fugatives and refugees

Typical Work Week

2008-07-26T00:53:00.000-07:00

This blog is for those (looking in your direction Ms Guy) who keep saying, "i still don't get what you DO. like at work..." Be careful what you wish for, cause i'm about to tell you:

So here are the facts: I go to work from 9:00 until 1:00 then I have a 2 hour lunch and go back to work from 3:00 until 6:00 or 7:00. I share the office with the director (and soul employee) Ludmilla Luft who- the less said the better… She is notorious for being late and leaving early so, you can shave an hour off either side. Our office is in the reserve visitors and research center. I have my own desk and it’s piled with my own crap. Here, the line between “mine” and “ours” is hazy, so while I have “mine desk” and “mine drawers” I come in and find mine sharpies have grown legs in the night, hopped out of mine drawer and have strewn themselves over ludmilla’s desk, or my duck tape has rolled itself right on over to her home repairs for a few days. I’ve taped ecoclub fundraiser money onto the underside of my desk with frowny faces on it so it doesn’t flap its little paper money wings on over to the shop and spend its self on cookies and meat.
Anyway… There is also a museum on our floor and a children’s art center. Upstairs is the conference hall and the monitoring office and the reserve’s ecotourism office. Upstairs from that is the reserve’s head honcho office and the UNDP office. I spend a lot of time in the UNDP office, but I don’t dare move my office up there as much as I may want to and as practical as it would be. I think if I did Ludmilla would combust.
Another reason I don’t write about a typical work week is because probably half of my time is spent putzing around. Whether that is writing blogs and emails (like now), or f’ing tea, or messing around with projects that I know full well will never come to fruition. My Minesweeper record is 247 seconds. That’s on expert. What’s your record time?
When I’m doing actual work it looks like this: Last week I went to Astana and sat in a bank for hours and didn’t get a damn thing done except to move from one line to another then back again. Then two days later I went to the bank again with Azhar from the UNDP. It still took about 3 hours to open an account, but we did it. Then tomorrow we will call the bank for the account number which will no doubt take forever and then on the 31st I will have to go back to Astana to sign for and pick up the bank card which should be an another day of thrills and lines. And in between these times I’m calling Almaty to adjust our grant budget and relaying info so they can transfer funds ASAP. Are you starting to understand why I don’t write long blogs about going to work? Cause reading about work is a lot like going to work. It’s boring. I’m not a peace corps stunt driver.
Maybe once a week or every other week I’m called out to translate on an excursion. That sounds like a lot of fun, but when ludmilla is the tour guide, it quickly goes from fun to making me want to slit my wrists. Even Dina, a professional translator, won’t translate for her because she won’t pause and wait for translations, and she gets huffy when I simply don’t understand something. And as a tour guide she couldn’t care less what clients are interested in, which puts me in an uncomfortable spot. She has her heart set on making tourists love some stupid colony of stupid plain brown birds, the size of stupid tennis balls, as if a geographer and his English teacher wife care. I’ve tried to explain to ludmilla that unless someone has good equipment and has expressed an interest in ornithology, she should focus on birds that weigh more than 10 pounds and/or have bright colors or some freaky fact, like “they mate in flight!” but she won’t have it. So I turn to the tourists mimicking what I remember about the rise and fall of ludmilla’s voice and her hand gestures, and I “translate:” “do you really care about these ‘extremely rare’ brown tennis balls? Cause if you do care I’d be happy to figure out what it was exactly she said about them. [here I mimic the scoopy thing she did with her hands] if not, seeing as how your geologists I’ll be happy to ask if she couldn’t take us to collect salt in the mud flats. [pop pop and my fingers fly away]” Then I turn to ludmilla and say (for the 10th time) “they are not ornithologists. Can we go to the flats and collect salt?”
My favorite days are ecoclub days. We sometimes go out to the club in Shalkar which is a fun bumpy dirt road in the United Nations SUV. Amerzhan, the driver, probably has good karma and deserves to be reborn into the body or a professional race car driver. He drives so fast it rattles my nerves. When I do ecoclub I get to work with Gul’zada who I adore. Gul’zada heads up the Shalkar club because it is so remote that the kids don’t even understand Russian, let alone speak it. Gul’zada speaks beautiful Kazakh with the kids and I answer “vhat iz yoor name?” a million times. Here in Korgalzhyn our kids come here to the reserve and we plan projects or do something outside.
Funny things about work: Google. I find my self googling things I would have never imagined. “innovations in solid waste management” “solid waste management in preservation areas” “how does a glass recycling plant work?” “what is that new stuff that’s just like coal but its made out of compressed cow shit or something?” And I ask for weird donations like Personal Flotation Devices and boards.
Other than that, I work on grants, go to meetings, reply to English language faxes, just office stuff. It’d be a little more satisfying and productive if my direct superior wasn’t a racist, incompetent hag. But isn’t that how work is.
(Except at the BLM of course, where my dad is neither racist nor incompetent. A hag maybe…)

Envy and the Beautiful City of Karaghanda

2008-07-26T00:48:00.000-07:00

When I first came to Korgalzhyn I was cursed with jealousy. “It’s not fair! Everyone else has nightclubs and sitemates and sidewalk cafйs, American corners in their libraries. I don’t even have a library! Or a bazaar, or internet cafй or train station or…” but I’ve been pulling myself together. After all, I’m the only PCV with a vegetable garden! And one of very few who has a house. Jodi can grow tomatoes in her city apartment, but I’ll tell you what: I used to grow tomatoes in my city apartment too. you do that because you wish you had a garden, not because you wish you had tomatoes. And sitemates? Bless me, I could have ended up with ---, who was sent home technically for sexual harassment but really was just generally a douche, or worse still are the sitemates who SHOULD be sent home but are allowed to stay.
So with enough effort, envy can be converted into a kind of generous smugness. I dodged the bad sitemate bullet, and come fall I will bless Jodi with a basket of winter squash and sun ripened tomatoes to offset her bucket garden losses. But envy waits you out.
I had to go south for an ecology conference and decided instead of going home right afterward, I’d go to Karaghanda for a 3 day weekend. Karaghanda is the second or third largest city in Kazakhstan. It is also the home of one of my favorite KZ friends, Katie. I tried to keep my smug generosity from degenerating immediately into envy. Yes, Katie may live in a city but she lives on the 6th floor. (…and has a great view that bitch!) Yes, Katie has plumbing, but that doesn’t mean she has water. (They turn off the water during the day! Too many small children suckling off the tit of city water I guess.)
The next morning Katie and I picked up Jodi at the train station and had my favorite coronary breakfast of samsa and diet coke. (…can’t get street food or diet cokes in my village…) We had banana oatmeal pancakes with Jodi (I can get neither bananas nor oats in my village), then made our way to the park.
*sigh* The park… for all their communist gravity and poverty, all of these soviet cities seem to have a park like this: there is a giant carnival lights archway and wide boardwalk lined with stalls where you can throw darts at balloons for stuffed animals, toss your kids into a fun bounce, buy a beer and cotton candy, ride the ferris wheel, or rent paddle boats. We laid on a blanket on the manmade beach next to the manmade lake in our underwear and tank tops and watched kids swim. We did not swim. A volunteer from some 6 years ago warned that she went swimming and then had a mysterious rash on her shoulder for the rest of her service. She’s lucky it was isolated on her shoulder. (This was my last attempt at staving off envy. Katie may have fun parks with lakes, but at least I don’t have mysterious rashes… but then again, neither does she…) Then we sat in a cafй in the park and had shish kebobs and cold beers on tap. That is something everyone should do on a Saturday: sleep in the sun and top it off with grilled meat on a stick and beers.
That night Katie prodded us into going to a free outdoors concert. I was convinced it would be like 60 drunk 14 year olds and a punk rock band doing covers of marilyn manson in some abandoned lot behind some dude’s mom’s magazine. How wrong was I… there were thousands of people. There were easily more people under 35 at the show than people of any age in my village. And I felt like a total ignorant foreigner when it turned out that these bands are like Russian super stars and everyone knew all the lyrics but us. On an unrelated note, while 2 dollar beers will cost you 7 dollars at an American concert, a 200 tenge beer will cost you 100 tenge at a Kazakhstan concert.
Oh the city. Village volunteers are jealous of city volunteers, and city volunteers are jealous of other city volunteers, but no one is jealous of a village volunteer. We get the knock on the chin, “you are such a trooper! Hang in there slugger.” (which sounds a lot like “hang in their sucker.”) Or, “you’re getting the real peace corps experience, lucky!” But no one says, “I wish I lived alone in your village and was getting a real Peace Corps experience.”
In November when we meet for thanksgiving, I will have a basket full of my landlords goose eggs and my and sweet sunny squashes and cucumbers. I will sit on my throne and let sun ripened tomato juice run down my chin. And city kids can come to me one at a time, and proclaim: “Jessica, I am so jealous of you! I wish I had a garden. I wish I was getting the real Peace Corps experience. I wish I lived in your village!” And then I will smile sweetly and place a giant warm tomato in their begging hands, and tell them to “hang in their sucker.”

in the garden

2008-06-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

V a’garodye

Tuesday: I finally received dad’s last package from DC. (I get so nervous about the post office situation and the lady’s penchant for giving my mail to whom ever she suspects might see me that day. Fortunately I had to sign for this particular package…) In it, among other good reads and ranch dressing, was Barbara Kingsolvers Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A year of food life about growing your own food and eating seasonally/locally. That very same day my landlord came to me at lunch and said she has a surprise for me in the garden. In the corner farthest away from the well was a little plot of weeds. It’s my garden.
Wednesday: I bought a couple of cold Baltica Devits and went out back to pull weeds and turn over soil. I am torn between two things, I know it’s wise to tag team this plot this year with Galya and learn her technique. But…I also wanted it to be my garden where I could grow food that I wanted to eat and preserve.
Thursday: I immediately regretted my efforts at being wise, when Galya filled 2/3rds of my little plot with potatoes. I’m so sick of potatoes… I was kind of hoping to put in expensive food that I love and buy cheap foods that I’m indifferent to (like potatoes) at the store. Oh well… I also put in 13 tomatoes about the same number of cukes, 2 eggplants, and I rescued a rouge bell pepper. As soon as they sprout I’ll be putting in “Kabachoke” which I think must be like multi-colored zucchini, pumpkin, miniature watermelon and Brussels sprouts. The Brussels sprouts are a crap shoot, I love them but no one here knows anything about how to grow them. And as for the watermelon and pumpkin, people say that it’s too late for putting in them in but… I’ve got the seeds and a bit of space left so I might as well throw everything in and eat whatever comes up. I wish I had had the garden earlier and I would have filled the entire garden with spinach and lettuce. At night I would have gotten down on all fours and just grazed. To think of all the years I took advantage of my leafy greens…
Next year: Next year I’ll have access to the plot earlier and I’ll be able to plan the season better. I’ll put in all my leafy greens that come up early, eat my self silly, then turn those plots over and put in lousy potatoes and fabulous onions. I’ll put in sweet green vegetables like peas and bell peppers. I’ll keep the cukes and zukes and tomatoes. I’ll put in hardy late season fruits like melons. I’ll put in herbs like cilantro and basil.
This year: But to make the most of it, I’ll learn to pickle cucumbers, tomatoes, and fish with onions (which I love). I’ll learn how to make vareniya (like jam but chunkier). But my big “crazy American” project is to learn to make sun dried tomatoes. I’ll grow as much as I can and preserve as much as I can for the winter, and try my damndest to put this “Americans go on the internet and email the CEO of America and have their groceries faxed to their private chefs,” rumor to rest.

hot tea and sour cream

2008-06-12T03:33:00.000-07:00

Two funny food things for you. (It’s not gross, don’t worry- although I have plenty of those stories too. ...if thats what you're into.)

