I learned a number of things this month on my trips to and from Ust-Kamenagorsk and Ridder. First, I learned that sometimes trains billed as traveling between Kazkahstani cities take slight detours into the nation of Russia. Second, I learned that my colleague Cav—Clarence A. Vassau, a TEFL volunteer from Colorad—has one of the most beautiful sites in the country. And finally, and worryingly, I learned that the Peace Corps staff in Almaty can be fairly clueless in the event of a crisis for a Volunteer. The first and the third point are intimately tied.
The train ride from to Ust takes a night, a day, a night, and a day. It’s not an itinerary for the impatient, or those averse to using the inferior restroom facilities on a Russian/Soviet train. After the first night and day, I settled down to sleep on my cot, expecting to be woken up well into the final leg of my journey.
Unfortunately, at 8 AM a commotion onboard brought me back into the waking world—the train had stopped, the bathrooms were locked, and everyone was sitting up in their bunks, holding their passports.
“Where are we? What’s happening?” I asked blearily of one my compartment-mates.
“We’re on the border. We’re going into Russia,” she informed me.
“What?!” I cried, instantly shaking off my fatigue, and whipping out my cell phone.
Ever since the Peace Corps’ expulsion in 2003, the PC and Russia—or more specifically Putin—have had a crotchety relationship. Recently, Putin kicked it up a notch, denying PCV’s the right to even travel through Russian territory on trains, harassing, fining, and even threatening to arrest those who do not spring for the much more expensive airfare. I had not known my train would be passing through Russia; my counterpart, with whom I had purchased the tickets, had not mentioned it.
“Can you get off the train?” my regional manager Ekaterina asked me.
“No. I have no idea where I am.”
“Ok,” she said, “I’ll have the documents guy call you in 30 minutes, once I’m at the office.”
During the 30-minute wait two Kazakhstani border guards entered my compartment, asked if we had any narcotics, and checked our documents. I had a Kazakhstani visa, and apparently the lack of Russian visa didn’t trouble them too much. By the time the Peace Corps documents guy called I was chugging through Russia.
“This is a very big problem, Forrest,” he began, “the Russian police will pull you off the train if they find you.”
“What should I do?” I pleaded.
“Why don’t you try bribing the conductor and hiding in the bathroom?” he suggested.
I let this hang in the air for a little bit. It struck me as the stupidest thing I could possibly do: I had already seen the Kazakhstani police open the bathroom door during their document check—they had a special key which I am sure the Russian police possess as well, given the uniformity of post-Soviet trains—and if they did catch me in the bathroom they would immediately treat me far more harshly than if I just explained my predicament. Plus, I didn’t know how to go about offering cash to the train employee, even if I had been so inclined.
“I’m not going to do that.” I replied.
He had no other ideas. No one did.
So, for the next four or five hours I lived in terror, sure that the Russian police would barge in at any second. Then, just a few minutes before we crossed back into Kazakhstani territory, a Russian officer did indeed poke his head in.
“Do you have any narcotics?” he asked. “No,” we replied. And he was gone.
And that’s the end of that chapter. God bless porous borders.
Buying a train ticket back from Ust-Kamenagorsk proved a huge pain in the butt—the computers at the train station were down, and I waited in line for an hour and a half before the women somehow figured it out. I wouldn’t have even gotten that far if it hadn’t been for a special note written by the head of the commercial department of the train station, obtained through a friendship/connection of my counterpart. The only trains they had that ran in the direction I wanted to go passed through Russia. I had no choice.
After a three-hour bus ride out of Ust, which is a thriving city of 350,000 or so, I arrived in Ridder. Cav met me at the bus stop, and took me to the apartment of Tony, one of two environmental volunteers in the region. We dined on American-style mashed potatoes (with the skins still in) and meat. Tony has a very nice apartment, and, together with Rob, the 52-year-old forest ranger PCV, has built a nice network of friendly locals and mutual acquaintances with Cav.
We left for the camp the next day, driven by Cav’s former host mother. It took about 40 minutes to drive to the camp, which was located in a narrow valley beside a river. When we arrived the camp was in an uproar: apparently the night before, as Cav, Tony and I had relaxed over a beer, a hoodlum (or group of hoodlums) had vandalized the camp, throwing a rock through a second story window (all the housing for the camp is located within one rickety, wooden two-story structure). Sure enough, the window over my cot had a nice, big hole in it.
