A Fun Time to be in Central Asia

When Newsweek International (May 30, 2005, page 29) wrote that Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian FSB (formerly the KGB), had "declared war on foreign 'spies' operating under cover of NGOs," we were alarmed. It turns out that "war" is too strong a word, but Nick Paton Walsh, writing for The Guardian on May 13, 2005, wrote

"Russia's security chief accused Britain and America of using civic groups as a front for spies yesterday, and blamed similar operations for fomenting recent uprisings in other former Soviet republics.

Nikolai Patrushev, the director of the KGB successor Federal Security Service (FSB), told parliament that his agency had uncovered spies working for the British and US governments, as well as for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, operating under cover of non-governmental organisations.

"Foreign secret services are ever more actively using non-traditional methods for their work and with the help of different NGOs' educational programmes are propagandising their interests, particularly in the former Soviet Union," Mr Patrushev said.

Mr Patrushev did not specify how many spies were uncovered in Russia or what they were accused of doing, except "pursuing the interests" of other states.

Mr Patrushev also said spies were operating within the US Peace Corps, which was thrown out of Russia amid spying allegations in 2002, the Saudi Red Crescent and the Society for Social Reform, a Kuwait group....

In Washington, a Peace Corps spokeswoman dismissed the charges as 'completely baseless' and untrue."

Anyone who thinks that Peace Corps is a major spying ring should sit in on the trouble most volunteers have finding out the class schedule at their own school, let alone state secrets. But though I can't imagine these accusations having any official impact on me or the volunteers around me, it serves to reinforce the uninformed suspicion that some people have of us just because we're foreigners.

In related news, here is an excerpt from an April 20th draft of newly proposed Kazakhstani international NGO regulation. (I got the text from a Kazakhstan NGO volunteer):

"The Draft Law defines the prohibited aims of establishment and types of activities of the [International NGO]. The expediency and reasonableness of such restrictions ensues from the norms of the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and is in line with generally accepted world practice. For instance, in Spain, it is forbidden for non-governmental organizations to engage in intelligence-related activities, to organize paramilitary units, to pursue illegal goals, and to cooperate with terrorism.

"In this manner, according to the Draft Law, branches may not be created for expressing the political will of citizens or various social groups. In addition to it, there is a prohibition on the activities of those branches whose goals or actions are intended towards the forcible alteration of the constitutional regime, the weakening of the country’s defense capacity, the aggravation of the social and political situation, reflected in the stratification of the society, the international and inter-confessional [religious] conflicts, mass riots, unauthorized assemblies, meetings, processions and demonstrations, unlawful pickets and strikes, disruption of the activities of state authorities, a decrease in the level of manageability of the country and other consequences undesirable for the Republic."

Kenneth Katzner is a Prude

Normally, I have nothing but glowing things to say about Kenneth Katzner's wonderful English-Russian Russian-English dictionary. It's the best there is. But it doesn't have any words describing sexual acts or bodily functions, not even the word "poop". Mr. Katzner, everyone poops, even the Russians. But you won't let me talk about it with them.

The Boundary of the School Year and The Boundary of the Atom

An atom cannot be said to have definite boundaries. If you want to describe the location of some outer electron in an atom, you describe it not by giving it a set location, but by a probability density function that represents the likelihood of finding the electron in that given region at a particular time. The transition from a classical to a quantum model of the atom took our civilization some time to wrap its brain around, and I am having analogous difficulty modelling the Kokshetau Middle School Number Three's school year.

I have been watching carefully for the end of the school year for a while. I believe it is showing signs of ending. Nobody knows when it will end. When I tell locals that I don't know when the school year will end, they tell me I'm being ridiculous. The school year ends with the "Last Bell" ceremony, which has been scheduled for the twenty-fifth of May for weeks. They were close, at least - the "Last Bell" was on the 24th for us, having been changed to the 24th at the last minute to accomodate a big graduation ceremony for the eleventh graders on the 25th.

