Monday, January 21, 2008

Happy Holidays Times Ten!

I have been in Balkhash for almost two months and working hard! Well, hard except for about the month plus of holidays. Kazakhstan likes it holidays. Since I’ve been in Balkhash, I’ve celebrated Id (a Muslim holiday), Republic’s Day, Independence Day, Catholic Christmas, New Year, Orthodox Christmas, and Old New Year. So while you back in the States get one holiday each for Christmas, New Years, and Independence, we here in Kazakhstan get two. With all this time off, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to experience how Kazakhstanis celebrate.

Whether the holiday is religious, national, or other, it is celebrated the same way—a dinner with tons of people, heaping portions of the same foods, and plenty of vodka. These holiday “dinners” are marathons with all of the ones I’ve been to lasting at least five hours and at most eight! The central act during these dinners is the toast. Each person is given a rumka, or shot glass, which must always be filled. As soon as everyone is seated and the rumkis are full, someone makes a toast and the shots are downed. No mixed drinks here; only straight up vodka. Every five to fifteen minutes, another person makes a toast and we go around the table toasting and drinking for the whole epic dinner. As you can imagine, the amount of vodka consumed is phenomenal and would put fraternities across America to shame. But whereas in American college parties you can abstain from drinking or get completely wasted and still be respected the next day, in Kazakhstan you must drink like a fish and be able to walk a straight line afterwards. Abstinence, or even moderation, is offensive. Refusing alcohol invites taunts such as “Kto ne pyut, ne Ruski” [He who doesn’t drink, isn’t Russian.]—an amusing comment considering that many of the people who give into this taunt aren’t Russian. To minimize damage, one option is to take half shots, although you are warned that “if you sip vodka, it goes to your head; but if you down it, it goes to your stomach and you won’t be tipsy.” But the better strategy is to eat huge servings of fatty foods after every shot. So despite the health effects of consuming a mountain of fat cubes and mayo salad with a bottle of vodka, I’ve only embarrassed myself with my poor Russian. In fact, several times I’ve received compliments from my host for not being drunk. Strange that they were expecting it since they forced me to drink…

Another fun part of these parties is the local food. Kazakhstani cuisine is eclectic, combining Kazakh (and other Turkic), Russian, and Korean influences. In fact, I feel that in a lot of ways these people have the ideal attitude, i.e. mine, towards food: meat and potatoes are plentiful, vegetables are rare and unavailable during the winter, and spinach is actually considered a weed! Let me give a quick culinary tour of Kazakhstan:

Beshbarmak: Means ‘five fingers’ in Kazakh because you are supposed to eat it with your hands, this dish consists of hulking size pieces of cow or horse that has been boiled on top of flat square noodles. Some of these meat cuts are pretty impressive and at weddings, you can see the whole top of a horse femur bone. And speaking of this delicious meat, the first time I tasted horse was the day I fell off one…kind of fitting, right?
Kurdak: This is a hit or miss dish. It is basically heavily fried meat and potatoes. When the meat is normal muscle, it is phenomenal. But on special occasions they substitute muscle for cut up tongue, kidney, heart, and liver. Unfortunately for me, every time I eat with people who want to impress me, I end up having to dine on unappetizing foods. For example, guests are always given an enormous bone (sometimes several ribs still connected to a chain of vertebrae) with generous layers of fat. I am looking forward to the day when I am fully integrated in my family and I can go for the delicious fat free and juicy tenderloin pieces of beef in the communal plate that everyone else ignores.
Plov: This is an Uzbek dish and all Kazakhs who have cooked it for me made that very clear. It is a basically a fried rice dish with meat and carrots. It is different from the Chinese/American dish in that the rice is much shorter in length and stickier.
Monte: These are Kazakh-style dumplings stuffed with meat, potatoes and sometimes pumpkin. This is one of my favorite dishes, which means there is nothing wrong with it and hence no interesting stories.
Lagman: This is simply beef noodle soup with the added benefit that the long noodles are freshly made and are somewhat chewy.
Baursak and Leposhki: Fried bread—always delicious
Salads: Every table always has a few “salads,” but these are basically small dishes with shredded meat, finely diced potatoes and carrots, and two-thirds mayo. For so many salad dishes in this country, I have yet to see lettuce. In the States, I was vehemently against mayo, but here it is essential as a good counterweight to vodka.
Jams: The homemade jam here has totally redeemed jam for me as a whole. Unlike in the States, the jam isn’t overly sweet and it basically tastes like cheery, raspberry, or strawberry syrup or puree. You can eat it right out of the bowl with your spoon…and people do. As a result, I avoided jam for the first several months because I thought it was a cesspool of bacteria, which it probably is here. But my family in Balkhash makes such amazing jam that I happily risk some debilitating illness.

