Two years ago I came to Kazakhstan with 66 other people.  Most of us were early twenties, most just out of college.  There were a few outliers, a few people who had worked awhile or even retired.  But we were all wide-eyed with dewy anticipation, many of us subtly scented with fear.  They gave us a number, to identify who we were and when we had come.  We were the twenty-first group of volunteers to come to Kazakhstan.  Kaz 21s.

Two years have gone by, and we are now  51.  Not everybody made it.  Some people got lost along the way, bogged down in the heavy weight of the Kazakh sun.  Others lost themselves in little internal combustions, the tips of their fingers too hot to hold on.  Still others were pulled by the magnetic voices of those they’d left behind, the siren song that had them crawling to splash overboard.

And none of those choices were wrong.  They were right for those people in those moments, at those times.

But 51 of us survived, and 49 of you will go home.  Or have gone already.  

I love you lot.  Thank you for the hand-in-hand fumbling and bumbling the last two years.  For the quiet victories and stinging lessons.

I will miss every darn one of you.

That’s all the drama I’ve got left in my veins, and all I care to say.

Lopa out.

When you arrive, you bump past the other people, but you don’t mumble apologies.  They are in your way.  The train is about business, when it comes to getting on and getting off.  There are six berths in your little quadrat- two run along the side of the train, one up, one down.  The lower one has a little table that flips up.  The aisle also runs along the length of the train of course, along these two bunks.  Across from it there are four sandwiched in between wall-like partitions.

You heft your bags into the hidden cupboard beneath your berth, arrange the provided sheets and thin fabric mattress not according to how you like it, but according to tradition.  As the train begins to move, it is no longer business, it is chai.

Each quadrat has a hodge-podge family – whomever you are, where ever you’ve come from, whatever you had or didn’t have, you now have a family.  Your food is their food, their food is your food.  Your story becomes their story (because as time drags on down the tracks, they will tell your story a hundred times to anyone who will listen).  Their food becomes your food.  Their story is now tangled up in your own, a random arrangement of people who meet at a singularly precise moment in their lives, to live a handful of long hours together.

There are children, of course.  They race up and down the aisle, bumping into feet of sleeping grandmothers, squealing with delight.  Arms of women thrust deftly from the banks of berths to scoop them up, vigorously rub the rosily-dirty cheeks and then thrust the piglets back into the aisle.  You want to play too of course, except somehow it seems the cutest of them never speaks the languages you know, and for a moment you feel disenfranchised by the unluckiness of it all – and worse, that you are an adult.

The ultimate disenfranchisement.

A few words bubble up in the back of your mind, like people long forgotten – friends, ones you parted with on good terms, friends you’re glad to think of again.

You make a joke to one of the piglets when the train lurches.  ’As-ta-roj-na!’ you intone,  ’Be careful!’ and the child squeals with the delight of a child who understands that fear isn’t funny at all, but pretend fear is, and therefore hilarity is warrented.

Of course, now, for the next sixteen hours of the train ride, you will hear ‘Astarojna’ accompanied by peals of raccous laughter each time the train lurches.  At least once every 15 minutes.

You drink tea with your quadrat family, eat with them, drift in and out of conversations with them.  For a little while you find solace in your iPod, in Ingrid Michaelson telling you to ‘just keep breathing.’  Really, it’d be impossible not to.  You’ve become part of the organism of the train now, a tiny, interlocking part.  You have to breathe with it.  It’s a complusion.

Some men have formed a tight knot, and you listen to them talk about things they know nothing about, but assert with prowess of voice and fists that bash madly in the air.  It’s better, even, when they talk about the country you are from.  Your very presence in the train has provoked them, somehow unsettled this very local culture.  Women chime in, their mouths unwilling to stop, gossip and barefaced lies dripping from their chins.  The fumes from the ignorance are like pepper spray.  They think you don’t understand them, but you do.

One woman glances your way, and comments, “What a mess.”  You catch her eye, “Can I help you?”  Her eyes snap open, startled from the lull of comforting lies, and she turns to her companions.  ”She understands,” she murmurs under her breath.

You have peace again.

And then comes the night.  You slip your feet from the tapiski, and pull yourself up and up into your top bunk bed.  Curling into a ‘c’ you sit there in the dark.  Swallowed whole by the train and the people and the woosh of the rails.

