Drinking Camel's Milk

Like many things I've experienced here in Kazakhstan, I didn’t even know it was happening until the last minute. One moment I was sitting in my room at seven in the evening, settling in to read The Hunger Games for the next three hours, and the next minute my host mother had stormed into my room announcing that we were going to see the camels in 10 minutes. I did the only reasonable thing I could do: I asked no questions, threw on a different pair of pants, grabbed my camera, and hurried into the living room to drink the obligatory cup of tea before we left.

That was when I got my explanation. Some distant friends in a nearby village own a herd of camels, and my host sister had run into the son at the store earlier that day. This had reminded my host mother that his family owes my family some favor from a long time ago, and she decided to cash in on that to give me and Michele, the other volunteer in my village, an interesting look at Kazakh culture. The bus left at 8pm, so I quickly called Michele, then trooped over to the bus stop with my sister, Aziza, and brother, Alisher.

A man was sitting in his car at the bus stop, which is at the top of a small hill, enjoying the view. Alisher chatted with him and asked if he didn't want to make some extra money and take us out to the village, but he declined. He did ask where we were from, motioning to Michele and I (even after two years I still stand out like a sore thumb!), and Alisher introduced us as relatives from America.

Eventually, another passenger came to the bus stop and told us that the bus had broken down and wouldn't be going today. So Alisher started bargaining with the man in the car in earnest. By “in earnest,” I don't mean that the process got any more heated or moved more quickly. Rather, it took a good 10 minutes for the two of them to come to a conclusion. First, Alisher asked the man how much money he wanted, and the man stated a ridiculous price. Alisher shook his head and then stood in silence for several minutes. Eventually, he offered to pay a little more than we would pay for the bus, but the man said he wasn't from around the area and just wanted to have a relaxing evening while on vacation. Several more minutes of silence ensued, all of us standing patiently around, then the man stated a price halfway in between. Alisher made one more plea for something slightly lower than the man's quote. After a minute or so of reflexion, he nodded and Alisher motioned us into the car.

The camels were totally worth the trip. The herd consisted of about five or seven full grown animals. The family who owned them was Kazakh, but they had lived in Uzbekistan for many years and brought their love of shubat, or fermented camel milk, back with them when they moved to northern Kazakhstan. The youngest babies are allowed to stay with their mothers, but after a certain age they are separated and put in a pen, from which they are only released three times a day when their mother is being milked. (This is an interesting contrast to horses, which have to be milked every two hours.) A person milks the camel from one side while the baby suckles on the other side, so it's important to milk a camel very fast so that you finish milking at the same time the baby finishes.

After watching a camel be milked, and petting the baby camels in the pen, we were invited inside to try some shubat. It's a thick, sour drink that is definitely an acquired taste, although I did manage to drink an entire cup. (Everyone else asked for seconds, though, even Michele, so I was still the “rude” guest.)

After the camels, our hosts took us on a tour of the nearby lake as the sun was setting. Finally, they fed us a full dinner before taking us home. I was in bed by midnight after another successful, completely unexpected Kazakhstani cultural experience.

Planting Potatoes

Even though my family lives in a five-story apartment block in the middle of a mile-long stretch of identical five-story apartment blocks, we still have a family garden. Our patch of land is a good 15 minute walk from our home, and was assigned to our family when they were given their apartment by the government. Nearly everyone in Kazakhstan has some piece of ground where they can grow basic foodstuffs, and although not everyone bothers to tend to theirs, keeping a vegetable garden is very common. Fresh vegetables are expensive here, and growing your own is an economical solution. Also, the memory of empty store shelves during Perestroika prompts even well-to-do families to ensure a reliable source of food.

Most people use their gardens for the basics: mainly potatoes, with some onions, beets and carrots. People like my family, whose garden is far from their home, plant only potatoes because they need no watering or tending. In northern Kazakhstan, potatoes should be planted in mid-May. And so on one warm and sunny day my host mom, sister, and I headed out to the garden to prepare for next winter's stock of food. I called the new volunteer in my village, Michele, and invited her to come along for the “cultural” experience.

