Backlogged, written March 14.
(Pictures to follow if the evil internet ever allows me to upload any...)
Last weekend I went to visit my pal Sarah (fellow Mac '10 Alum) in her town, about 2 hours south of me. I was aching to get out of the city, and itching for change of pace. Sarah telepathically sensed my discontent with city life, and called me up to invite me to spend the weekend with her and her host family. Her Kazakh tutor had heard about a traditional Kazakh event that would be happening that weekend and invited her along. She in turn invited me along. Hence, Friday afternoon I found myself on a bumpy, stuffy minibus ride down to see her and take in some Kazakh culture.
Friday night found us enjoying a traditional meal of plov (pilaf) and various salads in her host family's main room. We ate on the floor, lounging on mattresses (korpeshe), chatting, and intermittently watching Uzbek TV. [NOTE: They live so close to the Uzbek border, that they get better reception from TV channels in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, than from Shymkent or Almaty, Kazakhstan. The Kazakh and Uzbek languages are close cousins, so Sarah's Kazakh host family can understand Uzbek and Sarah, who's learning Kazakh, can follow along pretty well.] After dinner Sarah's tutor called to clarify plans for the next day. We were going to a village about 2 hours from Sarah's town to watch a game called kok-par (more on that later) with Sarah's tutor Sultan. We were supposed to take a taxi to a neighboring village and wait at a pastry stand near the town center for her tutor to meet us.
The next morning Sarah and I were up bright an early to eat breakfast before heading out to find a cab. During breakfast the Tutor called to change plans. Instead of making us take a taxi, he had found a friend that lived in Sarah's town to drive us to kok-par. The friend's name was Chinggis, and he would meet us at Sarah's school at 9am.
We left Sarah's house to walk to her school and meet Chinggis. He still hadn't arrived by 9:15 (Kazakhstani “on time” typically means being an hour late...), so Sarah gave me a tour of her school. Her students were all intrigued by the new American with curly hair that didn't speak any Kazakh, but instead spoke Russian. I met Sarah's fellow teachers, we chilled in her cushy teacher's lounge, and looked at the school yard out back. By this point is was 9:30, and we started to worry that we had somehow missed Chinggis and our ride to kok-par. Sarah called the Tutor, who confirmed that Chinggis had not yet arrived, but would be there in 10 minutes. We milled around out front of her school, talking to her students that were by this time hanging out the windows to talk to us instead of taking there tests.
Finally, at around 9:45 a car pulled into the school driveway. Sarah said something to him in Kazakh (presumably, “Are you Chinggis?”) he nodded, and we got in. We drove out of Sarah's town and through the neighboring countryside and villages. Thirty minutes into the ride, we still hadn't really spoken with the Driver, and began to wonder where Sarah's tutor was going to make his way into the plan. Sarah asked Chinggis where Sultan was, and Chinggis replied that he had no idea. This seemed problematic, so Sarah called her tutor and tried to figure out where he was, and passed the phone off to our driver so he and the tutor could sort things out.
Our driver Chinggis confirmed that we would pick up Sultan somewhere along the way to kok-par, and we drove on. About 20 minutes later, literally in the middle of nowhere, we see two men walking along the side of the road. There was nothing for miles around, so I have no idea how they got there, but these two men turned out to be Sarah's tutor Sultan and his pal Murat. We picked them up, and continued on our way to kok-par.
Sarah introduced me to her tutor, and he introduced us to our friends. [It was at this point that we found out that our driver's name was Kengis, not Chinggis, and had not bothered to correct us at any point in the ride.] So we had Sultan (the Guide), Kengis (the Driver), and Murat (the Security), as Sultan introduced them, and Sarah and me, driving off into the steppe in search of kok-par.
_____________________________________________________________________________________ASIDE: At this point, it's probably a good time to explain exactly what kok-par is. Some compare it to polo, some call is “Kazakh soccer”. Basically, you have a lot of men on horses and a headless sheep carcass. The sheep carcass has been soaked in salt water for 24 hours prior to game play to make it ridiculously heavy, and difficult to carry around. Then we have the field, which can really be an relatively large empty space, with a circle marked at each end. The goal is for the men on horseback to fight over the saltwater-logged sheep carcass, until one of them manages to haul it into a circle at the end of the field. Whoever succeeds in this, wins the round and any number of prizes. Play immediately starts again, as riders try to haul the carcass to the circle goal at the other end of the field.
Yes. This game is insane. People break bones, sprain things, etc. But it's actually surprisingly entertaining. Here's what Wiki has got to say about it.
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Sarah had warned me that her tutor didn't speak any Russian, and this turned out to be mostly true. In many of the villages in the south, life operates in Kazakh or Uzbek, rather than in Russian. The Tutor was really nice, but all of our conversation went first through Sarah who translated my English questions into Kazakh and his Kazakh answers back into English. He was curious about my work in Shymkent, my lack of any knowledge of the Kazakh language, and my vegetarianism, but he was eager to explain everything he knew about kok-par and Kazakh culture.
