happy 4th!

Yesterday the Republic of Kazakhstan celebrated its 17th birthday, making it finally legal to view R-rated movies without Russia’s approval, but not quite to the age to drink alcohol or vote in an election. Its pubescent years have been good, as Kazakhstan has experienced a boost in its economy due to foreign investment and development of oil and gas reserves, as well as vast territories of wheat production. Naturally, the country also has difficulties and obstacles in the path to developing an up-to-date transportation infrastructure and corruption-free government, but progress is always slow. Kazakhstan’s Independence Day marks a break from the official ties to the Soviet Union, and is therefore a fairly Kazakh-ethnocentric holiday. Despite K-Zed’s status as a minor, we celebrated her birthday with bottles of vodka, tables of food, and the presence of good friends.

Three Kaz-20 volunteers from the oblast south of ours came to Petro to utilize the two-day holiday from work and to explore a new city. One new Petro PCV tagged along, as well as our new “Northernmost PCV in the World” from Bulaevo. Braving the -18C weather, we took a two-hour walking tour of the city to show the newbies all that this great city has to offer. We left the house at about 1pm, while the sun was at its peak, barely breaching the top of the nine-story buildings. After the 22nd the days will start getting longer, but for now it’s just dark. We walked along Constitution Street to the new park, admired the war memorials and statues of Pushkin, Abai, and Lenin, visited the public library to see the American Corner, took pictures of the big New Year’s tree in the main square and the dancing troupe of Father Frosts. We drank coffee and talked about life in KZ, life back home, music, movies, books… I wanted to introduce them to my host mom, so our group of 6 crowded into my small apartment to introduce ourselves to the coolest host mama in town. Somehow, though I never warned her, she knew we would stop by and had prepared an impromptu mini-feast to celebrate the holiday. We said our toasts, ate a cabbage-chicken casserole, and laughed at each other and ourselves. It was good. We moved the party to PCV HQ (aka Mike’s place) in order to make some noise and bother some neighbors who obviously weren’t as excited as we were about the birthday celebrations. Mama Natasha tagged along, saying that someone needed to teach us how to correctly host a party. She made a salad, boiled some potatoes with onions, and whipped up some bread/ketchup/mayo/crab/cheese hors d’oeuvres. Only in KZ…

After an hour or three of singing and laughing, playing on GoogleEarth and YouTube, I went to the little shop downstairs for some refills on snacks and drinks. I greeted the middle-aged woman at the counter and the two older gentlemen loitering near the gum rack, cheerfully saying “S Praznikom!” “Happy Holidays!” All day this wonderfully generic greeting which literally translates as “with holiday” had gotten me smiles and reciprocated well wishes. However, in this instance it was replied to with:
“S kakim?” With what holiday?
“S dnyom nezavisimosti, konesho.” Well, with Independence Day, of course.
“Nezavisimost ot kovo?” Independence from whom?
“Ot sovietskovo so...” From the Soviet U…

This is where it dawns on me that the three obviously Russian people whom I had greeted so warmly obviously didn’t share the same enthusiasm for a holiday which in their eyes must seem like a bragging, banner-waving spectacle in the face of ethnic Russians everywhere. I checked my smiling eyes and mouth and made my purchase in a more solemn manner.

I said my goodbyes and left, thinking that it must be hard for some parents to let go of their kids as they grow older. It seems to me that when a child is young, the parent is mainly just worried about the kid making right decisions and becoming successful. But at some point the reason for that difficulty in transitioning shifts from worry about the child to regret of the loss of power and authority over that child, a feeling of being left out of that child’s decisions as they grow into their own personal identity. Just a thought. Growing pains, I guess.