The baby breathes ”Astarojna’ and giggles softly.  The mother hushes.

The train lurches on and on.

Ingrid Michaelson is playing again, but this time only in your mind.

This is peace.

I have recently discovered my superpower.  My friends, I have learned to read the minds of locals.

You might be asking yourself how it’s possible to refine such a nifty skill.  Well, I can only recommend that you promptly join the Peace Corps, go through about a year of culture-spell-bound-wonder, and then extend a third year.  I promise, your eyes will suddenly become crusty and jaundiced.

Yes, when I see that woman glance askance at me in the bazaar, my finely tuned skills pick up exactly  what she’s thinking.

What is wrong with that girl?  She’s not wearing makeup.  Are those pants?!  Isn’t she a teacher??!  For shame!

Even more impressively than my mind reading is my ability to have whole conversations subconsciously with local people.

Oh my God!  A dog lives in her house!  It’s disgusting!

Well, I find the fact that you are powerless to control your expressions pathetic, and those shoes are awful.

She’s not wearing slippers!

I will bet you my income versus yours for the next twenty-five years that I’ll still be able to bear children.

The window’s open!

Isn’t it amazing I’m not sick?!

I know, right? I’m pretty much super-human.  Mind reading and telepathy.  Beat that.

Of course, there’s a decided problem with my super skills.

A few weeks ago, I went into Turkistan to meet some volunteers.  I took a taxi from Zhanatas, and the ride was astounding, seriously the most beautiful drive I’ve ever been on in Kazakhstan.  We whipped around sharp curves and descended into this amazingly beautiful canyon, riddled with lakes and rivers.

When we arrived I had time to kill, so I hopped over the nearest bazaar and decided to find something to eat.  As usual, a place with lagman- a hand rolled, amazingly delicious noodle- was in order and easy to find but not without the typical shoulder-to-shoulder push and shove of the busy, low-priced Skymkent bazaars.

Tucked into a dark little nook, the place was just opening.  Unobtrusive, I could sit there quietly and eat in a peace.  Sit a minute maybe.  Ooo, and drink some cold tea – the air was already warming up, I’d dressed to warmly for Turkistan’s heat.

I settled in and ordered in Kazakh to a startled looking waitress.

“One bowl of lagman please, no bread.  One bottle of cold tea.”

I could read her mind, easily.

What? What is this Russian woman speaking Kazakh for?

“I understand Russian,” she replied primly in Russian, clearly offended that I thought she was too uneducated to speak it.

“I don’t,” I responded firmly in Kazakh.  Her eyebrows rose up into her bangs, and she flounced off to find my lagman and probably spit in it.

I sat awhile, relaxing.  On Kazakh-time the food comes when it comes.  Sometimes it’s instantly, sometimes it’s an hour later.  I watched a fly buzz lazily around the incandescent light bulb, and then turned my attention to the Saran-Wrapped pictures on the wall (presumably to keep them safe from the inordinate amount of oil used in the kitchen, drunks and other nemeses to public health).

A few other groups of people straggled in.  There was group of four obnoxious young Uzbek boys, bouncing about in the little space of the cafe and laughing like hyenas.  (In this culture, I do honestly wonder if he who laughs the most annoyingly is somehow having the most fun, or winning something – they seem to make a sport out of it.)  Then a small gaggle of women wedged themselves together through the doorway, whispering gossip in Kazakh while looking down their noses as much as possible.

I of course stared happily  down into my freshly arrived bowl of hand-rolled noodles and delicious mutton-veggie broth.   At least, until that super power of mine started nagging at me.

First I felt the woman’s gaze, then I could hear her thoughts.

What is that woman doing here alone?  And she’s wearing pants and a backpack.  Shameless.

I continued to eat my noodles, but she kept looking over at me, her thoughts as clear as day.

Cold tea? On a day like this?  It’s insane! Didn’t her mother teacher her better?

I ate faster, becoming more and more irritated at the Kazakh woman who kept looking over and then turning back to her friends, murmuring beneath her hands.  I just wanted out of there and out from under the woman’s gaze.  Can’t a person get some privacy?  Can’t they leave me alone for a just a little while?