After a 2 hour drive, we turned off the road, and drove out onto the empty step. It seemed like we were going nowhere, but the Driver clearly knew what he was doing. We drove until we reached a gathering of cars, and the Tutor announced “We're here.”
We parked the car and walked toward some shelters that had been erected in the middle of the steppe. We passed a giant banner with a picture of an ancient Kazakh man and woman standing side by side.
It turns out that this particular kok-par event was put on by a regional government deputy (like a state representative) in honor of his parents who had just turned 90, and Kazakhstan's 20th year of independence. Tables were lined up under the shelters and filled with food. Kok-par is traditionally started with a feast to honor all the guests who had in turn come to see a game that was held to honor some 90-year-old Kazakhs. The food is prepared by the women of the neighboring villages, and was delicious and free. We ate plov, bread, fruit, salads, and sweets. Men carried giant trays full of plov and roasted sheep heads around the grounds, giving the choice pieces to the oldest guests. During the meal, various area dignitaries gave speeches to honor the organizer of the event and his parents, and recited prayers.
After lunch, we headed to a small stage to watch eitus, an age-old Kazakh tradition that is surprisingly similar to rap battle or poetry slam. One old Kazakh man and one old Kazakh woman sat on the stage with dombras (2-stringed guitar). They took turns insulting each other in long, elegant verse sung to strummed chords. The crowd absolutely loved them. I had no idea what was going on, but every once in awhile the Tutor would explain a joke to Sarah, and she would explain it to me. Most of the jokes seemed pretty universal (the woman joked about the man's femininity, etc.), but the crowd ate it up. The battle continued for about 1 hour, and eventually a winner was declared. By this point we had lost the Tutor (who probably went off to chain smoke somewhere), so Sarah went in search of the restrooms.
We assumed there would be no restroom, and that we'd have to find some place to squat, but eventually we found the “restrooms” that had been constructed specifically for this event. It was essentially six holes in the ground surrounded on three sides with corrugated iron. It wasn't classy, but it did the job. On our way back to the stage we found the Tutor and the Security. They had heard the game was supposed to begin soon, so we headed over to the playing field.
The Tutor bought us some sunflower seeds to munch on while we looked for a good place to watch the action from. We walked past the small grandstand, as far away from the playing field as possible. The Tutor didn't want us to get trampled (very reasonable), so we would watch from far away until he got a feel for the play and we could move closer. He looked at us very seriously and sad that if the riders came charging in our direction, we should crawl under the trucks so we wouldn't be trampled. He wasn't kidding. In real kok-par, there is no out of bounds. Play continues until someone scores, and then just starts all over again.
We milled around and chatted with locals and men climbed onto the trucks to get a better view of the field. All around us riders were prepping their horses for play. The Tutor told us that horses from China, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, and all the 14 regions of Kazakhstan were taking part in today's play. He estimated that at least 700 riders were there, in addition to a crowd of at least 5,000. Prizes included a car, $500, sheep, and camels.
Quick note about the crowd, there were no women. Historically, women had been forbidden to attend kok-par, as it was a man's event. Now women are allowed to attend, but the don't mostly because they traditionally haven't. The only women we saw after the feast and the battle of the bards was a few women selling water and sunflower seeds. Sarah and I were very white, very American, and very much women. We stood out like sore thumbs. Lots of people wanted to talk to us and we were followed by catcalls. The Tutor explained that this was why he brought along two friends as security. We met a man that didn't believe we were Americans, which seemed very silly. The Tutor explained to this old Kazakh man that we were American, then Sarah explained to him in Kazakh that we were American, then we spoke at him for a bit in English just to carry the point home, but he wouldn't be convinced. I'm not sure where he thought we were from, but it certainly wasn't America.
Finally the game began. We couldn't tell what was happening because we were so far away, but the Tutor thought it was too dangerous for us to go any closer. He kept reminding us of our exit strategy, “If the horses trample, under the trucks!” At the end of each round, the winner and his prize would be announced. The Tutor explained that although there are no formal teams and it's every man for himself, lots of unofficial alliances spring up. Riders join together and set blocks for each other, and then split the prize if they win. The game ran over two days, each day from 2pm to sunset (around 6pm). So the riders just raced back and forth between the goals, taking breaks when they wanted, joining back in when it was convenient. Eventually we moved closer to the grandstand to get a better look, and the horses did trample twice, but we ran between some large vehicles and no one was hurt.