Luckily, we have some family friend with a rototiller, or something of the sort, and he had prepared the ground for us ahead of time. My host mom cut all the potatoes in half, and then began the long process of putting each of those in a hole in the ground. We planted the potatoes in rows, not mounds, and took break midway through for tea. This was definitely the best part of the afternoon. Kazakhs know how to make any work enjoyable. First, we sang songs while working, and told stories. Then, just as our backs were beginning to complain, my mom stopped us all and called us over for a picnic in the grass. She had brought along a samovar, a Russian contraption for boiling water. A samovar is a metal canister where you put water, and it has a pipe in the middle where burning twigs are put to heat up the water surrounding it. Once the water is hot, there's a little spout at the bottom of the samovar for you to fill up your tea cup. But “tea” never involves just tea; our picnic also included bread, sausage, cucumbers, cookies and candies.

After tea we finished planting our patch of potatoes. Unfortunately, I won't be around this fall to harvest them, although I did get to help last year. Last summer was especially dry, and so we only got a measly one and a half bags out of our entire garden. When you consider that we got 38 bags the year before, you realize why we didn't eat very many potatoes this last winter. This summer has already been quite wet, however, so we should have a large harvest this fall. Considering how much work planting those potatoes was, maybe I'm glad I won't be around to dig them out of the ground!

Teacher Training

The last week of March another volunteer and I organized a teacher training in the city of Semey. Semey, formerly called Semeipalatinsk, is located in the northeastern corner of Kazakhstan. During the Soviet Union, a large area to the west of the city, known as the Polygon, was used as the center for the Soviet nuclear testing program. Some 460 nuclear bombs were exploded there from 1949 to 1989. As a result, the area has a high rate of genetic mutations, mental illness and cancer. Because there's still a lot of radiation in the area, no Peace Corps volunteers are stationed there.

However, there are still English teachers in Semey, and those English teachers still want to improve their English and their teaching skills. So Becky Johnson and I joined with the head of the local English Teachers' Association to organize a two-day training for teachers from the city. We invited two other volunteers, Denise Nyffeler and Roshan Devaraj, to join us. Together we hosted different sessions on the theme “New Methodologies in the English Lesson,” which was purposely vague so we could all teach whatever sessions we wanted to.

Nina Nikolaievna, on the far right, went all out to welcome us to her home and organize every logistical detail of the conference. She found a location to hold it, her school “Zhas Ulan Lyceum,” which is a bordering school for 5th-11th grade boys who are training to be future officers in the army. She got us an apartment to stay in, bought us lunch in a restaurant every day plus food for breakfast and dinner, and even arranged a driver to take us around the city. She also put together two excursions in the afternoons, and finally invited us over to her house for dinner on the last night. Needless to say, we all felt like we got the VIP treatment.

I gave sessions on “Fun and Easy Grammar Activities” and “Working with Ayapova.” Ayapova is our national abysmal textbook that needs all the help it can get. One 45-minute session doesn't even begin to correct all the problems that book has.

Roshan gave presentations on “Lesson Planning” and “Using Visual Aids in the Classroom.”

Denise's presentations were about “Setting High Expectations” and “Critical Thinking.”

Becky talked about “Teaching Vocabulary” and “Teaching Speaking.”

At the end of the training, the English Teachers' Association gave us beautiful books about Kazakh history. Like I said, VIP treatment!

Because of train schedules, we had to be in Semey for three days. Since the training was only two days, we spent the last day holding English clubs with the students from Nina's school. About 40 boys total came to two different sessions of two and a half hours each. Like I mentioned, these boys are training to be future officers. As a result, they have the coolest school uniforms I've ever seen.

Their uniforms for outside.

For the English clubs, we planned to play a lot of games, both to practice their English and their teamwork. As soon as we found out we would be working with teenage boys, we immediately tried to think of ways to tire them out so they couldn't cause as many problems. We did a big team competition, and one of the stations was how fast the team could do 30 pushups each. Standing there with my cellphone/stopwatch, I felt like an army captain, although I didn't yell as much.

Denise and Roshan demonstrate a teamwork game, where two people have to move three pop cans across the table to form a pyramid using only spaghetti and their mouths.

The boys race to complete the task.

For another game, the boys built a tower of cups and index cards. Then they had to pull out the index cards without touching the cups, but in such a way that the cups stacked neatly together.

Another station in the team competition: answering a crossword puzzle using Scrabble pieces.

Our standby game, and a guaranteed crowd pleaser: Uno! I can't begin to count how many times I've played Uno in this country.