1.
Mom and dad sent me a ton of those ranch packets that you mix with sour cream. (I swear I never liked ranch in the US, but I want it here! I want it!) So the other day I told Ludmilla that I would bring in some veggie sticks and ranch dip. I chip chopped my veggies and brought a packet of the mix and thought I’ll just swing into the store and grab some sour cream on my way to work. I went to Aya. Nope, no sour cream there. Not surprising, they have the barest shelves in town. I went to Azat. Nope. I went to Yergin. Nope. Now that is surprising- Yergin always has everything. So I went to my favorite store Kamilla. Also nope. What the hell? Sour cream is like a dietary staple how could all the magazines be out! The reason I like Kamilla is because they tell me what’s up, whether the produce is old, or if they have bubble water in the freezer getting icy for me.
But this time they looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “girlie, everyone is eating homemade sour cream right now.”
“no butter or milk either?”
“Its all homemade right now.”
“uh…”
“you’ll have to make it yourself.”
“BUT I DON’T HAVE A COW!”
So the magazine lady and one of the ladies who just hangs out conferred in Kazakh for a sec then, “you can buy some from my neighbor.”
“How much will it cost?”
“300 tenge per liter”
“ok”
“where’s your jar?”
“I don’t have a jar. I don’t bring jars to work. Ugh. Never mind.” I thanked her anyway and accepted my sour creamless life until fall… I can’t do anything with a liter of sour cream anyway because we still don’t have a refrigerator. I never thought I’d come to Kazakhstan and find myself preoccupied with such banal things as shopping for a fridge. I did however expect to be sideswiped with original problems like no sour cream if no cow so I don’t know what I’m complaining about.

2.
This little thought goes out to mom and dad, and comes at the expense of grampa.
So, tea is big in my family too, not quite the event that it is here but… My mom has a beautiful collection of tea pots and cozies and we/they have a cup of tea after dinner especially if people are over for dinner. If not, mom can always be found with a mug of it late at night. But when July and August roll around what’s to be done. No one wants hot tea when its 100 degrees out. …no one but grampa. “It’s a thousand degrees out and your grampa wants a pot of hot tea!”
Well grampa you’re in good company. I have found your people, and they are called Central Asians. You have to have a good excuse not to have hot tea 100 times a day here, and, “it’s 40 degrees (104F) and I’m slow roasting in the sun,” is no excuse.
It’s awful.

25 shaberkova street

2008-06-12T03:31:00.000-07:00

25 SHABERKOVA STREET

I moved in during the last few days of April. There was some debate over whether Dina would live there too or not. She wouldn’t because Dina is Kazakh and my landlord is Ukrainian. She would because she had no where else to go. Turns out homelessness beat out a half century of ethnic tension (…this time…), and Dina moved in a few days later.
Going home: When I leave my office I walk around the back of the building and stop in at Kamilla’s, my favorite shop where they’ll tell me the truth about how old the carrots are and they’ll goat me on and ‘hurrah!’ when I throw out a few Kazakh words. I get an ice cream cone and walk through the field between the office and the first row of houses. The prettiest house in town is owned by a man named Orlan. He has one of those permanent tracheotomies, so I have to focus REALLY hard on what he’s saying. …and he has a lot to say. He gives me wet kisses on the cheek and hooks his arm with mine and walks me around his property while I eat my ice cream. He keeps me up to date on the progress of his veg garden and potatoes and rose bushes and little apple trees and tiny little nut tree, and reminds me every single time of his three little pine trees. They are like a million years old and barely come up to my thighs. Then I make an excuse and walk through the field behind his house.
From there you can see my house, which looks exactly like the two houses on either side of it. Soviet era architecture. From there you also have a window out to pure steppe. In the morning and in the evening there is constant livestock traffic. Sheep, cattle, and goats going out to the steppe and coming home at night. My favorites are the cattle in the evening because there is usually a woman in a bathrobe and flip flops with a stick and 4 year old on a tricycle involved. There is also a big puddle where geese ducks flop around. I give it a wide berth because the geese have their fuzzy yellow babies and are particularly ferocious. I skirt around the best fence in the world, made out of old beds, car doors, rusted out buckets, metal things off of tanks, anything and everything metal tightly tangled together. To keep the tomatoes from escaping I guess. And then I’m home. There are almost always a couple babushkas at the gate with their scarves and slippers. The babushkas here are perhaps the most masculine people in town, heaving dirt and 100 pound buckets of water around. Also our neighbor is one of the sustainable fishers so he almost always has his nets draped over our clothes lines untangling them picking on leaves and bumping Kazakh pop from his Lada car stereo. So I duck under the nets, endure the babushkas and slip through the fence.
25 Shaberkova street: Our house doesn’t have running water. I have a giant metal “flyaga” that I cart across the street and fill at the well. It lasts me a few days if I don’t have to wash the floors, my clothes, my body and my hair all on the same day. I genuinely don’t mind the situation, but I certainly don’t envy people with large families, no plumbing and far away wells. So no plumbing means what? No toilet. There is a Turkish squat in the “sarai” where the birds are kept. A Turkish squat is just a hold in the ground with a few boards over and you hunker down and keep a tight grip on your keys and cell phone. I don’t mind it during the day. But at night… I don’t want to ask my land lord for the key so I can fight off geese in the dark only to miss the hole because I can’t see it end up peeing all over my jeans. This happens. In real life. So instead, I just scoot around the side of the house and pee in the street. Not sure how that feels more civilized, but it does.
Our gas range has three burners and an oven. One burner only leaks gas and the oven works better as a cupboard. We buy giant balloons of gas for 1,200 tenge. They last a month. We also have what I affectionately refer to as the Soviet Era Easy Bake Oven. It has two temperatures- “on” and “unplugged.” It’s soviet gray, and is about the size of an easy bake oven. I’ve had surprising success with it making cinnamon rolls and carrot bread. I love it.
Our beds are… truly awful. Think of a hammock. Make it smaller and make it out of curly metal. Then put a thin mat on top. I need to solve this problem. Maybe a few more mats are in order. But I have a fluffy goose down comforter and that’s nice.
Our neighbor and landlord Tyotya Galya (Auntie Galina) brings us goose and chicken eggs and half living fish and half dead flowers, bricks of animal fat. (Bits of string and rocks that look like Richard Nixon…) She’s one of the tough breeds of babushka. She thoroughly enjoyed Colin when the boys and Katie came down for a few days. Enjoyed him enough to offer up the garden house if he found a local girl he wanted to bring in. Yeah… but who doesn’t love Colin.
That’s a weird note to end on.
The end.

camping trip

2008-06-12T03:22:00.000-07:00

I knew that Tony was coming with his buddy from Germany for a long time. Katie wanted a break and asked if she could get in on the trip. I’d never say no to Katie. That goes double for Jody who also wanted to come but scheduling screwed her at the last minute. And when the train rolled through the south, Tony and his buddy grabbed Collin. So my quiet camping trip for three turned into campstravaganza.
Wednesday May 7th
I went to meet Tony, his buddy, Collin, and Katie in Astana. Even in the shutie ride between Astana and my village, I could see the difference between village life and city life. One of my (unnamed) guests immediately laid into people on the shutie about how much he hated Astana. Uh huh. Nope. You don’t come to this oblast’ (or even this country) and tell people how their brand new capital is ugly and lacks character and is just plain awful. …even though we all know its true. Nope. If we were in a city, that would be one thing, he would just be insulting random strangers. But in a small community the person he happened to single out was one of the potential host families I rejected who also happens to be a guest house operator. But it could have just as easily been the magazine lady who I frequent or anyone else who knows me, where I live, work and shop. I was really disappointed. And embarrassed. But never mind… it’s just a thing that happened.
That night we waited while a herd of sheep crossed on the way to my house. We got water at the well. We stoke the coal oven for heat and cooking. I got the awed reaction I was basically hoping for. I need to be shored up occasionally, reassured that I get my hands dirty, where most others have taxis and central heating and indoor plumbing.
Thursday May 8th
The next day we toured the reserve center, and they were all thoroughly impressed even though it is still largely under construction. We went on the loop around town to the mosque, post office, magazines, banya, then back home to pack up. I think that they weren’t so much interested in it all except for buddy who had a camera with a high price tag and an eye for photos he’d seen in National Geographic- kids with dirt on the cheeks and concrete slabs where soviet apartment blocks used to be.
That night we went in two shifts to the camping site. First Tony and Collin with the equipment, then me, Katie and buddy. The UNDP has many initiatives in the land around the reserve, and one of them is sustainable distant pasture grazing. So we were on the property of a man named Kaierbek who was a UNDP grant recipient and has a substantial parcel of land along the river Nura where he tends a herd of cattle, a herd of horses, and a flock of sheep. He has a small white and blue concrete house in a place… it’s hard to explain. In any direction there is nothing but the curve of the earth and a dark patch of animals. Remote. Our camp was about a 30 minute walk from this place.
I lied. The one thing penetrating the sky line was a decrepit Kazakh cemetery, used between the 1920’s and 1940’s. The largest mausoleum was for someone born in 1886 and buried in 1936. The marker was in Arabic and barely legible anyway. It was built out of handmade mud and straw bricks. The dome had partly fallen in and now birds pulled straw from the bricks and the tiniest little irises grew over where there must be a body underfoot. When buddy (who was full of complaints) declared “it’s not even that old. The big one is only 1936,” I had to bite my tongue. Who ever that person was probably saw the height of the Russian empire, just like he saw the fall of the Emperor and the rise of communism. He saw his people move from yurts and to houses. That fact alone, of their nomadic lives before the 1920’s, means that this would be among the earliest of cemeteries for ordinary people. He would have just begun to witness the building and occupation of the gulags in Malinevka (not far from there) where intelligentsia, writers and artists were held. Then he died. So no. I’m sure living in Europe buddy sees graves from 400 years ago. But it’s all relative. This old cemetery is noteworthy, and the people buried in it are not insignificant. Our camp was right next to this place.
Friday, May 9th
When we woke Tony had already been out for an hour and a half eating fresh butter and fishing with Kaierbek. He lost our lure so that was the end of fishing. But we still had the boat. Collin couldn’t be helped. He’s built like Michael Jordan and it was a tiny little rubber dingy. He kept yelling “I don’t know how to get my knees out of the way!” But the german know-it-all-engineer and Tony the outdoorsman? I’m not sure what their excuse was. After a lot giggling and mockery, it turned out that the ladies were the best boatmen- and not by a small margin either. So we took our bottle of vodka and a cucumber and went off for DIRTY BIRDIES LADIES LUNCH- which we made a huge deal about with British accents and everything. While boating wasn’t a problem, getting in and out of the boat was a pain in the ass. There banks of the river involved mud and clay up your knees for at least a meter. There was nothing to be done except wade through it and remind ourselves that when Astana was a Russian fort they used to come to these banks for the ‘therapeutic and medicinal mud.’
We came back and fell asleep in the sun.
After lunch Kaierbek rode over on his horse and let us all go for a ride up and down the river bank. When I had my turn I asked all the right questions about his herds and his family, and came up with this information: Kaierbek has a wife who is a teacher in the district (presumably Korgalzhyn village) and together they have two daughters the oldest being 30 and they just had a son who is 2. This is his summer house, during the winter they live in the district together. He has something like 60 cows, 30 or 40 horses, and a substantial flock of sheep. For a horse in just slaughter products he can get $2,400 (weird he quoted in USD). (We later found that if I were to be married off my husband’s family would give a dowry to my family, and I’d be worth a few good horses at least.) There were some other things I missed but somehow inflation affected the price of metal and things are hard now. I know I’m missing a piece in there, but I can’t figure out what it is.
When everyone had had their turn on the horse (except Katie who didn’t want to) he invited us to come and have tea with him later. So just before sunset we walked from our camp to his house where he had the samovar heating water. We went in and had tea around the dasterhan (low round table). I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve known generous people and been the recipient of a lot of generosity and hospitality. But this man had 4 things to offer- butter he had made by hand the day before, bread, black tea and sugar. He apologized saying that he had only just arrived to set up the place a few days earlier and didn’t have the garden put in so didn’t have jams or milk, and was still waiting for produce to come in from the city until then. But all he had he shared. The butter was delicious, and the tea was relief from filtered river water and vodka. We talked for a long time about cattle prices and bride prices. We talked about how to make kumis (fermented mares milk) and I was invited back next week when the kumis will be ready. Mostly we talked a lot about how to get me married. He told me that the statue outside of Korgalzhyn is a statue commemorating the first interracial marriage in the district between a Russian and Kazakh. The statue commemorates that woman. So he has a few men in mind for me too look at and then were going to find a place to put my statue commemorating American love of Kazakh men. Yep… it always come back to that…

