Work Shake-Ups

It's been forever and a day since my last post, and this is long overdue, so here goes.

These past couple months have been full of all kinds of crazy. On January 25, after 4 days' notice, my director Lena moved across the country to the capital city of Astana to take a job as some sort of program manager with the National Youth Congress. It was a good career move for her, a good change for my organization that was in need of fresh leadership, and was great for me. I finally felt the collar loosen a little, and felt like for the first time I was actually part of the organization, actually was allowed to have an opinion about things, and could actually start to get things done.

Things weren't easy after Lena moved. We all were trying to figure out our new roles, my counterpart Nastya became the new director, and we had to hire someone new to take over Nastya's old position (1. The new hire was our accountant's 19-year-old sister who is studying fashion design, 2. the position is “President of the Human Resources Department”... we have 4 employees and no long-term funding, but we have a President of Human Resources...). Throughout February things were still tricky, but beginning to look up. I still wasn't getting any kind of direction from my co-workers, but Nastya was at least working with me at Volunteer Club meetings and holding regular staff meetings.

Then yesterday, who should come bounding into the office in overly-sized sunglasses and and sequined hair scrunchy? Lena! Of course! Who else. It turns out that it's cold in Astana, and having a real job is hard. She didn't like working somewhere where she “couldn't do exactly what she wanted”. It made her “uncomfortable”. Thus, my old director is back, my new director is now no longer director, and we have an extra, recently-hired employee that we're not quite sure what to do with.

I'm rolling with the punches, etc., but it's been frustrating.

On the upside, it's March!! The month of spring, Maslenitsa, and Nauryz! Nauryz is the new year holiday celebrated by many Turkic people (Kazakh, Uzbek, Tadjik, and others) and falls on March 22. It's a national holiday here in Kazakhstan, and is especially important in the south, where I live, due to the large Kazakh population. Everybody gets off of work for 3 days, people gather with family and friends and eat copious amounts of food, these same people drink copious amounts of alcohol, and traditional events pop up all over. Traditional dances and performances are put on, and horse games [including but not limited to: polo with a goat carcass [kok par], races, men chase woman on horseback, and woman chases man on horseback with a whip. Exciting, huh?!]

Lots of Volunteers venture down to the south for a taste of balmy spring weather and traditional Kazakh culture. Only 2 weeks of eager anticipation before a glorious reunion with my friends from training, and epic amounts of Kazakh culture.

Oops, gotta run. My old/reinstated director Lena just sent one of our 15-year-old interns off as a representative of our organization. She's supposed to speak to the directors of 3 state universities and convince them to allow our organization to run voter's rights trainings at their respective places of higher learning. This could quite possibly end in disaster.