Kazakhstanis are very generous, especially with food. Tables are always covered with dozens of dishes and bread is spread over the whole table. You are expected to put much on your plate, eat much, and waste much. I think part of the reason for this generosity is that at the end of the Soviet Union and during the first ten years of independence, food was scarce. Stores were basically empty and it was a time when people didn’t know if they would even be able to eat. Now that things are going so well, it is almost as if they are celebrating the end of scarcity with a cornucopia of food.

One of the most memorable dinner parties I had was for Id. My family and I went over to the home of some Uzbeks. The wife was one of the more “free-spirited” and fun women I have met in Kazakhstan and reminded me of my host mom in Uzunagach. She improvised a bunch of crazy dance moves and invited me to Uzbekistan. When we decided to leave, it was snowing heavily. The Uzbeks walked us to the car and then the wife ran back upstairs and came back with a handful of shot glasses, a bottle of vodka, and a plate of sausage and cheese. As the snow fell, we took shots on the hood of the car, sang songs, and danced; Ithese people know how to live!

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Livin' It Large in Balkhash

Happy Holidays! Winter has come to Kazakhstan like the Mongol invasion—fast and brutal. For the past month, I have been at my permanent site, Balkhash, which I will now start to describe. Today is supposedly –45C, or –49F, so if anything seems negative it is the weather talking.

Balkhash is a town of 70,000 and is situated on beautiful Lake Balkhash. The town is small enough to be navigable by foot (well, for a New Yorker) but large enough to enjoy yourself. Balkhash can be divided into two parts—an attractive downtown area with Eastern European style architecture and colors such as bright yellow, blue, and pink and a glum periphery with Soviet era concrete apartments, exposed pipes, and a feel of an abandoned construction site. The downtown area is defined by a wide boulevard, Lenin St, and a perpendicular two-lane street with a pedestrian lane down the center, Wallihana St. In this area, there is plenty of decent shopping, cafés (which means restaurant and bar), billiards, a bowling hall, a fitness center, and attractive buildings. The most impressive is the Culture House, which is a neoclassical yellow building several stories high, and is located at the intersection of Lenin and Wallihana. At the opposite end of Wallihana, which is only several blocks long, is the main square with a statue of the local hero, Agabai Batir, and small yurt-like structures. I, however, live ten minutes away in the gloomy periphery. I live in one of the few houses in Balkhash, but the rest of the area reminds me of news reports from Grozny in Chechnya. This image results partly from gunshot-like sounds made by children playing with firecrackers. The area has the look of an inner-city project and the public areas inside these buildings are even worst. But this is only superficial; the apartments themselves are renovated, well maintained, and very comfortable and homey. As a whole, the town has a feel of a place much bigger.

Balkhash was founded in 1937 as a center from which to exploit the vast amounts of natural resources in the area—copper, gold, coal, and many others—and process them. As a result, the most defining feature of the town is the copper factory. The structure is enormous! It takes up a good chunk of the town, has eight smokestacks, and can be seen from anywhere. The entire town is geared towards this factory—most people work there or in the associated mines, the universities and institutes prepare students to work there, and it runs 24/7. Even I deal with the realities of the factory everyday. About once a day as I walk outside, my chest and throat begin to hurt and I have trouble breathing. Suddenly, I have an awful taste in my mouth, but I cannot see or smell what it is. I start coughing. GAS. Although the factory was designed to have its smoke blow away from the town, the winds often change directions and Balkhash is covered in this odorless, invisible, and yet able to taste gas. Yes, I live in a factory town.

But I guess what makes a town is who you live with and I have a fantastic host family. There is a mother, a father, two daughters, and a female cousin who lives with us. The father is a boss at the factory and works every day including Sunday and holidays but he is always jovial. The mother is a kindergarten teacher who at first appears calm and quiet, but in actuality she loves joking around. The oldest daughter is 22 and is named Indira, after Indira Gandhi…why, I don’t know. The other daughter, Kamila, is 16. She is one of my students and the family member with whom I get along best. Although she is only 16, she has the maturity of a 25 year old. She is calm, smart, collected, and responsible. We live in a house, which is anything but what you would expect from Peace Corps. In addition to all of the minimal luxuries I didn’t expect from electricity, running water, and an indoor toilet, the place is furnished like an average small European house. And la piece de la resistance—a brand new sauna, or “banya.” In my room, it’s difficult to feel as if I am in the developing world. My family told me that they used to have beautiful ornate carpets hanging on all the walls, but they took them down because it was too traditional and I guess they want to be modern. The one main difference is the lack of bedrooms. Although they have a sizeable living room and dining room, I have to myself the only bedroom. And yes, I feel awful about that, but Peace Corps demands it. The rest of the family sleeps in makeshift beds. I am still in the process of getting tight with this family, which is a bit more difficult than with my family in Uzunagach because here they actually expect me to understand everything they are saying. Eh, that won’t happen anytime soon.