we have a wiener

2008-03-02T01:26:00.000-08:00

If I had to rank my best moments in KZ I officially have a new winner. (Or shall I say I have a new wiener.)
Pop pop is making his own dictionary with lyrics from his favorite songs and every day phrases like “give me ---, please” “I really like ---.” Today he set himself to body parts. Hair. Eyes. Ears. Neck. Then we got south of the neck. Pop pop has a dirty but silly sexual streak in him. I played coy and giggled that, “I don’t think English has a word for those.” (Breasts, boobs, chest, tits…) I fought my instinct with every bone in my body, but it was too late. I was on a path. In fact I warned him that I was going to tell him things that weren’t true. But he persisted. “I’m not telling you the slang! But the medical word is “wiener”.” I could hardly contain myself when he diligently wrote “wiener” in his little hand-made dictionary next to the Kazakh word for boobs. He copped this triumphant little smirk like, “I have won this battle.” He then turned to our neighbor and declared, “Give me wiener please! More black wiener please!” This turned out to be too much and I shot tea out my nose and choked on my own hysteria. I was so happy I was drooling. (FYI: Why would he specifically say “black wiener?” He knows my phrase “more black tea please”.)
I’d like to think these are the things JFK had in mind when he formed the Peace Corps and said “ask what you can do for your country.” America. I have done this for you. You can thank me later.

dream a little dream

2008-03-02T01:25:00.000-08:00

Since coming to my village (not Kazakhstan, but specifically my village) I have had a reoccurring dreams. Three times.
The first: I’m walking though my village and notice a street I’ve never walked down before (which in real life is highly unlikely- there aren’t a lot of streets). I decide to explore it. And there I see The Crab Pot! (For those uninitiated The Crab Pot in on the pier in Seattle and is the happiest place on earth. They steam a sea food medley in a huge pot for you then dump it out on your newspaper covered table.) But The Crab Pot is all wrong. There are linens and candle lit roses on the tables. Waiters in ties and bistro aprons. Silver service. (THAT is even more unlikely than a street I’ve never noticed). But I’m so excited! I have the place all to myself, and sit down and eat the biggest oyster I’ve ever seen in my life. (I hate oysters in real life…) I am so happy.
Dream two: I am in a cab driving into a part of my quiet, little village I had never noticed before. You know, the part with smog and skyscrapers and traffic. I’m going to my apartment which, in my dream, I share with my friend KZ Jody. We had planned a double date of fancy-pants cocktails and a movie. But on my way I notice a street I’ve never been on. And on it was a Target! Hot damn a Target! So I sneak in real quick to take a look around, but it was all wrong. It was dark and boxy warehousey but that was ok because the stuff was all the same. While I’m looking around my parents call me. (This was before mom figured out Skype in real life.) Dad says that they were flying in that night so mom could take me coat shopping. I go to the apartment to tell Jody I can’t go out because I was going shopping at Target with my mom. For some reason I’m really hesitant telling her that I had found a Target.
This mornings dream: I was going for a walk on a dirt road over a hill. (I live on the steppe. There are no hills.) When I came down on the back side of the hill there was a whole little hipster neighborhood I never knew about in my village. It was small, like a couple square blocks, so I walked all around it. There was a small oceanarium, and a boxing themed bar, and a bunch of little hipster cafes and boutiques. There were two teenage boys sparing on the street. One of them was black which seemed weird to me so I listened in for a sec. (In real life, my host mom and youngest brother had recently recounted the story of the first time they ever saw a real live black person. They were in grocery store in the capital and Pana ran up and shook his hand even though he was scared.) Sure enough! They were arguing in English. But it was getting late and I didn’t want to walk back over that hill alone in the dark so I started to head back when I suddenly noticed a Denny’s! But of course it was all wrong. It was called Denny’s but it was obviously a Wendy’s (two places I haven’t eaten at in probably 5 or more years). Plus there was a statue of the Hamburgler and that purple blobby guy out front. Classic McDonalds. But I was so thrilled! I was thinking “I’m going to go in and have a patty melt, and chocolate milk shake! That is if they haven’t Kazakhified the menu…” (first- what the hell is a “patty melt?” I think I only know that phrase because David Sedaris talks about “going to the airport for a patty melt” in his book about living in Paris and not speaking French (Me Talk Pretty One Day). Second- I bought a chocolate milk shake here in real life, in a big city at one of the fanciest coffee places in town. It was literally chocolate milk that they shook with ice cubes. …for the equivalent of $7! I was crushed.) I never found out because my best friend from high school Beckie turned up out of no where.
These are, at the same time, my happiest dreams and my most disappointing dreams. When I woke up this morning I was… well its like dropping an earring into the sink. You scramble after it right before it rattles down the drain. *sigh* I will not eat decent seafood in this country. I will not find a cute coat here that fits me. And I certainly will not have a patty melt and shake in a hipster neighborhood. But I can most definitely “sleep. Perchance to dream.” (Especially now that my snores-like-a-lumberjack sister is not sharing my room anymore!)

new address!

2008-02-16T00:10:00.000-08:00

Dear one and all, friends and a family:
Some of you wonderful friends and beloved family have been hassling me about a reliable mailing address, others about the blog, others about the flickr photos. I have especially dodged the mailing address requests, because its complicated… It’s a long story. …but!!! I have a PO box now!!! So discard the old nature reserve/Rodnik address, and the even older Almaty address. The following address is mine and mine alone, and I paid for it through January 1st 2009 so… Print this off and tape both the English and Russian labels side by side on the envelope. It’s ok if your return address is only in English:
Jessica F. Carlson
Peace Corps Kazakhstan
PO box 24
Korgalzhyn 021300
Kazakhstan
021300

Джессика Ф. Карлсон
Корпус Мира Казахстан
а/я 24
Коргальжын 021300
Казахстан
021300

If you send me letters, think of me when you’re reading the news paper! Or Harpers Index or Vanity Fair. Snip snip! Articles by Chris Hitchens or Jack Hitt. Snip snip! (Mom and dad- loved the article about Powell’s Books and “I Am America and So Can You!”)
Now as for the blog… http://www.fugativesandrefugees.blogspot.com
…and photos at Flickr.
http://www/flickr.com/photos/13324775@no2/
Finally if you’re set up for skype, my digits are:
8 777 190 96 62
Keep in mind that if it is 4 in the afternoon west coast, it is 3 in the morning here. I hung up on my mom the first three times she called because I couldn’t imagine wanting to talk to anyone who would call me at 3 in the morning, drunk presumably.
Love
Jessica
(rock the kaz-ba)

The Funeral

2008-02-03T02:39:00.000-08:00

We went to a funeral on Wednesday. It was Luda’s younger sister. I met her once at a birthday party. She had been sick with dropsy for a couple months. (Don’t giggle like I did, “dropsy” and a “case of the dropsies” are not the same thing. I’m an idiot…) She was Russian. She was 43. She had a husband and a 2 daughter (9 and 17) who I also met at the birthday party.