Nina organized a couple of excursions around the city, and one of them was to the local art museum. It was a very nice museum, with several pieces from western Europe as well as a large collection of Russian and Kazakh artists. The local guide was excited to practice her English on us.

Our other excursion was to the Dostoevsky museum. Dostoevsky was exiled to Semey for 5 years. He met his first wife there, and they lived on the second story of this house during their first years of marriage, from 1857-1859. Now it's a museum.

Oral Culture

Before the advent of Kazakh written literature in the mid-19th century, the Kazakh literary tradition was completely oral. Like the epics of Homer, which were told and retold at Greek parties for centuries before Homer committed them to paper, so also the epics of the Kazakhs were told for centuries sitting around the yurt. Although that oral cultural tradition is mostly gone, you can still catch glimpses of it in modern Kazakh culture.

For example, the Kazakhs love to recite poetry. At almost every event that students put on, groups of kids will come to the front and say poems from memory. Even at teachers' parties we have one man who, instead of singing a song as entertainment, will recite a long poem while a music track plays in the background. Kazakhs have a real ear for the lyricism of words, and when reciting poetry even the most shy students' voices will rise and fall with the rhythm of the lines.

Another bit of evidence about this oral past is the respect with which younger people listen to their elders as they lecture them about anything and everything. Often, the lecture will contain no new information, but will instead be a rehashing of some bit of Kazakh history or will explain a custom that all the listeners already know about. At first, I found these lectures rather annoying; why were these people wasting my time telling me something I already knew? But I think this is just part of the oral tradition. When you have no way of writing things down, you have to remember everything, and repetition is a great memory aid. By repeating information and stories many times, you ensure that you pass the communal knowledge on to your children.

When my host father lectures me about Kazakh traditions, beliefs or history, he doesn't expect me to interrupt with questions. And he definitely doesn't want me to share my opinion. (The liberal arts grad in me found this hard to stomach at first!) But I think most of his conversations are one-sided because we're not having a discussion about a new idea, but rather because he's passing on ancient knowledge to me. That knowledge needs to be kept intact for the next generation, not meddled with by my own individual whims.

When my parents came to visit, they got a taste of this lecturing. During a two-hour taxi ride into the city my host mom gave my real mom a full blown speech, talking for an hour and a half straight about everything from why the Kazakhs love President Nazarbaev and never speak ill or joke about him (because it's a Kazakh tradition to respect your elders) to why Kazakhs build their villages on rivers while Russians build theirs on lakes (because the rivers carry away the sewage.) My mom, not understanding that the expected response is to listen and nod, tried to insert her own observations as if she were having a discussion. But my host mom would have none of it, and just continued on telling my mother the things she needed to know.

Here's one more example of non-written culture. I was cooking a pumpkin pie for my host family for the third time and had the recipe out on the table. My host mom came in and told me that if I still needed a recipe after making a dish three times, then I would make a terrible housewife and no man would ever want to marry me. Well, at least I know how to scare away any potential suitors!

Nauryz Kozhe

It seems like most major holidays have a special food associated with them: Thanksgiving and turkey, Christmas and cookies, Easter and eggs, Halloween and any form of candy. In Kazakhstan this trend continues, especially with the biggest holiday of the year, Nauryz. Nauryz is the Kazakh new year, and it celebrates the coming of spring. Nauryz has been traditionally celebrated all across Central Asia for millennium. In modern Kazakhstan, the official date of the new year is March 22.

Nauryz is celebrated like most holidays in Kazakhstan: people get together with families to eat giant feasts of food, concerts are put on in every city and town of any size, and there's a day or two off from work. Nauryz has several additional traditions. Usually, on top of staging a concert, every city and town will set up a yurt in the town square for people to look inside. The largest cities sometimes host a game of kokpar, the Kazakh national sport, which features two teams riding around on horseback and fighting over a headless goat carcass. And finally, there is the special food associated with Nauryz: Nauryz kozhe.

According to tradition, kozhe must be made from seven ingredients which symbolize the seven important attributes of man, such as strength, wisdom, and knowledge. These seven ingredients can vary, but typically include: airan (similar to buttermilk), kurt (a rock hard, very sharp cheese), meat, wheat, salt, rice, and raisins. The mixture turns into a rather soupy concoction which is halfway between a drink and something you need a spoon for. As a result, I've seen both methods of consumption. The first time I was served kozhe, mine was one of the last bowls dipped up, and so it was more on the “solid” side of the spectrum. What I got looked remarkably like mushy rice pudding, especially with the raisins mixed in. My first bite, though, quickly proved otherwise. As you can gather from the list of ingredients, kozhe has a very unique taste. But despite my aversion to the dish, most Kazakhs I talk to like it, so I guess you can acquire a taste for Nauryz kozhe.

