23rd of October to 7th of November, 2022.
I have very mixed feelings about my volunteer work in Ozernoe. I supposed to help in the farm, at least that is what is saying in the profile, but perhaps because O. is busy with other things; because it is too cold; and because they need help in the kitchen of their hotel, I help in the kitchen.
Well, you can call it a hotel because they have rooms for renting and a sauna. Apparently, during summer, because of the Ozernoe lake just 3 minutes walking from here, they get really busy with people coming for fishing. Now, end of October, with temperatures very low and the wind cutting people alive, everything is dead.
Apart from a group of 15 workers who are repairing the water systems in the roads. Their company has arranged for them to have three meals a day here in the hotel. So that’s what I am doing: helping in the preparation of the food and washing the dishes.
A. is O.’s wife and she is very calm. They have a paid worker, N., who is always around, 24/7, which I think is quite sad. Doesn’t she have a house of her own to take care on the weekends? Or is it just from now, for the time when these workers are coming? Anyway, the three of us make a good team and everything is fine. A. has a small baby and she is gorgeous! But she loves to be hold so she can cry quite often. There is also a young girl, D., but she is very shy and bad behaved.
My room is very simple as well for the bathroom installations, but it is OK. I had worse. I guess I am still feeling a bit spoiled from Norway. The food is good, sometimes very tasty, but not the healthiest. They do a lot of fried things, which are delicious, but which we should avoid having it often. Their diet is basically based in carbohydrates and protein. They eat lots of meat, potatoes and pasta. They make soup quite often, but is only meat, potatoes and carrots most of the time. A. wants to eat more light and healthy food, but I guess it is too hard for her to manage that. Why? Well, she has to take care of everything in the house by herself, including the baby and her daughter. But also, because her husband always needs to have meat and heavy food, he doesn’t know different, so I guess she just don’t have the strength and the motivation to do it only for herself. One day she made a “smoothie plate” for the three of us, with kiwi, spinach, banana and nuts. It was delicious! But it was only that day.
I have trouble liking O. He is way too conservative and also sexist. I don’t understand how and why someone like that would use Workaway. He always insists that we should eat or drink more than we want, which is disrespectful. He doesn’t like to hear that I don’t want to get married or having children. And he treats A. as she was a thing. After they got married, he took away her freedom, and treated her very badly, given her a life she didn’t ask for, or was aware that it was coming. She tried to escape but by that time, she got pregnant, so she stayed. Poor girl.
I go for my walks around the lake. When it is a sunny day, the colours are beautiful! The golden yellow of the vegetation together with the different shades of blue from the sky and the lake. There is nothing around here. The villages are tiny and the houses look in very bad conditions.
My computer dies and when comes back to life, it disconnects me from all my accounts. And because I detached a phone number from my Gmail account, months ago, I cannot log in again. I had some important passwords in there, including my Covid-19 Status, which I suffered so much to gain. But mostly I lose access to almost all my contacts, all the people I have met in the past 5 years. When things like that happened, it makes you think what have you done to deserve something like that.
I spend all my free hours trying to fix this problem. Due to that, I almost do no writing at all or work on my personal things. The only thing I do is to find CS hosts in Almaty.
Another volunteer come, a lady from Bahrain. We will share the room. I think it is way too small to share with someone, but what to do. Az. is a good person, and it is nice that she is also travelling alone, but we are quite different.
Right after her, another couple arrives. O. is excited and I know that is because there is a guy coming. Perhaps he is gay and doesn’t know. Why else he would despite women so much and love to hang out with guys? Just joking. Anyway, when I first meet the couple, I have this strange feeling about them. Something is not right. He is from Iran and she was born in here but raised in Ukraine, although now they are living in the U.S. for many years. Before they arrived, O. was telling us that a couple from the U.S. was coming. I think that not even him knew they were not originally from U.S.
I will skip details about the problems we had with the couple. But basically, she did nothing for the 2 days they were staying, not even coming to eat with us. He told us she was sick. I think it is bullshit. He went to the far with O. and Az. for the two days. But after we all eat together, he would not help with the dishes, because A. told him not too. The reason? He is a man. Of course, I would not take that shit, and clean after him and his wife as I was their maid. I call him to talk about that, but he is an ogre, exchanges two words with me and try to leave. He is wrong about what he thinks I want to talk (his wife), who I don’t give a damn, but even when I tell him the real reason, he says they are leaving next day. Luckily, they do.
I understand cultures and their differences. I really do. After have being to so many of them. But when you open the doors of your house to international people, you must also respect them and their culture. Why should me and Az. do our 5 hours of work per day, plus 2 extra hours of washing the dishes, because the volunteer man cannot do it? Are you fucking kid me?
I have found 3 CS hosts in Almaty and they all look so nice. One of them even told me I could come earlier and live in his apartment, when I told him I was having trouble sleeping. That’s because Az. could not sleep for some reasons, so she would move, get up, make noises the whole night, so I was having a terrible time, sleeping only a few hours per night. And I love sleeping, it is a big part of my life and a very important too. Because of that and everything else, I decided to leave one week earlier than planned.
But there was also another reason. In the future, there is a chance I might need to cross Kazakhstan back again, in order to go to Azerbaijan and from there to Iran. Long story short: Turkmenistan is completely closed, so I cannot cross it to go to Iran. I actually had a horrible time making my travel plans. Horrible! And I thought I would be free of that once in Asia.
I get sick. After more than two years, two strong winters, hitchhiking under the snow and sleeping in a frozen tent, I get sick. I got it from Az. And everybody else in the house does too. Being from Bahrain, she was never before in a place under 0 Celsius degrees, so she didn’t take very well. Great! That was all I needed!
On my last day, A. gives me some Kazakh money. I try to refuse but because I couldn’t sleep at all on my last night, even though I was alone, because of my nose running like crazy, I decide to accept so I can buy some ginger and lemon for tea. She says it is their tradition for guests. I am not entire sure if it is true or if she was just trying to help me. I like her. She is very calm and patient. And I think she deserved a much better life. She was always making this delicious tea for us, with lemons, oranges, different herbs, ginger and honey.
O. drives me somewhere in the highway so I can hitchhike from there.
About the food in Kazakhstan… I have tried a lot of traditional Kazakh dishes. And I was happy to. But I only wish that they would appreciate the fact that, even though I am a vegetarian, I have tried all the meat dishes they prepared, because they were traditional. But instead of that, O. would always insist for me to eat more meat, and never showed one tiny sign of appreciation for my efforts.
Here is a list of the food I tried:
– Qurt (dry and salty cheese)
– Piroshki (fried cakes filled with potatoes, or cabbage and carrots, or meat)
– Bausark (fried cakes)
– Hvorusk (fried crispy cakes, spread with icing sugar)
– Shelpek (flat bread)
– Zhent (wheat and sugar bites)
– Irimshik (sweet brownish cheese)
– Polov / Pilaf (traditional rice)
– Manti (similar to Georgia Khingali, boiled dumplings filled with minced meat)
– Kaymak (dairy product, similar to sour cream)
– Fried Pastry with meat
– Beshbarmak (horse meat, fried potatoes and a flat dough underneath, it means five fingers, meaning you have to eat with your hands)
– Samsa (baked pastry filled with meat)
10 Years Around the World 