An exciting thing happened this weekend: the ice on the river broke. It happened literally overnight – we went to sleep on a Saturday with barely a strip of water visible between the river bank and the ice flow, then the next morning, the only ice left was floating rapidly downstream in large chunks or piled on the shore. Some people reported hearing a great wind in the night that heralded the melt. Sunday was the birthday of my host family matriarch (how old are you now? I asked in Kazakh that I tried to put a Tartar accent on to make it easier to understand. She thought for a long minute, and then replied: 83… or 84. The family eventually confirmed 84).
So after the now-routine Sunday brunch celebration in her honor, we all walked over to the river. This seems like a village ritual, and many people were strolling by with small kids in hand or bravely sitting on the edge of a sand cliff to watch the water. Everyone was sad that the break-up happened at night. One ex-teacher told about how they used to leave school on ice-out day with all their students to watch and listen to the big plates of ice scraping over each other or crumbling into the water. The tradition is to send all the bad things down the river as it melts – I decided to send bad health away. There have been some fun experiences these past weeks, including a sprained wrist from playing volleyball and some glorious stomach rumbles. The wrist helped me cement my reputation here as a “sportswoman,” which is useful now that I’m outside being active – no one questions what the champion skier and volleyball player is doing out running, they just cheer her on. So worth the pain, but I’ll have to remember at the big tournament we qualified for in May that volleyball is not Ultimate Frisbee and that indoor layouts are never a good idea.
That really is all the news at this point. The river melted and we can go outside with spring jackets and no hats. I know there are some big events happening/being processed in the USA right now – I pick up that much from my glimpses of the news. If you feel like being a news reporter, send me a more accurate version of events than what the Russian news media reports.
Oh, yeah, and I turned 22. Yippee! It was low key, but with lots of singing students and fun treats. And now the pressure is on: no one in this village wants to see me turn 23 unmarried... anyone in America want to volunteer to become my boyfriend/fiancée so I have a good excuse?
Peace,
Nora
PS – if you’re looking for more Kazakh info, my friend Jose’s blog looks strangely like mine (we seem to have the same formatting tastes). His address is on the comments from my last entry. And props to the RPCV that left a comment – I’ll be one of you at some point…
PPS – yes, packages have been getting through. Mostly pretty quickly, but sometimes they sit in limbo for quite a while.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Thursday, April 05, 2007
I made it back to my village after a week in Almaty for a Peace Corps conference. I got to see those big ole mountains again, visit my training host family, get attacked by my old neighbor girls, and eat some foods that I missed (both national and international cuisine). Spicy food! Broccoli! No way! There were some wonderful moments.
But as good as it was to speak English full speed again, it was also really weird. I kept slipping in phrases of Russian and Kazakh when those languages better expressed what I wanted to say. And as useful as it was to recharge my batteries, remember that I am part of a larger organization, and hang out with a bunch of Americans, it feels really nice to be back here. Things shrink down to the day-to-day at site and I blissfully lose track of things like long-term development goals.
I get to listen to stories, too. From tales of organized crime and random acts of violence to the best time to plant tomatoes, listening is a pleasure. I had a particularly great day hanging out with three taxi drivers in Pavlodar waiting for them to gather enough passengers to send a car our. A Kazakh, a German/Russian, and a Russian, all sitting around their favorite bus station café, treating the American to coffee, pot roast, bad jokes, and their historical grievances. You’re not really even Kazakh, says one, look at you with your black hair, you guys are supposed to be light skinned with blue eyes. You’re just a Mongol mutt – one of that tribe that kept my Russians at war for hundreds of years and destroyed our chances of being a Western nation. The Kazakh replies with something about the horrors of Soviet occupation, collectivization, and drafting for WWII front lines. To which the German plays his trump card – he’s the one with Nazi POW blood in his veins that was sent to die out in a labor camp. The outpost Russian village in wild Kazakh territory turned prison town – that’s where I live.
Somehow, I never had this conversation with my friends in America. Race, nationalism, and history are things we tend not to talk about and like to pretend make no difference. Here, though, go ahead and invoke the 14th century Mongols – everyone will understand what you are getting at.
But history is, of course, always up for debate and revision. One facet of history is already starting to slip away. It’s there in the back yard of the local history museum, the one housed in a beautiful log cabin with overflowing ice dams and a padlocked door. Walking home from ski practice, a friend of my host brother’s put it right: It’s like a graveyard to communism. Isn’t that Pushkin over there? Well, no, I wanted to correct him, it’s Marx, but you’ve got the right idea. He and his three buddies (two busts of and one pointing Lenin) are tucked away near the rubbish heap. They must have been collected from various prominent positions around town. Most places in Russia also did this after the fall of communism; I believe there is an entire sculpture garden in either Moscow or St. Petersburg.