Most of my encounters with kozhe happen at the Nauryz parties each class puts on at school during the week before Nauryz. At these parties, the kids dress up in traditional costume (or, often, throw a Kazakh hat on their head and call it good), sit around a low table covered with food, and watch their classmates perform songs and dances for about 45 minutes. Then, after the kids are done eating, any teachers and parents in the room descend on those tables and do a number on the leftovers. Although I mostly attend these parties to support my kids and get cute pictures of them in Kazakh hats, I don't mind the calorie-filled reward at the end.

Kozhe always makes an appearance at some time during the festivities. Sometimes, it is served during a break in the concert to each of the adults watching the show. This is how I got caught with several cups of it last year. I politely took a couple sips of the kozhe and then passed the nearly-full cup to the person sitting next to me. (There are rarely enough dishes, so only “honored” guests receive a serving. Luckily, nobody minds sharing a cup, and I never had any problem giving away my extra kozhe.) I was ready for the “honor” of kozhe this year, though. When I saw the jar come out, I quickly busied myself with taking lots of extra pictures of the children stuffing their faces, and so managed to avoid notice.

At other Nauryz parties, though, the kozhe comes out later, when the adults are gathered around the tables eating. Sometimes, all I had to do was avoid eye contact, and since the supply was limited and the demand was great, I prevented anyone from even offering me a cup. At one party, though, the jar of kozhe was huge, and the number of teachers sitting around the table smaller than normal. I was trying to decide if the half inch of orange juice remaining in the bottom of my cup was enough of an excuse, when I saw another teacher quickly polish her juice off and offer up her cup enthusiastically. Then, by a stroke of luck, the man sitting next to me offered me some Fanta. Eagerly I held out my glass. I couldn't possibly down an entire glass of Fanta to make way for kozhe. Thank goodness for limited dishes. I don't think the man realized that he was my savior, but I harbored a lot of gratitude to him getting me out of a possible disaster.

Well, I'm sure I could have taken a few polite sips. But at this point, I consider it a real triumph to have sampled all the pleasures of the Nauryz holiday...except the kozhe.

In the Classroom

My Regional Manager, plus our “Programing and Training Officer” (basically, the second-in-command in Peace Corps Kazakhstan), recently came to my site to visit my school and do some other Peace Corps business in the area. They observed my lessons, and the PTO had his camera out trying to capture some action shots.


My PTO's lens helped show what's really going on in my classroom. For example, in almost every shot there's a child looking at the camera. I'm going to soothe my ego by saying that 3rd graders are easily distracted, and not that my lesson was incredibly boring. (Although we did spent a lot of time repeating the phrase “The ball is in the bag.” Not exactly Hollywood blockbuster material.) Also, I apparently make some very strange faces at the children when I ask them questions. I think I'm trying to look encouraging, but mostly I just look confused or about to fall asleep.


That face is definitely not “encouraging.” Maybe I'm just concentrating really hard to try to hear some form of “The ball is in the bag” in this boy's attempts to speak English. The other teacher is my counterpart, Dinara Mironovna.


I love this picture only because I look so completely confused. Maybe I've also forgotten the English word for “машина,” just like most of my students have. Or because I can't figure out what compelled me to color my car picture pink.


I think this student must be worried that I can't find my ball and he's trying to help me out. Because I can't imagine why else you would be so excited to tell me where that ball is. I wish this was a video, because then you could see just how excited my students get to answer questions. They stand up in their seats and wave their hands rapidly back and forth (I call it the “karate chop”) as they call out “Anna Rodgers, Anna Rodgers, Anna Rodgers” so fast that my PTO couldn't even understand what they were saying.


The lesson continues and we branch away from balls and bags. When my students will ever need to say “The doll is next to the elephant,” I have no idea, but they're prepared, just in case.


Time for new vocabulary. This is the part of the class where we repeat “tiger, tiger, tiger” at least 150 times.


