Shymkent!

Alright, get ready for a proper update about my site for the next two years. Most of the info here is copied directly from the information provided by my Peace Corps regional manager. I've included personal commentary in square brackets. Also, consider how long two years is. It's very long, I feel. Anyways, here goes...

Site: Shymkent

Type of Site: City

History: Shymkent is 2200 years and was once part of the Silk Road.

Distance from large cities: 150 km from Taraz 7

700 km from Almaty

150 km from Tashkent (Uzbekistan)

Landscape and Climate: Close to the mountains, the Koshkar Ata river runs through the city. Flowering and hot summers, winters are mild with almost no snow [first time in my life I'll experience mild winters...], spring and fall are warm and long.

Economy: Industrial and cultural city. There are 69 enterprises of heavy, light and food industries [NOTE: I have no idea what this means, but it sounded important, so I typed it anyways]. Economy is generally developed and the standard of living is good. Prices for food and other goods are cheaper than in many other Kazakhstani cities.

Population: 750,000 people

Demographics: Population is 60% Kazakh , 30% Uzbek, 10% Other (Russian, Korean, Turkish, Uighur, Azerbaidzhani, Tadzhik, German)

Most Common Languages Spoken: Kazakh [I'm definitely going to find a Kazakh tutor], Russian and Uzbek [and I'd love to pick up as much Uzbek as possible]

Entertainment/Sports/Culture: 8 parks, 5 theatres, palace of culture, a lot of movie theatres, 28 city libraries [love!!!], cafes, restaurants, discos, bowling, swimming pools, sport centers, etc.

Transportation info: Taxis, marshrutkas [taxi vans that travel along a fixed route, they're faster than buses], prices are cheaper than in Almaty

Safety and security: Safe city, people are open and friendly

There are 3 Peace Corps Volunteers already living in Shymkent, 2 are Youth Development Volunteers, and one is a Education Volunteer. Three other volunteers will be moving there with me in November, which will make for nice company. Two of them are education volunteers, and one is a Youth Development Volunteer.

Brief Info on Work Assignment:

Name of Work Site: Youth Information Center of Kazakhstan (MISK)

Job Description: Social projects for youth, information programs for youth, youth events, education programs for youth, employment opportunities and professional orientation, leadership building, volunteerism development (through trainings, roundtables, forums, seminars)

Number of staff members: 4 people

Other comments: Successfully functioning NGO, famous among Shymkent Youth. Great, motivated staff looking forward to working with a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Site Announcement!!!!!

Here it is, dear readers, the moment you've all been waiting for. Site placements were announced last Saturday, and I will be spending the next two years in a city called Shymkent in the south of the country. I'll be working at an non-profit called MISK (the English translation is "The Youth Information Center of K-stan") that's run by three women in their 20s that sound like they really get stuff done. It's not the city I wanted, but I think it's really going to work out well. There're already 2 youth development volunteers there, whom I think I could become pretty good friends with. I'll do a larger post with more specifics about the org and the city, but I wanted to give you all a sneak peek.

 

 This week on Wednesday we're going into Almaty for a 2 day Counterpart Conference, where all of us Youth Development Trainees get to meet our counterparts (the host country nationals at our orgs who will be responsible for our well-being) and our organization directors and do some seminary things that involve learning how to work together, drinking insane amounts of tea, etc.
 
I'm not gonna lie. I'm pumped about it. Super pumped! The org sounds great, and like they could really use a volunteer to do some organizational development, exactly what I want to do! It's gonna be good. The skies have cleared.

Pre-Service Training and Practicum, juicy details, etc.

It's been awhile since my last post, so this one will be a good one full of juicy details.

 

We're in our 9^th week of Pre-Service Training (PST), meaning that we have only 2 weeks (*gasp*) until we will be sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. PST has been a roller coaster of days of complete clarity when I know I'm definitely in the right place and days of complete confusion. Thankfully the confusing days have been relatively few and far between. The last few weeks we've been concentrating on completely all of our Practicum hours. This takes up about half of our training time and is a way for us Trainees to get our feet wet before we end up in the real working world of the Peace Corp Volunteer. To complete our practicum Youth Development Trainees must lead 6 hours of English Club (hour-long English lessons that are more games than lessons), 6 hours of hobby clubs (I'm working with the school's Leaders Group), 5 hours of content based lessons (we still haven't figured out what these are... we've done 4 hours of training on leadership, but Peace Corps doesn't consider that Content Based), 2 hours of trainings (we're going to work with the English teachers), and a service learning project. Our service learning project has consumed most of my time and sanity for the last month. Our project is teaching students to plan and lead a Halloween Carnival for their school. This sounds relatively simple, but consider the following things: no school funding, no supplies, kids here have no critical thinking skills, there is no consistency with students' attendance, all the meetings are entirely in Russian, people here have never heard of Halloween. Cross your fingers, dear reader, that everything will go as planned and the event won't be a total flop.

