We had deliberated on how to dress for the evening ahead, what sort of wine to bring and which Italian dessert to prepare. Our landlord would be collecting us and then we would go together in his car, as company security policy did not allow us to drive ourselves. The doorbell rang.
“Hallo?” said my wife.
“Allo?” a man’s voice answered.
“Hallo?” my wife repeated.
“Allo?” the voice said again. “Arianna?”
“Yes, I’m Arianna. But who are you?”
“I’m Andrej.”
We had just learned a rather quirky cultural difference: when you ring someone’s bell here, you do not say, “Hi, it’s…” Instead you say the name of the person you are calling on, and they have to guess who you are.
We wrapped ourselves up: winter boots, gloves, scarves, a mink hat bought at the local market just to feel like we were one of them. But not being locals, we hadn’t been prepared for this diabolical cold!
We walked downstairs and a huge car was waiting for us.
“Lexus,” said my son, who knows every make of car.
“Zdrastvuite Andrej,” we chorused. [“Hello Andrej.”]
“Zdrastvuite Andrej,” repeated our son as we stepped into the car, whose seats were covered with fur. After 10 minutes driving around streets covered with ice and mud, we arrived at a huge three-storey house on the river, with a beautiful garden – in stark contrast to the streets just outside their door, which had felt like no man’s land.
The men shook hands (never with the women) as we took off jackets, gloves, scarves and hats and were led inside. The house was vibrant, with splashes of colour everywhere… on the floor, the wallpaper, the sofa. We were shown the fitness room with its small pool and sauna. The enormous living room was decorated in black and gold. In the kitchen – red, with two family-sized fridges – we found our hostess, who was preparing dinner. We had brought a special Italian dessert, known as chocolate salami, which we put in the fridge.
We went up wide wooden stairs to another huge, colorful living room, with pictures on the walls. A table, for 20 or more, was laden with starters and desserts: a tomato and pickle salad, fruit salad, sweets, dried plums, nuts, grapes, tea with milk, a variety of juices, cake… The main dish – manti, a sort of steamed ravioli filled with mutton and my favourite Kazakh food – was later served by our hostess.
We felt shy in all this solemnity, but we understood that we were the first foreign guests in their home and that they were proud to entertain us. We were shortly introduced to the Kazakh tradition of making a toast, which is something of a ceremony here. The eldest man, or a special guest, has to manage the sequence of toasts, for every man at the table must say one (women do not toast). I’ve never enjoyed making toasts, as my team at work quickly learned. (At my farewell party, nobody said a toast or asked me to say one. However, before I left, made a touching ‘personal toast’ to me.) Kazakh people love to make toasts. For them, every moment is a good moment for a toast. Our landlord did his half in English and half in Kazakh.
“Thank you to my Italian friends. I’m so happy to have you in our house and to enjoy this food with you. I wish you, your family and your children all the best. I hope you enjoy your stay in Kazakhstan.”
Soon it was my turn and, despite my embarrassment, I managed to express our gratitude for this special experience.
We have lost this sense of solemnity in what we do, I reflected later. Our hosts had also reminded us of the importance of respect and a love for simple things.
A few months later, we decided to invite these same Kazakh friends for dinner, as they had been asking for a typical Italian meal.
“Great!” said my wife, who loves to entertain at our home.
That Saturday morning we headed out to the supermarket, where we bought wine for the starter, as well as a red wine for the main course and a sweet wine for the dessert. We had decided on the following menu: tomato bruschette (slices of toasted bread covered with garlic and tomato) and Italian salami, lasagne, and home-made crostata (a baked dessert often with jam filling).
Later, my wife was finishing preparing the bruschette when the bell rang.
“They are here!” I called.
Our guests looked disappointed when they saw the table empty of food. Silence reigned in the kitchen, so I quickly poured the Prosecco to make a toast (of course!). I don’t think they liked it much – it is very different from vodka! My wife then explained that dinner would be composed of three courses and that each would be paired with a special wine. They were excited to try everything we served, although so shy at the beginning that I believe they hardly tasted the food.
My wife’s “Lasagne’s ready!” was met with happy faces, for they knew and liked lasagne. We changed glasses and I poured the best red wine I had been able to find. Slowly our guests started to appreciate the meal, asking for more lasagne – and for more wine! They were especially curious about Italian wines, asking how there came to be such a variety of wines in Italy and how wine is produced. By the end of the evening, they were enjoying themselves and all shyness had worn off.
Like the dinner at their home, this was a wonderful cross-cultural experience we will never forget.
Fun and Games at a Kazakh Birthday Party
by Tolga & Ozlem Tekiroglu
It was a summer’s evening in Atyrau, the temperature sitting at 40º Celsius, and I was running late. My family was back in our home country, Turkey, and I had been invited by one of my Kazakh employees to the 55th birthday party of his mother. I had heard that he had received a loan from the bank to fund the celebrations. While waiting for the lift, I heard, “Help, help!”