I called over the waitress, in Kazakh of course, and began to ask how much my bill was, when I was suddenly cut off by the gossiping woman.

“I know you! I knew I knew you!” She declared in a bright and boisterous voice.  ”You were on TV! You’re thinner now, you’re more beautiful! Let me pay for your meal!”

I was shocked.  Utterly flabbergasted.

I fumbled with my money as the rest of the patrons turned around in their seats to get a better look at the apparent TV star.

“When you spoke, I knew it was you!  Your voice suits Kazakh so well- it’s so beautiful!”

The more she talked, the more like a jack ass I felt.

“Thank you, thank you for speaking our language in our country!  Some Kazakh people can’t even speak Kazakh!”

I waved slightly, mumbling a few embarrassed words of thanks and goodbye, and stumbled out into the bright light and heat of a main pathway through the bazaar.

Like I said, fatal flaw.

I think it’s time to retire my super hero cape.

Oh, and the two puppies that are currently curled up in my lap asleep.

My neighbor kids have apparently decided that since I am the only human being they know crazy enough to live with a dog (ew dirty!), my home is now also a home for all things wiggly, furry and cute.

There of course is a problem with this (in case you haven’t grasped that yet).  In Kazakhstan, land of the strays, puppies are pretty much constant fixtures.  What’s worse is the abuse they take- kicks, rocks, even being thrown against walls and buildings.  And of course they’re all thin, malnourished and dirty.

The bottom line is this:  I can’t save them all.

Training, walking, feeding and giving attention to one dog is hard enough.  Add in the fact that I’m traveling all over the place, and have to find someone in a dog-kicking-is-shcool culture to watch her, it’s really a bit of a headache.  I do it, and gladly- I wouldn’t change a thing, but it’s still a difficult thing.

But here’s the deal.  I take in these puppies for a night.  I wash them up with anti-lice shampoo, I give them nutrient packed foods like meat and milk, and I give them a de-worming pill and a puppy vitamin.  The next day they’ll go out with me on the way to school and I’ll leave them near the dump, where they will have the best chance of finding food.

I personally believe that the world will provide for me to the extent that I am willing to provide for others.  I’s like the old proverb, ‘You get out what you put in.’

I wonder what sort of dividends puppies pay.

Except, in the Kazakh language people have fur too.  Any hair on your body besides that which resides on your head is known as ‘June.’ or fur, in Kazakh.

Dear Kazakh Men Whom Try Seduce Me (and/or any other American girl),

First of all, never never compliment a woman’s arm ‘fur’, even if you’re saying is a really nice color.

Secondly, never never call a woman furry.

Huge mistake.

Good luck in finding the American bride of your dreams (FYI that’s not me),

-Laura

“Hello!” one little boy with a ridiculously huge hat beamed up at me.

“Hello!” I chimed back, flashing Hat a big smile. (Hey, I was excited about snack and home too!)

Hat turned to his companion Over-stuffed-backpack-kid and began to speak in Kazakh.

“Did you hear that? I said hello! To the American!”

Backpack looked blankly at Hat, then skeptically at me.

“Hello! I said ‘Hello!’ Don’t you understand hello!”

Backpack continued to look blankly at Hat, the word clearly not ringing any bells.

Hat appeared to be getting a little frustrated.  ”Man, am I smart? How come you can’t understand hello!”

He jogged up to me, and slipped his little mitten into my hand, and grinned up at me.

“I understand hello.  I am sooooo cool.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

My puppy is paper trained, but due to where I live currently, I do not let her go outside alone.  So, as I’m sure you can imagine, we go through an awful lot of newspaper.  I promise, I totally promise that this has to do with Kazakhstan’s presidential elections, which are being held today.  Just hang in there, the story is totally worth it.

Last week I hopped over the the local newspaper office in Zhanatas and met a fairly nice seeming guy who didn’t set my creep-meter off.  So, the two of us began chatting amiably in Kazakh while I held my squirmy puppy Ioo in my arms.

“I need newspapers please,” I explained.  ”Old ones or misprinted ones.  I’ll buy them.”

“Oh, no no,” he said.  ”You needn’t pay.”  (I’m sure he said that because I am so darn charming in Kazakh!a girl can dream, right?)
“Here.”  He proceed to pull three individual sheets of newspaper out of a stark doorless Soviet cabinet.