Anyone and everyone comes to funerals, not just friends and family. I wondered how everyone knows when and where to turn out? Apparently Russian funerals are held 3 days after the death. Russian funerals are always held at 1:00, and Kazakh funerals are always held at 11:00. They have separate cemeteries, even for a village this small.
People are always buried, never cremated. I had a horrifying conversation with Bibinur during Ait (Kazakh days of the dead) when we were talking about my gramma. My limited Russian made it an especially grim conversation. “Where is your gramma now, if she is not in a cemetary?” “She is on a shelf at their house where my grampa lives.” “What?!” “There is a fire, and the dead person is in the fire.” “At the house?!” “no a specialist does it. It is against the law to do it yourself. Then the ashes are in a box.” She held up a pencil box, “in a box?” “No she’s in a beautiful box. Um. I mean that is a beautiful box, but my gramma is in a very, very beautiful box that is only for dead people.” “But you don’t put it in the ground! You put it in the house?!” “Yep.” “Where?” “On a shelf. (look of horror) On a very, very beautiful shelf with beautiful pictures of our family and other beautiful things…” I cashed in my chips at that point. They are rather opposed to lighting a dead person on fire and then putting their ashes in a box on a shelf in your house. Or maybe they are just opposed to my elegant phrasing. I digress…
It is January. It’s 40 below. Who digs the hole? The perfectly rectangular, perfectly vertical hole? I didn’t see any evidence of a tractor, as much as I looked and looked for it. I did see about 4 or 5 shovels, but I just don’t see how it would be humanly possible to dig a hole like that in weather like this in 3 days. Also, who dug the hole? No one tends the cemetery.
If you have to keep the body in the house for 3 days, and coroners don’t take it away and fill it with chemicals and preservatives how do you prevent the obvious, grim outcome? God forbid someone die in august.
Everyone piled in the car and drove to the house where she lived. First Sasha carried out the lid to the casket and slid it into the army green ambulance with red crosses on the doors. Alexei brought out the huge wooden orthodox cross and leaned it against the ambulance. Then Luda’s sons brought out three stools and set them in the snow in front of the audience. I definitely took a deep breath and thought “oooh no... nope. Nope, I don’t want to be here any more…” Then they went back in and brought out the casket and set it on the stools.
It did have a kind of orthodox elegance. She was wrapped in white linen and white lace. She had some kind of eastern orthodox (presumably) white and blue head band or head scarf over her forehead and a pink chiffon crown. Along the sides were tucked in bright silk flowers. Behind the casket were her children and Luda. Each child had a kind of support team to keep them on their feet and out of the snow, to keep their coats and gloves on. That was truly heart breaking to see the oldest daughter in the snow in only a light sweater and no gloves. They wrapped her in coats and breathed onto her hands. It must be hard to worry about frost bite when 60 people are in your yard smoking cigarettes and looking at you dead mom. I felt bad for being there.
After the casket sat on the lawn for about 10 minutes they pushed it into the ambulance and Luda, the two girls and Luda’s sister-in-law got into the ambulance. They left the back doors of the ambulance open and drove painfully slow. About 10 or 15 people walked behind the ambulance, and behind them a procession of cars. By the time we got to the cemetery no one was walking.
Then they brought the stools out and set the casket up again next to the plot. There was another opportunity for a viewing. Luda and the oldest daughter must have adjusted the position of her head a hundred times. Then the pulled the white lace back just enough to reveal her hands, which were tied together with a strip of white linen. Luda untied herhands and placed a Russian orthodox cross in her them then covered them back up.
The casket was covered in fuchsia velvet and lined with white linen. On the top of the lid was black velvet with a shiny gold stitched Russian orthodox cross. The put the lid on top and pulled out a bag of nails and hammered it shut with an old rusty hammer. I’m not sure why, but this part made me feel really weird. Then they lowered it into the hole. I know I should have been thinking “please let these girls be ok,” but I will be entirely honest, I was thinking “please don’t drop it please drop it.” I figure, there were probably 40 people there who knew the girls and were thinking about them. So I would put all of my wish power into not letting the stools slip, and not letting the casket fall.
Then everyone threw and handful of dirt into the hole, Luda’s son took the oldest girl on a walk, everyone else piled into cars while Luda’s husband and few other men shoveled the dirt over the casket and drove in an orthodox cross at the foot of the grave and arranged the funeral wreaths.
Luda gave everyone a handkerchief. Then we all went to a café and had soup and mashed potatoes and candy and vodka. Then I went to work, did English club Russian tutoring and went home.
The same day that she died, a Kazakh grandmother died and the next day a Kazakh grandfather died and both were buried on Wednesday at the Kazakh cemetery. I’d never met either. They have the same superstition here that we do in the US. The rule of threes. Marriages come in threes, births come in threes, and deaths come in threes. So we’ve fulfilled our obligation to death.

Holidays- Return to Korgalzhyn January 10th

2008-02-03T02:37:00.004-08:00

I was joking with Katie that I wanted to catch the first bus back to Korgalzhyn because I knew there would be beshparmag-the food of celebration- and vodka and a 3 or 4 hour bender I wasn’t going to be able to avoid to celebrate my triumphant return. I wasn’t being arrogant. For example the first few times I went to Astana on my own for no more than an afternoon, I came home to a celebration. As if one of these days I will go to Astana to use the ATM and will end up on a plane to Portland. I’m leaving tomorrow for Astana to celebrate my belated birthday with friends and we are having beshparmag to send me off. Seriously… I’m only taking my purse. If I decided to leave for good, I’d at least come back for my books and a change of clothes.
Sure enough when I got back, they were already a bottle into it, beshparmag on the table, and people I swear I’ve never met who erupted when I walked through the door with my luggage. They exceeded all expectations (and desires to be honest). We feasted and drank and just when I was full and ready to pass out from a day on trains and busses, they bundled me up and we went driving across the street for “tea.” Which turned out to be manti (like pot stickers) and another bottle or two of vodka and another bowl of candy. Then we went to another neighbors, then another! By 1am I had eaten 4 dinners and 4 deserts and had fudged and faked my way through a million toasts.
A few days later it was my birthday. I made a carrot cake and macaroni salad. Mama insisted on beshparmag even though what I really wanted was sandwiches. Mama apparently doesn’t understand the Carlson tradition that if it’s your birthday you pick what you want for dinner and you don’t have to do the dishes. It was fun- but like I said this was the night I was scolded for not putting water in my shot glass.

Holidays- House Party January 10th

2008-02-03T02:37:00.003-08:00

I met Katie in Astana and we did a little sight seeing before the next train to Atbasar. Along the way we picked up our dear, wonderful, fabulous friend Almaz, who was an assistant during training. He blew our minds when he bought a ticket to go to Atbasar with us. The dude left home with just his coat and wallet to go to the museum with us and ended up in Atbasar. He also taught us the world for “dude” in Russian is “dildo” (“dilda” actually but…). Katie and I have gotten a lot of mileage out of that one.
In Atbasar we went to a house party for New Years Eve. Oh a house party! So familiar I could have cried. Aaron (our humble host in Atbasar) has buddies in a band called Green Team and more in a band called X-ray. I’ve never rocked so hard to Blink 182 covers in my life- and god willing never will again. But there was a considerable amount of mud slide involved and they were songs, which shameful as it is, I knew most of the words too. And Katie rocked it too- if I have to go down for this, I’m taking her with me! Oh and the boys looked so good! It was supposed to be “gangster” themed. But I think they meant “mobster” or 1920’s moonshine runners, because they all had on their oxfords and suspenders and ties.
This was Kazakhstani youth culture, which does not exist in villages like mine. The next wave. They cook and set an amazing table like their parents, they take their shoes off at the door like their parents, they elect a tamada and drink vodka like their parents. But they never knew the Cold War, and they barely remember the fall and subsequent independence of their country. They are less concerned with other peoples’ choices. They are more relaxed talking to foreigner. They dress better. They party better. Ironically, while they drink just as much they are less likely to force others to. (On my very OWN birthday I was severely scolded for filling my shot glass with water when the vodka went around. 3 times round I pulled it off, and on the forth one of the men saw me and made a big show, insisting that because life is good he would drink from my glass (whatever that means) then took my shot glass drank my precious water and filled it with vodka. …tail between my legs… I’d been found out.) But I digress…
As midnight rolled around we went out to the street and lit fireworks. Something which at the beginning of the night Katie and I were staunchly against. “You are all going to get wasted then go out and light the house on fire, or worse yet your going to light each other on fire.” But of course we got there was so much mudslide and so much happieness to go around that when some shadow thrust one in my hand and lit it on fire I squealed with delight. Katie did it too! (Once again I’m taking her down with me…) Then we went INSIDE and everyone did sparklers. F’ing retarded… I’m shocked we really didn’t burn the house down with everyone in it! A two-fer.

Holidays- Train corruption January 10th

2008-02-03T02:37:00.001-08:00

The train from Almaty back to Astana was a nightmare. I’ve never seen such corruption! I got on and already figured I had a top berth- which sucks. But then like 5 men came and asked if they could sit, I figured that the bottom berth was the ring leaders bunk and rest were just his buddies who would go to their beds soon enough. …that is until they piled all their crap on my bunk and squeezed me in to the corner. I began to have serious doubts about their possession of tickets, but figured as soon as the conductor came to collect tickets and rob us of our 250 tenge for bedding (which is against the law now, but happens anyway) he would realize the error and give them the boot. Nope. When the conductor came I handed him my ticket and my 250 tenge, and they all handed him 3,000 tenge each on the sly. What the hell?! Absolutely not! were they going to crowd me out of my already crappy top berth aisle bunk near the crime scene called the bathrooms! I sat there scowling at them for about 20 minutes, resenting such easy corruption. Then a girl peaked through all of them and asked if the top bunk was mine which said to me that the bottom one must have been hers. I felt bad for her and bad for me too. So I reached up, tossed all their crap on the disgusting train floor, made my bed crawled up. The girl then came over and laid into them also. They then just milled around looking shifty and waiting for the next old man to doze off so they could sit on his bed while he slept. When I woke up in the middle of the night one of them was sleeping on the luggage rack which is barely made to hold the weight of luggage. I waited the rest of the night for the thing to buckle under him and send him crashing three berths down.

Christmas- The Arasan Baths January 10th

2008-02-03T02:36:00.000-08:00

They finally warmed me all the way through, cold bones, cold heart and all. It costs a low low 1,500 tenge to spend all day in the happiest place on earth. You can buy a little bundle of switches, usually birch. But it being winter and Christmas and all they offered “yolkii” bundles too. Little Christmas tree branches. I bought one. You go in and you are given a locker in a big salon. In the salon you can get your nails done, or get a massage or sit on the sofas and gossip, or hang out in your towel with your hair wet and have a beer and shashlik (“meat-on-a-stick”). I got undressed and went wrapped in my towel with my bag of shampoo and soap and comb and my special treats, a pot of honey and my bundle of Christmas tree branches. You first go into a big room with a high ceiling and marble arches and columns and pasty pink and yellow tiles and your fill your bucket with scalding hot water and give yourself the scrubbing of your life. There is an “I’ll literally scratch your back if you’ll literally scratch mine” philosophy at the banya. The babushka whose offer I accepted, nearly took the skin right off my back.
Then you tote all of your things down to the Finish sauna where 90 year old women perch on the top bench near the coals and lean on red hot nails with out flinching. I sat on the bottom bench near the door and begged for mercy. I still have little scabs from grazing up against nails and when I felt brazen enough to sit higher up. Third degree burns were fair warning that these old women, were much much cooler than me. Then you go for a dip in the soaking pool. The most beautiful, most peaceful place. The highest domed marble ceiling. A perfectly round pool encircled with blue and toothpaste green tiles and cedar benches. After the low, tight, dark, hot-as-hell sauna, a float in these cool waters, in this open sun lit place is exaltation. Then when the heat seeps out, going back to the Finish sauna is like crawling back under the covers.
I spent the rest of the afternoon bouncing back and forth between these two places. Slapping my back and shoulder and thighs with my Christmas tree bundle in the cave of the Finish sauna, then rubbing honey into my face and collar, dangling my legs into the cool pool. Both the antidote to the other, and both a cure to winter in this country. Then you work your way back out several hours later, you take one last shower and pop back out in the salon. Just like I can’t sit on the top bench near the coals with the babushkas, I can’t come out of a 4 hour banya and sit before a beer and half kilo of meat with them either. I sat snuggled in my towel in the corner and had a pot of tea, and a sprite and combed my hair until I worked up the will to get dressed and go to the bazaar.

