Spring Break '09 or Drew Goes Crazy with Parenthetical Asides or Don't Mess with Texas

Well last Tuesday I got back from Spring Break Kazakhstan ’09 and I have to say it exceeded my expectations. The plan was to go to Shymkent for Naurys (Kazakh New Year) and hang out with some volunteers for a few days before moving on to Almaty for a Peace Corps conference. I was really excited about this if for no other reason than I was going south and was promised warmer climes. The night before we left I gleefully packed T-shirts, a hoodie, my Pumas and everything I needed for two weeks into one backpack. I was trying to simplify and not have to worry about a ton of bags while travelling all over south Kaz, in retrospect this was a mistake.

Nota Bene: There are two ways to get to Shymkent from my town of Zhezkazgan.
1: You can take a 40ish hour train ride from Zhez to Karaganda to Almaty or Shymkent.
2: You can take an 8-14 hour bus ride from Zhez south to Kyzlorda and then an 8-10 hour bus/train to Shymkent.

I’ll let you guess which one I decided to take.

If you guessed option 2, you just won a year’s supply of kumis.

Now, I’ve grown accustomed to certain liberal smattering of hyperbole in my conversations with locals around my town, so when I was told on numerous occasions that the road from Zhez to Kyz was “the worst road in Kazakhstan” I took it to mean that I would be mildly inconvenienced during the trip. I knew it wasn’t going to be the cushiest means of transport, but Jamie and I were feeling adventurous and are fans of taking the quickest route possible.
So we arrived at the bus station at 7AM to jockey for tickets (can’t buy tickets in advance for private minibuses evidently) with my host dad Mukhtar to make sure we were able to get on the bus/van/marshrutka. As we waited for the bus to leave, the final snow of the season began to fall and I was anxious to get out of town and see the first signs of nascent spring. When the bus left the station we spent about 4 minutes on actual road and then immediately went “off-roading” on the long stretch of steppenroad to Kyzlorda. The best description of this “highway” was given by one of my English club students who said “it’s not a road, it’s a direction” and this is more than apt. For about 4 hours we bumped and sloshed through a mud slush mixture that wracked the 10 or so passengers back and forth through the bus. You really couldn’t even look at the road ahead without being filled with a pervasive sense of dread. After those four hours, the unimaginable happened… our bus slid off the side of the road into a steep ice ditch that nearly flipped us over. Now I invite you to remember that I brought zero winter clothes and am wearing my cloth Pumas.

At this point dear reader I would like to paint you a picture of the steppe. I’ve been in the southwestern Badlands of America. I’ve been through Texas (which in my opinion is one of the most boring states in our contiguous 48). I’ve seen some grim shit, but nothing, nothing compares to the sheer desolation and stark lifelessness of the steppe (I hope I’m not steppen on any toes here). Imagine being able to see for miles in every direction yet finding nothing worth looking at. There are no towns on the steppe, there are no casual passersby, there are no animals or plants save shrub brush. So when I was presented with the situation of being stranded in the middle of the steppe (still winter here) with no food or water and completely unequipped to handle the elements for any length of time, I immediately began to ponder my own mortality and wondered how Jamie would taste cooked over a shrub fire (I still think it was a reasonable assumption that they would have killed and eaten the Americans first and since I have slightly less meat on my bones, Jamie would have been the obvious first choice). Luckily the menfolk were able to push the bus out of ice and mud (nearly destroying my shoes in the process) and we lost about 30 minutes on the trip. I still lay awake some nights wondering what would have happened had the bus actually flipped and stranded us in that land God forgot.
I realize I’m being verbose, but I really want to instill that initial panic in you. I’ll nutshell some things from this point on. Jamie got some pictures that are worth thousands of my words so I’ll either link his blog or steal them from him and let you see what I am talking about (After writing I realized Jamie has posted about this already so if you want pictures go to the list of other blogs on the right and check out Kokpar and Carnivores).

