The Goodbyes Part 1: Karabulak and Taldykorgan

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.
- Robert Southey

Over the last 27 months, I've met some really awesome people in Kazakhstan, and I am doubly lucky because not only do I know them, I call them my friends. They picked me up when I was down and showed me how to live and survive in a foreign place. We spoke different languages, had different cultures, but still found a lot to laugh and communicate about. We made great community projects, talked about some serious stuff, then laughed at each other for hours. And now with a week and 5 days until I leave, seeing my friends one more time to say goodbye and thank you is one of the most important things right now to me.

The first part of my goodbyes took me back to the friendly confines of Taldykorgan and Karabulak. Although volunteers cannot travel during the last 90 days of their service, they can go on business trips, and although I had a great time hanging out and drinking chai with my Karabulak friends and beer with my Taldykorgan pals, there was work to be had.

My goal in Karabulak was to give my old director the final report for our grant to establish Kazakh Courses. We reviewed the report together and made some corrections. She also gave me letters that were written by some of the adults who attended, as well as the teacher. Once I translate them, I'll include them in the thank you packet I created with my director to the people who donated to the project. This means that I'll make a final trip to the most stressful place in Kazakhstan, the post office, but it is the best way to convey the gratitude and thanks that the people and my director in Karabulak have.

After that, I saw my host mother one more time (she apologizes to my mother because I am so thin) and my host sister (she told me to "stay cool"). Even the woman on the 3^rd floor of the Akimat who hit on me constantly until I changed towns even came down to the 2^nd floor to say goodbye, but not without being awkward one last time by telling me it was a shame I never agreed to go on a date with her while her boyfriend was standing next to her. Everyone thought this was funny. The boyfriend did not. I just felt awkward. And on that note, I hopped into a taxi and left Karabulak for Almaty.

To get to Almaty from Karabulak, one must find a taxi in Taldykorgan. Because I had some time to kill, I took a long walk around town for the last time to reminisce in my own head about the good and bad (but mainly good) memories that happened there. I started by the (in)famous club Luxor, now renamed, renovated into a café, and not as shady, although I will never ever go inside again. From there I walked past "the apartment"; the place where almost every male Kaz-19 volunteer in Taldykorgan lived at one time or another. There used to be a cat that lived under the door (the local kids called it "garbage"), but it's not there anymore. From there, I went past the Oblast Akimat, past Hessen Pub, turned left at Shashlyk Place and strolled down the Arbot. By then, it was time to go.

(Photo Captions:1^st: Kazakh Courses in Action. Currently 44 adults and 8 youth attend the classes.

2^nd: Counterparts, friends, and my babushka in Karabulak. They'll always have a place in my heart, even though they loved to laugh at the awkward things that would happen to me.)

Traditional Instruments in Kazakhstan

In the recent past I had a blog post about popular music in Kazakhstan. And while pop is the music that dominates the airwaves in Kazakhstan, there is another type of music that is just as well known: traditional Kazakh music. My interest in traditional Kazakh music started when the head facilitator for the youth development program in Ecik suggested that we take some time to learn how to play the dombra.

The dombra is the most popular Kazakh traditional instrument. According to archeologists, the dombra was invented over 2000 years ago, as they found ancient statues of people playing a two stringed instrument in a plucking manner in the ancient city of Khorezm. It’s lightweight but tough, made of wood and is a bit smaller than a guitar. The two strings are tuned a 4^th apart, and people usually attach feathers to the ends.. If you want to read more about the dombra, you can check it out here.

One thing that I love about Kazakh musical culture is that each traditional instrument has a legend about how the instrument was created or what powers it’s said to have. For the dombra, it is said that if played correctly and with passion it has the ability to communicate without words and even save people from death. My saxophone never did that!

The legend of the dombra goes like this:

Back in the day when Kazakhstan was a nomadic country, a khan (leader) forbade his son to go hunting. Like all teenage children since the beginning of time, he didn’t listen to his father and went out anyway. While the son was out trying to find dinner against his dad’s wishes, he came across a herd of kulan (something like a deer), and shot the leader of the herd with an arrow, wounding but not killing it. The lead kulan, called Aksak Kulan (lame “deer”) took the arrow shooting personally and used its hoof to kick the khan’s son Chuck Norris style, killing him.

Not a roundhouse...but just as effective

When his son didn’t return from the hunt, the Khan got angry. He was so angry that he declared that anyone who came to him with bad news would be killed by having molten lead poured into their mouth. The lead thing may sound a bit excessive, but the Khan was only following in the footsteps of this guy with the same title who went into the history books as one of the greatest conquerors of all time.

Not this Khan.