 

With all of these hours to complete in addition to 5 hours of Russian language everyday, my enthusiasm for training is quickly fading. I feel like we've been here an age, and am ready to move to my permanent site and start working, but at the same time these past weeks have flown by and I can't believe training is almost over. After being surrounded by other Trainees and Peace Corps staff almost constantly for 3 months, in no time at all I'll find myself pretty alone in a strange city with few English speakers.

 

The site placement process is complicated. Peace Corps tells us they match us to sites according to our our resumes, our aspiration statements (I wrote mine in approximately 12 minutes, you can imagine how thoughtful and thorough it is...), and how we've been doing in training. Despite this, I'm convinced that all the staff get together on a Friday afternoon, pull out the beer, and throw darts at a map. Let's face it, the dart process is way more fun and they probably get just as good of results. There's just no way to determine which site will be a perfect match based on 2 pieces of paper, so why not just have some fun, throw some darts, and hope for the best.

 

In non-work-related news, today a few Trainees and I trekked to Kazakhstan's largest bazaar to purchase winter coats. Please don't hassle me for not bringing a coat with me. I couldn't possibly have fit a winter coat in my suitcase, and based on my experience in Russia, I knew I couldn't possibly find anything in the US that would be remotely suitable for post-Soviet winter fashion. You can't blame me for wanting to try to blend in, can you? So this bazaar is called Barakholka, and is literally miles of bazaars that make up one giant bazaar mecca. According to my language instructor the best quality coats are in the "European Bazaar", but they're also the most expensive, so we went to the bazaar across the street instead. After trying on 8 different monstrosities, haggle the price down 3,000 tenge (about $20), and threatening to leave without buying anything twice, I bought a coat. I'm quite please with it. It's black and poofy and has a creepy fur hood that I'm going to remove. The seller insisted that it's down, and it feels like down, but the very Chinese label says it's 100% nylon, so who knows. My host family insists that it won't be warm enough for winter if I live in the north, but I think it will do just fine. Though I know winter in the US is different from winter here, I have done winter before. I think I'll be alright.

 

So that's what's been happening here in K-stan. The next big event is this-coming Saturday. We will all be gathered in a school auditorium for site announcements. It's going to be a circus. Peace Corps apparently makes a PowerPoint slideshow, with one slide dedicated to each Trainee. Our slide will show the city/town we've been placed in, the organization/school we'll be working with, and a picture of our site. That auditorium is going to be a madhouse of emotionally unbalanced Trainees who are all either rejoicing at their site announcement or sobbing. I'm crossing my fingers for anywhere that is not the north. That being said, I've probably jinxed myself and will soon be Peace Corps northernmost Volunteer. We'll see on Saturday.

 

 

New Address Will Be Forthcoming

I'm sitting at a fake Starbucks called "Moka Loka" stealing free wireless internet. There are expats and french fries, it's glorious. I'll go back to being hardcore, flexible Peace Corps Trainee tomorrow. But until then, I'll be here drinking too much coffee.

I just returned from a 4 day excursion to the city of Taldykurgan, a city about 3 hours north of Almaty. I had a pretty excellent time, and need to mentally prepare myself to go back to language and technical trainings tomorrow. Just so you all know, my address will be changing very soon. In a few weeks we'll find out which site we'll be placed at and what organization we'll be working with for the next 2 years. Once this happens, I'll post my new address, but until then don't send anything because I'll probably be living in a different city by the time it gets here.

I'll post a detailed account of my recent travels someday soon.

The cost of a clean rug

It turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that vacuum cleaner salesmen exist everywhere. Even in Kazakhstan. On Friday, there was a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman at our house for 5 hours. He arrived at noon, and left just after 5 pm. My host sister Donna had agreed to let him come because he promised to clean the area rug in the TV room for free. By the time I got home at 4pm, my host mom had put him to work steam-cleaning and vacuuming said rug. This specific Kirby vacuum is some kind of wonder vacuum that costs 630,000 Tenge (roughly $4,200). I'm not sure people here make that kind of money even in an entire year. Needless to say, my host mom did not buy the $4200 Kirby Wonder Vacuum. But she does have a very clean rug.

