...to be continued

Moving!

My new website is up and running at www.talldrink.centr.kz; this is where I'll be posting journal entries and photos from now on so head on over!

Moving On

Five days ago the big day came when it was time to leave Ecik. The night before there was a big birthday party for the training director at her house and the departing Peace Corps volunteers took the opportunity to say goodbye to everyone until September when we return to Ecik for one week of In-Service Training. In a way it was hard to believe that the group that I had spent the past ten weeks training with was splitting up but it was also a relief that we'd finally be able to put the things that we had learned into practice. The next morning my group was one of the first to depart with our train leaving at noon; five of us were to travel to Ust-Kamenogorsk with two continuing on to Ridder once we arrived at our first destination. We boarded our train with only a few minutes to spare so there were no tearful goodbyes but I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't a little emotional to wave goodbye to the family that had acquainted me with Kazakhstan and that had taken care of me for the past few months. After a 30 hour train ride which included a crossing into Russia and tons of document checking we finally arrived and we were sent to our host families. My family is an older couple in their late 40's with a 19 year old son but since the father spends much time taking care of his ill mother I haven't had the chance to see much of him so far. The mother teaches German at one of the local universities so you can imagine how tempting it is for me to revert to that language if my Russian isn't going too well. She's happy to be able to talk German to someone but I want to keep working on my Russian also - fortunately there are plenty of chances to do that every day. I live on the fourth floor in one of the many microregions (apartment blocks) in Ust-Kamenogorsk and I'm already making friends with the babushkas in our building. To be honest I don't understand everything they're saying but if I can practice Russian and make new friends in the process then it's all good. During the four days that I've been here so far the weather has been stifling hot with temperatures reaching close to 90 every day. That might not sound so bad but when you don't have air conditioning it can get pretty nasty. On Sunday we had a chance to meet some of the other volunteers here and they all seem to be a good bunch; they showed us some of the important buildings (post office, bank) and invited us to their Sunday afternoon movie club where "Dude, Where's My Car?" was shown so you can all rest assured that we're doing our part in educating the population in Kazakhstan. The city itself has a unique layout as compared to other cities here as it lies at the confluence of the Ulba and Irtysh rivers (the latter river is one of the longest in the world) and therefore has a lot of riverfront parks, cafes, etc. The streets in the center of the city are very wide as they are in Karaganda and some of the buildings there are towering pieces of architecture from the Soviet era. One building that stands out from the others is the mosque which towers against a backdrop of hills. With the Russian population being dominant here it's not something that I expected to see in the middle of the city but it seems as if people in Ust-Kamenogorsk take great care to respect other cultures. There's a building here that's solely dedicated to friendship and cooperation between the cultures and after reading up on some of the history it seems as if they've all had a part in things here. When I arrived here I learned that I'd be named warden shortly as the former wardens are all close to finishing their service; in a nutshell this means that I'd be responsible for relaying information to the other volunteers in my area, for knowing their whereabouts when they aren't at their sites and for consolidating everyone at my apartment if an emergency occurs. From what I hear the job doesn't entail much aside from the required yearly drills so it shouldn't be too tough. Today I took a walk along the banks of the Irtysh and got to soak my steaming hot feet in its icy cold waters until I felt them cramp up - life is good. While we're talking about water all hot water in Ust-Kamenogorsk will be turned off on May 23rd for one month for maintenance; apparently this is an annual occurrence. Looks like I'll be taking cold showers to cool off from the heat come next week - I'll let you know when I find out which alternatives people here use!

The Past Week

I'm just going to write about a few odds and ends that happened over the past week. Last Saturday we were all invited to the opening of the new Peace Corps headquarters in Almaty after our site announcements and it was rather impressive. The headquarters is made up of two buildings in a gated compound and they contain everything from computers, showers, and storage to a resource center where all kinds of useful information can be found. Getting there is a little hard since it's on the other side of Almaty if you're coming from the Sayakhat bus station, the airport, or the train stations but it's definitely worth the trouble. After several speeches a ribbon was cut to officially open the headquarters and food was served in the form of shashlik and many vegetables. It was interesting to talk to some of the volunteers who had already been in the country for a while and to get their perspectives on things but while Kaz-14 is the newest group for now Kaz-15 (a teacher trainee group) is scheduled to arrive in June. The following day we headed to a mountain lake in the mountains surrounding Ecik for poker, impromptu swimming in icy cold water and, yes, more shashlik. Shashlik is actually pretty good when the cook takes his/her time with it; you need to marinate the meat (usually pork or lamb) first for a while before sticking it on the metal rods and grilling it. Many restaurants here serve shashlik with tons of bones and the meat doesn't taste very marinated either but if you are invited to a private shashlik cookout here then you should definitely accept the offer because the cook will put the time in to make it a great feast. One of the volunteers had 6 (!) rods of shashlik because he was standing too close to where it was being grilled. I was glad to finally head up into the mountains that I see every day when I'm walking around Ecik because they really are beautiful; Trees don't grow on most of the peaks and some of them are so high that the snow on them never melts, even in the summer heat. This past week we had more classes including how to write a business plan, how to apply for grants and one on introductory Kazakh. Kazakh is a Turkic language which means that words can be hard to form sometimes but I plan on learning at least the basics of the language before the end of my service. Peace Corps actually pays for tutors once I move to my site so there's no reason for me not to keep learning Russian and Kazakh. Today we cooked beshparmak (Kazakh for five fingers because that's how you eat it)in my language class, a Kazakh dish consisting of big noodles, vegetables and lamb which turned out to be a very tasty experience. Since I live with a Russian family I don't get too many of the true Kazakh meals so this was a new thing for me. Once I'm at site I intend to learn how to cook some more, especially since I won't have a microwave! Now it's Saturday afternoon and it's a beautiful day outside so I'll take a walk through the bazaar in search of a new flavor of kirieshki (flavored croutons; great with beer) before heading home. Talk to y'all soon!