So, as Cav and I spent the next four days throwing around the Frisbee, taking dips in the river, and occasionally persuading kids to join us for soccer or basketball, most of the boys spent a great portion of their times making “beat sticks” out of fresh-cut branches. At night they formed little militias and patrolled around the area, dutifully protecting Cav and I (who refused to participate in their little crusade. We were the reserves, in the unlikely event something actually happened), and the girls, who slept a floor bellow.
Kids would occasionally come in, wild-eyed, with claims of seeing a gang of drug users, or being struck in the head with a mysteriously-originating stone. None of these claims ever amounted to anything.
Watching the kids spontaneously organize themselves into “security forces”, cover their faces in black cloth, and prowl around the woods begging, begging someone to start a fight with them struck me as an apt metaphor for Bush’s foreign policy, as well as fanatical youth movements the world over: from Mao’s Red Guard to Putin’s creepy “Ours” group. It was like a cross between the Lord of the Flies and the build up to the War in Iraq, complete with misguided overreaction and nonsensical claims of undetectable, looming threats.
All that drama notwithstanding, I had a wonderful, relaxing time at the camp. I got a nice, red sunburn, which mellowed into a decent tan. I took a lot of pictures too, including several of a derelict Soviet tank, now posted on flickr.
We returned to Ridder on the 14th, as we were a little worried a car would be unavailable on the 15th. We went out that night, and I met Cav’s friend Sergei, a young employee of KazZinc (which employs most of the town either directly or indirectly with their several large polymetal mines). He was very friendly, spoke English very well, dreamed of going to America, and occasionally frequented prostitutes. I’ll come back to that point later.
Cav left Ridder a couple of days after I did, headed to Europe to meet up with his parents. He will not be back in time for MST, which is a shame, as I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with him. But I suppose he’ll probably have a better time in Greece, Italy, Austria, and everywhere else he is going.
I left Ust-Kamenagorsk at 1:30 AM on the 17th. I slept soundly, and did not awake until the border crossing… back into Kazakhstan. I completely slept through Russia the second time. At the border the guards were equipped with high-tech Fujitsu laptops with twisting screens and instant document scanners on the side. Now I know where all the oil money not earmarked for Astana construction or the President’s birthday party is going.
Two friendly Kazakh soldiers joined me in my compartment on the way back. We ate together, drank a little Vodka (which you must conceal from the train authorities), and played the Russian card game “Durak” for many hours. During one of our later games, when we were all a little tipsy, another Kazakh police officer came into our compartment and demanded to see my papers. Not everyone’s papers, just mine, a fact I commented on in Russian. Incensed, the police officer then went through everything I had: my duffel bag, my backpack, my plastic bag full of food. He even made me turn my pockets out. The whole time I was smiling and making friendly little comments, sure to piss him off. I didn’t have anything even remotely illegal anywhere. So eventually he left; I repacked my bags, sat back, and reflected on the glory of the Fourth Amendment.
Both Kazakh soldiers were officers, heading to Petro to conduct a training. Early in our journy, the older of the two called me out into the space between train cars to have a smoke. I don’t smoke, of course, but I didn’t want to make him angry by turning him down. Once we were alone he enquired, with a pounding hand motion, where one might procure prostitutes in Petropavlovsk. “I don’t know,” I replied truthfully, “I never need them.”
Now, this might be shocking to some, in fact it would have shocked me a year ago, but the whole topic of prostitutes has become rather blasé. Maybe because I was reading Catch-22 at the time and the soldiers spend about a third of the book in whorehouses, while “Nately’s Whore” is a central character, but the Kazakh soldiers request didn’t strike me as particularly odd. Even though he is, by his own assertions, happily married with two children. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a small town, but it wasn’t until I came to that I realized that frequenting sex workers is not at all uncommon in much of the world. Needless to say, I wasn’t about to lecture the guy, though I also didn’t help him in his quest. He eventually asked for my cell phone number, which I gave him, and promised to call me if they ever went out to eat some dog (this is not a figure of speech, I really want to consume a canine), which I had expressed an interest in doing.
So now I am back in Petropavlovsk. On the 27th I will be boarding a train once again, this time to go back down to Almaty for Mid Service Training and an environmental camp. Most of the other education volunteers will be there, and I look forward to seeing everyone. On another random note, the President has called another election—suddenly, so the opposition can’t organize their campaigns—and my college is a polling place. I will report on that after the election on August 18th.
До свидания
That tank is a T-54 by the way (its condition doesn't actually look that bad though, considering).
Posted by: Conan | 07/25/2007 at 11:38 PM