“Oh, no no no- I need many!”  I emphasized the many by juggling my dog and drawing one hand out as far as I could from the wiggling pup.

Ioo- the miscreant in question

Comprehension flashed on his face, and he nodded.  ”Come outside, wait.”

I obligingly followed the man out to his car, where he retrieved a giant skeleton key, the sort you might imagine belonging to an old Victorian house, only way, way bigger.  He gestured to the back of the building, and since my creepy meter still hadn’t gone off, I determined it was safe to follow.

At the back of the newspaper offices, there was a very short door.  The man brusquely thrust the key into the lock, giving it a few expert jiggles, and the door swung inward and he ducked into the blackness.  I figured I’d followed him this far, what the heck, right?  And so I ducked to avoid seriously clunking my head, only to gracefully trip over the uneven floor and run smack into my newspaper man.

He laughed at me, taking me by the shoulders and righting my orientation, which had gone all kinds of wrong.  My eyes adjusted slowly and I let out a small gasp.

Three, count em, three printing presses crowded the space, the air ripe with the smells of ink and chemicals.  Two of them were clearly no longer in use – rusted antiquities from a time before this one.  Even the one that was in use looked like something out of the 70s – it was painted that strange metal toaster sea foam green.

I at once bent to examine the relics, exclaiming at this and that, wishing I had a more technical vocabulary.  I learned however that the newest was 30 years old – the rest were from before he’d worked here, and he had no idea how long they’d been sitting in this room, it’s walls blackened from ink and chemicals.

Seeing my interest, he promptly invited me to come to see the newspaper being printed next week.  I accepted his offer, accompanied by a giant pile of newsprint, and promised to see him the next week.

So, what does this have to do with the Kazakhstani presidential elections?  We’re almost there, hang on.

A few days ago I invited Chris (the sitemate) over for dinner.  He came, we ate and talked- it was nice.   We talked a little bit about the election, how it was being held, how the teachers (who are notorious for cheating on tests) were election proctors, and how there is no official ballot collecting process- the school is making it up as it goes along. As he was getting ready to leave I was replacing the puppy’s papers on the floor.

“Where did you get those papers?” Chris asked, his voice strange.

Ioo's opinion on the Kazakhstani elections (not mine! )

I of course, was obliged to tell him the aforementioned.

“Do you know what it says?”

“Of course not- it’s Russian.”  The huge stack of newspapers, probably 40 pounds of them, were all printed the same, like little booklets.  They read ‘ГЛВНЫЙ ВЫБОР СТРАНЫ!’ in all capital letters, clearly very important.

Chris explained what this meant.

It means ‘very important election papers.’  Or something like that.

And my dog, of course, continues to use them as she requires.

Oh, Kazakhstan.

Would they be stern-faced and Ayapova-bound?  Would they be young and barely able to speak English, freshly printed and dearly paid for diplomas declaring nothing for their abilities to teach or speak English?  Would they be middle aged and barely able to squeeze in time to chat between cows braying to be milked, mother-in-laws snapping for service and husbands pressing them onto their backs?

Or would they be something else entirely?  Something unforeseen.

Tokjan wasn’t plain but wasn’t a classical beauty either.  She has shortly shorn hair, and stands about as high as my shoulders.  Pressed into a neat two piece skirt and jacket, carefully accessorized with dangling, sparkling baubles, she sat primly in her chair in the room with all the other teachers.

The volunteers entered, each of us searching for the woman who held the name of the place we would soon be headed – the name of the place we would call home for the next two years.

Disappointment snagged on my reflection in the back of her eyes when she saw me.  I was too fat, I was too unfashionable, I was too much something, or perhaps not enough of something else, and I caught the look before she could blink it away.

That was alright.  I felt the same way too.

Those first few days at the conference were awkward and forced.  One of the first ‘games’ we had to do was to discover 3 things about each other.  Her English wasn’t very good, my Kazakh was worse- conversing with each other was painful, to put it mildly.

Her three things?  One: Tokjan (TOE-KUH-ZHAN) means contented soul in Kazakh. Two: she was 24 years old (just as I was).  And three: she had just been married two weeks prior, and was a young bride.

