At 5 a.m. we disembarked from our Lufthansa flight to witness the spectacular view of the snow-capped Tian Shan Mountains. It was June 5, 1993, and we had just arrived in Kazakstan—a country that many of us had never heard of six months earlier. Several months before, National Geographic had published an article on this developing country called "Kazakstan: Facing the Nightmare" (Edwards 1993). It opened to a photo of a blind and disfigured boy affected at birth by the nuclear fallout from an old test site. Despite such negative publicity, I had already reached my decision: I would join the first group of American Peace Corps volunteers to set foot in this former Soviet republic.
First Impressions
After three months of intensive teacher training in the capital city of Almaty, 46 of us (including business volunteers) departed to different towns throughout Kazakstan—an area four times the size of Texas with 17 million inhabitants. While some volunteers took two-day train rides north to colder climates, four other Americans and I were assigned as English teachers to different schools in a town four hours away by car.
Taldykorgan—with 150,000 people—is an industrial hub surrounded by mountains and endless steppe where sheep, horses, and camels graze. Although the Cold War still lingered in the minds of the older generation and KGB officials suspiciously watched our every move, our arrival stirred up excitement and curiosity. Kids who didn't remember the old Communist days and received most of their impressions from TV viewed us favorably. And why shouldn't they? We represented the land of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Santa Barbara soap operas (extremely popular), fast cars, and famous basketball players.
Many children in this town had never met an American before, so we attracted a lot of attention and admiration, which included requests for autographs and bewildered stares on the streets. "Get ready to live your life in a fish bowl," a Peace Corps official told me when I accepted the position.
In addition to working at school, I began hosting a weekly TV program (lasting two years) teaching English to the community, further raising my visibility. Adding to the mystique: I hardly look like the typical American. My Asian heritage sometimes allowed me to blend in with the Kazaks, Tatars, Uigurs, Uzbeks, and other ethnic groups. The dead giveaway, however, was when I opened my mouth to speak heavily-accented Russian.
From day one, my background as a former editor at the Children's Television Workshop in New York helped me to capture the details and local color of the place that I was about to call home. (Later I extended my service beyond the usual two years.) Although I had no special qualifications as a teacher, as some of the others in my group who were certified with education degrees did, I had volunteered extensively as a private English tutor to Japanese adults. No prior experience of mine, however, prepared me for the number of times that I would be asked to sing.
The first request came when our group of American teachers was invited to meet with officials from the regional department of education. As we sat around a conference table and spoke about ourselves, the director suggested that we sing something in English. A roomful of Russians and Kazaks, who have a long history of beautiful ballads about loves lost and hardships overcome, waited in anticipation. The five of us—George, Kellie, Jeannine, Diane, and myself—looked at one another, wondering what to do. The best that we could come up with was "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain." After a cheering round of applause, I was consoled by the fact that most of the people in that room didn't understand a word of what we sang.
Life at School
Chokan Valikhanov, named after a Kazak writer and scientist, is a secondary school with 900 students in "forms" (the British term for grades) 1-11. (The 11th grade is the top grade in the basic education system.) The students were of Russian, Kazak, Korean, and German heritage. They attended classes six days a week, including Saturdays, in two shifts. Older students attended the morning classes while the youngest showed up for the afternoon shift.
Upon approaching the school, we couldn't miss the authentic Soviet MiG fighter plane placed on a concrete platform in the middle of the playground in memory of the soldiers killed in the Afghanistan War. Donated to the school several years earlier, the relic suffered from the wear of kids climbing on it, usually boys who sat in the cockpit and pretended to be fighter pilots. I often feared for the safety of those kids on their unusual "jungle gym."
Inside the English classrooms, the walls were bare except for handwritten signs of verb tenses. When Smithsonian magazine (Watson 1994) sent a reporter to our town as part of its coverage of the new Peace Corps program, the writer toured my school and was struck by the Sovietism. For example, one classroom sign stated, "A Foreign Language Is the Weapon in the Life Struggle," a quote attributed to Karl Marx. The textbooks reinforced the slanted Cold War philosophy. Directly out of English 10 (Starkov and Ostrovsky 1990), I found uncomplimentary passages on American life: When Maxim Gorky visited New York in 1906, he called it the City of the Yellow Devil. The Yellow Devil, the power of money, enslaves the people of America today as it did in Gorky's time.