The story you've all been waiting for

(Written 9/07) Okay, you've waited long enough. I give you: "The Tale of the Feast that Involved Many Sheep Heads"

 

One evening I got back to my host family's house later than usual. On a typical day and with lots of luck I'm home by 6:00 or 6:30, usually just in time for dinner. On this particular evening I had stayed an hour and a half after our technical training to work on some extra assignments with our language instructor. So I finished the tutoring session, and after spending 11 hours at school, I'm finally home. As soon as I get inside and take my shoes off, my host mom tell's me that she has been waiting for me, and hopes I can help her carry some heavy bags. She says we're going to her oldest daughter's house to drop the bags off, and that it will take half an hour. I weigh the possible options, and because I'm trying to take the Peace Corps encouragement to integrate to heart, I figure it's no big deal to help my host mom out for half an hour. Integration comes first, dinner and homework can wait.

 

On the walk over my host mom explains that the bags are full of clothing for her daughter's husband's sister's neighbor (you follow?) whose house burned down two weeks ago. Now this woman has no home, so her neighbors are helping her get back on her feet. My host mom asks me if I think it's sad, and I agree, it is very sad their house burned down. It's very nice of my host mom to help. (These are the very deep, heartfelt things I'm able to say in Russian...). This is all happening as we're weaving through unlit and unpaved streets at 8:30pm. Every once in awhile we yell at the stray dogs that try to follow us, and every once in awhile my host mom calls the groups of teenagers hanging out on the streets hooligans.

 

After half an hour we arrive at my host mom's daughter's house. We take our shoes off on the porch, chat with the men in the backyard who are sitting around a bonfire, and go inside. As we step inside I quickly realize that we are not there just to drop the bags of clothing off. A low table in the living room is set for 12 and covered with various salads, bread, sweets, dried fruit, candy, and dishes. It has seemed, dear reader, that we had come not to drop clothing off, but to attend a feast. My host mom's oldest daughter, you see, is practicing Ramadan, meaning that do not consume anything during the day throughout the entire month of Ramadan, and must do all their eating and drinking after dark. I'm ushered into the living room, introduced to the guests there, and told to sit at the table.

 

Gradually everyone else joins the table, and my oldest host sister brings two giant dishes full of a noodles to the table. The dish is called beshbarmak and is considered the national dish of Kazakhstan. My host sister made all of the noodles by hand, and her family slaughtered the sheep that supplied to mutton for the dish. This is of course very overwhelming, but I figure I can handle some tasty noodles and a little bit of meat.

 

Next thing I know her husband and uncle have come in from what I thought was a simple bonfire each carrying a large dish of roasted mutton and a sheep head. The heads are passed to the head of the table (the place of honor) to the 87-year-old neighbor woman who picks up a paring knife and in no time at all begins carving the meat off the heads. The ears and tongues go first, and are passed down the table. I luckily avoided those delicacies, but ended up with quite a bit of face meat on my plate. My host sister's husband (who is generally amused by me and thinks vegetarianism is a hilarious notion) has sat down next to me and fills my plate with a few sheep ribs, more face meat, and some suspicious-looking sausage.

 

I'm not gonna lie, the dish was tasty. The handmade noodles were delicious and even the ribs and face meat weren't bad. There was no silverware at the table so everything was eaten by hand (it turns out Beshbarmak means "five fingers" and is named for the way it is eaten). Food was passed around and people ate until they could eat no more.

 

The table was cleared, the dishes were washed, and a large samovar and tea cups were brought out. Everyone lounged (literally) around the table and tea was passed around and sweets were brought out. Stories are told, people recall previous celebrations with other family members, and my host mom's youngest brother regales us with a tale about last New Year's when he consumed an entire samovar's worth of tea in one sitting.

 

I am now a big fan of Ramadan, and nightly Ramadan feasts, and Kazakh family gatherings. And I gained major street cred by eating that face meat. 

 

A brief note on laughter.

Dear readers,

Sorry I fail at getting to the internet cafe before it closes. I'll try to be better.

I hope this makes up for it.

(Written 8/27)

My host family is crazy about laughing. They laugh about everything, all the time, period. Everything is hilarious to them, which I in turn find hilarious. They laugh during tea, during dinner, at their children, at their relatives, at their neighbors, and sometimes (and quite politely, I might add) at me. They find joy in everything, which is completely refreshing. I have no doubt, dear reader, that you wouldn't be able to last five minutes in this household without cracking a grin. (Note: The only person not entirely amused by life is Inkar, my host mom's oldest daughter's youngest daughter ((you follow?)). She cries a lot. Her lack of amusement is excusable because A. She's usually walking around without any pants on; B. She brings me things while I'm studying, frequently a tomato or else a her socks; and C. She's teething.) When all's said and done, I live with an inexplicably happy family. Who needs an indoor toilet and a shower when they could have perpetual amusement instead?