I gave a hastily-written speech in Kazakh for the last bell, and although I may complain about my Kazakh stagnating, it must be getting better. For the "First Bell" last year I needed someone else to translate my speech from Russian to Kazakh for me, and I couldn't memorize it. This time I wrote it myself, and was able to remember it. I also wrote and performed a song for Kazakh Voice and Harmonica. The lyrics (which rhyme in Kazakh) were:

I am a teacher (bum ba da da dum)
At the third school (bum ba da da dum)
I give lessons (bum ba da da dum)
To grades 6, 7, 9, and 10 (bum ba da da dum)

When they do their homework (bum ba da da dum)
I am happy. (bum ba da da dum)
When they speak English (bum ba da da dum)
I rejoice. (bum ba da da dum)

To get back to the school year, although the last bell was held close to the scheduled date, it didn't have very much to do with the timing of the cessation of classes. The last two to three weeks of school are dominated by "tests" (which I put in quotes for reasons I won't get into here), which take priority over lessons. There is a schedule of tests, which puts the start of testing in mid-May and continues it well into June, and which is not a reliable predictor of when a given test will actually take place. Consequently, I've had my classes more or less randomly cancelled for the last week and a half. I was told by the math teacher I team-teach with that we would even have a class after the last bell ceremony, so I stuck around, but only four students showed up. (The other teacher herself didn't come, either.) I chatted with the students for a while and sent them home. I was told by the same teacher that today we would have a class, too, but I didn't go because it's graduation day for the eleventh graders, and I cannot believe that anyone would go to any lessons.

But further, it happens that school number three has mandatory summer school for students who are good and for students who are bad. Only if you are a middling student do you not have to go to summer school. Starting next week, I will be teaching fifteen hours of English a week to the best students in the school, and ten hours a week of math to the worst students in my class. The English classes are to prepare students for the Olympiads, which are regarded as one of the primary, if not the primary, measure of a school's performance. The math classes are a requirement if I want to give students the lowest grade, a two. If you give a student a failing grade, you are required to give them summer school classes to give them a chance to improve their grade. I, stubbornly, and maybe stupidly, refused to recant my failing grades for students in my math class who knew almost none of the material, and by doing so, got assigned these extra classes. Fair enough.

In theory, these summer school classes should last two weeks. Me, I'm waiting to see if the probability density really starts to flatten out before I make any conclusions.

A Night On the Town

Myles, Scott, McKay, and Christina (from Taldykorgan) were in Kokshetau for one last time before they leave for America for good. They wanted to go to a disco, so we headed for the Kokshetau favorite, Jyldyz. When we got there, we were delighted to discover that not only was the cover lower than usual, that night there was to be no-holds-barred fighting! Indeed, in the middle of the dance floor they had set up a makeshift ring with mats and ropes, and we watched three fights - light, middle, and heavyweight. Each fight was five three-minute rounds. Other than boxing gloves, the contestants wore no protective gear, not even mouthguards, although all sorts of blows, like punching the back of the head, kicking anywhere, and elbows to the kidneys were legal. Wrestling was allowed, and at one point when one contestant had the other in an arm bar, the emcee gleefully announced, "he has the right to break his arm!"

The audience was mostly made-up young women who were obviously there expecting a night of dancing and not of MMA

fighting, but there were an assortment of middle-aged men in the balconies who shouted things like "joshe"! (more

cruelly!) and "lamai nogu!" (break his leg!).

And if that wasn't enough, in between fights there was striptease!

And if that wasn't enough, the emcee at one point between fights pulled Christina and a Kazakh girl, who was teetering on high heels on the soft mats, into the ring, and had some kind of contest where they had to make believe they were sizing each other up and posturing as if before a fight. The Kazakh girl got a little pushy, and Christna knocked her down, which earned our table a free bottle of vodka courtesy of the establishment.

After it was all over, they cleared out the ring, and it reverted back to your everyday disco. Which goes to show that you never know what you'll get from a night on the town in Kazakhstan.

Posting When I Go On Trips. A Tame Birthday.

It seems to be a pattern that I won't post for some time before going on a trip, and then I post a flurry when I get back. Hope that works for you all.

Perhaps you're wondering how I spent my birthday. Tamely is the answer, since it fell on a working Tuesday, and also because I am now closer to 50 than I am to my birth and can't party like I used to. Gulshat, Bryan, Shunar, and I went to get a pizza. That's it. It was cool.

A Pizza in Almaty

One night, Bob, Bryan, and I went to a restaurant by our apartment to get a bite to eat. After we were done eating we paid, but our change was 100 tenge (about 75 cents) short. Not seeing our waiter anywhere, we asked another waiter if we could get the rest of our change. Who is your waiter, he asked. We don't know, we said. I'll go find him, he said, and went off for a while. After about ten minutes we flagged him down again. Your waiter left, he said, so you can't get your change. Can we talk to the manager, we asked? There is no manager, he said. Let me talk to your boss, I said. I'll go check, he said. After another ten minutes he came back and gave us 100 tenge. In Almaty, he said, 100 tenge is nothing. It is change, he said. We took our money and left.