Training Nears An End

After two months of Peace Corps training the end of the tunnel in in sight. People have started to take their language tests and the schedule which was packed at certain points during training has become very light. I plan on taking my Russian language test early next week to get it out of the way; it basically consists of a 15 minute conversation where pronounciation and grammar are assessed. My language skills aren't as good as that of some of the other people in my group but I can still pick up a lot from conversations and am able to hold my own at this point. My language class was dissolved because my teacher was chosen to teach Kazakh to the people who were going to sites where the language is more commonly used and so the three people who were taught by her were sent to other classes. The class I'm in now is a little more advanced but it's all good because it's forcing me to work on my grammar and to keep buiding my vocabluary at a faster pace. Next week I also get to give a presentation on grant writing at the town Akimat (town hall) and I need to build an Access database which will eventually contain all available NGOs in Kazakhstan when they're all entered. So I'm still keeping busy even though things are winding down and am counting down the days to my official swear-in as a Peace Corps volunteer on May 13th.

Site Assignment

Yesterday was the big day where all got to find out where we'd be serving for the next two years and just about everyone had been nervous all week, waiting to see whether they'd gotten their preferred choice. It's a rare thing that Peace Corps trainees get to choose their sites, mostly because that makes things much more complicated but since Kaz-14 is the first NGO group in Kazakhstan the training staff wanted to place us at a site where we could use our specialties more effectively. Over the past week everyone had interviews with the country director as well as with the regional managers of the sites that we were interested in and we were all presented with their top matches for us while we told them what our preferences were. In some cases they didn't match at all but I was lucky enough to have my top site match theirs but in spite of that I was still nervous because I wasn't 100% sure whether I'd be sent there or not. Saturday morning it was confirmed though that I'll be working for the Social Fund "Local Center of Self-Governance Development" in Ust-Kameongorsk (Oeskemen in Kazakh) for the next two years. The city is located in the northeast of Kazakhstan, not far from China and Mongolia, and has a population of about 334,000. There is a lot of natural beauty in the area with mountains and nature reserves to the north and east and it looks like the city itself also has plenty to offer. The organization I'll be working for promotes civil society development through information and educational programs as well as through local administration development. I know this must sound like Greek to some of you but until I'm there and can actually see what my daily routine will be I'll only be able to pass on descriptions that are passed on to me instead of putting them in my own words. The reason I really wanted to work here though was because this position lets me do some project management and also lets me work on more "business" type activities - both things I really wanted to do within the Peace Corps. From the sound of the position it looks like I'll be kept busy and that was another important reason why I wanted to work with this NGO. I'll get into contact with them this week and will go from there - I was also provided with a choice of three host families, one of which I'll be staying with for at least the next six months. So as you can see there's a lot of preparation going on but I'm really looking forward to finally getting started with my assignment.

Wringing The Most From Your Car

Yesterday I experienced my first car breakdown in Kazakhstan! I was heading from the center of town towards Microregion 3 in an old Lada with the two other members of my language class when its engine shut off in the middle of an intersection. After several attempts to start it the driver decided to push it out of the intersection; when I got out to help he told me to sit back down so I complied. Once the car picked up enough speed it rolled downhill towards our destination with our driver blaring the car's horn as it approached intersections. A little over a kilometer later he dropped us off about 5 minutes away from the apartment we were heading to and started breaking out the tools to fix the car. Many cars here are on their last leg but I'm impressed at how long their drivers keep them on the road. I just hope that this scenario doesn't happen in the middle of the steppe where everything's flat!