I will never, never forget my regional manager’s comment as I reveled this information to the group.

“What a wonderful husband, to let her come to Almaty so soon after being married!”

All the other local women in the room seemed to agree.  I chalked it up as normal.  But a statement could never have been more wrong or more ironic.

A few days later I took the train will all the other volunteers out to our sites.  One by one the volunteers disappeared off of platforms, and the familiar buzz of English became the ominous buzz of languages I didn’t understand.  When my site mate  Chris and I arrived it was 4am, freezing and bleak.

I was also told I would work with another teacher in my school named Aida.  Small next to Tokjan, but literally dwarfed by me, she only had one sentence she’d preprepared:  ”My name is Aida, and I’m thin!”

Bitch, I thought, of course.  Who wouldn’t?  The woman is literally the size of a very thin 14 year old boy.

As I began to adjust to teaching and living in Zhanatas, things began to become more and more strained between my co-teacher and I.  Tokjan wasn’t coming to  lesson plan, and she certainly wasn’t prepared when she did come.  She kept asking me when I would teacher her classes alone, an idea I strongly resisted – I didn’t feel it was my job to teach her classes while she sat back and got paid for my work.

Then she announced her pregnancy, and began not coming to classes at all, or skipping out to go have tea in the school’s hole-in-the-wall cafeteria.

Things came to a head early spring.  I was almost done writing our extensive SPA grant for a Zhanatac summer camp, and the deadline was that day.  I’d brought my laptop in to school to finish the minor details and send it off with the school’s internet connection.  The day was packed, morning to afternoon, and I needed to get to the computer lab while the teacher was still in school.  It isn’t uncommon here for teachers to go home when they don’t have classes, a teacher’s schedule works rather like a university student’s schedule in America.

“Please Tokjan,” I asked, “teach this class.  I need to turn in our grant.”

She refused, complaining of illness.  I found her, not much later, in the cafeteria laughing with other teachers and drinking tea.  When she came back to our room I’d had it.

I reamed her.  In a bastard flurry of two tongues, Kazakh and English, I threw all caution (and grammar)  to the wind.

“How could you?!” I’d said.  ”You don’t come, you don’t work, you don’t want to be here.  So go!  I am not here to do your work! I am not here so you get paid! I am not your vacation!”

She’d yelled back.  ”You can’t understand me!  I am married, I am pregnant!”‘

“In America women work while they are pregnant until their 9th month sometimes!”

“This is not America! You don’t understand you brat!”

It went on like that for sometime.  I was furious, she was equally furious.  Looking back, we’re both an awful lot alike.  Quite stubborn and utterly unwilling to consider we might have been wrong.  A few days later, hours of cooling down and reflection later, I approached her.

“I can’t understand what’s going on if you don’t tell me.  I’ve never been married.  I’ve never been pregnant.  Help me understand you.  Talk to me.”

A month or two later the small swell of her stomach granted her maternity leave.   Slowly, awkwardly, we began again.  She began talking about living with her greedy mother-in-law, puppet father-in-law, and plump, self righteous little sister-in-law.  I began to understand what Key-lin, or bride, means in Kazakh culture.

In American culture we picture young women with bright eyes and glowing cheeks, dressed in white.  The idea is carefree and light- the happiest day of your life, when you begin an adventure with one other person, when the two of you strike off on your own to make your way.  There’s a party and music and you’re surround, just utterly mashed together with people who love the two of you.

In Kazakhstan to be a bride means something entirely different.  You live with your husband’s family and you become the lowest member of their individual hierarchy.  You cook all the meals, you alone clean the house.  You are not permitted to visit friends or have friends visit you.  It is shameful to see your real family, the family you were born into, more than once every few months.  They must not visit.

If you are bride napped, as Tokjan was, you are literally snatched up from wherever you might be and driven to your proposed husband’s house.  Propriety says you must have met once before.  After that, any man can take you.   When you enter the house there’s a huge hullabaloo.  Tokjan told me it’s normal, as her husband’s family did, to bribe the bride.

‘You’ll be happy here.’

‘You’ll never want for anything.’

‘Look, my son, he already loves you!  Look in his eyes!’