It was amazing to see so many people on horses, all chasing after this single sheep carcass. Kok-par is brutal, folks. By the end of the day, more than a few horses and riders were limping off the field. As the first day of play came to a close, we set off in search of our car and the Driver. We eventually found them, and headed home, dropping the Tutor and the Security off at the exact same empty patch of steppe where we had found them that morning.
And that, dear reader, is the story of how I got to see traditional Kazakh kok-par in the middle of the steppe.
Showing posts with label Insanity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Insanity. Show all posts
Monday, April 11, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
You can save 15% or more by switching to...
This is a quick one folks, I promise. There have been a few interesting developments at work this last week, most amusing: our NGO office is now the home of Altau Car Insurance! Our cell phone-repairing office neighbor has recently come under the employment of said car insurance agency as a programmer, and came by to install the sales program onto our office computers and train my co-workers in salesmanship. Now about half of our accountant's day is spent with car insurance clients, we have boxes full of official Altau gear (mostly poorly functioning flashlights and some broken pens), and we have people coming in and out of the office far more interested in insurance than anything my organization does.
When I asked about this whole car insurance business a couple weeks ago, my co-workers explained that by law every driver in Kazakhstan must have insurance, but it's cheaper to buy fake insurance than to actually get insured. When we opened up shop in the insurance business, I asked my co-workers if we were selling legitimate car insurance, they looked at each other and giggled. So we may or may not be selling fraudulent car insurance out of our NGO office.
Monday, December 20, 2010
It Was a Dark and Story Night, or Why It's A Bad Idea to Lose Your Passport
This is a tale of woe that I've finally decided to type up and share with my faithful blog followers. It's a bit insane and a lot of tragedy. Please note that such incidents happen in EVERY country in the world. There are pickpocketers everywhere, some countries just deal with the after-effects of pickpocketing better than others.
In other news, I've had a crazy couple of weeks. I was pickpocketed. Pickpocketed. As in, some jerk stole my wallet that contained: my passport, 2 US Bank cards, my Kazakhstani Bank card, my US driver's license, and 36,000 kazakhstani tenge (about $240 that I had just taken out to pay my host family for December rent). The event itself was nothing serious. I didn't even notice it had happened until a few hours later. But the task of trying to file an incident report with the local police was awful. I'll give you a play-by-play. It's a long story, but stay with me to the end. It'll be worth it.
Dec. 3, 2010
4:30 Leave my work office to go to the library in the city center to conduct an English club. I buy a magazine on the way, put my bills back in my wallet and put change in my pocket for the bus ride. I put by wallet back in my purse and cross the street to the bus stop. I'm not sure how to get to the library, so I ask a bus driver if he goes where I need to go. As I'm talking to him, a man on my right jostles me repeatedly. I think nothing of it. I'm in a hurry, I figure he's just trying to get on the bus. This bus is going where I need to go, so I get on a different bus.
4:45-5:15 I endure the world's longest bus ride to the library. I pay the bus driver with change from my pocket and sit down. The route is more roundabout than I had thought was humanly possible. We go to the outskirts of the city before coming back to the center. English Club was supposed to start at 5:00. I'm quite late.
5:15-5:25 I get off the bus in the city center and walk ten minutes to the library. For some strange reason all of the club participants are still there, patiently waiting for me.
5:25-6:25 I conduct a thrilling English club. Okay, not really thrilling. I don't really like leading English Club, but you gotta fake it til you make it, right?
6:25 Club ends and I gather my things to leave. I realize that my wallet is not in my purse, and I panic. We search the classroom, but my wallet isn't anywhere. I call the Peace Corps Safety and Security Coordinator. She asks me for some details, makes sure I'm not panicking too much, tells me to call home to cancel my American cards, and tells me she'll call my counterpart (the co-worker that's my host country partner) and tell her what happened.
6:30 I call my poor mother stateside where it is 6:30 AM. I have her cancel my credit cards and insist that it's no big deal and I'll get everything sorted out.
6:40 My counterpart Nastya calls me. She's coming to pick me up and take me to the police station. As per Peace Corps protocol I need to file an incident report describing the theft, and get a "receipt" that serves as a temporary ID. It will explain why I don't have a passport or visa.
6:45-7:15 Nastya and I arrive at the police station in the city center. We spend a considerable amount of time explaining in length what happened to the guard at the door. He can't let us in the building until he's signed us into his little book. But he can't sign anyone in that doesn't have a passport. Conundrum. We beg and plead and retell my story, and the guard tells us that because the theft likely occurred at the bus stop (where I was jostled) we have to go to a different police station. The bus stop is in a different precinct of the city, outside the jurisdiction of the central police station.
7:15-7:25 Nastya and I grab a cab, and high-tail it across town to the precinct containing the aforementioned bus stop.