Let’s see, after our near death experience we made it to a halfway café that was really someone’s house that they just fed travelers at. This place was ridiculous, they had goats that seemed to provide their only form of sustenance and I ate one of them in a soup they made. We made friends with this guy who drank an entire GLASS of vodka in one gulp and then ordered another (editor’s note: It was really good vodka). This guy proved to be a valuable friend as he somehow procured sold-out train tickets for us from Kyz to Shymkent. I got a decent night’s sleep in coupe on the way to Shym and we arrived in the morning battle worn and shell-shocked.
We got into Shymkent on a Thursday morning and hung out with the volunteers that were already there and spent the next couple of days watching others trickle in. Before I got to Shymkent my friends and host fam put the fear of God in me that Shymkent was “the Texas of Kazakhstan” and that I shouldn’t even speak Russian because I would get beat up, so I was expecting a crappier version of Texas (Texas already being pretty crappy in my estimation). Turns out it is my new favorite Kazakh city. It’s actually pretty and has some amazing and cheap restaurants. I ate pizza, I ate hamburgers, I ate nothing even resembling the 10 requisite Kazakh dishes that I have been eating for the past 7 months. It was wonderful. One day we went to this awesome café and I ate a chocolate lava cake that actually made me start crying. It tasted like America and culinary ingenuity. I had my first banya since I’ve been in Zhez too and it was great to sweat myself clean and be beaten with birch branches again. The night after the banya we went to a night club and danced a lot. There were 2 fights among the local guys, but no Americans were harmed in the making of this Naurys. The coup de gras however was Naurys day when we went to the stadium to watch Kokpar.

I’ve probably described Kokpar, but it’s the national game where two teams are on horseback and fight over a decapitated goat carcass, trying to throw said carcass into their stone goal. It’s definitely not PETA approved. There are also some pregames where a guy and girl race on horse down a track and the guy tries to kiss the girl before she reaches the finish line and if he doesn’t, she gets to chase him back and whip him. There was also some good ol’ fashioned horseback wrasslin’ Tayhaw style Yee-Haw! It would have been perfect had it not started raining so I was all cold and wet and had to leave before the end of the Kokpar match. Really if you watch 5 minutes of the game you’ve seen it all anyway.
Basically Shymkent was awesome and it was a great break.

Afterwards, most of us took a bus to Almaty and got ready for the conference. I took a side trip to my training village Kaskelen to visit my first host family. As I walked into my old house I kept thinking of that quote “you can never go home again” and thought how different everything looked after living in Kaz for 4 more months. My host mom was at work so I spent some time with Tima and Saniya and watched the Russian dubbed version of “Bruce Almighty” before paka-ing (paka means “bye” or “later”).

I went to my host mom’s café and we sat down and talked for about 30 minutes. This doesn’t sound that impressive, but when I left Kask, I had never had a real conversation with my host mom. Saniya was always a dutiful translator and my Russian was really awful so the two of us never talked much without an intermediary. How under these conditions we both grew to love each other so much, I am still questioning. We talked about our lives, now separate and she cried a bit and I fought some off myself.

When I first got here I wrote about how one of the hardest things to deal with is the knowledge that no one loves me in this country. It was a sad but true fact of the time. Somehow, in the strangest way, I have made a familial connection with my host mom and it’s just a beautiful and surprising outcome of my Peace Corps experience. I am happy to say now that someone in Kazakhstan does indeed love me and that small fact makes everything I am doing here worth it.

On a sadder note, I found out my cat, Mike, had died/ran away. He was a good cat. R.I.P Poor Mike.

Okay this entry is just getting unmanageable, I congratulate you if you have made it this far and I’ll reward you with brevity.

Had a 5 day conference in Almaty. It was good and really renewing. I got my last Hepatitis shot (which I swear I got in America and now think I’m so immune that I actually cure people of Hep when they walk by me). I also had a language test and probably went up a level. I also learned some great Russian slang like “superpooper” (just roll the R’s) which means like fancy-schmancy or something. I also got some good ideas for secondary projects like a grant for getting better books and maybe starting a health week that will teach about HIV/AIDS and germ theory (a noted point of contention between me and Kazakh society). I also made friends with some vols I didn’t know as well and now we are all deepest bros.

On Sun I left and took the 36 hour train ride back to Zhez and got home feeling pretty good. Things got even better though, because I went to the post office and found I had 3 PACKAGES waiting for me. It was better than Christmas! Here’s where I stop to thank the Coradazzi’s and my parents and the Tribe. Thanks for the SI swimsuit edition, food, music, and the camera. I am currently eating Cheeze-its and Jellybeans, does it get more American than that? Seriously though, I couldn’t have asked for better friends and family. I can’t thank you all enough.
It’s also Spring here now. The snow as I left Zhez proved the be the last labor pain of winter birthing spring and now everything is dusty and dry and will hopefully start turning green soon.

It’s amazing how much more I appreciate the changing of the seasons now, but that, my friends, is a story for another entry. Until our next meeting.

Drew