sofasurfers

Shock news! The Americans have planted yet another flag: this time in a Shymkent university seminar room. We’re here for “American Corner” - a US government-funded project to encourage English-speaking forums around the world; this particular Corner is run by our host (cf that over-achiever characteristic of couchsurfers: our host is also the regional Peace Corps warden, is currently training in AIDS awareness, runs a film club, does a weekly aerobics class…“Well, at least I now have a great butt,” he justifies in jest, though being the sole male, there may be an ulterior motive).

Anyway, the point… So, along with three Peace Corps volunteers, Lindsay and I get to participate in a 90-minute exchange with 18 Russian and Kazakh students. The point of the session is to encourage locals’ foreign-language skills, the festive nationalistic festoonery is to show that American hegemony has even jammed its foot in Kazakhstan’s backdoor (NB: at the insistence of the program, and not our host, I should add).

Under the influence...

“So does everyone remember what we’re here to talk about today?” asks our host, standing at the front of the classroom. “Technology!” volunteers one student. “That’s right!” And so ensues a conversation about how the students have appropriated the digital age: research, emailing their homework to their tutors, social networking (using Russia’s Facebook equivalent, ‘In Kontakt’)… No difference there, then. Do any of you have blogs, I ask. A Kazakh medical student with green contact lenses tells us she has a private blog that her friends don’t know about but that strangers can – and do – comment on: a free, anonymous agony aunt service, if you like. Is there censorship? “Yes,” says a Russian girl who wants to become an interpreter. “Any emails with the words ‘drugs’, ‘kidnapping’ [cf bride-napping] and the president’s name are intercepted.” And then what happens? “Nothing.” So it’s not like in China then, where contraband words in emails are vaporised; never arriving at their destination, they are apparently then stored in a vast database (if my Beijing hosts are correct). Another Russian student wearing a camouflage teeshirt and a bullet pendant says, “I could write whatever I like on my blog, and no one would stop me.” So does he? “No. I don’t think I have anything interesting to say.” However, journalists have been imprisoned for speaking out against the president, they tell us, and there is “of course!” the death penalty, though a law student, who happens to be holding “his favourite book” on the American Death Penalty, informs us – with some reserve – that it is under some kind of review (“it’s complicated”), and no, there’s no one currently on Death Row.

And then I go and mention the B-word. It was unavoidable, honest! A student who wants to work in the petrochemical industry has asked, “Is Kazakhstan becoming a popular place for travel?” Who could deny how Sacha Baron Cohen raised awareness of the world’s ninth largest country which, as Christopher Robbins says, is The Land that Disappeared? However, the students are clearly still smarting from the national insult. One of the Peace Corps volunteers delivers the stock Western response (a crutch of mine too), which is that the joke of Borat was on Small Town America, not Kazakhstan. The students don’t see it like this: “At the MTV Awards, there was an actor playing our president, and Borat kissed his feet, as if he is our king, as if Kazakhstan is a dictatorship,” says a Kazakh girl wearing a green tanktop and matching eyeshadow. As Robbins points out in The Land that Disappears, while votes in the most recent presidential elections were 91% in favour of Nazarbaev, the independently run exit polls were at 85% (gonna check these facts! No complaints, please!) - so while there’s evidently some some skulduggery, it’s hard to argue that he’s not a popular president. But up till last year, the president’s eldest daughter ran the media, and freedom of speech is evidently compromised; it’s a well-known fact that Nazarbaev is not a fan of political opposition. Other Kazakhs have referred to it as a totalitarian state. But her statement goes unchallenged… How very un-American.

“But there is not only bad in Kazakhstan,” pipes up one student. “Have you met any of our teenagers?” Umm, sadly, no…

(OH NO! Don’t say ‘Umm!’ It’s Faux Pas Number One in Kazakhstan! What could possibly be the problem with the humble umm? “It means vagina in Kazakh,” our host had warned us earlier).

Ahem, so no, we haven’t had the honour… “Our teenagers have a vision for this country, and many of them want to study abroad to bring back their new knowledge to their country; the president has a programme to encourage overseas study [however, if you don't then return to work in Kazakhstan for five years, you lose the house that you have to buy and put down as collateral]. Plus we have very many natural resources,” says the petrochemical industrialist-in-waiting.

And then it was time to go. The students left the American Corner, and left me filled with youthful optimism. And left me their doodles, abandoned on the table…

Inside the mind of a Kazakh girl

Inside the mind of a Russian boy