7:25-8:25 We go through the same routine with the guard at this station as we did with the guard at the last station. We explain why we're there, what paperwork we need to do, etc. Everyone is very interested in the American that had her passport stolen, but no one seems quite sure how they can help us. We get shuffled between offices and end up in a department supervisor's office. He can't help us because it's "very late", so he shuffles us down the hall to a different office.
Nastya and I sit at one end of the office with an officer that seems like he might actually help us. In the corner there are two local men being interrogated by an officer. My counterpart and I pretend like nothing's amiss, and tell my story to the officer helping us. He writes down my address, phone number, etc.etc. in his book, and then says that he can't help us. Because we don't know where the theft occurred, the only thing we know for sure is that I noticed my wallet was gone at the library in the center of town. And that's - you guessed it! - in a different precinct. We have to go back to the station we had been at earlier.
8:25-8:45 More than a little frustrated, Nastya and I catch a bus back to the city center, to the police station we'd already been at, to try to fill out an incident report.
8:45-9:45 More than an hour has passed since our last visit, so of course the guard shift has also changed. There's a new guard at the door that we need to explain our story to, and we once again have to explain over and over again why I don't have a passport number for him to write in his book. We finally convince him to let us in and he directs us to room 308, where someone will help us. If there's no one there, we should try room 312, and if there's no one there we should try 413.... Yeah.
We search the halls for someone who will allow us to file an incident report, with no luck. Lights are on in most offices, but the doors are locked. We stand knocking at one door for 5 minutes before someone finally opens. We have found a captain of the department that deals with theft and robbery. We explain our story to him, he's terrible amused by the fact that I'm American, tells me he loves me in English, asks me if I have a husband, and then refuses to fill out an incident report for us. He'd like to help, he wishes he could, it's just that all reports need to get stamped with a department seal. Unfortunately there's only one seal, which is in his supervisor's office, and because it's 9:30 his supervisor has already gone home. He tells us that if we come back in the morning at 9, he can get us our paperwork in 15 minutes, no problem.
Slightly defeated, Nastya and I head home and agree to meet at the station the next morning at 9:15.
Dec. 4, 2010
9:15 I wait in the snow for my less-than-prompt counterpart and the director of my organization. My director Lena interned at this police station last year, so she's hoping some of her connections will help us out.
9:30-10:15 Nastya, Lena and I explain our story to the guard at the door and ask to see the captain we spoke with the night before. The guard tells us that there is a "very important" meeting being held, so we'll have to wait 30 minutes. Half an hour turns into 45 minutes, and it's clear there's no meeting happening. Officers have been filing in and out of the building all morning. Lena goes back to the guard and demands that we be helped. The guard relents and lets us in.
10:15-11:00 We find the captain in his office, and ask him to fill out the incident report. He tells us that he was mistaken the night before and can't actually fill out a report for us. I'm not a Kazakhstani citizen, therefore I have to do everything through the Migration Office. We argue for awhile and insist that I get a report taken care of at this station. I call the Peace Corps Safety and Security Coordinator, she yells at him for awhile and insists that he help us. Captain Unhelpful relents and takes us to his supervisor to have us talk to him.
11:00-11:45 Nastya, Lena and I start to explain my story to the supervisor, but before we get very far he stops us. He wants to know who I am, how old I am, and what exactly I'm doing in Kazakhstan. He's never heard of the Peace Corps, has no idea what a volunteer is. Lena patiently explains to him over and over again that I am a volunteer that works with her organization to do organizational development. But the supervisor is still stuck on the fact that I don't get a salary. He uses words like "psychology", "brain wash", and "magic" and seems to think there's something very unsavory about volunteerism.
Regardless of what he thinks of my financial situation, he'd like to fill out a report for me. But he can't. It's the week of the OSCE Summit in Astana (Kazakhstan holds the 2010 Chairmanship for the OSCE, and the summit was held in the capital), so the entire world is watching Kazakhstan. He explains that if he fills out a report, it could get in the news and everyone will hear about the American that had her passport stolen in Kazakhstan and the country will look bad. He'd love to help, really, he just can't.
I call up the Peace Corps Safety and Security Coordinator again to have her talk some sense into the man, but he refuses to take the phone. We argue for a few minutes, and he gives in. But he won't be writing the report. Our friend Captain Unhelpful will do it instead.
11:45-12:45 The next hour is spent in the Captain's office writing out a theft incident report. As luck would have it, there is no official report form. Instead, I was handed a 2 blank sheets of printer paper and instructed how to write the official heading at the top ("To the chief of police of the city of Shymkent from American citizen Katherine Whitmore residing on Valixanova Street, Building 225B, Apt. 36...."). On the first sheet I write an "announcement" that is a brief paragraph explaining that a theft occurred. The second sheet is for the "explanation of the announcement" in which I go into further detail about what occurred. The police won't provide a translator, so I have to do these reports in Russian.
