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.

Comments

[Bristlebane]

So it looks like you're not choosing to stay in Karaganda for your two year stay? Do you know yet where you will be heading? Are you excited?

[Tom D.]

We're in the middle of site selection right now and everyone's nervous. As much as I liked Karaganda my top choice is an NGO in Ust-Kamenogorsk/Oeskemen...we'll see what happens.