To me, one of the strangest facets of the Kazakh culture is the homogeneity, and the willingness to make general statements on behalf of all Kazakhs. At least, I’ve met more people here with such a willingness than I have in America. I hear things said I know are false because I’ve seen and heard the opposite for myself. “Kazakhs don’t eat breakfast.” “No one will understand you if you use the Kazakh word /tosap/ for ‘jam’; everyone uses the Russian /varennyi/.” Now, these statements run contrary to what I saw in my first village, even if the trend here in Arys is to not even drinking tea in the mornings and few townspeople know the Kazakh for ‘jam.’

But beyond that, my ears find it odd to hear such blanket statements on unprovable claims outside of a political campaign. Why? What’s the point in saying ‘no one’ and ‘never’ when ‘few’ and ‘rarely’ will suffice? Is this just a rounding up to the nearest whole number, from 90% to all. [Maybe this is the same logical math that’s used to equate a pair of 40 minute classes are supposed to equal 2 hours of instructional time, according to some grand, arching yearly lesson plan that I disdainfully disregard. 80. 120. Not the same thing no matter how many times I’m told they are.]? And in return, in speech, I try to avoid saying generalities about life in America; there’s hardly a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ unless I’m asked if something exists. I can’t answer simple questions—what’s the most beautiful city in America—without qualifications: I’d say Chicago, but that’s just because I like it so; many would disagree with me, and there are plenty of cities I haven’t seen. And I don’t understand how I can be asked to compare the weather of an entire country to the weather of a town. If I lived in Nauru, perhaps, but these questions refer to a country that is, in the language of the Soviet textbooks, washed by two great oceans. Winters are colder in Chicago, in the north, and warmer in Louisiana, in the south; there’s much snow in the first place and almost none in the second.

The logic of many commercial dealings also escapes me: either I don’t understand the economics here, or the locals don’t. During the summer, the drive into Almaty is a row, stretching for several kilometers, of watermelon sellers, uninterrupted by apples or bread or any other foods (admittedly, it’s occasionally punctuated with dark car liquids in reused Coca-Cola and mineral water bottles). I always passed them going pretty fast, but it didn’t seem that many people stopped. Here in Arys, the blocks surrounding the bazaar mostly form a ring of /magazines/, small stores. These are the places you go for eggs, butter, most canned and packaged goods, and drinks. They differ some in size and quality—the best have the German Kindeeier, the mediocre have Snickers, and the lower ones offer Turkish rip-offs of American chocolates as the best choice—but not in general selection. One next to the other next to the third next to the fourth. . . . Rarely do I go into a store or walk by and see more than one other customer already in it; often, only the shopkeeper is there. Why are there so many, how are they not all in business, why don’t they consolidate ala Wal-Mart, why isn’t there a more diversified selection?

Not all the stores are so clustered. There’s one of these small food stores near most apartment buildings, and on the more major streets near a neighborhood of houses: essentially, at rational and convenient places. Shoe repair stores are also decently well spread out across town, but they don’t count because they don’t exist [This conclusion is the result of careful calculations, double- and triple- checked, that estimated the number of shoe repair stores in any country in which I have ever lived as 0. The calculation is based, for starters, on population and the number of times a year an average person goes to a shoe repair shop. According to the environmental chemistry text Consider a Spherical Cow, I am an average person, and there are no shoe repair stores.]

But as for why everyone’s selling the same, perhaps the customers don’t have an apathy (and pocketbook)-conquering desire for variety, and it’s simply the cheapest to stock. There are only a handful of dominant couch patterns: green, red, plaid, and leopard stripe. The last is what we have in my teacher’s lounge, and was at a very conservative Turkish grandmother’s house. I haven’t tried to mention it, but I still think, every time I see one of these, ‘pimping couch’ (Unfortunately, although I know the correct Russian noun, I don’t know how to create Russian adjectives. Partial knowledge courtesy of Lonely Planet: Central Asia’s ‘Guide to People You Meet on the Street). Rugs come in varied patterns, and that’s nearly the end of interior decoration. Depending on the family’s wealth, there’s probably some cut-glass crystal in a cabinet. But there’s not the amount of decoration or just stuff that there is in America: no pairs of glass-fronted bookshelves topped with 3-D puzzles of famous buildings, no selection of antebellum antiques or modern Disney figurines, no wall with years of family portraits or decades of cross-stitched pictures. Maybe it’s kitch, but it’s a kitch that says something about the people who live there. Here, it’s rugs, couch, table, TV, cassette player, picture of Mecca, photo of the grandparents, possible homage to the father or oldest son, done. Houses don’t particularly look alike, but what’s in them is so much the same. Home as a well-decorated castle doesn’t seem to be a particular value in this community.

As a warm-up to a discussion of community traditions, I asked a class of 10th graders what music they liked. They listened to Eminem, Brittney Spears, Shakira, and a few artists I did not recognize, like the winner of SuperStar KZ (think: ‘American Idol’). But, they all listened to the same musicians. I had hoped and thought to begin the class by noting that often, friends share similar tastes in music, and this forms part of their identity and is what attracts them to each other. I suppose having them all agree was quite illustrative, but it didn’t divide the class into any groups as I suspect it would have at an American high school. This, too, was a class of students during my practicum teaching in Issyk, a town with far more ethnic diversity and more different music at the bazaar than in Arys. Perhaps my ear just isn’t tuned to the differences within Kazakh and Turkish pop music, but as far as I can tell, it all sounds like the same genre to me, and what the children like to is the same as what the adults listen to; there’s no maturation of tastes away from the unbelievably cheesy, or and not much listening to the music of one’s youth (though is Soviet music missed?). This, at least, is what dominates in the villages; in the cities, there’s local punk and other options.