Holidays- Leaving the Village January 10th

2008-02-03T02:35:00.001-08:00

Christmas was… well it wasn’t awful, but it did not go according to plans. The embassy dropped the ball on her visa and she had to cancel the day she was supposed to fly out. They put her $90 in the wrong account and then proceeded to have a series of Japanese, muslim and Christian holidays. Then on the 21st day of the 10 day processing period she finally got through but it was Wednesday. “We don’t field visa questions on Wednesdays.” Right?! What’s so special about Wednesday? Anyway, even the expedited visa was not going to come in fast enough. Nearly broke my heart. As my path seems to be wrought with challenges lately, I desperately needed to break from village life so I went to Almaty anyway. “team KZ” 100: “team Jessica” 4.
Apart from Summers problems with the embassy, a more recent challenge: My computer crashed. Every volunteers worst nightmare, terror number one. I lost everything… every song I ever loved. Every picture of my family, my beloved Portland, my bunny. Every paper I wrote in college. Every episode of This American Life and Radio Lab. All of my books on mp3. everything… the virus infected the whole village and we lost over 30 computers- not an insignificant number for a village this small- including every computer at the akimat (city council/mayors office) and the school, and most recently the United Nations’ laptop, and biology research lab.
I’ve been on a streak of shit luck. So when I went to catch the bus at 5am from my village to Astana, the weather, which had been uneventful for a month, was a nightmare. Mama kept saying ““buran” on the street! Go tomorrow! Buran buran!” I was thinking “baraban” which means sheep, as if sheep in the street was something new… I plunged out into street to find 2 new feet of snow and the wind was something awful. “oh right… buran- blizzard.” I ran with my huge pack to the bus stop trying not to cry. When the lady there said we were snowed in, I just stepped back and burst into tears. Shit luck. No visa questions on Wednesdays and snowed in on Mondays… seems about right… I went out side to think about what my next move would be. There were some men digging their truck out of the snow. One came over and asked if I needed to go to the city. They took me on a white knuckle ride out of the village. They only charged me 3 times the normal price when they could have easily gotten 6. Probably because they could see I was upset. On the way, we had to pass through a check point. I’d been through the point maybe 12 or 14 times and always just slowed way down and rolled through. This time we were stopped. There weren’t any problems, just a pissed off search for my passport which he wouldn’t have even asked for if the kind but idiotic driver hadn’t said he had a foreigner in the back.
I made the train just in time and actually had a nice place near the conductor’s quarters. An excerpt from the journal Jody gave me: “the conductor is a crook, this one, and I told him as much when he charged me 250 tenge for bedding. ‘I thought there was a rule that bedding was free in KZ now?!’ as I was sorting out all of my smallest coins to add to 250. ‘In KZ? No.’ ‘the last three times it was free- you’re a thief you know.’ But he was harmless. The train is cold and boring; he’s probably a long way from home and just needs to get his. … later his cross eyed lackey came to beg me to join them for fish and beer, claiming that they fish in KZ is ‘the BEST in all the world.’ I declined, not having the heart to tell him that KZ is entirely land locked and every lake and river has long since frozen over. I therefore wouldn’t eat that fish in KZ if it was ‘the LAST in all the world.’ But their offer did warm me up considerably.”

Holidays- Almaty January 10th

2008-02-03T02:34:00.000-08:00

24 hours later we rolled into Almaty. I found an apartment at the apartment window, which was nothing short of a Christmas miracle. Normally they don’t have anything and you have to go down to what I call the “apartment bazaar” where there are a hundred people piled up on top of each other with information for their apartments for rent safety pinned to their coats or taped to the fence. It is impossible to ask one person about an apartment without 4 more coming up to yell at you that theirs is in a better location, or theirs has a new bed. It’s hard to take anyone seriously when they have marker scribbles safety pinned to their coat and they are clearly drunk at 10 in the morning.
So on top of the relief of not having to dive into that awful scene, the apartment I got from the apartment window had the best possible location. It was square between the Green Bazaar (one of the largest bazaars in Central Asia) and the Central Mosque (one of the largest chandeliers in the world). In Almaty they don’t have gutters, they have canals- maybe 2 feet deep that aren’t covered and seldom have bridges, you just jump over them. …that is if you see them. Like I said a blizzard had just rolled though the whole country and had filled them with fluffy snow. I stepped right into one and went face first into the sidewalk with my heavy pack. I mean I was white with snow from my face to my boots. The egg ladies laughed and didn’t even try not to stare, but the doner kebab guy helped me up and let me stand next to his kerosene heater and eat a free kebab.
It was a beautiful little apartment with BBC World and MTV both broadcast out of Iceland (not sure why) and thus broadcast in English. (I still don’t understand my excitement at a perfectly intact MTV… The shameful things I did on this vacation, among them, soaking in the tub while watching MTV Cribs and My Super Sweet 16.) I went out to the balcony to call Joe and Greg and was surprised by the call to prayer. As beautiful as it is, and it is truly beautiful, it was strange- eerie even- to hear on a Christmas morning.
When I went to leave for the bazaar the key wouldn’t turn in the lock and it wouldn’t come out of the lock. I pushed the door in, and pulled the door out and jiggled the key. Nothing would work and I started to feel a little panicky. Admittedly I gave it a good hard twist and snapped the key in half. “now I’m really f’ed…” so I called the landlord but lacked to calm to remember any of the right vocabulary. “key broke! Key broke! I don’t know what to do! Seven zero four! Key broke!” She sent her husband up. “Just take the key out of the lock.” As if I hadn’t tried that… “can’t! key broke!” “just take it out.” “half key with me. Half key with lock. key broke.” 2 ½ hours later with a combination of knifes and hammers (two tools I don’t generally associate with lock smithing) we had disassembled the door and I breathed the sweet polluted air of freedom. It took another hour to install a new lock but the guy was really, really nice. He didn’t even charge me, although I did offer 800 tenge for the new lock, which he accepted.
Greg and Joe came down the next day from Tal’dy Korgan’

Dear American Santa

2007-12-11T06:58:00.000-08:00

Dear American Santa,
I know you are busy with the Western hemisphere for a while. But rumor has it you have a weeklong engagement at the Mega Center in Astana after regular Christmas but before Orthodox Christmas. My little brother has been pissing and moaning about seeing you at Mega Center. I’ll have you know he never obeys his parents and I twice saw him kick the dog. I told him what David Sedaris once told a child. I said that “Santa no longer traffics in coal. If you behave like that Santa will break into our house and steal all of your video games and indoor plumbing.” I hope you don’t mind, I know it’s not true- I mean even if you wanted, how would you steal indoor plumbing? I guess you could break it, but I don’t know the verb ‘to break.’
Anyway, in a country flush with oil, believe it or not there are things that even money can’t buy. I’d like to think I’m on your list of good little girls. I know you’re little helpers have been asking for my address. It’s hard because villages do mail in kind of an ad-hoc manner, but I’m taking a leap of faith. If you can’t make the trip from Mega Center to my village, maybe you can mail to office address. It is helpful if your little helpers write on the outside of the box what is in the box. It is also helpful if packages are insured to discourage theft. I’ll be celebrating Christmas away from my oblast. But I’m going to visit an artisan’s aul and hopefully pick up some cool handy crafts to send your way, but it’ll be late. Late is ok though. Did you know my birthday is the 5th? Only a day or two before orthodox Christmas!

OO Rodnik
Jessica F. Carlson
Kazakhstan, Akmolinskaya Oblast’
Village Korgalzhyn 021300
R. Madina street 20, office 5

ОО Родник
Джессика Ф. Карлсон
Казахстан, Акмолинская область
С. Коргалжын, 021300,
ул. Р. Мадина 20, офис 5

Vanilla Beans: They want me to cook cakes and make ice cream and the only vanilla I can find looks like something they scraped off of a fiberglass boat. It’s white and powdery and looks sharp. You’d think since vanilla is like 90% vodka, and this country is like 90% vodka... Nope.
Duct tape: this would be a gift to my family, and a gift to my sanity. They call all tape “scotch” here. I brought it out once, and ever since they can’t get enough of it. Mom skips around the house ripping off huge strips of it taping up the windows “oh you have such good scotch! We only have Chinese scotch…” I’m gritting my teeth thinking ‘its not scotch its duct tape, and of course its good, its American, its expensive and it’s the only roll I have…’ You can leave the price tag on.
Molasses: I have the weirdest cravings. Baked beans. Chocolate chip cookies. Lots of things that require either brown sugar or molasses. I’m not surprised that I can’t find it.
Worcestershire Sauce: like molasses, even money can’t buy it here. And if I have to drink vodka- I at least want a bloody mary. If I have to eat a pound of meat every day- I want some flavor. Mmm…
Ginger: I just miss the flavor of ginger candies, ginger ale. God how I miss ginger ale and root beer.
DVD’s in English: When older volunteers come back from their sunny holidays in turkey they are rich with American movies. Bonus: not only can you see the movie, but you can see everyone in the theatre watching the movie, courtesy of the guy who filmed it on his cell phone for you! You’ll miss every punch line over their laughter, but at least there is confirmation that it was funny! I’ll take just about anything that wasn’t filmed on some Turkish dude’s Chinese cell phone honestly. Especially TV shows. (Hint: Northern Exposure season 5 and 6. The Office season 1 and 2. Family Guy. Futurama. Anything from Pixar (except shrek). Anything Shakespearian with Kenneth Braunah. Office Space. A Christmas Story.)
Books in English: I eat books up here. I read them not only for the pleasure I derive from the book its self, but for the pleasure I derive from the angst it causes my 10 year old brother. He wants to put Grand Theft Auto on my computer and pretend he’s Jackie Chan with my computer screen. Instead of telling him flat no I explain that my room is the quiet place where we come to read books. Now he hates me AND books. I don’t know why I like that but I do. (Hint: lonely planets 4th edition of Central Asia- poetically, it came out one week after I left.)
Anything apricot or peach scented: random, I can’t explain it. I have Toms of Main apricot deodorant and I just wish it was soap or lotion or something I could enjoy more.
NPR: If I could pick anything to come with me KZ, maybe I’d pick a friend, or maybe I’d pick my old friend NPR. Radio Lab. This American Life. Fresh Air. And to think, I could download and burn them for free. If only I had reliable internet… *hint*

PS: American Santa: don’t waste space in your sleigh with snickers and M&M’s. You know how much I love them, which is lucky for me, because I can buy them here on the cheap.

