It has been a rough couple of weeks. Immediately upon getting home I caught a nasty stomach thing, and spent a miserable, sweaty night praying to the porcelain god. I think I had food poisoning; everyone keeps commenting on how skinny I am now (I measured myself, and appear to have lost five pounds or so since arriving in Kaz). My school schedule is as demanding as ever, and it took extra work to get back into the swing of things. Plus, the weather, while pleasantly sunny until the last two rainy days, has been problematic.
Spring has barely wrestled the landscape from winter, and everyone is already looking forward to summer with great eagerness (“I hate f*#&ing spring!” my friend Hassan said as we walked to the bank). That’s because spring in Kazakhstan means melting snow, giant puddles, and massive tracts of mud. I don’t know what exactly the difference in construction styles is (actually, yes I do; Americans use much more pavement), but I do not remember America, even rainy, rural Cordova, being this damn muddy.
The road in front of my house is finally starting to dry up; it was so muddy a week ago that our security coordinator from Almaty, who was in Petro doing site inspection, paid for a cab to my front door. Walking from the bus stop, which I do every day, would have ruined her boots and dress.
Speaking of the Peace Corps, I received no help in Almaty for my back injury—they simply told me to stretch more and do some back exercises. Apparently, the Peace Corps will not pay for back braces, nor can I visit a masseuse or chiropractor, as there are none in Kazakhstan certified to American standards. “There is no magic pill for your back,” the PC doctor explained to me, “my back hurts all the time too.” Yes, but he is in his fifties. I am 22. There should be something they can do to help. It hurts every time I lift something (which I do very seldom now), or exercise in any fashion. It also hurts when I walk, or sit for an extended period of time. I know what is going to happen; in the two years I have left in Kaz I am going to throw it out a few more times. By the time I head home I will probably have some kind of serious, long-term problem. And guess what? The Peace Corps is going have to pay for my American treatment, because that is how the insurance works. So rather than get me basic care now, they’ll wait until it is far more serious and pay for a lifetime of care back in the States. Brilliant.
Of course, coming back to Petro hasn’t been all bad. Classes at the PHP library are going well, and it appears that Shinae—a volunteer of Korean descent—may have swung a deal with a Korean cultural organization to show “Cross-Cultural Movie Nights”. In other words, they get us a room in the “Center for Nationalities”, a government building downtown, and we show English language movies for a small fee. This might be the first step towards funding the soup kitchen (now slated for re-opening in September).
Last Saturday I also had a very good time at my friend Igor’s ridiculously nice apartment. Igor is a local who works with American couples that come to to adopt children. The laws in Kazakhstan are such that it is much easier for an American to adopt here than in the US. Also, it is much more difficult for the biological parents to reclaim the child if they have second thoughts. This leads to hundreds (maybe thousands) of couples coming to Kazakhstan every year to adopt children. Now, this makes some locals angry (“They’re stealing our children!”), but the truth is that the orphanages and foster care here are completely inadequate. For the vast majority of these adopted children—many of whom have disabilities—being adopted by an American means an immeasurably better quality of life.
Igor is one of the locals who helps the Americans negotiate the Russian-language paperwork, visit the children, and live the required waiting period here in Petro. It is a fairly lucrative business for him: those Americans with the resources to get here are also equipped to pay far above local rates for food, apartments, etc. And, once the child has been taken safely to the States, the Americans are usually very, very thankful. Thus Igor’s prosperity.
Grateful Americans have bequeathed upon Igor (in ascending order of value): lots of exotic American food (like KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce), a Zippo lighter, a Foreman-style grill, a Treo handheld, an IBM laptop, a car, a $40,000 apartment, and a $50,000 apartment. One of these he jointly owns with an American woman; it is equipped with a washer and dryer, a beautiful bathroom, a giant TV, and unlimited DSL internet, and is rented to Americans for $85 a night (perfectly reasonable for them—very pricy by local standards). This is the apartment in which we had our little party.
Did I mention Igor is twenty-five? I am pretty sure he is going to be an oligarch by the age of forty.
