[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]By Virginia Pfau Thompson, Cochise College Art Instructor for Ceramics and Sculpture
Two men with a large video camera approach the windblown group of jetlagged American teachers and our tour guides. A brief conversation ensues. We are standing underneath the Baiterek tower, which we have just ascended via elevator to peer down at the rapidly growing new capital of Astana through the glass walls of the golden orb nested in its angular metal “branches”. Two days ago, on our first visit to the city’s central landmark, we had been unable to go up at all due to the robust winds roaring from the steppe through the capital. “What do they want?” someone in our group asks. “They want to know if you can sing the national anthem,” our guide Anara replies. “Ours or theirs?” “The Kazakh national anthem.”
Sure. Why not? We’ve totally been here for two full days, and will even begin our Kazakh language lessons at the university tomorrow. There is a printed copy, which we do our best to read through. The realization builds that there is no way we are going to manage anything remotely resembling anyone’s national anthem- I mean, we’ve never even heard the melody once! At least several in our group, myself included, wouldn’t have been able to locate the central Asian country on a map identify its flag before we were accepted to this Fulbright-Hayes Scholar trip. We stumble and hum through the section we were assigned at the end of the sheet a second time, each of us thinking on how to politely bow out of this gig. “Good! They got it!” Anara says. “What?!? That was a take?!?!”
Three days later, we are on YouTube.
Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country in the world. It is the home of apples, pistachios, and allegedly tulips. Historically inhabited by nomadic herders, the region was absorbed by the Soviet Union as a convenient location for food production, including labor camps, resource procurement (mining), nuclear testing, and relocating groups of ethnic minorities such as Koreans from Russia. During the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, Kazakhstan followed the line of republics declaring independence
and has since been led by the “First President” Nursultan Nazarbayev, a steel mill laborer who worked his way up through the communist party to become prime minister, then president. He was re-elected twice before obtaining the right to run for unlimited 5-year terms. Everything is named after him- the University where we are being hosted, the airport, his museum. No one criticizes him in public.
In the constitution, Kazakhstan is officially a “democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage.” One scholar who presented to our group mentioned that there had even been high-level government discussion of dropping the “-stan” from the end of the country’s name to avoid the stigma attached to the suffix by Western trading partners. They are further loosening ties from Russia by changing the alphabet for Kazakh from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet, and our teacher Gulnara Omarbekova is part of the debate to decide how to express particular sounds of the Kazakh, soon to be Qazaq language. This is a country working to define its position in the world economically and politically, while also striving to create a cultural narrative that preserves the identities and equality of over 120 different nationalities living there today. There is an Assembly of People, where representatives of diverse groups can interact to voice concerns. Public education is now largely trilingual, with lessons being given in the dominant local language such as Kazakh, Uzbek, Uyghur, Tajik, Tatar, etc. and all students learning Russian and English, as well as Kazakh if it is not their local dominant language. The stated goal is that by 2020, 15% of the country will be fluent in Kazakh, Russian, and English. The government is carefully constructing a “Multivector Foreign Policy” to build and maintain strong ties with diverse foreign countries and regions that are often at odds with each other. The “Third Modernization” was addressed by the president in a speech last year, denoting plans to implement new technology in all sectors of the economy, as well as plans to modernize “social consciousness” through programs such as the Sacred Geography program, which calls for 100 important sites to be identified, developed for tourism, educated to students, and protected.
Having spent several years living and traveling in East Asia, Kazakhstan is the first Asian country I have visited where I was not an obvious visual minority. In fact, on several occasions, someone stopped to ask me directions in Russian on the street. The traditional nomadic custom has always been to welcome the guest to your yurt, a practice which aided the survival of groups relocated by the Soviets to the region. I admit that the local cuisine: shubat (fermented camel’s milk), koumis (fermented mare’s milk), kyrt (extra salty, chalky dried cheese balls) and beshbarmak (noodles and horse meat, eaten with the hands) were not a favorite of my travels, especially as a long-time vegetarian. The shiny granite veneer and new materials of the ultra-modern construction of Astana, including Nazarbayev University and its dorms where we stayed, which appeared to have been outfitted entirely by IKEA, and actually had rainbow hamster tunnels and an enormous atrium connecting all the schools to allow scholars and professors, all of whom were housed on-campus, to avoid the -50-degree wind-chills of the Kazakh winter, lacked any apparent cultural soul in their style. My favorite thing about Kazakhstan by far was the people and their renewed celebration of traditional culture while maintaining a deep tolerance and respect for the diversity of the many different groups inhabiting the country, as well as global peers.
In the center of the Baiterak tower’s golden ball, there is a small monument beloved of the locals for wishing. As I place my hand into the recessed gold palm-print of President Nazarbayev in the bronze, pedestaled book, I think back to the Words of Abai Qunanbaiuly (Kazakh poet & philosopher, 1845-1904) “The world is an ocean, time is a breath of wind, early waves are elder brothers, and late waves are younger brothers. Generation succeeds generation, even though things seem immutable in their quietude.” (37-17) The quietude is gone. Progress is at hand- carefully curated, ambitious progress. My hope is that this emerging host country of peace talks for the middle east will make good on its promises to its citizens and to the region.
Published in the Sierra Vista Herald on August 12, 2018.
Thompson, Virginia P. “Cochise College professor explores Kazakhstan’s wonders.” Sierra Vista Herald [Sierra Vista] August 2018. A010.Print.
https://www.myheraldreview.com/news/classroom/cochise-college-professor-explores-kazahkstan-s-wonders/article_9f0a9fd2-9618-11e8-b413-cb1e3dd7ace9.html#utm_campaign=blox&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]