I think overall, Americans tend to take their leisure time more seriously than Kazakhs. For us, what someone does with his hours is a crafted part of his identity, and part of how he is assessed. Are you a triathlete; do you go camping in the Rockies; are you a swing dancer; is genealogy or quilting your pastime; or do you write musings on politics, Latin poetry, and chickens, and stick them online for people to read? Writing as much as I do is odd by local standards (oh, it’s uncommon in America, too), and I who can lug all my possessions on my back have more books than many Kazakh households if you don’t count the school textbooks, which the students must buy.

I hear people say that they don’t have free time for hobbies, but I think the truth is that most of the people I know spend their free time in the same pursuits. I’d like to know what people did before they had TV, and Spanish soaps to watch (the Turkish soap is better: more mafia, fewer forced liaisons). There is a movie channel, showing dubbed versions of everything from “The Cannonball Run” and “Pride and Prejudice” (the BBC miniseries) to “Home Alone 3” and “Power Rangers: The Movie.” Sundays are a Bollywood marathon on anther channel. A few men go hunting. In childhood, some people study dombra, or traditional dancing, but it seems casually, not with the devotion of someone who plays piano or dances ballet for years. Perhaps it’s more of an accomplishment, in the old high society sense of the word; at parties, the talented people are called on to perform. It’s at such parties and gatherings that middle-aged women in the village’s middle class are found. A lot of their free time goes over to being companionable, to the long evenings of guesting at a relative’s or a friend’s.

All this guesting is something that doesn’t require much additional investment, of money or time, beyond a slightly better spread of food on the table. It’s not the lightweight bike or backpacking tent, or the lessons and dancing shoes, and it’s also not a sense of self-improvement from the work spent relaxing or a result to show for all the time invested, like a mountain conquered or shelves of books read. Yes, there is production, the food should be good, but it also should be standard, with the pieces of what the table needs are already set by convention. The side-dishes, always salads, for a decked-out table are set by tradition. Think coleslaw, macaroni salad, or potato salad; not Caesar or chef’s. There’s much mayonnaise, and several different vegetables, some of which are boiled, and all of which are chopped in fairly particular fashions that still just results in cubes, but you must follow the proper slicing order in getting to that point. But there’s only about five or six different ones, and most parties feature the cabbage-cucumber salad and one or two of the others. That’s the amount by which things change. It’s in the nuts, the fresh and dried fruits, the candies and the cookies that most of the variety comes (though I don’t think the latter really matters, for the differences aren’t valued enough for each kind of cookie to have its own name. How odd to my ears).

And part of what I see as homogeneity is truly tradition in the Kazakh perspective. The traditional food is beshbarmak; pilau (plov) and manty (dumplings) are runners-up. At even the smallest celebration, you are almost guaranteed to see these foods, for rolling out the beshbarmak noodles is the equivalent of rolling out the red carpet. One day, I went guesting at three different homes within the same family, the grandparents’ house and the houses of two of their sons. Each family served beshbarmak. The men of these three families came with me and my host family as we visited these relatives in turn. I’m sure the hostesses knew their sisters-in-law and mother-in-law would also be preparing beshbarmak, but it’s what you do, so it’s what you do. It doesn’t even seem to be a competition to see who can make the best beshbarmak. And then at the third house, I was asked why I’m not eating much. Right. But perhaps I’ve over-exaggerated the homogeneity. This region serves its beshbarmak with a twist. After the meat and noodle dish has been served, bowls passed, full of the salty, fatty broth in which that main dish was boiled. Only here, the bowls are first half-filled with mare’s milk (a liquid fouler than bad vodka), and then topped off with the bouillon. If this does not sound unbelievably foul, then I’ve messed up the description. Admittedly, I haven’t tried it, since it’s a straight combination of two foods that I don’t eat. But I have smelled it and seen it and that’s enough for me. And if this does not sound like a challenged served on one of those survivalist reality shows, then my description has not done it justice.

And often then I’m asked the inexplicable:

“What is the American traditional food? What does your family serve when guests come?” I say that we have traditional foods for some of the holidays, turkey for Thanksgiving and black-eyed peas for New Year’s (well, peas, is the same word as beans), but not even all Americans have the same traditional holiday foods. And each family has some dishes which they pride themselves on doing well, and that’s what they’re likely to serve guests. And is it seasonable to grill outside, and was there a sale on pork tenderloins? And no, it’s probably not hamburgers or pizzas, though I do make an excellent whole-wheat crust.

Oh, and was I floored by a few students’ response to my Thanksgiving lesson. I had begun with the Pilgrims; moved on through other immigrant groups large and small, including the Irish and the Eritreans, and their reasons for coming; and ended with a pie chart showing the US’s racial breakdown. “So America is 83% American?” No. No, no, no, no, no. America is 100% American. Let me return to the theme that all of these people are equally American and that if you, my students, were to come to America and take citizenship, you too would be just as American as I am. And the people and traditions honored at our Cultural Diversity celebrations and International Heritage festivals and named months are all part of America. I think more students did understand what I was saying, but it wasn’t the 100% understanding for which I had hoped.

And unfortunately, I can’t make an analogy to Kazakhstan that will really stick. I can’t say that Kazakhstan has many ethnic groups, but all of you are Kazakhstani, because the only time I’ve heard the word ‘Kazakhstani’ come out of a local’s mouth was when he was repeating me. There isn’t a concept of this heterogenous Kazakhstani identity, or of a national identity where ‘national’ isn’t synonymous with ‘ethnic’. Right.