Out of fear of being forced to quench their thirst with liquid metal nobody told the Khan what really happened to his son for a long time. Eventually, an old dombra player used music to get the Khan to realize what really happened. The dombra player played so sadly that the Khan realized that his son was dead. Since the dombra player never said anything, the Khan couldn’t kill him. So instead, the Khan ordered that the dombra be filled with molten lead, thus saving the life of the musician and everyone else.

My dombra. Because it is now in my barely competent hands, I doubt that this particular dombra will save any lives.

I don’t think I’ll get really good at the dombra in my remaining 3 weeks in Kazakhstan. I’m not good with stringed instruments, I like woodwinds better. I’ll be happy if I could play and sing a song or two by the time I leave Issyk. Our teacher is the head music director from the local Kazakh school and she is very patient with us. She doesn’t speak English, but we get along just fine and I am learning a lot. Music is one of those special things that transcends language. However, I have high hopes for the trainee that also joins us in our lessons, as she’ll have at least 2 years to practice and will probably become a dombra hero.

October: The Final Countdown

October: the last full month of my Peace Corps service. As of today, I have 40 days until I leave Kazakhstan. No more, and no less. I’m starting to get excited, because the end is in sight. I used to measure my Peace Corps service in years…then months. 40 Days? 40 Days is nothing!

I’m having a hard time finding motivation to care about anything work related, perhaps because I’m so close to being done. It feels like the last semester of college again, when I had classes to attend, stuff to do, but I didn’t really feel like going (and didn’t really care). Usually there is a sense of duty or obligation (and sometimes desperation) that provides the fuel that keeps me plugging away at whatever I’m doing, but over the week I’ve come to the conclusion that the motivation tank is running on fumes. I find myself using more and more of my time watching episodes of House and playing video games than focusing on things that I need to do.

The exception is my work assisting the Kaz-22 Youth Development trainees (who are coming along just nicely). Working with them is a pleasure, and now that I’m done with my primary assignment at the Local Community Foundation, they are my #1 priority. Honestly, they are the reason why I don’t barricade myself in my apartment and waste the month watching old tv shows and playing videogames until my plane leaves.

I don't think its very productive to watch the whole 3rd season of House...in two days.

Whatever the case, I have to snap out of it. The end is near, but there is a lot to do:

• Creating my "Close of Service Document", a one page account of what I did as a volunteer. This will be the only surviving document that Peace Corps will have of my service after I leave, so it has to be good, and more importantly, accurate.

• Confirming tickets home, and researching fun things to do in Istanbul, Turkey. I’m going to spend a week there on the way back to the US. After researching Egypt and Greece as other vacation alternatives, I decided that it may be better to go to one country and spend a meaningful amount of time there than skipping around to 2-3 countries but only spending 2-4 days in each. So as much as I want to travel to Egypt, the pyramids will have to wait. They’ve been around for 1000’s of years, so I think they can hold on for another decade or two.

• Revamping (again) my resume, so I won’t be unemployed (for long) when I get back.

• Retaking a Russian language test. I initially took it during the Close of Service Conference, but I wasn’t happy with my results, so I’m going to try again before I leave.

• Packing up my stuff. Giving away what is useful, throwing out the rest.

• Studying for the GRE. In between my House watching binge, I’ve been doing GRE prep. I have study materials, and run through problems for about 2 hours each day. One of my goals for 2011 is to go back to school. For awhile, I thought that I wanted to do law school, but since then I’ve changed my mind. It’s hard to do proper research on this sort of stuff from the other side of the world, but I’m seriously looking at schools that offer programs in Non Profit Management, Public Policy, or Central Asian Studies. Peace Corps also has a “Fellows Program” which allows for returned volunteers to get higher degrees for cheap (or free!) at some pretty good universities. So watch out! I may run an NGO someday.

• Tying up administrative loose ends with the Kazakh course project by turning in the final paperwork documents to Peace Corps. However, some of the documents and receipts that I need are still in Karabulak, so this means that I must pay a visit to Taldykorgan in October. Although it may cause some long days for me because I must still also help out the new trainees every day, I’m certainly not crying because Taldykorgan is the best city in Kazakhstan.

• Preparing my organization and site for a new volunteer. This means helping them to find host families, creating a plan of work, and recruiting a counterpart. As well as cleaning out my desk/shelf.

• Call it fate, magic, voodoo, and Act of God or whatever, but during the last 27 months I’ve met some very influential people in Kazakhstan; people who have shaped my service and my life. Some are teachers, students, old counterparts, and a few are even volunteers. I’m bad with goodbyes, and mushy stuff, (and will hopefully see some of them again) but I can’t leave Kazakhstan without telling them about the positive effect they have had on my time here, and thanking them for it.