The next night we went back to the same restaurant, maybe inadvisably, but because it was near our apartment and was the only place that served plov, which Bob and I had a taste for. We sat down and waited for fifteen minutes, but nobody came to our table, and we couldn't flag any waiters down. So we gave up and went down the street to get a pizza from a man making them in a kiosk on the sidewalk. Can we eat the pizzas in the outdoor restaurant, we asked? Yes, he worked for the same restaurant with which we had been having problems, and we could buy a pizza and eat it there. How much are the pizzas, we asked. It depends on what you get on them, he said. What if we get sauce, cheese, and meat on it, we asked. I don't know, he said, and called to a waitress who was entering something on her computer next to him. How much is a pizza, he asked. She frowned and didn't answer. Hey, how much is a pizza, he asked. She ignored him again. Could I have a menu, he asked. And she turned around and walked away.

Here we explored other food options, but Bob decided pizza was the way to go. So we went back to the pizza guy. Can we just order from you, we asked? No, I'm not a waiter, you have to order from a waiter, he said. So, stepping in front of a passing waiter, got him to stop for us. How much is a pizza, we asked. 450 tenge, and you pay first. Ok, we would like one with sauce, meat, and cheese, we said, and at this point, the waiter from the night before staggered up to us, apparently drunk. Came back for more? he asked. It seems that way, we said, and he staggered off.

Bob, at this point fearing that we would pay but never get our pizza, asked for a receipt. Why? asked the waiter. We're on a business trip and we need our receipts, we said. I will give you a receipt for something else, he said. How much money do you want on it? We just want the pizza receipt, we said. I cannot do that, he said. Let me make it for 2000 tenge. We really just want a pizza receipt, we said. Impossible, he said. Tell me how much you want a receipt for, and I'll do it. How about the price of the pizza, we said. Impossible, he said, I will make it for 1000 tenge, and he took our money and walked away.

We waited for five minutes, during which time the pizza guy looked at his shoes. And sure enough, our waiter returned with a receipt for five shashliks and a beer for over 1000 tenge. Thank you, we said, and he walked away. Wait, we called, aren't you going to order our pizza? (We were standing next to the pizza guy the whole time.) Oh, right, he said, and said to the pizza guy, they ordered a pizza with fish and mushrooms. No, we ordered a pizza with meat and cheese. Oh, he said, and said to the pizza guy, make them a pizza with meat and cheese, you hear? And the pizza guys stopped staring at his shoes and started to make the pizza.

We got the pizza about ten minutes later, and agreed that it was the last thing we would buy there.

A Trip to Almaty and Astana. International Friendship.

I went to Almaty with Bryan to help with the English education training sessions for the next group of Kazakhstan NGO volunteers.

On the way, we stopped at Almaty, the new capitol of Kazakhstan. It's quite an experience to see a modern city raised by dictat. I have never seen so many cranes in a single place as from the center of the new government complex, and never have I seen such an enormous government complex, with a design taken out of a new Star Wars backdrop, go up with so little around it. Astana is a sprawling city by design, and to get from the center to the various monuments required long bus trips through very little. Astana is also an impressive exhibition of modern Kazakh taste in architecture, which has inherited the Soviet taste for expansive grandiosity without a trace of its restraint.

We ascended Astana's towering art-tower, which has a real name that I cannot recall, but it's colloquial name is "Chupa-chups", a brand of lollypop. The tower resembles a very round egg born aloft by a fountain of water, or possibly a chupa-chups. From the top of it, you can look from a bird's eye view of Astana-in-transition, put your hand in a bronze negative relief of Nazarbayev's, and buy a real chupa-chups, the candy, all of which I did.

We then rode the train down through spring to summer in Almaty, where training was to be. I alternately had my teeth cleaned and my spleen measured in Almaty and gave lessons an hour away in Kapchegai, which another volunteer has aptly described as a "Mad Max Beach Resort".

The new group of volunteers seemed very cool and capable, from what little we ended up seeing of them. An unofficial part of our mission was to pick a nickname for them. Every Kazakhstan volunteer group has a nickname. Kaz12 was Kaz Drunk, Kaz13 was Kaz 90210, Kaz14 was Kaz Spoiled, and we were (ta-da!) Kaz Lame, because of our not-going-to-disconess. We are recommending that Kaz16 be Kaz Tastrophe, because of the incredible number of injuries, hospitalization, elective-termination-of-services, and other mishaps that characterized their training.

I was riding on a bus in Almaty with my American volunteer friend Bob, who sports a black, bushy beard, and we were speaking English. Consequently, the conductor asked us where we were from. Bob replied that he was from Iran. And I am from America, I said. It is an international friendship, said Bob. It is for world peace, I said. Can you imagine? said the conductor to his friend. An American!