Sheep Face!!!

While walking around Zharkent’s bazaar we were invited to eat dinner at the house of a student. This isn’t uncommon for many volunteers to be invited to госты, but it was the first time I was ever asked, *direct translation*: “do you eat sheep?” One of the first things I remember from our language training was our teacher holding up a paper cutout of a sheep's head, to which we would point and say, “Спасибо, но я не ем" (Thanks, but I don't eat it). I've never said this phrase because I like sheep. I think they are cute and they taste good. So...I'd say we knew what we were getting into when we replied that we thought that sheep was tasty. All of this led to an awesome госты experience.

First we sat outside and talked with the student's father for about an hour. I enjoyed talking to him. He had many interesting experiences and stories. He served in the Soviet army and was stationed in Germany in the late 80's. When independence arrived, he drove trucks across Kazakhstan into China, where he learned Chinese by listening to the radio when he drove. Currently, he has over 1000 sheep and lives in the house that his grandparents built with his family.

In a mixture of Kazakh, Russian, and English we all talked about a variety of topics: religion ("why does your Pope change his name and add numbers after it?" he asked. We didn't know the answer.), Bill Clinton (which sparked a debate on the purity of humans and whether we should judge them if we are not pure ourselves, especially if we are electing them), and something about circumcision that everyone understood but me. There were two things that he said that will always stay with me. The first was an answer to the question of whether Kazakhstan was better now than under communism. He simply pointed at his children and said that this is now their world, and as long as they are happy he would be too. He was also one of the few people that I've met in both Kazakhstan and America who understood why many volunteers pack up; leave their homes and families for two years to work without pay at the ends of the earth. In his words *roughly translated*, "when you get married you shouldn't leave for a long time. But you all are young, without children. Now is the time to see the world and live in it." I found him very insightful, wise, and a joy to talk to. He seemed like a person secure in himself and content with life. It's hard for me to explain, one would have to meet him. I would seriously go back to Zharkent just to talk with him again.

The cow was not interested in participating in our intellectual discourse and kept on sniffing my pants and licking my arm.

After the talking came the food. First we drank kumis, which is fermented milk. Once taken from the horse, the milk sits for 2-4 days in special barrels. It is a very popular drink and people usually drink it out of the chai cups. Kumis looks like coconut milk but doesn’t taste anything like it. To me kumis tasted like milk about to go sour mixed with water with a sharp cheese aftertaste. It wasn't bad, but I believe it may be an acquired taste. I've heard that there is a similar drink made from camel's milk that tastes "milder", but I don't have a clue what "milder" means in the context of kumis and I haven't come across it.

Next up was the beshbarmak. It came on two huge plates and one small one. The two big plates were familiar: they were heaped with noodles and sheep meat. The third plate contained the unfortunate sheep’s head. It is tradition that the eldest male of the guests has to cut the sheep head. Since I was the only male in our group, the duty fell to me. I was passed a knife and basically told to go at it. I am not good at carving. I was banned from turkey cutting at Thanksgiving because my hack and slash methods tend to create a mess. Cutting the sheep head wasn't so bad and was a lot easier than a turkey. First, I took off a piece of the cheek (the right side of the sheep) and ate it. Then with two big hacks I took off the ears. I looked around, and saw everyone staring at me and nodding in approval, so I kept on cutting what I could get at. They finally took the knife from me when I started on the nose. Nobody eats the nose. There were three things I failed to get with the knife: the tongue and both eyes. Once these were removed, each of us was presented with a certain part by the father with a short explanation of what the part meant. According to him:

• Ears: The person who receives an ear will be able to listen very well and hear the true words/intentions of others
• Eyes: The person who receives an eye will be able to see their true friends
• Tongue: The person who receives the tongue will be able to speak well and be understood by all.

I received an ear and eye. The ear wasn't bad (kind of chewy), but I couldn't bring myself to eat the eye. I remember my mother telling me stories about when she was a little girl in Antigua she would fight over the fish eyes with her 2 sisters (someone always lost out), but I just couldn't do it. I was disappointed at myself because this was the first time I violated my "try everything once policy" in Kazakhstan. We also tried a spoonful of sheep brain, which I did not like at all. It was grey/yellowish, kind of lumpy, and reminded me of grits gone wrong mixed with cat flavor. I had a small mental crisis when I realized that the only thing I had to wash it down was kumis.

The beshbarmak was amazing and I made sure to eat a lot of it! We ate it in the traditional way, with our hands, as beshbarmak means "five fingered". For future volunteers and travelers: try to use your right hand for traditional beshbarmak eating, as the left hand can be considered unclean. It wasn't a big deal for me this time, but as a left-hander but I was let off with a warning. When we were done, we drank more kumis (mixed in the broth of the beshbarmark. I liked this), then chai and cherry jellybeans (which I guess exist in Kazakhstan, but I don't know where to buy them). We ended with a short blessing in Kazakh. It was amazing!