Trip to Karaganda

The city of Karaganda is pretty impressive; it is the second largest city in Kazakhstan with roughly 420,000 inhabitants and many remainders from the Soviet era remain such as the Miner's Culture palace, a big statue of Lenin and many murals with a space theme on buildings around the city. Many of the Soviet cosmonauts lived here in years past and the big museum and government buildings still give the city an air of innovation, as do the many university students who attend school here. The first differences I noticed about Karaganda as compared to the other places in Kazakhstan that I'd been to was how wide and clean the streets are. In the center of the city they are easily as wide as two normal city streets and there's usually a strong wind from the steppe blowing down them which can be a pain if it's blowing dust into your face. While I was there I got to see Die Fledermaus in Russian (with added ballet sequences) and the symphony and liked both performances but Karanganda also has creature comforts such as the Johnnie Walker Pub where you can buy Franziskaner beer, hamburgers and haggis or Mario's Pizza which serves personal pizza along to the sights and sounds of MTV Russia on their widescreen TV. These two establishments are much more expensive than the places that serve local food though and are not in the everyday budget of the average Peace Corps volunteer as the local PCVs told me. One pleasure that does come cheap there is Karaganda dark beer; a half liter bottle costs less than 70 cents and rivals the taste of many American microbrews. While there many ways to be entertained in Karaganda the NGO I visited was well worth the trip as well. I worked at the EcoMuseum (www.ecomuseum.freenet.kz) for the week that I was there and was impressed by how organized everything there was. The main mission of the EcoMuseum is to educate the public on the environmental problems that Kazakhstan faces and to get them involved with solving these problems. The EcoMuseum plans on doing this by finishing their museum which will contain exhibits of some of the larger environmental problems as well as projects that the NGO is working on such as building biogas generators in small villages and cleaning up the Nura river basin from the high levels of mercury that are found there. The museum itself is still very much under construction but when it opens (scheduled for September) the NGO plans on inviting every child in the vicinity of Karaganda there so that they can all be educated on environmental issues. The legacy of the Soviet nuclear testing in Semipalatinsk and the rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome are two of the biggest issues that the EcoMuseum deals with today. Nobody knows for sure which areas in the Semipalatinsk testing area are radioactive so families can easily drive right through the middle of it without having any idea of what they could be dealing with. As far as the Baikonur Cosmodrome goes as rocket parts are detached during space launches they fall over a wide area of the steppe in Mangistau oblast (oblasts = provinces, Karaganda is the capital of Mangistau oblast) and the people who live there use these parts for everything from car garages to barns. When you consider how much the American public was warned not to get near any of the space shuttle parts after last year's explosion you can imagine the potential health problems that could arise when you hang around these parts every day. The government in Kazakhstan does have ministries that are supposed to deal with these issues but for whatever reason it is not effective in handling them; this is where the EcoMuseum wants to step in to make changes. The NGO is funded by several aid organizations and participates in exchange and training programs so the techincal expertise exists - it will just take some time to solve these problems. When I was there I proofread several documents and talked with Dima, the head of EcoMuseum, about some IT and political issues that the organization faces and was surprised by how many different things it does. The EcoMuseum is an available NGO for the trainees here so I'll have to get in touch with whoever is sent here to see how things are going several months down the road. All in all I really enjoyed Karaganda and would definitely return for a visit once I'm at my permanent site.

Trains

On my trip to Karaganda I got to experience the trains here firsthand and by the time I returned to Ecik I liked traveling this way a lot more than flying. It takes a lot more time of course but you get to see and experience things that you otherwise wouldn't. The train ride from Almaty to Karaganda takes about 19 hours and 18 1/2 of those are spent chugging across the endless Kazakh steppe. I looked very hard for anything interesting and while I occasionally saw the lone horse or flock of sheep there really wasn't much else out there. Once the passengers board the train they usually change into something more comfortable like a training suit. I shared my kupe (compartment) with three other trainees and it sleeps four quite comfortably with upper and lower bunks. The window in the kupe can't be opened but you can always step out into the hallway for a breath of fresh air. A water boiler at one end of the car provides hot water for tea and you can buy sheets and covers for your bed for about $1. While some of the trains have restaurant cars you're much better off boosting the economies of the villages where the train stops buy buying food from the vendors there. Every time a train pulls in they flock around the train exits selling all kinds of things. Fried fish, smoked fish, manti, pierogis, soda, beer, vodka, ice cream - you name it it usually doesn't take much of a walk at all to find what you're looking for. Depending on where you are the sellers will even bargain with each other to give you the lowest price and they'll climb underneath trains to get their wares to you; I really was impressed by how much effort they put into it. The only thing you have to watch out for is where some of the food comes from and how it was handled; one of the trainers told us that some of the fish may be smoked in toxic fires and I saw one lady drag her fish on the gravel as she climbed under one of the trains. Some other things I found out during my train trip was that almost all trees around Karaganda are not native to the area and that they were planted when the area was settled en masse in the 1920's. Many buildings around the tracks seem to have fallen into disrepair since the Soviet collapse; it must not have been profitable to operate many of them once that took place. After this trip I'm definitely looking forward to my next train ride to my site next month - I just hope it's not a 40 hour ride next time!