Lena, Nastya and Captain Unhelpful crowd arround instructing me how to write my story in a grammatically correct fashion. They argue about grammar, the Captain tells me he loves me and asks why I don't have a husband, etc.
Finally I finish the two reports and we get them stamped by the supervisor. Before they're filed away forever, I ask for a xerox copy of them to send to Peace Corps. The Captain informs us that there is not a single photocopier in the entire 6 story central police station in the third largest city in Kazakhstan, so I take the reports across the street to a store to get them photocopied.
We ask about the "receipt" that will explain why I don't have a passport or visa, and he says they need 24 hours to get it processed. Come back tomorrow.
My coworkers and I leave the station, and head back to our office. I call the Peace Corps and the Safety and Security Coordinator (SSC) is outraged at my treatment. She keeps talking about what an "injustice" my treatment has been, and she says she's going to talk to the chief of police about it and get back to me.
6:00 At the end of the day my director and I are leaving the office when the Peace Corps SSC calls. She has just talked with the chief and he also thinks my case was mistreated. If my director and I go to the police station now, he will get us the forms we need. It should take just a few minutes.
6:30 My director and I arrive at the police station and there is an officer waiting at the door to escort us up to the chiefs office. The Chief is very nice, and at least seems to be genuinely helpful. He issues me an official apology on behalf of the city of Shymkent for my treatment and vows that they will find the man that stole my wallet.
I am many things, but naive is not often one of them. At no point did I think my wallet would be found. People don't steal American passports and just give them back.
He asks what the man that jostled me at the bus stop looks like and I explain that it all happened so quickly and seemed so inconsequential that I couldn't say for sure. He was 45-50, my height, skinny, had a black leather coat and a black hat on, and was vaguely asian. Maybe Kazakh or Uzbek, I couldn't be sure. I figured it was the end of that conversation, and we moved on to talk about the paperwork I needed.
6:45-7:15 The chief presents me with the receipt I need to serve as my temporary ID. My director looks it over and notices grammatical errors, so we head up to the room where they type these sorts of things and fix the grammar. Everything has to printed in both Kazakh and Russian, and then get the official seal and signature of the chief, so it takes awhile. But finally I have the a temporary ID.
7:15-7:45 We thank the chief for his help, and try to leave, but he insists that I help them find the man that took my wallet. I am escorted to a room with a computer that has a program containing the picture of every person arrested in Shymkent ever (or at least since this program was installed). They narrow the search to "age 45-50", "asian nationality", "male" and "theft" and pull up pictures of everyone matching this description arrested in the last year for theft. There are 568 pictures. As the chief, a dozen officers, Captain Helpful, our friend the supervisor, and my director cluster around me, I'm instructed to look through the pictures and point to the man that stole my wallet.
I explain that it all happened so quickly that I didn't get a good look at him, I don't remeber very well, it seemed unimportant at the time, etc., but the chief insists that his picture is probably here.
All I can think about is Kazakhstan's less-than-acceptable human rights record. All I can think is that if I pause too long at any one picture, that man will be in a secret prison tomorrow. I don't need anyone to disappear on my account.
I page through the pictures and apologize again and explain that I can't really remember what he looks like well enough.
7:45-8:45 No matter!! If they don't already have the picture of the pickpocketer, I'll reconstruct it! They start up a different program that allows you to reconstruct appearances one facial feature at a time. This stuff is straight out of CSI. We start with head size, and page through 12 pages of different heads to choose from. Then we move on to eyebrows, lips, eyes, noses, chins, hair, face shapes, everything.
Again, all I can think is that if this picture ends up looking like any real person, they'll be dead. Or at least in jail for eternity.
I construct a face that looks like a strange mix of Cameron from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and a Kazakh, and call it good enough. They print 45 copies that will be sent out in the morning with the day shift officers who will be instructed to keep their eyes out for this face around the bus stop I had been at.
8:45-9:00 After finishing with the computer programs, I'm taken back to the supervisor's office (who previously wouldn't help us because he didn't want to look bad). The chief stops in to invite my director and I to dinner at his house, and to insist that this supervisor drive us home and take us out to dinner on the way. We politely decline, but are generally ignored. We thank the chief and he goes home for the day.
My director hints not too politely that it's late and we should be getting home. The supervisor agrees, but needs my help first. He pulls out a 400 page manual to his new fancy hunting watch. The manual is entirely in English and he needs me to translate it. Unfortunately he doesn't have his watch with him, it's at home. So he needs me to go to his house to help him work his watch. My director and I somehow talk our way out of a visit. But he makes us promise to come back next week.