Another passage reads: While millions and millions of dollars are spent on military needs, there is no money for public services, for housing. Many apartments in New York are old, and the rooms are small and dark. In summer, these houses are very hot; in winter, they are often cold. Living conditions in such apartments are very bad. There is no place for children to play.Having just moved from New York, I felt a little defensive. The teachers, however, understood that the book portrayed a less than accurate picture but they were faced with a larger problem: no money to buy quality English textbooks. As a result, they adapted these books to fit the grade level and used them every year in their curriculum.
I politely declined the use of their materials; instead, I introduced some of my own resources, which I readily shared: Sesame Street and National Geographic magazines, Norman Rockwell pictures, and World Bank donations (dictionaries, atlases, short stories, textbooks, and classic novels).
Not surprisingly, I learned much from interactions with my students—3rd and 7th to 11th graders. For example, I could never get used to the students all standing up as I entered the classroom—something that they did for all teachers as a sign of respect. And they may not have gotten used to my casual approach, sometimes sitting on my desk and rearranging the tables so that we faced each other.
I knew I had my work cut out for me from the first day, when I greeted my students with a cheerful, "How are you?" and they answered back, "Today's date is. . . ." Even the brightest students displayed limited English-speaking abilities. Accustomed to a system of rote memorization, translation, and recitation, any of them could repeat the words to the Beatles' song, "Yesterday" (a big hit among English teachers and students), but they did not fully understand what they were singing about.
To encourage my students to think independently, I often posed interview questions. In one session, I asked the 10th graders, "Whom do you admire most in the world?" Answers revealed a lot about the students and varied from the typical, "Arnold Schwarzeneger," "my mother," and "Michael Jordan," to the more unusual, "the Soviet people who were killed in the Afghanistan War," and "Saddam Hussein and God."
I learned other things about my students as well, such as the acceptance of "sharing" answers. In the first year, I had difficulty with the whispering and shouting of answers among students, which to my mind bordered on cheating. Identical answers on assignments occurred too often to be just a coincidence. At first, I wondered if this took place only in my classes, but I also noticed this behavior with other teachers—not just with the lenient American.
I soon discovered an unwritten code dictated by the culture—smarter kids were required to help struggling classmates. It made no difference whether the student asking for help really didn't know the answer or simply was too lazy to research the question. One of my 9th graders, Nadia, a very bright student, never hesitated when others asked for her notebook so they could copy her answers. In the second year, I realized that I wouldn't be able to change their ways. I allowed them to freely exchange answers—but only during regular class time. During tests, I pushed the students farther apart and kept a watchful eye on them.
Hard Work and Discipline
One of my most vivid memories of student life occurred regularly: Kids attended school on certain days with plastic buckets and rags to clean the school stairways, windows, and floors. Surprisingly, they worked with few complaints. A local English teacher, Natalya Petrovna, said that all students were required to help keep the school clean—even 1st graders devoted one hour a week to labor, while 2nd and 3rd graders contributed two hours. The number of hours assigned to cleaning increased with the grade level. In this way, local colleagues told me that they could effectively teach the value of hard work and team effort. As a result, my older students sometimes missed their lessons because of cleaning chores.
There were other ways to enforce the hard work ethic. For example, the school canceled classes every autumn for several days, so that the students could help the collective farmers gather their harvest before the first frost. Sometimes, students were allowed to bring home tomatoes to their families as a reward. In the spring, a larger project took them out of classes at the end of each week to clean not only the school grounds but also the neighborhoods around the school.
A strict dress code became another way to enforce discipline. Younger students wore uniforms—dark dresses with white-laced aprons and stockings for the girls; dark suits and white button-down shirts for the boys. This tradition, now phased out by many schools, dated to the Soviet era when uniforms promoted fair treatment of each person, as no one could distinguish who was poor or wealthy. One disadvantage: Many shops no longer stock the uniforms. In addition, parents complained that the garments were too time-consuming to clean and were uncomfortable to wear. At our school, more kids arrived in casual attire, although the director still prohibited jewelry and nail polish. As I walked in the hall, it wasn't uncommon for me to hear the director berating poorly dressed students.