The lift was out of order and someone was stuck inside it! We lived in an apartment that had been advertised with photos of “a beautiful panorama of the city”. When we had moved in though, we had found that the inside of the building told quite a different story: the heating system was poor, the housekeeping left something to be desired, water and electricity were often cut off, and the furniture was old. Not to mention that we were in a fourth-floor apartment and the lift was frequently out of order.
I immediately ran over to the maintenance office in the building next door. They were always quick to respond to any problems in our building. I knocked on their door and quickly told them what had happened.
“Okay, no problem,” the two men calmly replied. “As you can see, we are eating dinner. We’ll rescue them when we’re done.”
Astonished, I went back to the lift and, hiding my concern, I explained that the maintenance guys would come as soon as they had finished working on “another technical hitch”. As I couldn’t do much more, I made my way to the party. Twenty minutes later I was running towards the restaurant entrance thinking I was terribly late. Fortunately, the guests were still standing about. I learned that night that a start time is just an approximation and that events may even start a couple of hours late. The risk then is to arrive on time and not find anyone else there!
There were probably about 150 people at the party, of which I was the only foreigner. The men mostly wore dark suits, while the women floated about in various colored dresses (and some very high heels). The tables were laden with different salads, vegetables and meats, as well as a selection of small cakes and candies placed on a cake stand. The presentation of the meal in all its variety and color was striking. Waiters walked about, serving alcoholic drinks and small glasses of vodka.
Galim, my employee, immediately came over to give me a warm welcome and to introduce me to his mother, the guest of honor, a small, smiling woman wearing a dark red traditional Kazakh dress. Galim then introduced me to the other guests at my table.
The dining began, along with speeches by family members and close friends of the birthday girl, each speech accompanied by vodka and a toast. When it was my turn to toast (as each guest must do at a traditional Kazakh social event), I did not speak in Turkish or English, as expected, but rather in my r
ather rudimentary Kazakh, using a few special words for wedding toasts that I had memorized. The group appreciated my attempt and laughed, obviously pleased with the gesture. I was rather proud of myself, but my sense of accomplishment was not to last!
I thought we were finished eating, but I soon discovered that the food on the table had been only the starter. Waiters were now bringing out beshbarmak (literally meaning ‘five fingers’), a traditional Kazakh meal made with horse and lamb’s meat. The beshbarmak was served in big round dishes and, as the name suggests, eaten using the hands. Finally we were served tea, cakes and fruits.
The evening continued with eating, dancing, shows, games and various competitions (and more toasts), though I preferred to watch rather than participate. Just as I was finally starting to relax after the dramatic start to my evening, I was chosen for a new game, along with three other guests. The foreigner at the party was not going to be allowed to sit out!
Okay, let me get it over with, I thought.
The Master of Ceremonies summoned us to choose, without looking, from various traditional attire from around the world. We were then told to don our suits and dance accordingly. Mine was from Africa. While dancing in as much African style as I could muster, I imagined my wife and children watching and laughing themselves silly. I went from workdays in a formal suit with tie to African dress and dancing in front of 150 people at my employee’s mother’s birthday party! It was the hardest five minutes of any birthday party I’ve ever been to – especially because my moves were being recorded on every mobile phone or camera present. That was the last time I took part in any games at Kazakh parties!
When I returned home later that night, I remembered the poor souls stranded in the lift. Were they still imprisoned inside it, or had their rescuers finally found the time to release them? To my relief, the lift was empty… and none of us used it again.
On the Road Without a GPS
by Olga Jaworska
My biggest dream was about to come true: my parents, sister and I were planning a trip to southern Kazakhstan. I started counting down the days to the summer break and spent hours looking at a huge map of Kazakhstan on the wall of my bedroom in Astana. I found pictures of the Aral Sea and watched it disappearing due to past Soviet irrigation projects. I knew the names of all the towns of the region by heart. I was close to reciting the data of their population sizes. Then we realized there was no road connecting Aralsk and Aktau. This fact was confirmed by friends of my parents who had gone on a month-long trek from Astana to Aktau and back. Without tents, more time, and an off-road car with a huge trunk, the trip would remain just a dream. So, that same summer we took two separate trips around the country instead: one eastwards to the Altay mountains close to the border with China, and the other to the south (Almaty, Taraz and Turkestan) and on to Kyrgyzstan. It is the first that I want to tell you about…
Kazakhstan did not disappoint us and my desire for adventure was almost fulfilled. On our journey we realized that maps can never completely reflect the reality (especially as they aren’t constantly updated with satellite photos). In fact, our three maps of the same area made it even harder for us to move around. How do you decide where to turn when one map shows an intersection after a village, the second hints at a turn before the village, and the third doesn’t acknowledge the presence of either the village or the road?
And don’t be surprised when a trip you planned takes two days instead of one – because of the poor quality roads that don’t even exist according to one map, and are considered the best by another. All these difficulties (and detours) are allowed for by the low price of gas – if there is a gas station that sells good-quality fuel nearby, and provided their electricity is working when you arrive.