In other news, Happy belated Easter everyone (and Passover too). The Russians celebrate it as well, and Orthodox Easter happened to fall on the same day as Catholic Easter this year. They have colored eggs too, and these giant cupcakes that you are supposed to eat with your hands as they represent the “body of Christ”. That raised an interesting theological question, which I unfortunately lacked the Russian to ask: Do the Orthodox believe in transubstantiation, as Catholics (are supposed to according to doctrine)? Or is it a symbolic act, as it is for most Protestants? Feel free to write in the comments if you know the answer.
Today is a holiday as well: “Parents’ Day”, celebrated nine days after Orthodox Easter. Everyone is supposed to visit the graves of their parents or grandparents or other relatives. Of course, many of the Russians are unable too, as the graves are not in this country, and the Kazakhs do not observe the holiday (being Muslim). It’s also raining today, which should dampen the attendance at the cemeteries, which I am sure are going to be huge puddles of mud and water.
On a totally unrelated note: I heard that Don Imus got fired, which I welcome, not because I think he is a dangerous racist, but because his show thoroughly sucks. I remember trying to watch one of his simulcasts on MSNBC, and I kept waiting and waiting for something funny or insightful. Nothing. In that same vein, I agree with the New Republic’s John Judis: the Democratic candidates for President should boycott Fox News. Not only because of their clear and dogmatic right-wing ideology, but because of the general crappiness of their programming, which is almost universally unwatchable.
Back to Kazakhstan: John in Ohio forwarded me a very interesting Economist article related to immigration here. Following the Soviet collapse, almost two million people (mostly Germans and Russians) left Kazakhstan, which had for decades been a “human dumping ground” for the Soviet police state. However, now the tide has turned, and Kazakhstan is the 9th-greatest destination for immigrants worldwide. The majority of these immigrants are Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, or other Central Asians, many of whom would have gone to Russia in the past, but are hesitant now due to rising Russian racism and neo-Nazism. Of course, this has lead to predictable friction here; the Kazakhs never again want to be a minority in their own homeland, and they have the nativist, racist streak that seems to run through every people. In the North it’s not so bad, but there have been a couple of fatal, anti-immigrant incidents in the South and West. We’ll see how this develops in the next two years.
Finally, today I had the distinct pleasure of editing a student’s English paper, prepared for a government-sponsored and mandatory competition, entitled “Kazakhstan Patriotism is the Base of the Confident Development of Our Country”. Some of it was good, such as this passage: “I quite agree with our President when he spoke about interethnic agreement, because to live in peace with all nations (she means nationalities) is the law in our country.” Her concluding paragraph was less comforting: “I am interested in studying languages and I’ll be an English teacher. My duty is to bring up the young generation as true patriots, to develop in them the burning desire to be useful for the society and the state.” However, the true nadir ran thus, “The development strategy offered by our President is without a doubt a complete ideological document that should direct our country’s future developments”. Thankfully that part was plagiarized, like a good portion of the paper and, I might add, much of Vladimir Putin’s graduate thesis.
I am looking forward to summer very much—it looks like I will have some free time wedged between two summer camps I hope to work at. Also, it is not yet certain, but I may be going China to in early June. More on that as it develops.
До свидания.
PS As I finished writing this I began reading a story about the mass shooting at Virginia Tech. They still haven’t released his name, and there is no information on why he did it. I am sure you guys will hear a lot more about it than I.
PPS Congratulations again to Uncle Dave and Aunt Debbie!
The VA Tech thing seems to have been pretty much a college-Columbine deal. They don't know all the facts yet, but basically, it's emerged that a loner sad angry guy finally went over the edge and started shooting people. Its been all over the news that he is South Korean, which he is, but that's not really a story, he's been naturalized since 1992 (he was a 23-yr old senior at VA). It's annoying because now all the colleges are freaking out, if they start putting gay security shit at WSU, I'm leaving. I bet AU is even more freaked out since they're so anal.
Posted by: Conan | 04/18/2007 at 06:56 PM