Travelers' Travails
I learned a lot from the Kazakstani teachers, too. They always wanted to know how much their colleagues in America earned. I responded that some U.S. teachers receive a starting salary of about $20,000. This answer always raised eyebrows and caused a furor, because the average teacher in Kazakstan only earns $50 a month. When I tried to explain that American salaries also come with increased debts such as car, mortgage, and health insurance payments as well as student loans, taxes, and high rent—that part fell on deaf ears. They only remembered the $20,000.
It's no secret that the country has undergone severe turmoil as it has moved to a free-market economy. Because of the insignificant rise in wages to compensate for inflation, many teachers' living standards have shrunk dramatically. As a result, many professionals are forced to go into the trading business, buying Chinese and Russian goods in bulk to sell at the local markets. Larissa Victorovna, an English teacher from my school, moonlighted as a sneaker merchant. Bella Romonovna, another English teacher who reminded me of my mother, often appeared at our neighborhood minibazaar, selling watermelons from her summer garden.
Almost everyone I met, in fact, survived shortages by growing their own produce at dachas and spending long hours canning for the winter months. Teachers' salaries were often three or more months late, which contributed to the chaos. Many workers in town sometimes even received their salaries in bartered goods, such as sacks of third-rate flour, crates of eggs, or a truckload of coal, which they then had to sell for money.
Although Kazakstan is known for its former nuclear testing and the radiation aftermath, I rarely heard Kazakstanis discussing these issues. They were too busy earning money to buy food, feeding their families, and caring for sick relatives. I was amazed by the strength I saw in these people, who sometimes even laughed about their problems and their uncertain future. I developed many strong ties throughout the community—not only with teachers but also with neighbors who invited me in for borscht and hot tea.
We were brought closer because I shared many of their experiences: lighting candles during power outages, heating water on the stove for a hot bath, standing in outdoor bread lines in freezing temperatures, shopping in food stores with few products except for plentiful sheep's heads (a Kazak delicacy), hand washing clothes in the bathtub. Sure, I commiserated with them, but they sometimes also wistfully pointed out one major difference: "For you, it's temporary, and you will go back to America. For us, we have nowhere to go—this is our life."
Final Reflections
Although many Kazakstanis could never understand why I left a comfortable American life to live with them doing unpaid work for three years, some understood the nonmonetary rewards. For one, I met my husband-to-be, Tahir. For another, I developed lifelong friendships with several people with whom I continue to correspond. Unfortunately, the country's situation remains bleak—but I also sense their hope for better times. One 7th and 8th grade English teacher, Irina Yurivna, recently wrote: Crazy things are happening in our country. Our educational system has great changes. A lot of teachers were fired, because many schools closed, and classes were combined. I feel depressed about it but my friends say that I have nothing to worry about, because many parents are looking for private English tutors for their kids.
Maira Rakmetovna, director of the English department at the town's pedagogical university, recently shared her thoughts, too: I'm sorry that I didn't write sooner but the fact of the matter is that our life is awful now, and we have a lot of troubles. It is already winter, but we have no heating or electricity. As a result, it is very cold at home and at the university. In addition, we have no salaries. But in spite of all this, we work. I think you will understand us.
Despite the hardships, the times I spent in Kazakstan were also filled with fond moments. I taught many of my students and other teachers how to prepare pizza and carrot cake. In exchange, they offered their recipes for beet salad with pickled herring (shoo-ba) and fried potato pies (pe-rosh-kees).
We always celebrated teachers' birthdays together at one another's homes, singing Russian and American songs, sipping homemade rose and apple wine, and laughing over anecdotes. They were amazed that I was 30 years old and not yet married. I was amazed by the Kazakstanis who were not yet 18 and already married with a child. Still, we were two cultures joined by a common cause: promoting the educational welfare of students and teachers.