In spite of having spent her childhood in the Polish countryside, my mom was close to losing her mind a few times during the trip, as we were exposed to the peculiarities of village life in Kazakhstan. In an Altay village of Urunkhayka, where the temperature on a summer evening is slightly above zero, we stopped to look for a place to spend the night. We had been told that the locals were prepared for tourists and that finding a night’s lodging would be fairly easy. However, it proved to be anything but, and it was starting to get late. My mom’s desperation was growing, and the rest of us weren’t especially excited at the prospect of staying in the car for the next few hours.
While we were driving around the village asking the locals for a guesthouse or a hotel, a young woman walking towards us said we could rent a room at her place in about half an hour, after she had led her cows home. We were still surprisingly optimistic about finding an alternative and told her we would return if we weren’t successful.
Later we bumped into a group of teenagers listening to music on a mobile phone and stopped to ask them where we could find a guesthouse.
“I think there is a hotel over there,” one of the teenagers replied in Russian. “They might have a room for you.”
What are you saying?” replied another. “You call that tiny house that is about to fall apart a hotel?”
It was our only option we were told. The only guesthouse in the village was under construction and a lady who usually rented out rooms had gone “to the city” – the city being half a day’s drive away. After driving up a hill we found the ‘hotel’; a house that looked like every other house in the village. The owner, it turned out, was the cattle-herding woman we had met as we had entered the village.
We agreed to her price, although it was pretty high considering the conditions, because we didn’t want to spend the night in the car. We unloaded the most important items from the car and stepped inside the house. It was too dark to look around properly, but we were too tired to care. We soon discovered that, although the rest of the house had electricity, the sole light bulb in our bedroom didn’t work. We accepted this with a few groans and changed into our pajamas in complete darkness. I lay down on the uncomfortable bed, feeling the chill through drafty windows, and couldn’t fall asleep because of the noise of a television, and our host conversing in Kazakh on a cell phone.
In the morning, when the absence of electric light was no longer a problem, we had a breakfast composed of our own food supplies and the hostess’s boiled water for tea. After coming through some minor trouble, most notably learning to use the host’s kettle and opening a glass of processed cheese by mistake, we set out in the direction of Lake Markakol. We didn’t intend to swim, but we expected to at least be able to feel the temperature of the water with our fingers. Again, our dreams were crushed by the reality of the Kazakh countryside. The water was crystal clear and home to some interesting wildlife… We weren’t able to get out of our car thanks to a bull that was sauntering towards us. We consoled ourselves with a few photos and drove away.
After a few kilometers, we noticed that the meadows had changed color, from green to yellow-orange. We left the car equipped with three cameras. On closer inspection, the meadows proved to be even more beautiful than we had thought, and my parents compared it to those postcard views of the Alps. My mom, a proud gardener, ran about the meadow taking pictures of every type of flower, bush and grass. Today, we still remember this moment as one of the happiest of our travels in Kazakhstan.
“Why did she have weeds in her garden if she could dig some flowers from that meadow?” my mom wondered later, referring to our hostess from the previous night. I didn’t feel like explaining that the meadow seemed nearby only to us, with our 4x4 and plenty of time on our hands.
I quickly forgot about our sleepless night in the village as we drove through the breathtaking variety of Kazakh landscapes: mountains, deserts, and steppes. We had to concentrate on the potholes in the road, as well as the road signs and our infamous maps, so there was little time to contemplate the daily lives of the people we encountered.
The next moment of confusion came a few hours later, when we were required to turn from the main road in the direction of the town of Zaisan. We took a guess, turned and dro
ve about 15 kilometers – almost off-road – onto the steppe. We came to a village and saw that the only exit was the road on which we had entered. We asked a man on horseback for directions.
“I don’t know,” he said in broken Russian. He pointed at one of the houses near us, suggesting its owner would be able to help. An old man, who was sitting on a bench in front of the house, told us how to return to the main road. As we were leaving the village, I heard the sound of something falling to the ground, but thought it was our luggage in the trunk shifting as we drove on the uneven road. We continued on our way back to the main road.
By this stage we needed fuel desperately, and only some unknown miracle saved us from spending a few days in the cold desert. (We drove on reserve, which had been due to run out about an hour before we hit the first gas station.) Shortly after refueling, my dad discovered a malfunction in the car. Fortunately, the problem wasn’t serious and he was able to fix it himself, using pieces of junk he found at the gas station. It was while doing this that he noticed our back number plate was missing. I immediately thought of the sound I had heard that morning, in the no-name village on the steppe. It was too late to go back now, so we decided to worry about it later. Our priority was rather to find a place to spend the night, which was quickly approaching.
We found a hotel in Ayagoz, a town in the southern part of eastern Kazakhstan. We were happy to have a warm, weatherproof place to stay as the town welcomed us with a storm. Once settled in, we took one of our maps and made a provisional number plate using a marker and a red pencil we found in my sister’s pencil case. This plate was replaced twice by other better-looking makeshift plates after our journey, and we are still in the process of getting a proper one.
Drinking Camel's Milk in the Yurt – Expat Stories From Kazakhstan Page 9