9:00-9:45 He gives us a ride home in his 1980 soviet Lada car that he personally spray-painted in camouflague. He drops my director at a club where she's meeting her friends, and then I spend the next 15 minutes insisting that I can't go out to dinner with him, and that he needs to take me home. He tells me he just wants to "hang out", he has a "very clean heart", and "just wants to be friends". A 15 minute drive home turns into 45 minutes as he weaves through the city asking me what my favorite kind of flower is, what kinds of presents I like, where and when we will go out to dinner. He wants to stop and get beer so we can "hang out" and I can tell him about life in America. I finally tell him I have to be taken home right now, or else I'll catch a taxi instead, and he relents. He makes me take his phone number, and makes me promise to call him. If I don't he'll get my number from one of the dozens of forms floating around the police station that have all my personal information on them. Finally I got home, talked him out of walking me to the door, and insisted that we're good friends and will hang out some time.
Insane, right? I mean, who does this happen to? What did I do to deserve this constant battle with bureaucracy.
Update: My friend the "clean-hearted" police supervisor texted me last week to ask how I'm doing. Needless to say, I didn't respond.
In other news, I've had a crazy couple of weeks. I was pickpocketed. Pickpocketed. As in, some jerk stole my wallet that contained: my passport, 2 US Bank cards, my Kazakhstani Bank card, my US driver's license, and 36,000 kazakhstani tenge (about $240 that I had just taken out to pay my host family for December rent). The event itself was nothing serious. I didn't even notice it had happened until a few hours later. But the task of trying to file an incident report with the local police was awful. I'll give you a play-by-play. It's a long story, but stay with me to the end. It'll be worth it.
Dec. 3, 2010
4:30 Leave my work office to go to the library in the city center to conduct an English club. I buy a magazine on the way, put my bills back in my wallet and put change in my pocket for the bus ride. I put by wallet back in my purse and cross the street to the bus stop. I'm not sure how to get to the library, so I ask a bus driver if he goes where I need to go. As I'm talking to him, a man on my right jostles me repeatedly. I think nothing of it. I'm in a hurry, I figure he's just trying to get on the bus. This bus is going where I need to go, so I get on a different bus.
4:45-5:15 I endure the world's longest bus ride to the library. I pay the bus driver with change from my pocket and sit down. The route is more roundabout than I had thought was humanly possible. We go to the outskirts of the city before coming back to the center. English Club was supposed to start at 5:00. I'm quite late.
5:15-5:25 I get off the bus in the city center and walk ten minutes to the library. For some strange reason all of the club participants are still there, patiently waiting for me.
5:25-6:25 I conduct a thrilling English club. Okay, not really thrilling. I don't really like leading English Club, but you gotta fake it til you make it, right?
6:25 Club ends and I gather my things to leave. I realize that my wallet is not in my purse, and I panic. We search the classroom, but my wallet isn't anywhere. I call the Peace Corps Safety and Security Coordinator. She asks me for some details, makes sure I'm not panicking too much, tells me to call home to cancel my American cards, and tells me she'll call my counterpart (the co-worker that's my host country partner) and tell her what happened.
6:30 I call my poor mother stateside where it is 6:30 AM. I have her cancel my credit cards and insist that it's no big deal and I'll get everything sorted out.
6:40 My counterpart Nastya calls me. She's coming to pick me up and take me to the police station. As per Peace Corps protocol I need to file an incident report describing the theft, and get a "receipt" that serves as a temporary ID. It will explain why I don't have a passport or visa.
6:45-7:15 Nastya and I arrive at the police station in the city center. We spend a considerable amount of time explaining in length what happened to the guard at the door. He can't let us in the building until he's signed us into his little book. But he can't sign anyone in that doesn't have a passport. Conundrum. We beg and plead and retell my story, and the guard tells us that because the theft likely occurred at the bus stop (where I was jostled) we have to go to a different police station. The bus stop is in a different precinct of the city, outside the jurisdiction of the central police station.
7:15-7:25 Nastya and I grab a cab, and high-tail it across town to the precinct containing the aforementioned bus stop.
7:25-8:25 We go through the same routine with the guard at this station as we did with the guard at the last station. We explain why we're there, what paperwork we need to do, etc. Everyone is very interested in the American that had her passport stolen, but no one seems quite sure how they can help us. We get shuffled between offices and end up in a department supervisor's office. He can't help us because it's "very late", so he shuffles us down the hall to a different office.
Nastya and I sit at one end of the office with an officer that seems like he might actually help us. In the corner there are two local men being interrogated by an officer. My counterpart and I pretend like nothing's amiss, and tell my story to the officer helping us. He writes down my address, phone number, etc.etc. in his book, and then says that he can't help us. Because we don't know where the theft occurred, the only thing we know for sure is that I noticed my wallet was gone at the library in the center of town. And that's - you guessed it! - in a different precinct. We have to go back to the station we had been at earlier.
8:25-8:45 More than a little frustrated, Nastya and I catch a bus back to the city center, to the police station we'd already been at, to try to fill out an incident report.