And, the trump card of course, where the older women of the family lay down in front of the doorway.  If the bride wants to leave she’ll have to step on assorted mothers and grandmothers.  Sometimes they also put bread in the doorway- starvation is a recent memory in this culture, and bread is sacred.

That’s only part of the problem though.  After being bride-napped  the local culture assumes a woman no longer is a virgin.  She is no longer clean, and should she leave her husband-to-bes home she brings shame not only to herself but to her family.  She may never find someone willing to risk marrying a ‘non-virgin.’

Suddenly, I was beginning to have a lot more appreciation for poor Tokjan.  Yes, she was  quick to anger, equally quick to mope and didn’t seem to want to work.  Classic signs of depression.

Wouldn’t you be depressed?

On top of it all, she told me she’d been dating a guy at the post office- a guy I’d  met and actually liked (in this place it’s rare for me to meet a man that doesn’t make my internal creep meter go off).  The man had promised that next summer, when he had enough money for their own home, he would marry Tokjan.  She thought she loved him, but all that was over now.

Not working with her because she was on maternity leave helped our relationship a lot.  She would call meand sneak out of her house in the early evening, claiming the doctor told her that walking was important for the baby.  We’d meet and talk.  Every time we’d met there was some sort of horror story about her family.

Once, her mother-in-law screamed at her in a fit of rage over the clothes not being dry that she wanted to wear.  ”You’ll give birth to a useless girl, you lazy, stupid cow!”  Tojkan just took the abuse, her hands resting on the globe of her stomach.

Tokjan began to talk about moving out of the house.  Since her husband wasn’t the youngest male child, he wasn’t bound to live with his parents forever (take not readers, do not marry the youngest Kazakh boy, unless you fancy those living arrangements).  She cajoled and sweet-talked her husband (who, she admitted, she didn’t love).  Then one day we met for a walk and she exploded into furious tears.

“My mother-in-law says she will have me divorced from her son, before her son will leave her house. I can’t live with them anymore!  I can’t!”  Literally weeks from her due-date, the baby thumped vigorously in her stomach, strange quick bulges visible beneath the thin summer house dress she wore.  I shuddered a little bit.  ”He won’t listen!  He only bows his head and nods to his mother!  He swears he loves me, but he can’t understand me!”

I couldn’t give advice.  What can a western-raised female say to someone so embroiled in such a mess?  Nothing.

She gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl not much later, and managed to stay put about 5 weeks after the birth, until one day her mother-in-law simply kicked Tokjan and her newborn child out.

The shame of being used woman horrified her into her paternal family’s home.  She had no means to support herself or her tiny infant child.  Her mother and father were shamed.  The weight of what had been done hangs heavily around them, even now.

Tojkan now lives with her mother and father in the house and in the village where she grew up.  It’s not far from Zhanatas –  a 15 minute taxi ride – and so I sometimes go out to visit her.  I went out this week for two days.  I wish I could say she’s happier now.  It’s clear that playing with Elveera makes her happy, that the gurgling sound of baby laughter helps some.  We talked over making samasa and belini, about how her husband bribed the judge and won’t have to pay child support.  Tokjan shrugged that off as though it didn’t matter.  It’s when she talks about how her husband doesn’t call, even just to ask about the baby is doing, that hurt glints in her eyes. She understands he doesn’t love her now, but how can he not love his own child?

I said I didn’t know, and I just gave her a hug.  And things seemed fine for awhile.

But when we laid there together in the dark waiting for sleep, sonorous sounds vibrating from the chest of the infant between us, she cried.

1)  Peace Corps will change me, I want to be changed.

and

2) I will change the world, however minuscule, for the better.

It’s the Spring of my second year, and about 98% of the people I came with (who made the two years) will be leaving this summer.  As our Close of Service (COS) conference fast approaches, people make plans to visit and I make plans to visit people who’s sites I’ve never gotten to see, it’s clear that this summer is going to be filled with a lot of reflection.

Before coming to Kazakhstan I knew that being a Peace Corps volunteer was going to challenge and change me in ways I couldn’t imagine.  One of those ways has been undeniably my philosophy regarding education.

