16 - 1st June

16 – 1^st June

Summer is here! Well, its been over 25degrees for the past month, but still, its official now. And with summer comes the summer camps and activities that I have spent the last two weeks planning. It also provides our first opportunities to travel independently, albeit rather limited this first summer, due to language and ‘baby-sitting’ by Peace Corps.

The local educational authority has organised a month long camp next to Alakol (the massive lake nearby), which I was told about yesterday, which, although messing up my current plans, should provide a nice experience and fun by the lake, I think 2 weeks will be fine (a whole month of camp would be exhausting, and this is my summer holiday after all!

I realised that I haven’t talked about food that much, sorry. Now that summer has arrived, the number of vegetables on the table is increasing, which is lovely, as in the first two months, meals were limited to bread/potatoes and meat. The biggest thing I would say is that breakfast, lunch and dinner all feature similar foods, with breakfast in fact often just being the left-overs from the previous night’s dinner.

Due to the extended Russian presence in the area, there is a lot of Russian food in the diet, so that explains my breakfast today, a kind of ravioli (meat stuffed pasta like ball), and the Borsch I had for dinner last night.

Kazak food is also very much influenced by the Uzbeks in the south, and the Uigur to the east, with Plov (rice, meat and carrots) being a popular Uzbek dish in the south, and Lagman (big noodles (like Udon) with meat and vegetables) being the most popular Uigur food. Both of these are much more popular in the south of Kazakhstan, where there are much larger communities of both ethnic groups, as well as others from the area. The north of Kazakhstan (up until the 1990s at least) featured much larger groups of peoples deported to Kazakhstan by Stalin such as Germans, Ukrainians and Russians.

Meat (sheep, beef, chicken, horse) in large quantities, potatoes, pasta, bread, plus the usual vegetables all feature here, but there is less variety in preparation styles. Most dishes involve frying, or stewing in a pot for hours. Nothing overly exciting, but nothing toooo terrible either, apart from the inclusion of lots of fat and internal organs.

I just had an interesting talk with my host father about religion, and it clarified some of things we were told during training. Almost all ethnic Kazakhs (as well as Uigurs, Uzbekhs etc) call themselves Muslims, and indeed the religion has had a presence here for a long time. It was effectively banned under Communist rule, with all Mosques being used for other things, or allowed to fall down. And this has not only led to near universal ‘Islamification’ of the country post-Communism, but also to a strong dislike of atheists.

While I am undecided about my own views on religion, it is far easier for me to say I am a ‘little bit Christian’, than an agnostic or atheist. Believing in 1 God, even if only at Christmas, is enough here. Which goes along way in explaining how many people can call themselves Muslims, while still drinking alcohol, not praying 5 times a day, trying to get to Mecca once in their lives, or for some, especially in the Russian North of the country, from eating pork. Which is similar to my experience in Japan, with people being having Buddhist or Shinto funerals, and visiting the family graves, but doing little else to justify calling themselves Buddhist or Shino. Simply calling themselves Muslims is enough to make themselves Kazakh, and not Communist, and that is enough.