Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The Start of Summer

So the last blog and the current blog are going to kind of run together. The difficult part of this is that I’m running around and still have no access to internet. That should actually be a good thing because then I can put thought into these blogs. In theory, that’s what should happen. However, with so much running around, after I craft one of these beauties, I really don’t like to go over them and correct them. It’s a flaw that somehow I’ve gone through college with. Still got A’s on most of my papers. Hey, they say that first instincts are usually correct. Anyway, with all the running around, when I have time to put figurative pen to paper, I just want to blaze through it. That may be part of why some of my entries can be a bit more down-trodden than others. Mood swings are major thing that happen here, partly because of the weather, partly the distance from home. Anyway, I guess this is a back-handed apology for lack entries and quality maybe. Or just a blanket statement to cover my ass. Maybe I should be a lawyer. J

Anyway, so far I’ve done a few meetings and a few camps. At the beginning of June, we had to go to something called PDM, or in the non-acronym world Project Development Management. This is an extended weekend seminar to, you guessed it, develop projects. We are a clever people. The best part of this was a weekend on the booming metropolis that is Kokshetau. Well, it’s 100, 000 people and there are cafes. When you live in a village, standards are kind of low. Actually, the best part was that we got to stay in a hotel, with a shower! Even though most of the information covered were things I’ve dealt with in Youth Service Learning and Boy Scouts and Pi Sigma Epsilon, a refresher is always good. Plus we did it with our counterparts, so the hope is that we plan and execute these projects with our counterparts and they can then do their own projects after we have left the country. It’s our one big buzzword in Peace Corps: sustainability. So, that was a start to the summer.

About 3 or 4 days after that, Roshan and I hopped on a train down to Almaty to have our yearly physical. This also included a trip to the dentists, which was kind of a fearful moment before we got there. Due to the lack internet, I can’t recall if I wrote about my last brush with the Kazakhstani health system, but I’ll briefly touch up on it. I had an ear infection and I went into a time warp that brought me back to 1950s health care, except it’s alive and well in Kazakhstan. So imagine the consternation before going to the dentist’s. Well, it was actually a modern place and had at least one thing I’ve never seen before. Instead of a fluoride paste like at my dentist’s back in the States, they had some kind of gun. It’s hard to describe what came out of it. It was a cross between foam from a shaken up soda and salt. That may sound unpleasant but I swear my teeth were squeaky afterwards. And no cavities, which in itself is a minor miracle considering the massive amount of sugar everybody consumes here. Thank god the no-sugar-in-tea thing is working. I believe half the volunteers got cavities here.

The only other eventful thing on this trip was a lovely woman from Chelyabinsk on the train back north, and I saw lovely very tongue-in-cheek. She was a stereotypical Russian woman, body build between a linebacker and a defensive tackle with a strong odor and an even stronger voice. I believe her knob was stuck at 11. Anyway, Roshan and I were sitting there talking with another woman who happened to be on the train down a couple days before. To preface this, Roshan is half-Indian and half-Chinese and complete serenity, or at least only on the outside. He hides his anger a little bit. Anyway, this meathead of a woman had the gall to say that Roshan was not a real American because he was not white. Needless to say, we were pretty incredulous (trying to use a different term than pissed off) but luckily other people in the cabin were a bit stunned to. Luckily, she started explaining to a Kazakh woman near us why Russia was better than Kazakhstan, so we were able to extract ourselves from that conversation, but we were not in the best of moods afterward, as one can imagine. Come on, I’ve got plenty of friends of multiple ethnicities. It’s hard to deal with bigotry, even if you kind of expect it in other countries.

Anyway, in the last blog I talked about my camp in Makinsk, and the less said the better. It wasn’t bad, it was just non-descript, so the less said the better. I prefer not to bore you. Needless to say, the kids ran around, did some ridiculous activities that the teachers though were “authentic Native American,” went to the local museum and spoke a little English. Trust me, the other camps will have better tales, and I shall regale you with them. As for now, I have a ridiculously long 36 hours of bus rides ahead, so I shall write again soon.

Almost Summer

As you’ve probably read throughout these pages, we Kazakhstan volunteers tend to go through our own trials and tribulations, some more ephemeral than others, but they still wear on our minds. However there is a silver lining: the magical time of year known as summer. As in America, teachers don’t work during summer because of the old idea that students have to be on the family farm to help the summer harvest. Though, that is somewhat true in Kazakhstan, or at least in the wheat belt in the North. And it’s quite not true for teachers because they still have to work at school during the summer, and I use the word “work” very loosely. Depending on how megalomaniacal the director is, the teachers either do bullshit work or they do nothing. It’s the system and we’re on the bottom.
That sucks for the teachers of this country (or doesn’t depending on the teacher), but it leaves plenty for the volunteers to do that is not school-related. Actually, instead of doing school, a lot of the teachers do summer camps, which here works out as a less-organized version of summer school. In America, students would be doing classes such as Kooky Spooky Science or Summer Theatre. In Kazakhstan, they let you run around as long as you don’t punch another student. Actually, I’m not being as charitable as I should to it. The summer camps do give something for the students to be doing. If not, they’d just be sitting around the house doing nothing. The summer camp lives and dies on the organization of the camp, so planning is important. I planned a bunch of activities for the kids, and I think they all went well. They got to run around, learn a little English and did more than sit under the gossipy teachers who did nothing. Sometimes the organization here can be infuriating, but if you teach the kids here, maybe they can change a few things when they grow up. Besides, they like hanging with the cool foreigner, and I get to let out my little kid, which they enjoy. It’s a win-win I say when the volunteer organizes stuff.
Now I know that the above does sound a little bleak, and that may be a little bit of jaded Scotty showing through, but summer is about recharging your batteries after a long, long winter. I’m always reminded by a joke back from Wisconsin. We have four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction. Amended to life in Kazakhstan, it’s three seasons and there’s no road construction. My coccyx can attest to the jarring conditions of the road, but that’s neither here nor there. But, summer is a time for travel, and since all the volunteers put on camps they need plenty of help from fellow volunteers. We are all happy to oblige. The weather is warm and the camps vary greatly. There are sports camps, drama camps, English camps, other language camps. Anything and everything volunteers are willing to organize will happen. The camp in Makinsk was organized by teachers at my school, but next year it will be an extravaganza organized by myself. I’m looking forward to seeing volunteers, even after 18-hour train rides and 30-hour bus rides. Travel is a bitch, but there’s a merciful God who deemed it necessary to invent iPods and e-books.
Oh, the last thing about summer that is very exciting is the ice cream. When it’s –40 outside, it’s very hard to come up with a valid excuse to have ice cream. I keep thinking back to the days when I was younger when Dairy Queen actually closed in winter. In all honesty, a cup of warm chocolate always sounds better than frozen chocolate when you can scoop up frozen ice from your doorstep. Not so in winter. For the low price of 25 cents, you can get an ice cream cone from the local store. It’s not Ben & Jerry’s, but it works its magic. The best part is that Kokshetau, the regional center, has really good ice cream for 45 cents. Worth every penny. Gotta enjoy the goodies.