Love,
Jessica Aunt Florence Carlson

The Bad Lands and 100 Years of Solitude

2007-12-11T06:53:00.000-08:00

My resentment I have for Roseburg, my parents tiny little Podunk teeny tiny town is coming back to bite me in the ass. I now live in a smaller house with a larger family in a village almost 9 times smaller than Roseburg. Yeah… it’s karmic, poetic justice.
I just finished reading 100 Years of Solitude, about the birth and death of a village. (Thank you american Jodi for this treasure of a book.) This is going to be a melodramatic entry. Knowing that I’m going to go in for it anyway. I feel as if I am here for the death of this village. Collective wheat farming is our banana company. It brought wealth and population. When it collapsed the town collapsed. People leave for university and don’t return. When someone leaves or dies, that house or apartment is just left to rot, to dissolve back into earth. To American eyes it is the most mysterious and unbelievable phenomenon to witness. No one scrambles to claim the building or the land it sits on. After a while everyone forgets what was there, and no one cares what will happen to the land. I’ve spent hours walking out of town, out onto the steppe. It is so cold and so windy and so flat. And when I turn around I can see the entire tiny village with flat steppe stretching out on either side. Skeletons of wheat mills and crumbled buildings and tangles of power lines that used to supply the mills, litter the outskirts of the village. The last remaining industry here is ecotourism, and while they have the will to support it, they lack the infrastructure. (Disclaimer: With the entire force of the UN behind it, the UNDP office here is working on reviving the dairy and felt industries. I have no opinion on their effectiveness, although they seem like interesting initiatives.) Like Macando in 100 Years of Solitude, villages on the steppe are plagued with ants and wind. If you’ve read the book you know, ants will carry away the last born and wind will erase the rest. It’s hard not to think about that here. I should add that Korgalzhyn is about 100 years old. Maybe a little less than.
I’ve immersed myself in books and stories about American history, especially presidential history here. To temper my melodrama, I’m going to let Roosevelt show me up. He lived for a time in the Bad Lands of North Dakota, a place I’ve never been, although judging from his description I imagine it’s not that far removed from the steppe here.

“When one is in the Bad Lands he feels as if they some how look just exactly as Poe’s tales and poems sound. … No where, not even at sea, does a man feel more lonely than when riding over the far reaching seemingly never ending plains. And after a man has lived a little while on or near them their very vastness, and loneliness, and their melancholy monotony have a strong fascination for him. No where else does one seem so far off from all man kind. The plains stretch out in deathlike and measureless expanse, and as he journeys over them, they will for many miles be lacking in all signs of life.”

I’m sure he saw buffalo from time to time, as I have seen enormous Kazakh camels. On such a flat landscape things play tricks on your eyes. Things will look like they are moving when they’re still, or they will look close when they’re far. I was in a train and I thought I saw a car racing toward the train at a 45 degree angle. For several minutes I watched it racing toward us, flying across the grass, until I realized that it was a yurt, with maybe a stack of hay next to it. When I saw two camels from the cab I thought, “That is the strangest herd of horses.” We were driving closer and closer to them and slowing down for an ecological check point. I kept watching, and like those 3D pictures where if you stare long enough the image will pop out at you all of a sudden. There were two camels, huge, moving slowly, or maybe not moving at all. Enormous, black and almost perfectly stationary. That is how I imagine buffalo to look on the Bad Lands.

Thanksgiving

2007-12-11T06:51:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving was amazing! American All Star!
Day one: I took the 8 hour trip to meet up with Aaron, my “nearest” and (one of my…) dearest volunteer. As the bird flies he’s only about 4 hours away, but… things are never that simple in Kazakhstan. I took the first 3 hour bus to Astana. It was pitch black and windy, but at least it was only like -15… the driver was bumping the synthesizer as we crawled through the snow past village and steppe. At moments like that I try to endure by chanting mantras like “cultural exchange cultural exchange cultural exchange” or “I love the synthesizer i LOVE the synthesizer i love the SYNTHESIZER” but it always ends up with my MP3 player full of This American Life episodes and books-on-tape about American history… the train was easier, just a few guys with speakers playing “loving you is easy cause your beautiful,” a song which makes me think of Amy hitting the high notes.
Aaron is lucky to have an unfailingly positive attitude and a great mini-city (or in his words “a thriving port city,” pure joke considering it doesn’t have a river let alone a port). His boss is the picture of Russian hospitality, and made us fried chicken, insisting that it was turkey and stewed vegetable medley in lieu of mashed potatoes.
Day two: Aaron and I took the 4 hour bus to the “resort town” Zerenda. Devin and Sven, Education volunteers from the previous group rented out a sanatorium in the woods and made thanksgiving something to be thankful for. There were 25 volunteers there from the Akhmolinskaya Oblast’ (like a state). Only 3 were from the Development program (my program) the rest were all English Teachers.
We dined on two turkeys and a goose. Mashed potatoes. When we realized there was no masher- we came to understand that there is nothing that Vodka isn’t good for in KZ as we used the bottles to smash the potatoes. We feasted on stuffing and coleslaw. Sven, chef extraordinaire, made two pumpkin pies and a pecan pie, and I made apple pie. We played Amerikanskii football and Jodi and I went X-Country skiing. The cherry on top was when we snuggled in to watch A Christmas Story. It was everything that Thanksgiving should be.
Day three: Aaron and I waited for the 11:00 bus. Then we waited for the 12:30 bus. When we were losing hope and the feeling in our extremities, the 2:30 finally arrived and took us back to his thriving port city. By then it was too late for me to go back to Astana, so I caught the morning train the next day and made my way back to Korgalzhyn.
It was wonderful. I have a special feeling of gratitude for the 18’s (volunteers from the previous group) who made it all possible, arranging supplies and rooms and busses. and again- the food- so delic. Probably the most satisfying apple-vinegar-turkey-goose-gravy I have ever and will ever taste.

OJDA 3

2007-11-05T05:24:00.000-08:00

Monday, October 22^nd 2007

From my journal but edited for the sake of parents and our good friend John Drotos... boo...

Oh na poyezdye. …bwila iterestno… from Astana to Almaty is about 26 hours. Unlike my colleagues I was odna. Just me and the host country nationals. There was a woman called dinara. She and I shared the exact same birthday. However we did not share the exact same spirit. She was perplexed at how, at our age, I would dare leave home let alone the country for 2+ years. Also she wanted nothing to do with the festivities of the coupe. She took a sleeping pill and slept for nearly the entire ride. Then there was Akhmet the professor of medicine and nutrition. He was ironically the first to bust out a bottle of cognac, a bottle of vodka, a bag of horse fat and chocolates. Definitely a professor of Kazakhstani medicine. And then… oh and then the second Akhmet. (no relation except for the fact that he and the professors daughter attended the same class at university.) he was in his mid thirties and is a lawyer for a small business and a human trafficking NGO.

So there were many toasts. There were more toasts and some card games. They polished off a bottle of vodka. There were more toasts and discussions and tomatoes and pears and horse. That’s right! Horse. Akhmet (the elder) sliced off a slice for me and Akhmet (the younger) explained that I would feel quite honored when the eldest or most honored man slices off a large piece of Khazi (horse meat with a ton of fat) and gives it first you a young woman. True, I felt and feel quite honored. After a while professor Akhmet fell asleep also. So it was just me and lawyer Akhmet.

We were talking about the Americans. He, like many, held firmly to the belief that all Americans see only America and are only interested in what occurs with in their borders. I tried to explain that that is true as often as it is false. He refused to believe that. I protested. “I live here. My concerns are obviously not exclusive to what occurs inside the US border. You know that I am right!” he was willing to concede that I, and I alone, was special and but there was at least one American who gave a shit. Peace Corps keeps telling us to lower our expectations, and accept small victories. So I accepted a small victory. But the argument about America didn’t stop there. Oh no… everyone is quite upset about the war. You must understand that Kazakhstan’s goal is to become the second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia by 2010. So they are very sensitive to the belief that the US has invaded the Middle East to pillage for oil. Call me what you want, but it is a belief I hold as well. (Or a simplified version of my belief anyway…) So after a discussion about the war, and the validity of bush’s presidency, we both sighed deep. And in the same sad harmony: “Kashmar…” (“What a nightmare…”)

it was strange to be on a train rolling of the steppe for hours and hours. Everything is pitch black and totally flat. And you think, there is so much oil under us right now. Then you roll into Astana and it becomes immediately apparent that this is where they come to spend that oil money.

OJDA 2

2007-10-28T02:56:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 18^th 2007

From my journal

I surprise myself with the fact that I adore this place. Or rather I adore things about this place upon first glance. My boss, Lyudmilla is a hard worker and never hesitates, but sweet and funny and completely patient with me showing me how to do everything around the house and letting me help with the food and chores. Her husband, Nikolai, cracks me up. He’ll talk with me with out end on all subjects in a patient effort to help me understand Russian faster. They work on the reserve, him as a biologist and here as a coordinator. Their son is the best. Alexei entertained me and Nikolai with the Kazakhstani version of college cuisine. Where I would have had a ramen and a diet coke in 15 minutes, he shot geese, “took care of them,” pealed like ten pounds of potatoes and made stew. We wasted the day chatting and playing with the sweet, sweet puppies and messing around in the yard. As we speak he is “fixing” my phone. We are getting ready to go to his uncle’s (Lyuda’s brother) birthday party. It is amazing and completely obvious what a huge difference a better host family can make. OJDA- the week that tony described as “the loneliest week of [his] life,” has turned out to be one of the best weeks in Kazakhstan.