8:45-9:45 More than an hour has passed since our last visit, so of course the guard shift has also changed. There's a new guard at the door that we need to explain our story to, and we once again have to explain over and over again why I don't have a passport number for him to write in his book. We finally convince him to let us in and he directs us to room 308, where someone will help us. If there's no one there, we should try room 312, and if there's no one there we should try 413.... Yeah.
We search the halls for someone who will allow us to file an incident report, with no luck. Lights are on in most offices, but the doors are locked. We stand knocking at one door for 5 minutes before someone finally opens. We have found a captain of the department that deals with theft and robbery. We explain our story to him, he's terrible amused by the fact that I'm American, tells me he loves me in English, asks me if I have a husband, and then refuses to fill out an incident report for us. He'd like to help, he wishes he could, it's just that all reports need to get stamped with a department seal. Unfortunately there's only one seal, which is in his supervisor's office, and because it's 9:30 his supervisor has already gone home. He tells us that if we come back in the morning at 9, he can get us our paperwork in 15 minutes, no problem.
Slightly defeated, Nastya and I head home and agree to meet at the station the next morning at 9:15.
Dec. 4, 2010
9:15 I wait in the snow for my less-than-prompt counterpart and the director of my organization. My director Lena interned at this police station last year, so she's hoping some of her connections will help us out.
9:30-10:15 Nastya, Lena and I explain our story to the guard at the door and ask to see the captain we spoke with the night before. The guard tells us that there is a "very important" meeting being held, so we'll have to wait 30 minutes. Half an hour turns into 45 minutes, and it's clear there's no meeting happening. Officers have been filing in and out of the building all morning. Lena goes back to the guard and demands that we be helped. The guard relents and lets us in.
10:15-11:00 We find the captain in his office, and ask him to fill out the incident report. He tells us that he was mistaken the night before and can't actually fill out a report for us. I'm not a Kazakhstani citizen, therefore I have to do everything through the Migration Office. We argue for awhile and insist that I get a report taken care of at this station. I call the Peace Corps Safety and Security Coordinator, she yells at him for awhile and insists that he help us. Captain Unhelpful relents and takes us to his supervisor to have us talk to him.
11:00-11:45 Nastya, Lena and I start to explain my story to the supervisor, but before we get very far he stops us. He wants to know who I am, how old I am, and what exactly I'm doing in Kazakhstan. He's never heard of the Peace Corps, has no idea what a volunteer is. Lena patiently explains to him over and over again that I am a volunteer that works with her organization to do organizational development. But the supervisor is still stuck on the fact that I don't get a salary. He uses words like "psychology", "brain wash", and "magic" and seems to think there's something very unsavory about volunteerism.
Regardless of what he thinks of my financial situation, he'd like to fill out a report for me. But he can't. It's the week of the OSCE Summit in Astana (Kazakhstan holds the 2010 Chairmanship for the OSCE, and the summit was held in the capital), so the entire world is watching Kazakhstan. He explains that if he fills out a report, it could get in the news and everyone will hear about the American that had her passport stolen in Kazakhstan and the country will look bad. He'd love to help, really, he just can't.
I call up the Peace Corps Safety and Security Coordinator again to have her talk some sense into the man, but he refuses to take the phone. We argue for a few minutes, and he gives in. But he won't be writing the report. Our friend Captain Unhelpful will do it instead.
11:45-12:45 The next hour is spent in the Captain's office writing out a theft incident report. As luck would have it, there is no official report form. Instead, I was handed a 2 blank sheets of printer paper and instructed how to write the official heading at the top ("To the chief of police of the city of Shymkent from American citizen Katherine Whitmore residing on Valixanova Street, Building 225B, Apt. 36...."). On the first sheet I write an "announcement" that is a brief paragraph explaining that a theft occurred. The second sheet is for the "explanation of the announcement" in which I go into further detail about what occurred. The police won't provide a translator, so I have to do these reports in Russian.
Lena, Nastya and Captain Unhelpful crowd arround instructing me how to write my story in a grammatically correct fashion. They argue about grammar, the Captain tells me he loves me and asks why I don't have a husband, etc.
Finally I finish the two reports and we get them stamped by the supervisor. Before they're filed away forever, I ask for a xerox copy of them to send to Peace Corps. The Captain informs us that there is not a single photocopier in the entire 6 story central police station in the third largest city in Kazakhstan, so I take the reports across the street to a store to get them photocopied.
We ask about the "receipt" that will explain why I don't have a passport or visa, and he says they need 24 hours to get it processed. Come back tomorrow.
My coworkers and I leave the station, and head back to our office. I call the Peace Corps and the Safety and Security Coordinator (SSC) is outraged at my treatment. She keeps talking about what an "injustice" my treatment has been, and she says she's going to talk to the chief of police about it and get back to me.