When I was studying in University there were two gen ed requirements that terrified me: maths.  After meeting with my advisor, completely terrified in my Senior year, she pointed out two classes that my quite liberal college offered:  Math for Non-Majors and Practical Mathematics.  I was the kid who hid her math homework under her bed all through middle school, and the kid who sucked up to the math teachers obsessively to pass in High School.  To this day, the very idea of mathematics in an academic setting is enough to make my stomach flop (something I’d better get over, as the GRE is lurking around the corner).

Math for Non-Majors and Practical Mathematics were night classes because the professor was an engineer who worked full-time and GM, and loved teaching mathematics so much that in her free-time she came and taught us.  Keep in mind, this woman wasn’t teaching a bunch of engineers who had three kinds of graphing calculators and various rulers in triangle shapes.  Oh no.  She taught two long math classes a week to people like me.  People who want to cry if they find a letter mixed in their math problems.  Seriously, let’s keep the letters where they belong- in history, science, English- anything but math!

Utterly terrified, I showed up that first day, hundreds of dollars worth of over-priced textbooks in my book bag, ready to a) cry or b) throw a tantrum about the injustice of it all.

Then, this woman with absolutely Einstein-esque hair, a ridiculous shade of frosted pink lipstick and a terribly professional pantsuit plus heels waltzed into the room.  Her personality matched her hair- she had me at that first bouffant hello.

Two days a week we foraged into matrices, parabolas, and yes, letters in our math equations.  What was different?  Three things.

1)  She didn’t rule with an iron fist.  She didn’t care if you were working full-time and just didn’t have time to get the homework done, or if you burst out in an explosion of confusion over a sly X that you couldn’t solve for.  In sort, she was cool about it. She accepted that not everyone’s forte was mathematics.

2) All of the math she taught- every bit- was supported by a little bit of history about the development of the math and the reason this type of equation or proof was so important.   We figured out how much weight a bridge could support, gas mileage, a famous pitcher’s ball velocity- you name it, but it was interesting for people who ordinarily didn’t find numbers interesting.

3) We were required to teach math to the class as a whole.  Why?  Because when you teach something you have to demonstrate a comprehension beyond the typical regurgitation in most college subjects.  You have to show that you are confidant – and you have to grow into that feeling.

In a way, what happened in that classroom were like my intentions for my Peace Corps service.  One, I was changed.  Math no longer made me want to lie down in front of the nearest semi-truck.  Two, I helped other people- suddenly people were asking me (moi! men! ya!) to help them.  And you know what I found out?  I could help them.  Talk about empowering.

So when I came to Kazakhstan, I really had three major education philosophies, or so I thought.  One, I should be approachable, fun and genuine.  Two, I should always teach and infuse why what I was teaching was relevant. And three, that I should give my student the opportunity to showcase their knowledge and confidence to other students.

Thus far, have I been overly successful with those guidelines?  Has my philosophy changed?

Part #2 to come after Skymkent and this holiday break: My Intentions vs. Reality.

This past month, my ‘Kazakh-father’s’ ethnic-Kazakh mother and father came up to Zhanatas from Uzbekistan.  Many Kazakh people actually live in Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan or any number of post-soviet union countries. Nazerbyev, Kazakhstan’s president, famously called for all ‘Kazakhs’ to come home to their ‘mother land’ and provided heavy incentives like very generous pensions, and child birth rewards which starkly contrast Uzbekistan’s population control (give birth to 5 children, get a bronze metal, give birth to 9, get gold!).   Kazakhstan also has an ‘up and coming’ international profile, while Uzbekistan is still pinned under the heavy ramifications of the Soviet era.

Kazakhs are notoriously racist against  their Uzbek counterparts (or perhaps I should say relations are consistently strained), a sentiment Uzbeks are more than happy to echo (in fact, if you’re interested in a PCV perspective, check out this blog of the ONLY Uzbek-speaking Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan).

My ‘host mother’s’ family recently  immigrated to Kazakhstan from Uzbekistan and they’re living quite high on the horse in, raking in a joint-pension of over 100,000 tenge a month, a small fortune especially in a place like Zhanatas.  While they had to give up sheep and horses and only take what they could fit in the baggage portion of a bus, they don’t want for anything any longer.

With the announcement that my host father’s family was coming up, I couldn’t help but be curious.  Who were these ethnic Kazakh people that chose to stay in Uzbekistan when they could be living in Kazakhstan?

