Horses and Cannibals

It has taken exactly three months, but I finally decided to sum up what I have been doing in the middle of nowhere Kazakhstan. I am currently at my permanent site of Balkhash where I will be an English teacher with the United States Peace Corps for the next two years. But before I talk about that, I should explain what I have been doing since I arrived in Almaty on August 23, 2007.

For the past three months, I was in Pre-Service Training (PST). This is the period where Peace Corps trainees are placed in a village with around ten other Americans and you learn all the skills you will need for the next two years. This includes language training, teaching training, and cultural training. In addition to studying the language—primarily Russian, but also Kazakh—we taught classes, ran English clubs, held teacher workshops, and came up with and executed a secondary community project. In short, it was an extremely hectic three months and although it felt like forever, now that I am at my permanent site it seems like PST lasted only a week.

For PST, I was placed in the Kazakh (meaning over 75% Kazakh) village of Uzunagach. The village is a bit over an hour from Almaty, the former capital and still commercial center of Kazakhstan. Uzunagach is a pleasant place with around 30,000 people and though it is called a village, it had more of a suburban feel. The main strip of the town is very typical of a Kazakhstani town and village. There is a monument to the local hero, Karasay Batir; the akemat (local government); an enormous building for the education department; the “Culture House;” WWII, or Great Patriotic War as it is known here, monument with eternal flame; and further down the bazaar, the post office, and KazTelecom. Nine other Americans were placed in Uzunagach (one later dropped out) and we were split into two groups and were placed into different schools. In these groups, we learned Russian and worked on projects, but all eight of us became very close.

Although I was technically located in Uzunagach, I actually lived in a much smaller village outside called Jana Khurlus, which is 30 minutes away by foot. Jana Khurlus is an interesting place. The name apparently means “New York” in Kazakh—Jana means New and Khurlus means…York??? Everyone told me this and unfortunately my Russian and certainly my Kazakh were not at a level where I could get a straight answer about how this is possible. Jana Khurlus also has a high population of Chechens. I should mention here that Kazakhstan is a heterogeneous country. Only 60% of the population is Kazakh, around 30% is Russian, and the rest is German, Ukrainian, Korean, Chechen, or other Turkic—Uzbek, Uigher, Karakalpak, Turk, Tatar. Most of the peoples, including the Chechens, were put in Kazakhstan under Stalin to keep them from being disruptive.

In Jana Khurlus, I lived with a Kazakh family in what felt like a farmhouse. Although they were one of the poorer families with which an American was residing, it was definitely not what I expected. It was decently spacious and there was first, electricity, and second a TV, DVD player, stereo, and computer, but alas no internet. There was no running water, however, and I had to use an outhouse, wash clothing by hand, wash myself with a bucket and ladle, and the house was heated with wood. Still, not exactly the full Peace Corps experience. I should mention that by the end of my stay, my family had firmly moved into the middle class. One day, my host brother comes back with a washing machine, a microwave, and iron, and a cell phone and a few weeks later we had a sink with running water. The house itself was very typically Kazakh. Enormous detailed rugs were hung on all walls within the house and the outside door and window frames were blue with white geometrical carvings on them.

The family I was living with was absolutely amazing and with whom I will stay in contact with for the next two years. The head of the house is Zaurie, a mother and a teacher of Russian. She has two sons—Timur (22) and Sanjar (20), both of who are physical education teachers. There is no father, which actually was the case with almost all the host families. Zaurie deserves a whole blog entry to herself. She is a loud, gregarious woman who loves jokes (and lies) and always made me feel completely at ease. Though even by the end I only spoke a bit of Russian, there were never any quiet moments. Everyday, she would tell me the local gossip or some fantastical story such as the one about the Uzunagach cannibal who had a penchant for Russian girls and made dumplings out of them. She had a way of telling stories that crossed linguistic boundaries. But she did dedicate much of her time, despite having no free time, to helping me learn Russian. Whenever she saw me studying, she would ask if I needed help and regardless of my response, she would take my books and notes and go through it with me. She is also a very traditional woman, despite her love of alcohol and vehemence toward her own religion, Islam. Whenever she thought I might be ill or that there were bad spirits around, she would light matches and swirl them over my head. Since I showered only once a week, I sometimes thought my hair would catch on fire. She also made me pin a tiny evil eye on the inside of my shirt collar to keep away these spirits and especially those sent by our next-door neighbor. She accused this woman of cursing me for “my beautiful face” and causing me to fall off a horse…yes that did happen and yes, that is the end of my dream to ride a horse everyday to work in Kazakhstan. But as one can imagine, it was awkward walking past this sweet looking neighbor as my host mother whispers that she is cursing me. Zaurie also describes herself as a fortuneteller and using an ordinary deck of cards, told the future for everyone.

The two sons were also great to have around. Timur is the one with whom I became closest and who kind of took me under his wing. For the first two weeks, he walked me to school everyday and would pick me up. He stayed at home at night and we watched TV together. Sanjar, on the other hand, is the wild son who went out every night and came back at four or five in the morning. He was always fighting with his mom and yelling, but there is also some childish innocent in him as well.

This is getting long and there is still so much to tell about my stay in Uzunagach. But as I don’t want people to stop reading cause of the length, I will post the second half later.