Adam Kesher has an article up about a meeting between the head of NurOtan, Zhumagulov and the Italian Ambassador to Kazakhstan (full article is here). While I have extremely strong opinions on this, and Mr. Kesher seems to share my concerns, that a political party leader is meeting with an ambassador! As of late NurOtan has been strengthening its position–and showing up in key locations including government meetings. Nor is this the first time NurOtan has met with with foreign parties. As I remember from Khabar broadcasts, NurOtan has a signed agreement with a party in Malaysia (a country much loved by the powers that be here) and in other nations.

As an American, this is very strange. It isn’t the role of a political party, as I understand it, to meet with officials from other governments or to try to gain an international role. The job of a political party is to get its candidates elected and push forth a platform of issues. Foreign connections do nothing to help with either of these functions.

I am curious, though, how Kazakhs feel about this. What does a political party do? What should a political party do? Does it bother you, or does it seem quite normal that a political party (any given party) should have foreign relations?

Apropos of nothing, I would like to note that while my comment form asks for an email address, it does not verify that address, so it is very easy to post anonymously by just putting in something like anau@minau.kz.

First, apologies for the lack of substantive posts. I’ve changed jobs recently and it’s been a bit hectic adjusting to a new environment. I swear I have all sorts of insightful things to say about Kazakhstan and tons of boomarked articles; just no time to write it all down.

Also, a few people got mistaken for spam by my spaminator: It thinks KazakTelecom and the iCard servers are bastions of spam apparently. I have now fixed that problem (with my spaminator–KazakTelecom is on its own) and you should be able to comment. So go crazy!

Today as I walked through the old square of Astana, I saw something going on at the Ministry of Education. Cars and trucks parked everywhere, hundreds of kids running around carrying boxes and Chinese bags, men and women standing over them barking orders. I asked one of the kids what was going on.

“The Ministry of Education is moving to the Left Bank,” he answered.
“Wow! They hired a lot of workers for that. When we moved offices, we did all the moving ourselves,” I said.
“What workers? We’re students. The rector of the university called off classes today and told us to come here and help them move,” he replied.

I’m not really sure that the government should be sending the message that students are slave labor. Or that students should be entrusted with government property–some of the kids had brought their own cars, meaning they were going to get in those cars and drive to the Left Bank with papers, supplies, maybe computers. What’s to stop them from just going home? Loyalty to the kind Ministry who gave them a day of hard labor?

Also, it seems odd that the Ministry can afford to move to a new building, but didn’t think to spend money on professional movers. Leaving aside that it looks very bad–could Borat have thought of anything more shameful–it also would have been a more organized move. As I watched, office workers were running around shouting, “Where’s my computer? Who has it? The black one? That goes to office 315.” People were writing their names on boxes, no doubt hoping there would be only one Aigul or Nurlan in the entire Ministry. The chaos was unimaginable as the whole courtyard in front of the Ministry was full of people running this way and that, boxes and bags stacked here and there, cars being driven in and out, around the mess.

Perhaps I should view it as a bit of a cultural experience. When I worked as a volunteer in a small African country, I remember attending a conference of teachers. Everyone was dressed in their suits for the conference and spoke very formal English. As soon as the conference ended, everyone took off their shirts in the heat, started up small fires in the school playground and started drinking beer and talking local slang. The simple villagers came out once work hours ended, and it was sort of delightful how these serious men started telling dirty jokes, and all the worries of the modern world fell away. It made me think that the Western world will never capture, colonize, destroy the spirit of these people.

Perhaps we should view these sorts of disorganization similairly. Reclaim the term “по Казакский”, doing things in the Kazakh way, which often means doing things incorrectly, not by the rules, but getting the job done anyway, often avoiding expense or unnecessary complications. Perhaps Kazakhs should be proud that even their Ministry does things по Казакский.

Following Snow Queen’s release, which is really some of the worst vodka I’ve ever had–straight, frozen, mixed in drinks, it is harsh and unpleasant, now there is Nureke vodka. The -eke ending is a Kazakh familiar ending, and the Nur can only come from Nursultan, given that the bottle is decorated with Ak Orda.* Of course it claims to be the most elite vodka ever. I’ll have to pick up a bottle and try it; expect a review in the next few weeks. At 700 tenge, it’s reasonably priced.

EDIT: I see as I google for more information that Adam Kesher is already on the story in his LiveJournal, with a picture.
Unfortunately I can’t seem to find any information on who makes it.

He also found it for cheaper, 650 tenge, so I’ll have to ask where he saw it.

*linguistic note for anyone who cares: Kazakh names are often made familiar by the attachment of -ke or -eke to the first syllable. So Nusultan, Nurken and Nurlan would all be Nureke. I gather doing this is roughly equivalent to calling someone brother. It’s familiar but also respectful in some way.

I thought I would have a chance to add valuable information to Leila’s article on Neweurasia, Kazakhstan: Money, Kidnapping, Money, Power, Money…, when I heard that Rakhat Aliyev was being sent to Vienna as Ambassador to Austria and to head all Kazakhstan offices there. He has been there before, 5 years ago, and we will note that the OSCE is based in Vienna. Leila’s article is a fascinating read about a confusing set of events surrounding Nurbank, a bank widely believed to be connected to the Nazarbayev family, including the alleged kidnapping of first deputy chairman of the board–twice! He accused Rakhat Aliyev, the son-in-law of the President.

So now we know why Mr. Aliyev is leaving. On a second read of the article, I see that Leila did predict this: (more…)

Irene has an interesting post up at Neweurasia on the number of bloggers in Kazakhstan: 3450 blogs registered in Kazakhstan. Compared to China, which has 19.87 million blogs(!), the number is very low, especially when you look at it per capita. 1 in 65 Chinese has a blog, but only about 1 in 4347 Kazakhstani is a registered blogger. The post then asks why Kazakhstan is so slow. It led me to thinking about the Internet and Kazakhstan. There is an assumption generally that new technology is good and that people will naturally incline towards use of new things, if any technical barriers are sufficiently reduced. So in the interests of making Kazakhstani computer-literate and Internet-savvy in general, the government is working on a program to provide cheap, high-speed Internet cafes throughout the country, as well as trainings. The theory is that Kazakhstan doesn’t use the Internet because it is expensive, not widely available, and because they don’t know how. Reduce those barriers and everyone will be jumping on a computer to use Wikipedia and start a blog! In turn this will help convert Kazakhstan to a knowledge-based economy and the money will start pouring in!

This begs the question of whether the Internet has anything to offer Kazakhstani. We assume that technology is good and everybody needs it. However there are features of Kazakhstan culture and social life that make me wonder if Internet usage will ever reach the levels of the US, for example. (more…)