We have just returned from the birthday party. What a treat. What an absolute honour! Yes I’ve had dinner with Slava, but I believe that this was my first proper “gosting” experience. There were maybe 12 adults, a flock of children, running al about and crawling under the table pleading for candy and tickles. There were bottles and bottles of beer and vodka. Everyone, myself included, toasted the birthday boy. I went on in a mixture of English and Russian that “I have just met you tonight, but you are Kazakhstani. And I wanted friendship and I have found it here at this table in Kazakhstan. Thank you dearly for inviting me to your birthday party.” I felt so welcomed and not like an American sideshow. Additionally- to have a girl moment, I adore Alexei. He is certainly my first local friend, giving me faith that it can indeed be done. If I can hire Amina to be my tutor and Alexei to be my boyfriend then I’ll be fluent in no time or so says peace corps…

On the Job Development Activity 1

2007-10-28T02:53:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, October 16^th 2007

From my journal

I am getting a glimpse of my future… Somehow I’m horrified and relieved in the same breath. Korgalzhin. Less than 5000 people. We are square in the middle of the steppe. Some people have claustrophobia. Whatever its antonym is, I may very well have that. You can walk five minutes to the edge of town and look out as far as the human eye is capable and see the edge of the earth. You can actually see the gentle bend of the planet which proves in fact that the earth is not flat. And between the very spot on which you stand out to the curve of the planet is not a single tree. But at the same moment in which I am lamenting the absence of trees and mountains, it is so bizarre and so alien that it could only be beautiful, or at least interesting.

This is the very reason that anyone stuck around Korgalzhin. The collapse of the USSR and the loss of subsidized farming in the 90’s devastated the economy of the steppe. The town was depopulated as people left for the cities. Now what’s left of Korgalzhin stands guard over the largest nature reserve in Kazakhstan. It seems as if 80% of the village adults are biologists of ecologists or somehow involved in the ecotourism industry. Cheesy as it may be it makes me think of “Garden State.” Of the couple with their new baby who live in the ark, standing guard over the quarry while the governments decides whether or not to build a strip mall over a natural phenomenon.

When you see a village like this in National Geographic all I can say is that it is neither as destitute as it looks, nor as romantic as it looks.

Zelyonii Bazaar

2007-10-03T05:26:00.000-07:00

The zelyonii bazaar in Almaty is amazing. You can buy anything you want. (if you want only Asian things, that is…) you can get the most amazing apples of your life, Turkish delight, Korean salad and a whole horse, skinned and guttered for your eating pleasure. Or, if your so inclined you can buy and heads. Of all sorts! Here we have pig heads. To be “culturally sensitive” it is a sweet sentiment. It is the highlight of the meal, and the honored guest of the honored whomever cuts it up according to special wishes. If you want to speak only the truth, you get the tongue. If you want to acquire knowledge, you get yourself some brain. If you want to see with clarity you can enjoy some eyeball. Delic!

Turgen

2007-10-03T05:08:00.000-07:00

we went to the turgen waterfall last week. there's not a whole lot to say about it, except that it was beautiful, and the people were fun. and i have lots of pictures. you boulder almost all the way up. way way up. the water runs down out of the snow fields in the mountains. there is wild mountain mint which Sherali swears up and down will cure what ails you in the winter. a huge spoonful of honey and a handful of mint, and you won't be blue any longer.

here you have Sharali infront of the waterfall and Vyacheslav (professor goofball) in the waterfall.

Driving in Kazakhstan & Don't feed the fish

2007-09-19T04:36:00.000-07:00

Driving in Kazakhstan:
dig our sweet ride on the short bus!

Anyone who believes that women are bad drivers is more than welcome to come visit me and reconsider. My observation is that much less than 20% of the drivers are women. My observation is that over 80% of the cars have been in an accident.
In Kazakhstan cars “should” have steering wheels on the left, because they drive on the right, just like the US. But you can almost guarantee that any nice new car will have a steering wheel on the right, and it will be Japanese. Because of Japan’s changing emission standards, barely used cars with steering wheels on the right are sold on the cheap in Kazakhstan.
In Kazakhstan any car can be a taxi. They cost 50 tenge and pick up anybody and everybody going in sort of, kind of your direction. It’s a crap shoot. Nobody wears seat belts- ever. People will let their babies rest on the dashboard while the taxi driver is defying death at every corner. You hear of many accidents, but I’ve seen only two, and I was in the taxi for one. [see dinner at Vyacheslav’s]
In Kazakhstan there are no lanes. There are suggestions painted on the road as to which side is reserved for opposing traffic. So picture a four lane road. Picture Burnside or MLK, but the only line is between the east and west bound traffic. In your lane people are swerving in an out and forcing busses up onto the “sidewalk.” Or if there is no immediate oncoming traffic, they just drive in that lane.
Pedestrians do not, under any circumstances, at anytime have the right of way. Regardless of whether they have a red light and you are in a pedestrian crosswalk in a school zone with a babe in arms, you still do not have any right to cross the street safely. (By the way, in a town of 40,000 we have one stop light, which is often turned off.) Don’t get me wrong, people are gracious and stop so you can cross, but it is rare. If I cross a major street 40 times a week, twice, maybe thrice, a car will stop and wave me across. Maybe 8 or 9 times they will slow down so you can start running. Many volunteers complained that they had their legs clipped by a car in Almaty.
Everybody rides the short bus. You pay when you get off, not when you get on, and it costs 30 tenge in Talgar (40 in Almaty). They are quiet often very packed and very quiet. I detest being on the bus with my fellow volunteers because many make no attempt to acculturate, and talk very loudly in English which is a guaranteed an audience, and I just hate being stared at.

Don’t feed the fish
The fishbowl… people who know me know I prefer not to be the center of attention. I’m not excited to have a huge audience of strangers. But my god, we are on the radar here. In a town of maybe 40,000 people we are known. We carry back packs and we carry water bottles and we talk loudly in English. So I’ve stopped carrying a backpack. I’ve stopped carrying my water bottle. I don’t talk except when I have to and then I speak quietly in Russian, or very, very quietly in English. Still, children I’ve never seen before know my name. “Good morning Jessica! Where Aaron?” Today I got in a cab, later two young boys got in. All I had on me was my old leather purse. I hadn’t said a word or even smiled at them. (…because people here don’t smile at strangers.) I’d never seen them that I know of. And simultaneously they chimed “hello Americanka!” yep… hello American…
Where are you going? Where are you coming from? How long will you live here? Do you like Kazakhstan? Why are you here? Are you married? Why not? Will you marry a Kazakhstani? Do you have children? Why not? How old are you? Do you have a boyfriend? I will be your husband? Do you have a telephone? How old is your father? What does he do? How much money to you make? How much money does your father make?
One must be prepared to talk on these subjects regardless of how inappropriate they seem or how bad the timing is for you. I am asked probably 10 or 15 times a day where I’m going, and 2 or 3 times a day why I’m here and to list my 47 favorite things about Kazakhstan. This is completely understandable. But where it gets a little intrusive: I am asked a minimum 7 or 8 times a week if I am married, I’ve been proposed to thrice, once quite earnestly. They want to know when I am planning on getting married and how many children we will have. They also like to know if I plan to find a husband in Kazakhstan. I feel a bit like a spinster for being 24, unwed, and childless. And I’ve been asked several time about what my father, how old he is, how much money he makes, is he married, how many children he has.
Vyacheslav has explained that Kazakh culture is so intensely family oriented that these questions seem natural. Everything begins and ends in the family. These are such hard questions to answer sometimes when I just want to listen to my I pod and shop for tomatoes. I’ve learned to low ball and lie. My dad is forty.* He makes 10,000 a year. I’m twenty. I plan to marry a Kazakh in the winter of 2009. We will have many children. We will live in Kazakhstan because I love it so much, because it is much, much better than the US in every way imaginable, except for MTV. Yes I’ve seen MTV, and yes, I agree that it is the best TV show of all time, especially when they show videos of Fifty Cent because I love him so much. Seriously though, it’s been a pleasure but I need to buy my tomatoes and go home.
*I’ve got bad news for you mom and dad, but in kazakhstani time anyone older than like 50 has one foot in the grave. If I’m honest about the age of my parents people are shocked, or at least horrified that josh and I haven’t given them a dozen grandbabies.

Dinner at Vyacheslav's

2007-09-19T04:32:00.000-07:00

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Dinner at Vyacheslavs

He had gone to the bazaar and collected everything. Somehow, he had found time after four and half hours of instructing (to be fair, we spent a great deal of the lesson at the café) and an hour and a half of tutoring, to pull together a marvelous meal.
Meanwhile I took a taxi to the center of town to buy a “gosting” gift only to realize I had forgotten my wallet. …and my dictionary, because it’s never an authentic nightmare if you have your dictionary. So I walked 45 minutes back home, which people were horrified to hear. I was returning home from my second trip from the bazaar. My little gift, a tin of English tea, was clutched in my hot little hands. My cabbie turned against traffic cutting another car off. …or attempting to cut him off. We were rammed pretty hard from behind. Much yelling and shoving ensued, so I slipped out of the car and quietly walked away. For the second time in as many hours I was making the 45 minute walk home.
With all that I was still unfashionably early for dinner (I was 5 minutes late). We had borsch, of course. But we also had chili. Normally I would turn down chili, this time however, it was the first properly spiced dish I’ve had since I arrived in Kazakhstan. Really, a truly great dinner. One note I’ve made on Kazakhstan is that people eat food very quickly, especially men, and drink tea very slowly. So while I’m still working on my chili Vyacheslav is saying “if it is inedible, you mustn’t eat it.” Simply because I don’t shovel it in doesn’t mean it’s inedible. On the contrary, it may be the only properly edible thing I get; I want it to last as long as possible.
One thing I thoroughly enjoy about Kazakhstani culture is tea. Tea isn’t a simply an inanimate noun you swill from a coffee mug on your way to work. Tea isn’t even an event occurring between dinner and bed. Tea is culture. We shoveled down dinner in maybe 15 or 20 minutes. We had tea for 3 hours. …seriously… furthermore, tea has a proper and predictable progression. First we talk about casual subjects; Russian rap music, fantasy vacations to Sochi, and when snow will first fall. Then into the civilized subjects of philosophy, culture, and a very favorite: literature. Then you really get your hands dirty... On tonight’s docket: the state of Israel, what would happen if China stops buying US debt, razed 1930’s soviet villages, US occupation of the middle east. Then it comes back to more civilized conversations. On a side note, I also enjoy the tradition that the man always pours for the woman, and always keeps the cup full. There are other standards which I would enjoy quite a bit less, but fortunately both Vyacheslav and my host family are quite progressive.
So that was an evening of gosting. Others have horror stories of vodka and singing, moving of the furniture, and drunken dancing. I have yet to experience that. Perhaps my associates keep a much lower, more civilized profile. Or perhaps they lack pure passion from the vodka soaked gut. It’s hard to know. Anyone who knows me knows my preference. It doesn’t involve moving furniture.

PHOTOS!!!

2007-09-12T04:40:00.001-07:00

All of my new photos are on flikr.com look for "fugatives and refugees" or my screen name there is anatasia4 (after my sweet sweet bunny.) i promise i'm going to streamline all of this information when we get free internet at the HUB site. now i'm paying an arm and a leg for a slow connection at an internet cafe...