It's The Culture

To prove that I'm not only focused on work and business these days I've decided to write about some of the things that the average American might find strange or hard to deal with. This isn't meant to be a complaint but rather a reminder of how much Americans take for granted!

1. Hot water is a luxury - I don't know about the big cities but in Ecik hot water definitely isn't easy to come by. We only have it for a few days each week where I live and whether I'm attending a language class in Microregion 3 or a business class in the city center I always find myself washing with cold water. Very refreshing in the summer I'm sure but when it's below freezing outside it's not fun!

2. Learn to hover over toilets - The times when I have to use an outhouse or a bar toilet are the times when I'm glad that I'm a guy; some of them make the one in Trainspotting look like a model of cleanliness. BYOTP (Bring Your Own Toilet Paper) is a rule you will learn to follow after a few days and during the times when you do have to sit you learn to develop some way to hover over the toilet as you really, really DON'T want to actually sit down in one of these establishments - trust me. Finding some way to not breathe through your nose will make using the toilet a more pleasant experience.

3. Carrots and potatoes are your favorite foods - The sooner you can convince yourself of this the better as you'll be eating a LOT of both in Kazakhstan for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'm getting used to eating them all the time after a month but I like to change things around every once in a while by eating something spicy like a salad sold by one of the Korean ladies in the bazaar.

4. Get used to being stared at - This was one of the harder things to get used to. No matter how I dress or where I'm going people are somehow able to discern that I'm an American and stare at me as if I just stepped off a spaceship. It used to make me feel uncomfortable at first but now I just take it in stride. Many of the kids will take a chance to practice their English by saying "Hello" or "How are you" and several times this has led into a more interesting conversation. People are naturally curious so it's to be expected that they'd be wondering why an American would come to Ecik or any other town or city in Kazakhstan.

5. Russian is spoken loudly - The first time this happened at my host family I thought that all hell was going to break loose but it seems to be natural for them to raise their voices and to talk loudly at each other. Even when they really seem to be angry with each other the conflict is usually resolved quickly. I'm sure that I'll find out over the next two years whether all Russians speak the same way or whether it only happens with my family.

6. Animals are everywhere in Ecik - From the stray dogs that run across my path to the flock of sheep that I have to dodge on my way to language class in the morning there's never a shortage of animals here. If I stand in my family's yard I can hear chickens, geese, sheep, dogs and possibly a few other animals. Horses on the street aren't uncommon sights here and I'm sure that there plenty of things that I haven't seen yet.

7. Expect the unexpected - It's a cliche but it's also a reality of life here. From the taxi driver who invited me to a local cafe for a few shots of Schnaps last week to an impromptu chat at the bazaar with one of the vendors there are always plenty of opportunities to experience something new that just might change the way you perceive people and their culture. Even though some days may not go as well as planned it's important to keep an open mind and to stay positive - you might be depriving yourself of a great experience otherwise!

Midway Training Point

Looks like I've officially reached the midway point in training; the vast majority of time until now was spent studying Russian and listening the the lectures of NGOs that came to visit us as well as some training on what to look for in an NGO, how to adapt to our sites once we get there, etc. - generally high level training. Next week we go to our practicum sites and once we return the 25 of us in training will get to choose between 34 available NGOs for our permanent site placement. As far as I see it it's more important for a volunteer to help by assisting in the creation of mission statements and project plans while doing things on the side such as teaching English and writing grant proposals. Even though I'm in the IT track I was told that I wouldn't be doing anything more sophisticated here than data entry and building websites but there is the possibility of me teaching some things at the university level if that's what I want to do. I'm slowly getting the idea of how busy my life will be once I get to my site and while I'm looking forward to it it's a little scary too. Over the remainder of training our schedule will become more flexible; today we were asked by the training director to help design it and it looks like we'll be having more detailed technical sessions on grant writing, etc. Kaz 14 is often described by the training staff as being reserved in the sense that we don't leave many comments for improvement but the truth of it is that most of us are content with the way that things are going. There are a few things that I'm sure will be changed for the next NGO training group (Kaz 16 in October) but the trainees in the current group won't be able to effectively judge how useful the training we received was until we actually begin to work at our NGOs. I'm looking forward to getting the chance to see a different area of Kazakhstan and to make new acquaintances and friends once I do get to my site.