The grandmother was like every other Kazakh woman over the age of fifty.  Bent and wobbly, she wears layer after layer of clothing to protect herself from the cold that leeches off her body.  Her hands are gnarled, cliche or not, and she grasps at the constant cup of tea in her hands like it’s the last thing keeping her attached to this world.

She’s also blind, and to my horror, her husband of 40 years kept making nasty remarks about how ‘bad’ of a wife she was, so ‘useless.’  Let’s just say I’ve invited her to my place a lot for tea.

And it was over just such a tea that she told me her story of falling in love, and why they live in Uzbekistan.  I’m going to attempt to tell it to you as best and as accurately as I can, but some of the charm of the Kazakh language is probably  lost in translation.

Like the old women we both are at heart, the two of us began the conversation by commiserating about the state of the youth today (I, in particular, take issue with the ‘hammer pants’ the kids get away with wearing in the city or sometimes outside of school).

“When I was young,” she told me, “in Uzbekistan, things were different.  You listened, you were obedient.  You had to be.”  She sort of cackled, showing off her four remaining teeth, one of which is gold.  I reached over and refilled her little bowl of tea, the hot liquid sluicing over the tea spoon.  ”Being in love, now that was hard – no phones, no secret meetings.  My mother, now she was strict.”

I of course smiled and slightly nodded, making the soft ‘mmm’ noise under my breath that means I’m listening and interested.

“Acet and I went through school together.  I was ‘A’ class, and he was ‘V;’ I loved him long before he noticed me.”  Her hand went to the huge bun of bound-up grey hair at the back of her neck covered by a married woman’s scarf.  ”Finally in 9th form he noticed me, and told me he loved me and that he would kidnap me and take me away.”

Bride nappings are very common in my part of southern Kazakhstan, so the idea is no longer a shock or cause for pause.

She continued, “But I told him I wanted to leave school first (graduate), and if he loved me he would wait.”  Her lips, literally scored with wrinkles, pressed against the edge of her cup to drink tea as she thought, her eyes the misty white of the blind or near-blind.  ”We arranged all of this in school, on notes between the two of us.  The teachers were strict, and back then  girls had modesty.”

I nodded agreeably, taking a sip from my own bowl of black tea, my fingers wrapped comfortably around the circular shape for warmth.

“But then he had to go to the army, and I thought my heart would break.  It was summer, and I couldn’t see him expect to go on a walk with my mother – she was smart, she wouldn’t let me walk alone in the early evening – and even when I did see him I couldn’t say hello.”  Another pause, another bend of her head to the little bowl of chai.  ”Acet used to throw rocks at the window, and I would try and go out to meet him.  But once my mother caught us, and then she would stand every night by the window, her arms crossed, until I was safely tucked into my bed on the floor.”

I laughed slightly, commenting under my breath: “Smart woman.”  Her crackling laugh echoed mine.

“I would pretend to go to sleep, and wait and wait until she was asleep too, and then go to the window.  He was always there waiting, until the day he had to leave.  I told my mother I was going to my grandmother’s and I went to the station to see him off.  I cried, and he laughed- men are like that.”

I nodded the obligatory agreement accompanied by the soft ‘mmm’ in the back of my throat.

“After training he got to come home for a month.  And that is when he took me away and we were married.  It was romantic.  But then he left again and we would write letters and once a week I would go to the Post Office at a certain time and wait my turn to talk on the one telephone our village had.  He would tell me how much he loved me, and he wanted me – and I would tell him about his mother and his family and then our time would be up.  Eight minutes.”

Like young women of most Central Asian countries, she lived with her husband’s family, taking care of their every need like a second-class citizen.

“When he left that first time I became pregnant but the baby died.  It happened like that even after he came home.  I couldn’t find who I was anymore – I was lost.  We lost four.  He wasn’t like other husbands, he didn’t blame me too much.  He was good to me.  Then, when Shooak was born there was great rejoicing.  And after him came four others, healthy.”

I couldn’t and still can’t imagine the weight of losing four children, especially in a culture where fertility problems are blamed directly on woman for something they’ve done, like not wearing shoes or sitting on the floor.

“Now three of my babies live here, in Kazakhstan,” she said.  ”But five of my babies are still in Uzbekistan.  I belong with them.  I belong there.”