And now we combine the grammar we were reviewing with the new vocabulary. “Where is the monkey?” “The monkey is in the tiger.” Apparently I agree with the tiger that he was a very tasty snack.


One of my 3rd grade classes. Please observe Nursulu, aka Godzilla.

Standing Out

I've gotten used to being special. In Kazakhstan, I don't have to do anything out of the ordinary and I stand out. In fact, even if I try to be completely ordinary, I still attract attention. When I first got here, that attention was flattering. Then, it was annoying. And now, it's just the status quo. It's so normal, in fact, that I didn't notice how much I'd come to expect it until I wasn't special anymore.

In January, I took a trip to visit an American friend in Thailand. Walking down the streets in downtown Bangkok, I saw as many foreign faces as I did Thai ones. On the one hand, foreigners stand out in Thailand even more than they do in Kazakhstan. In Thailand, if your face is white, you are not from around there. At least in Kazakhstan you can buy a local fur coat and hat and boots and convince yourself, as you shuffle down the street, that you look Russian. In reality, just the way you walk often sets you apart as a foreigner, and something is always a little wrong with your wardrobe. But you can at least think you're fitting in. In Thailand, there's no way to change the way your face looks; you are not Thai.

But, despite this stark feeling of standing out, in reality westerners in Thailand blend into the tourist landscape almost effortlessly, at least in the touristy places that I visited. Unlike in Kazakhstan, where foreigners, even in the big cities, are rare, it seemed like every other face in downtown Bangkok wasn't local. My white face was nothing special. Not interesting, or different, or annoying because I couldn't speak the language. Thais were completely unaware of me, because they'd seen a hundred others just like me that very morning.

I didn't realize how much I'd come to expect that other people saw me as special. The shopkeepers in Thailand treated me the same as everybody else, never asking where I was from or striking up a conversation about whether I liked Barak Obama or was planning to marry a local man. The people selling food were unimpressed with my paltry Thai skills, and never once told me I spoke perfect Thai after only saying, “Hello, how are you?” And the other tourists completely ignored me. This was the hardest part for me. At first, every time I saw a white face I wanted to go up and introduce myself and ask where that person was from and what they were doing there. Of course, this would have meant talking to every other person on the street, so I contained myself. And anyone I talked to probably wouldn't have been too happy about it; they'd come to Thailand to get the “Thai experience,” not spend the whole time talking to Americans. They could do that at home. But for me, expats are an exciting oddity. Thailand was closer to America, at least in terms of the population I passed on the street, than anywhere I'd been for the last year and a half.

I realized, as I blended into the tourist crowd, that I liked being different. In Kazakhstan, I don't have to do anything extra to get people to know that I exist. Just walking down the street, people say hello to me, people that I'm sure I've never seen before. On the bus or in the store people will strike up a conversation with me. Sometimes, this can be annoying, but when else am I going to have people so interested in everything I have to say? When the teachers from different schools in our region held a volleyball tournament, I was asked to play for our team. Even after my teammates figured out that I'm terrible at volleyball, they kept asking me to play, although my allotted position on the court was always the far back corner. But they made sure I always shook the opposing team's hands.

I often get extra honor, even though I'm younger and not in a position of authority. If someone has set out tea and cookies in the cafeteria for some holiday, I'm always invited. When I give a toast at a party, people always listen, and often ask for a song afterward. I was asked to sing in a concert with my fellow English teachers, and then, even though we sang quite terribly, we were asked to sing again at the next concert. I'm sure this was solely because of my minor-celebrity status. At festivals, people always shove food on me, and when I visit other schools I get the full tour, plus a free lunch in the cafeteria.

I've started to expect these little honors. When I heard about a wedding for one of the teachers at my school that I thought I wasn't invited to, I felt a little slighted until I realized it was just the wedding announcement. The actual party will be this summer, and I can only assume that I will be invited to that. My ego was soothed. When I invited another volunteer to my school to help with a teacher training, I expected that the cafeteria would serve her (and me, as her companion) all their best dishes for free. They did; but for a moment, as I wondered whether they would, I contemplated what my reaction would be if there were no cookies on the table.

The Peace Corps warns you that one of the most difficult transitions back to America is the fact that you no longer stand out in the crowd. When, for the hundredth time, someone asks me if I'm going to marry a Kazakh man, I look forward to this anonymity. But mostly, I realize, I'm going to find it difficult to have to earn the right to be called special.