at the very least, they become family gatherings.

Christmas was ignored by many, but some people took advantage of the opportunity to throw a bit of a party. People don't understand much about Christmas here -- in fact, many people believe that the name of the holiday is "Merry Christmas" and asked me what one says on "Merry Christmas". "Do you say 'Happy Merry Christmas?'" Furthermore, most people think that Jingle Bells is the official song of Christmas and is the main carol. I've heard the techno version so many times that it became painful.

For the three volunteers in Zhezkazgan, Christmas amounted to a series of parties. Parties here are a lot different and first and foremost they require structure. Here, structure means a seat at the table and a well-defined agenda. Kazakhs hate any sort of mingling and generally become extremely uncomfortable when forced to do so, especially at a party where not everyone knows each other. Parties here generally consist of a big dinner with several courses interspersed with various dancing sessions and other games. Among other things, I've been to a party during which I was forced to wear a diaper and later was eating apple slices off of my sitemate. Yes, things can get weird. At our main Christmas party, we were surprised to be thrown without warning into a dance contest, so we did the best we could. Dancing all the time here has already become a norm so we didn't think twice about it.


On Christmas Eve my sitemate Drew organized a small Christmas festival at his school. It largely consisted of songs, skits, and a few games. To sweeten the deal for the kids learning Christmas carols, we promised to perform a traditional Kazakh dance. One of the younger girls tried to teach us but we proved to be poor students. Nonetheless, we did our best and this haggard performance was luckily our best execution:

The 21st Century Peace Corps Volunteer

Life in Kazakhstan provides for plenty of reading time. Thirty hour trains, bad Russian television, and the familiar comfort of the English language have driven me to read a lot more than I did living amidst all the distractions of America. One of the books I have recently read is Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. His premise is that over the past 20 years, a variety of technological advances and historical developments have combined to create a much more globalized economy in which a person's ability to find work and reach their potential is no longer handicapped by geography.

Ironically, the land of the steppe is not a particularly “flat” country. Cities such as Astana and Almaty are Westernized to a certain extent and connected to the global community. Outside of the big cities, however, everything immediately becomes more insular. In Zhezkazgan, I can read about financial crises, political happenings, and foreign affairs but everything feels very remote and slightly surreal. Nonetheless, even in this hidden corner of the world, we have telecommunications companies and DSL. It may take weeks of processing paperwork, but technology has a way of inexorably, if slowly, marching into even the most obscure and esoteric locales.

I didn't quite envision typing away on a DSL connection in the comfort of a sub-Siberian apartment when I applied to Peace Corps. It certainly does not fit the Peace Corps paradigm of a mud hut on the banks of the Volta or a hammock on a far-flung Pacific isle not seen since Captain Cook set sail. It is a different experience with a different set of challenges. Peace Corps Kazakhstan volunteers can suffer from “close but no cigar syndrome”. Physically, Kazakhstan doesn't look incredibly different from America. Apartments, cars, groceries, Snickers bars, even barbershops are similar. The culture, however, is very different and this dissonance can be very frustrating and it inevitably wears on even the hardiest Westerner. I'm sure every single Peace Corps volunteer in Africa would roll their eyes at me. Of course, it's doubtful that more than a handful of them would ever be able to read this...

In any case, having a solid internet connection will allow me to post photos and videos of my trials and tribulations here, which will hopefully make Kazakhstan easier to visualize and less of a murky concept.

Rumblings From The Heart Of The Steppe

Zhezkazgan is located in the center of the most desolate region of the Kazakh steppe. It is about equidistant between the larger cities of Karaganda (511km by road ENE) and Kyzylorda (428km SSW). Zhezkazgan and its smaller neighbor Satpaev owe every ounce of their existence to the discovery of copper many years ago. If, as rumored, the copper runs out in the near future and the Kazakhmys corporation leaves, the future looks very bleak. If no economic alternative can be found, Zhezkazgan will suffer from crippling unemployment and will face a mass exodus of its population. In 30 years it is possible that Zhezkazgan will exist only as a ghostly village trapped in the withered shell of a city designed to house up to the 150,000 people of its heydey. Zhezkazgan is currently home to only about 100,000 people; it has already been slowly bleeding population. However, all is not yet lost. Everybody in the city is keenly aware of an ominous future looming just beyond the horizon even if some prefer not to talk about it. Some way, somehow, a solution may be found.



I have a map of Karagandinskaya Oblast – the center of Kazakhstan – which makes Zhezkazgan's isolation even more clear. The Ulytauski region, which includes the entire western quarter of the oblast except for Zhezkazgan and Satpaev, can claim only 16,600 inhabitants spread throughout a handful of tiny villages. You could leave Zhezkazgan in almost any direction and travel for hundreds of miles without seeing any sign of human existance. There's a reason why the Soviets built their Baikonur space facility nearby.

In such isolation, it's become easy to equate life in my city with the rest of country. If that's a mistake in any country, it's doubly so in Kazakhstan. The climate, geography, ethnicity, language of choice, and even some major cultural characteristics can vary wildly from region to region. It's essential to travel – judging Kazakhstan from life in Zhezkazgan or in a village would be just as silly as drawing conclusions about the country from a comfortable perch in Almaty or Astana. That's why I was glad to get out of town and spend a few days in Karaganda.

Karaganda is the capital of our oblast and feels like a whole different world. Regional capitals in Central Asian countries are not often labelled cosmopolitan, but it's all relative. To be fair, Karaganda is the fourth largest city in Kazakhstan. It was built on the back of the coal mining industry and housed an enormous gulag under Stalin's rule, which explains the large numbers of Volga Germans who once lived here (the Kazakh SSR served as the dumping grounds for many internal Soviet – and even Czarist – exiles, but most Germans have left after independence). It's also centrally located in the Kazakh railway, which is the lifeblood of the transportation system here. Because of the complete dearth of human existence in the center of Kazakhstan, there's not always any easy way to navigate across the country. All things considered, Karaganda is where I would want to be based if I had to visit every Peace Corps volunteer in the country bearing in mind there are none in the far west. That's why it was a convenient place for volunteers to reunite, relax, and vent for a little while.

My sitemate Drew and I decided to do it the hard way and took the bus to Karaganda, a decision that required us to ignore the strenuously expressed advice of every local we knew. Despite apparently being the only two people to buy tickets for the 8pm bus and being bumped, the 10pm bus was sold out and crammed. At 5'11” I'm not exactly Gheorghe Muresan, but Kazakh men trend on the shorter side and the seats were built accordingly. There's no limit to how far seats can lean back on the bus, which makes for an unfortunate bus ride when combined with the fact that common courtesy in public settings is a poorly understood concept in this country. The contrast between the enormous hospitality of the home, and the brusque indifference shown on the streets is stunning at times. Needless to stay, we didn't sleep much. Nonetheless, it was an interesting experience if only to see the numbing emptiness of the icy road. Bumping along at the most frightening 55mph of my life, the headlights illuminated the wind-whipped snow screaming across the two lanes in strange patterns. Save for a few darkened towns, the only sign of life was the occasional snow rabbit scurrying for safety.



Even though the bus saved us about five hours, we took the train back. It was worth the extra $5.