A Kazakhstan NGO business meeting

Today, my director took me to nearby Taldykorgan for a huge meeting of all of the Kazakhstan NGO’s in the Taldy region. My director didn’t understand at first why I wanted to tag along (I had trouble explaining that “boring” does not also mean “non-informative”) but let me go anyway.

The first part of the meeting went fine, with speeches and lot of flipcharts. It was the second part of the meeting where I ran into trouble. During the second half, all of the directors broke into groups and started to create lists of issues that their organizations could work on. I split off from my director and joined a group of women. They promptly began talking in Kazakh (which destroyed what little effectiveness I had) and then I was elbowed out of the way by a lady in a wheelchair who changed groups because she had a great idea that fit with our group. At this point, I was fed up and wanted to leave. Thankfully my director felt the same way. We quietly packed our stuff and tried to sneak out of the room, but we were caught by the director of the NGO who hosted the event…

…who made us drink chai. “It is our tradition that the first time you come to our organization, you have to drink at least one cup of chai!” she said. My director did not want chai. I did not want chai. We wanted to leave. However, this lady insisted, and we drank our one cup according to custom, and then left.

So what did I learn?

•The Kazakh- Russian language divide in Kazakhstan makes for some interesting meetings. Almost everyone KNOWS Russian, but if Kazakh will always be spoken by people who can. In a mixed language setting everyone will use Russian to communicate and present to the group, but use Kazakh among themselves if they know it. It is a fine and acceptable practice to language switch in this manner (I imagine US business executives blowing their tops if they everyone around them spoke amongst themselves in a different language).I will be fine with only Russian but there is a lot of side chatter I am going to miss because I won’t know enough Kazak. Think of it as passing notes to your co-workers in the big conference room. Except you are writing in a whole different language that not everyone present understands.

•Nothing personal about the elbow. While this is an extreme example (she apologized later), it underscores the larger idea that the business culture here is more aggressive than in the US. After this meeting I felt a little roughed up, both physically and mentally. If I am to be successful here, I will have to adapt and learn how to “play rough”. Who knows? I hope that a little of the aggressive business culture rubs off on me. It could do me a lot of good later.

•You will drink chai after the meeting. You can’t avoid it. Resistance is futile.