2007-09-12T04:25:00.001-07:00

Golden Tampons and Kumis Tasting Tours

2007-09-12T04:24:00.001-07:00

Golden Tampons and Kumis Tasting Tours
Wednesday, August 27th- Wednesday, September 5th 2007

The basin
We work 6 days a week right? 11 hours a day. …except on Saturday when we only have 5 hours of language training. …only… so on Saturday after class we went up up up into the Zhungar Alatau mountains for a hike. There is a little river- the mighty Talgar River- that cuts down through one of the ravines. It comes strait out from the snow and glaciers and crashes down over huge granite boulders. So we walked along the river and then cut up through a different ravine. Strait up. Bouldering for the first half and scooting along steep hills through the grass. There were sweet, wild apples to snack on. There was also some kind of stinging nettle I got into. They kept saying it was healthy. Zdorovo! Zdorovo!

Moosar
This is depressing- and I chose not to mention it the first time but it is such a defining factor of this place… the trash. I can’t even describe to you the litter. It’s everywhere. Broken glass. I mean everywhere. The problem is that hardly anyone comes to pick it up. Since there is no one to pick it up there are no trash cans. Since there are no designated trash cans the world is you dumpster. Even the trash bag from inside the house, we just toss in the street on our way out. Today I had a soda and I walked for like 30 minutes with it in my hand until the guy I was with (local) was talked me into just tossing it into the grass. I feel like I need a shower. Those with true initiative pile it up and burn it. Burning plastic just hangs in the air. There is evidence everywhere of little trash and cigarette fires that got out of control. Yesterday another enormous swath of foothills burned and no one went out to fight it. It was burning when I left for class at 7:30am and it was still burning when I went home at 6:30pm. It we had a good Oregon rain storm roll through so it burned out by the morning. They know it’s a nightmare. They even call cops moosar- trash.

Come see country number one Kazakhstan!
Hell yeah! I’m going to be working with an ecotourism agency for the next 3 months. It’s not my permanent project but I’ve got my fingers crossed! I’m going to be working in Almaty (like 45 minutes from Talgar) at the Ecotourism Information Resource Center. They are focused on Community Based Tourism. So let’s say you come to visit me in the Kaz and you say, “Damn! I heard that lake Lkjhdthgr kicks ass, but I called the Radison and they totally don’t have a hotel there. There’s not even a Holiday Inn! Can you believe it?!” I’ll say, “As it happens we have we have operations in that community, and there is a network of Yurt-stays (you know like a homestay but…) Ytn*bjhl said he wants to put our guest up. He owns a herd of horses and runs day trips on horse back over the pass. We’ve contracted to have national dishes made from local produce provided. Also this community’s elders are artisan felt makers. You can learn all about how Kazakhstan is revitalizing traditional/pre-soviet ways of life, like nomad yurting, felting, and the dombra.” Kick ass right?! I’m totally stoked. And check it: in Oregon you can go on wine tasting tours, but where, tell me where, can you go on kumis tasting tours. That’s right folks- horse milk. Kazakhstan- check us out. www.ecotourism.kz

Dumb stuff:
• I never every drank Fanta in the US. People drink it everywhere here! And for some dumb reason there’s nothing so satisfying as a Fanta. I crave it like some people crave liquor.
• (Dear Risa:) They leave everything out all day and all night. Meat. Mayo. Dairy. Jam. Gross right, but it doesn’t matter because they keep the fridges at like 50 degrees and the freezers at like 32.5. When you go into any magazine and you see a fridge full of Fanta, and you think to yourself: “Damn!!! I could totally go for an ice cold Fanta!!!” Think twice because only ½ of the fridges are plugged in, and maybe 1/8 of them are good and cold. They believe that drinking anything too hot or too cold is bad for your health. That’s right folks, we’re talking DANGER ZONE!
• You want to know how much things cost? I’ll just put them in order of cheapest to priciest: Cigarettes, Chocolate bars (100g), Vodka, Light bulbs, Tampons. That’s right folks- cigarettes are like 70 tenge (like 60 cents), good vodka is like 250 tenge, and tampons are like made out of gold or something. I guess a few days a month I’ll just sit in the dark and get drunk, binge on chocolate, and learn how to chain smoke.

2007-09-12T04:23:00.001-07:00

Chipsi Kraks
Tuesday, August 21st- Sunday, August 26th 2007

Arrival and Tabagan:
I don’t even know how to explain this… We spent two whole days crossing time zones where we never once set foot outside. Washington DC to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Almaty, Almaty to Tagaban. (Said “tabaGAN.” Not like the sled.) Oh Tabagan… Generalnii sponsor: Chipsi Kraks… Crack chips. Crack Chips seems about right… We roll into Tabagan at maybe 2 or 3 in the morning? Maybe 4? My brain and body lost all concept of time. So we’re all squinting though eyes that haven’t known a good hours sleep in well over two days and thinking “is that a half pipe? No… I must be on crack… there’s no way I’m seeing a skate park… I need sleep.” This must be like boot camp. Sleep deprivation, heavy lifting, food deprivation. Shots. Shots. Shots. They break you down so that when you realize that your Peace Corps service commences at the 2007 Tabagan X-Games your not surprised. And when you meet your neighbors, and they’re Kazakhstan’s professional skateboarders and they’re partying like rock stars it seems normal. The cherry on top is that the whole thing, in blatant violation of Pringles copyrights, is sponsored by Chipsi Kraks, Crack chips. We’ve all been eating too many crack chips.
Talgar:
We spent three days studying like and champ and partying like a rock star with all the 14 year olds who were chain smoking and downing duce duces. I’ve never been so ready to hang my hat. Pack for the 3rd, 4th, maybe 5th time, and load up. Now we’re in Talgar, outside of Almaty. It’s sort of like Vancouver, Washington. Far enough away from Almaty but definitely still a suburb.
Ahhh my novaya cem’ya… they’re so great. I have a novaya mama, who knows a few words of English. She has my back. We went for a walk and she told me who were the bad punks, the good fruit sellers, and so forth. I have two noviiye syestri. The elder is a student, studying international business management at the university in Almaty, and speaks about as much English as I speak Russian- I couldn’t ask for a better arrangement. My younger syestra is like a little pixie. She’s so tiny and sweet and quiet, but when she opened up, did she ever blossom. …and militant about proper pronunciation and vocab building. She sat on my bed with me and we went through a book about Kazakhstan, and magazine and one of my cook books and identified everything in every picture on every page. If I saw sand on page 12 and didn’t remember on page 20 I was reminded, if I didn’t remember it on page 22 still, I was scolded. She especially liked that the only way I could remember “cloud” (ablaka) was to remember apple (yablaka). She laughed and laughed and told her mom and laughed and laughed and told her sister and laughed and laughed. She does not speak a word of English. Dear mom, you’d love Irina. My 11 year old syestra has been quizzing me all day on my address and my walk to school and work.
Being here has given me thoughts on a secondary project. I said that I was thinking of a community garden and if I find myself in a place anything like talgar there certainly is space for it. These are like soviet block style apartments. So there’s a cluster of apartments and big open outdoor spaces in the middle. But they are really run down, full of trash. At some point someone put up playground equipment all over the neighborhood, but no one has maintained it. I’m thinking the scope should be bigger. A community garden would be great, but a community green space would be better. The litter has to go. Bring in trash cans. The play equipment has to be repaired. They know it’s a problem. They tell me over and over it’s a problem.
Superstitions:
• A spider on your body or in your hair means money is in your future.
• Whistling indoors is cursed. I knew this and I still did the oh-my-god-that’s-expensive! whistle, and got a pretty humbling reaction. I won’t forget twice.
• Sitting on cement sidewalks will freeze your ovaries or makes your wiener *ahem* retreat.
Food:
• They never ever have mint and chocolate together. The After Eights I brought were a huge hit. Dear <>
• We had spaghetti for breakfast. …but when you picture marinara, picture minestrone that’s been cooked off. Beans, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, peas, and slices of beef.
• Tea all the time. Good tea! Chocolate all the time. We’re talking chocolate from the time you wake up until you sleep again. I explained that the only time Americans eat a lot of chocolate for breakfast is if it’s in coffee. They thought that was strange. Not like spaghetti and candy bars for breakfast. <>
• The juice is nasty. I can’t even think of how to describe it. It’s like red dye, and Splenda and gelatin. In Tabagan it was thick. …in a bad way.
• I was so scared of the food. My fear was completely misplaced. The food is good. Really good! Some things you’d recognize:
Plo’v: basically rice pilaf. It’s a national dish.
Pilmeni: basically pot stickers
Borsch: like veggie soup with beets
Bishparmag: like empanadas I guess. They’re freaking delicious! It’s a national dish
Shash’lik: basically shish kebobs
Kasha: basically oatmeal
Spageti: what? Are you slow or something? It’s spaghetti!
Odd:
• There are *ahem* illicit plants growing wild in the streets. …not in small quantities either. On my walk to work there’s enough to buy a Beamer and a McMansion if one was so inclined toward *ahem* business management. I now understand how 15 volunteers from a previous group were sent home for “abusing illicit substances.”
• There really are sheep and cattle allowed to just graze throughout town. (They graze on these illicit plants…) Marina warned me severely against petting the sheep. She and Irena seemed a frightened of them so I backed off too.
• Also, cats and dogs are everywhere. Leashes and collars must be entirely a western invention. My host sobaka hates me. Barking is an understatement. It’s something like barking and something like screaming. I feel bad because they have to lock it up all day, but what am I supposed to do?! It’d drink my blood if they let it. Bare in mind it maybe weighs 3 pounds.
• Kazakhstanis drive on right side of the road. BUT: they have steering wheels on the left and right side of the car. Why? Emission standards in japan mean that people have to buy new cars (with the wheel on the right side) every few years. So they sell their old cars to Kazakhstan and now Kazakhstan has cars with wheels on both sides even though they drive on the right. Also, there are no painted lines on like, 90 percent of the roads, so to say they drive on the right is pretty loosely defined. FYI: pedestrians do NOT have the right of way, and the drivers are coomaSHEDshiye- lunatics.
• China is Kazakhstan’s answer to Mexico. Do you need a Folex watch or Dolce und Gabana belt? Take a weekend trip to china. Talgar at the base of the Tien Shan Mountains that divide Kazakhstan and China. People seem to enjoy the trip and make it often. …like living in san Diego and making the trip to Tijuana.
• There was an election recently and NazerBAev was reelected by a landslide. I’m not supposed to talk politics so look it up. Nzerbaev.
• We also have new money. If you think our money or the euro looks like monopoly money you’ve got to see the new tengey. Google it. there are like 130-150 tengey per dollar.
• Best of all, Lionel Ritchie is HUGE here. *Muah*