Or my 7th grade host cousin, who one day watching a television serial/bioepic on Stalin (there was another one going on when I was in Irkutsk; it’s a popular theme on Russian television stations) asks: What does repressed mean? And my host mother answers, it means punished. Which is a legitimate one word answer, but there is so much more in that word. It contains the experiences of this girl’s grandmother, who was a slave laborer on a state farm with nothing to eat for years because everything went to the front lines. And the stories of the German taxi driver’s family. And the tales of Tartar families relocated here trying to escape collectivization. And writers exiled, generals purged, war heroes sent away to freeze with Lenin tattooed on their breasts.
So, in short, there are still things here to fascinate me, and I can’t help but wonder at people who think they can know a place after a week long tour. I’ve been in this village for almost 6 months, and everyday I figure something else out. Like today, I found a new route home that bypasses the lake our road has become. Small successes…
Oh, and if you’re wondering, a great time to visit would be July. I’ll round up some students to sing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” with you.
Love,
Nora
But as good as it was to speak English full speed again, it was also really weird. I kept slipping in phrases of Russian and Kazakh when those languages better expressed what I wanted to say. And as useful as it was to recharge my batteries, remember that I am part of a larger organization, and hang out with a bunch of Americans, it feels really nice to be back here. Things shrink down to the day-to-day at site and I blissfully lose track of things like long-term development goals.
I get to listen to stories, too. From tales of organized crime and random acts of violence to the best time to plant tomatoes, listening is a pleasure. I had a particularly great day hanging out with three taxi drivers in Pavlodar waiting for them to gather enough passengers to send a car our. A Kazakh, a German/Russian, and a Russian, all sitting around their favorite bus station café, treating the American to coffee, pot roast, bad jokes, and their historical grievances. You’re not really even Kazakh, says one, look at you with your black hair, you guys are supposed to be light skinned with blue eyes. You’re just a Mongol mutt – one of that tribe that kept my Russians at war for hundreds of years and destroyed our chances of being a Western nation. The Kazakh replies with something about the horrors of Soviet occupation, collectivization, and drafting for WWII front lines. To which the German plays his trump card – he’s the one with Nazi POW blood in his veins that was sent to die out in a labor camp. The outpost Russian village in wild Kazakh territory turned prison town – that’s where I live.
Somehow, I never had this conversation with my friends in America. Race, nationalism, and history are things we tend not to talk about and like to pretend make no difference. Here, though, go ahead and invoke the 14th century Mongols – everyone will understand what you are getting at.
But history is, of course, always up for debate and revision. One facet of history is already starting to slip away. It’s there in the back yard of the local history museum, the one housed in a beautiful log cabin with overflowing ice dams and a padlocked door. Walking home from ski practice, a friend of my host brother’s put it right: It’s like a graveyard to communism. Isn’t that Pushkin over there? Well, no, I wanted to correct him, it’s Marx, but you’ve got the right idea. He and his three buddies (two busts of and one pointing Lenin) are tucked away near the rubbish heap. They must have been collected from various prominent positions around town. Most places in Russia also did this after the fall of communism; I believe there is an entire sculpture garden in either Moscow or St. Petersburg.
Or my 7th grade host cousin, who one day watching a television serial/bioepic on Stalin (there was another one going on when I was in Irkutsk; it’s a popular theme on Russian television stations) asks: What does repressed mean? And my host mother answers, it means punished. Which is a legitimate one word answer, but there is so much more in that word. It contains the experiences of this girl’s grandmother, who was a slave laborer on a state farm with nothing to eat for years because everything went to the front lines. And the stories of the German taxi driver’s family. And the tales of Tartar families relocated here trying to escape collectivization. And writers exiled, generals purged, war heroes sent away to freeze with Lenin tattooed on their breasts.
So, in short, there are still things here to fascinate me, and I can’t help but wonder at people who think they can know a place after a week long tour. I’ve been in this village for almost 6 months, and everyday I figure something else out. Like today, I found a new route home that bypasses the lake our road has become. Small successes…
Oh, and if you’re wondering, a great time to visit would be July. I’ll round up some students to sing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” with you.
Love,
Nora
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