6:00 At the end of the day my director and I are leaving the office when the Peace Corps SSC calls. She has just talked with the chief and he also thinks my case was mistreated. If my director and I go to the police station now, he will get us the forms we need. It should take just a few minutes.
6:30 My director and I arrive at the police station and there is an officer waiting at the door to escort us up to the chiefs office. The Chief is very nice, and at least seems to be genuinely helpful. He issues me an official apology on behalf of the city of Shymkent for my treatment and vows that they will find the man that stole my wallet.
I am many things, but naive is not often one of them. At no point did I think my wallet would be found. People don't steal American passports and just give them back.
He asks what the man that jostled me at the bus stop looks like and I explain that it all happened so quickly and seemed so inconsequential that I couldn't say for sure. He was 45-50, my height, skinny, had a black leather coat and a black hat on, and was vaguely asian. Maybe Kazakh or Uzbek, I couldn't be sure. I figured it was the end of that conversation, and we moved on to talk about the paperwork I needed.
6:45-7:15 The chief presents me with the receipt I need to serve as my temporary ID. My director looks it over and notices grammatical errors, so we head up to the room where they type these sorts of things and fix the grammar. Everything has to printed in both Kazakh and Russian, and then get the official seal and signature of the chief, so it takes awhile. But finally I have the a temporary ID.
7:15-7:45 We thank the chief for his help, and try to leave, but he insists that I help them find the man that took my wallet. I am escorted to a room with a computer that has a program containing the picture of every person arrested in Shymkent ever (or at least since this program was installed). They narrow the search to "age 45-50", "asian nationality", "male" and "theft" and pull up pictures of everyone matching this description arrested in the last year for theft. There are 568 pictures. As the chief, a dozen officers, Captain Helpful, our friend the supervisor, and my director cluster around me, I'm instructed to look through the pictures and point to the man that stole my wallet.
I explain that it all happened so quickly that I didn't get a good look at him, I don't remeber very well, it seemed unimportant at the time, etc., but the chief insists that his picture is probably here.
All I can think about is Kazakhstan's less-than-acceptable human rights record. All I can think is that if I pause too long at any one picture, that man will be in a secret prison tomorrow. I don't need anyone to disappear on my account.
I page through the pictures and apologize again and explain that I can't really remember what he looks like well enough.
7:45-8:45 No matter!! If they don't already have the picture of the pickpocketer, I'll reconstruct it! They start up a different program that allows you to reconstruct appearances one facial feature at a time. This stuff is straight out of CSI. We start with head size, and page through 12 pages of different heads to choose from. Then we move on to eyebrows, lips, eyes, noses, chins, hair, face shapes, everything.
Again, all I can think is that if this picture ends up looking like any real person, they'll be dead. Or at least in jail for eternity.
I construct a face that looks like a strange mix of Cameron from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and a Kazakh, and call it good enough. They print 45 copies that will be sent out in the morning with the day shift officers who will be instructed to keep their eyes out for this face around the bus stop I had been at.
8:45-9:00 After finishing with the computer programs, I'm taken back to the supervisor's office (who previously wouldn't help us because he didn't want to look bad). The chief stops in to invite my director and I to dinner at his house, and to insist that this supervisor drive us home and take us out to dinner on the way. We politely decline, but are generally ignored. We thank the chief and he goes home for the day.
My director hints not too politely that it's late and we should be getting home. The supervisor agrees, but needs my help first. He pulls out a 400 page manual to his new fancy hunting watch. The manual is entirely in English and he needs me to translate it. Unfortunately he doesn't have his watch with him, it's at home. So he needs me to go to his house to help him work his watch. My director and I somehow talk our way out of a visit. But he makes us promise to come back next week.
9:00-9:45 He gives us a ride home in his 1980 soviet Lada car that he personally spray-painted in camouflague. He drops my director at a club where she's meeting her friends, and then I spend the next 15 minutes insisting that I can't go out to dinner with him, and that he needs to take me home. He tells me he just wants to "hang out", he has a "very clean heart", and "just wants to be friends". A 15 minute drive home turns into 45 minutes as he weaves through the city asking me what my favorite kind of flower is, what kinds of presents I like, where and when we will go out to dinner. He wants to stop and get beer so we can "hang out" and I can tell him about life in America. I finally tell him I have to be taken home right now, or else I'll catch a taxi instead, and he relents. He makes me take his phone number, and makes me promise to call him. If I don't he'll get my number from one of the dozens of forms floating around the police station that have all my personal information on them. Finally I got home, talked him out of walking me to the door, and insisted that we're good friends and will hang out some time.
Insane, right? I mean, who does this happen to? What did I do to deserve this constant battle with bureaucracy.
Update: My friend the "clean-hearted" police supervisor texted me last week to ask how I'm doing. Needless to say, I didn't respond.
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