The Importance of Friends

September 2, 2007

So I just got back from a wild night at the local discotech! Actually, it was a bit strange and awkward. My friends and I were definitely the oldest ones there, and I kind of felt like I was chaperoning a middle school dance. No one danced with each other, but rather in a circle, and for the first hour the circles were segregated by gender. I think that most of the people my age go to the discothèque in the nearby, larger village of Kas Kilian, while this discothèque is the territory of the high school set. Things got a little bit wilder at the end, but by this time I had gotten a little bored and headed on back to the house. I probably could have gone and partied in Kas Killian with some of my neighborhood friends, but I think I will stick to the tamer locale until I am a little more secure in my surroundings. Just a few days ago, my older brother was partying at the Kas Killian disco when apparently he got into an argument over a girl, and someone hit him over the head with a beer bottle. He has been asleep most of the time ever since, and has even had to be put on an IV a couple of times to help replace some of the blood he has lost from his scalp wound. He was definitely lucky his friends were there with him, God only knows what might have happened if they had not been there.
Making local friends has been one of the hardest and most important things I have done with since I have gotten here. Even more so than my host parents, my friends Talgat and Bahkahtjon have helped me practice my Kazak and helped me to form a support network that made me feel at home in the community. The value of friends in a Kazak village can not be underestimated, I have only seen a policeman once since I got here, so a group of friends are often as much a posse as a they are just hanging out. They watch out for each other, even in my case making sure I was accosted by a group of 14 year-old “zhaman ballalar,” bad boys, at the discothèque.