Taking the Show on the Road

February 24, 2009

This past weekend, I went with the three other education volunteers in the Kyzylorda Oblast to Zhanakorgan with Medina Apai, one of the chief methodologists for the oblast, to give a seminar for village schoolteachers. I must admit that I was at first a little wary at the thought of spending a weekend with Medina. Conversations with her are difficult, and I feel like we need a translator, even when we are both speaking the same language. Also, like many people I work with here in Kazakhstan she is not really great at communicating what it is she needs or wants, and so I often end up misinterpreting what I am supposed to do with her. Still, our supervisor Alma wanted us to do it, and with my students on practice I did not have anything else to do, so I figured why not?

The seminar was on Monday and Tuesday, but we figured we would leave town early and go first to Turkestan, a small city only an hour away from Zhanakorgan. Turkestan is very small and is a lot like a village in many ways, but it is one of the most important and famous in Kazakhstan. Several hundred years ago, Turkestan was the capital city of Kazakhstan, and it is the home of the Mausoleum Kozha Akhmet Yassoui. The mausoleum is not only gigantic and beautiful, but one of the most important places in Islam. They say that if you go to the Mausoleum three times you are guaranteed a place in Heaven. I am not sure what qualifies as a repeat visit, (do you have to leave city between visits or just the walled compound?), but I guess that every resident of Turkestan is heaven bound, even that lucky Peace Corps volunteer who gets stationed there. We decided to take the midnight train down because it is a six hour train ride, and we figured that way we could sleep on the train and get to the city first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, the latest train was 11:10 not midnight, and we ended up getting to Turkestan at 4:30 in the morning. Once we got there we wandered around in the dark for a half an hour looking for a working bus or an open café before we found a small cafe where the woman was willing to make us eggs and instant coffee at 5 AM. After breakfast we hopped on a bus to meet the Kaz-20 living there. She told us to get onto the number two bus and get off at the small mosque, but since there was no number two bus and we hopped on to the thirteen bus because we were told that they followed the same route. As it turned out however, they did not follow the same route, and though I tried to convince him otherwise, my site mate refused to believe that the very large mosque where we got off the bus was not the small mosque” where we were supposed to meet the volunteer. Eventually though, I was vindicated when he admitted that the building that he thought was an inconsequential mosque was, as I insisted, the Mausoleum that we had come to the city to see.

The mausoleum was amazing, although the experience would have been more enjoyable if I had not been so cold. The weather in Kyzylorda had been a balmy 35 degrees Fahrenheit when we left, but Turkestan at sunrise was freezing, and it was even colder inside the mausoleum than outside. Most of the inside had been restored vandalized during the last few centuries before being recently restored, so there was only a little bit of the original stone work left, but it was still an impressive sight. The coolest thing though was the huge iron Kazan made out of seven different metals, and inlaid with script from the Koran. Apparently at one time, when pilgrims would come to the mausoleum they would be served a sugary “holy water” out of the huge Kazan to replenish them. I wish I could show pictures of it, but unfortunately, no pictures were allowed inside. The mausoleum was not the only thing on the site. We also saw the underground chambers where one of the kings had spent his last thirty years. He did not want to live any longer than Muhammad, so on his 63rd birthday he went underground. There was also a pretty decent Archeological museum in the area which house art and artifacts from the Sarmatians, Mongols, and Turks that once lived in the area. After we had seen everything we headed to a café to have lunch, warm up, and plan our next move. At first we decided that we all would head back to the Kaz-20’s house to hang out for awhile, but unfortunately, my site mate left his phone on the bus, so we decided that the two of us would head to the bus station to look for my friend’s phone and get tickets to Zhanakorgan while the Kyzylorda Kaz-20’s went to get their bags. As it turned out the last and only bus to Zhanakorgan had left at two so we ended up hiring a taxi, and we never did find the phone. We made it to Zhanakorgan and after a few miscommunications with Medina’s equally English-Challenged friend were finally picked up at the train station.

Despite our inauspicious arrival, Zhanakorgan was awesome. After we dropped our stuff off at the hotel we were taken to a nearby café. As it was Sunday, it was technically closed, but they made us tea and eggs, which was more than enough as we were still pretty full from lunch. Just then however, Medina showed up and we were whisked off to the home of a local teacher where they had prepared a full konak for the six of us that could have fed at least 15. There was so much food that for the first time ever I heard my site mate utter the words, “I’m full.” Eventually however, we excused ourselves, went back to the hotel, and quickly passed out. The next day we slept in because we did not have to be at the seminar until ten. I still got up around seven out of habit and got ready, but one of my friends slept till 9:15, an impressive ten hours of sleeping. I gave a presentation on using alternative English methods that admittedly fell a little flat. At first I thought it might have been my delivery, and in a way it was, I made the mistake of giving the presentation in English. As it turned out, only two or three of the teachers there had a working understanding of English, which left me to wonder how the other twenty-five teachers in attendance taught English.

After the presentation we went for a drive to see Tay Samal, where there is a campsite that we are interested in for a summer English camp. The camp looked great, even in February, but unfortunately the car we rode in was not in such good condition, and it broke down halfway back to the village. Our driver tried fixing it, and we even tried pushing it to get into gear, but in the end one of the drivers’ friends towed us back into town. We had barely gotten back to the hotel when we were picked up again and taken to another Konack, this one, incredibly, even better than the first. They served plov instead of the Beshparmak, and once again I ate too much. Bazargul’s boss came by so we actually had to repeat our toasts for him, but luckily my Kazakh gets better not only with practice but with a couple of extra shots.

The next day I gave my second presentation, but this one was about using the Internet and Google. I think it went better than the first one because I was more careful to use small words and my presentation was lots of pictures. I still got a few blank looks from the teachers over fifty, but the other teachers got it, and I honestly think that I lost the older crowed when I said computer. After our sessions were all over we had a short meeting where the teachers asked us questions about comparisons between education in America and Kazakhstan, which needless to say was a bit awkward. Then, we grabbed our things and boarded the bus back to Kyzylorda. The ride was blissfully uneventful, at least until we got back to the city. It turned out that Kyzylorda was not its final destination, and so it dropped us on the outskirts of the city. We got a taxi without a problem but it was still disconcerting to find yourself at the gas station across from the mosque when you are expecting the bus station. All in all though, the trip to Zhanakorgan was a great quick work trip, and the next time Medina asks us to go on an out of town seminar I will be one of the first to sign up.