I decide to travel to Kazakhstan mainly because I am nearby.  Just across the border from Urumqi, China; and my Chinese visa running worryingly low on days.  I have to choose between trekking all the way back across the Middle Kingdom or taking the conveniently timed bus to Almaty.

On the bus to Almaty, my Russian is no more substantial than aydin, dva, tri, chytiri.  One, two, three, four.  I joke with our Chinese driver, but my only recourse to the questions of my Kazakh neighbors is to shrug and look perplexed.  At the border stop twelve hours later, I finally learn how to say “I don’t understand.”

“Я не понимаю.”

In Almaty.  A kind British Couchsurfer and his Kazakh girlfriend, Alyah, try to teach me the basics of navigating Kazakhstan.  Linguistically, I am still confused.  Culturally-minded, I write their tips in my journal and glance at them at every unsure moment.

1.  Family is the most important thing.
At a homestay near Almaty, the English-speaking mother of the family interprets as the children hit me with the standard barrage of questions.  What is your name?  Where are you from?  How long will you stay in Kazakhstan?  The father looks on, unimpressed.  As I hike to the nearby Russian Orthodox monastery, the family dog accompanies me.  I call him Dog, having been given no other name.  Only the eldest daughter remembers my name, and the younger two address me much the same as I address Dog.

2.  Who you know is more important than what you know.
My sixth day in Kazakhstan, and I’ve missed the government’s five day foreigner deadline to register and pay a traveler tax.  Alyah’s cousin’s friend’s aunt worked for the Immigration Bureau, and only just retired.  The five of us (Alyah, Cousin, Friend, Aunt, and I) take Cousin’s car to get me sorted out.  Five hours and three offices later, my paperwork is in order.  What about that tax?  I buy Alyah lunch as a small way of saying thanks.  I never do remember the rest of their names.

3. The Kazakh dream is to get rich, get married, have lots of children, and own a thousand sheep.
In Aralsk’s train station, a local kid becomes a local friend as we pass a phrasebook back and forth.  He seems as puzzled about why I’ve come to see the Aral Sea as I am about why he says he never wants to leave Aralsk.  One day soon, I am later told, the Aral Sea will come back to Aralsk harbor.  Then the fishing families will become rich again, providing fish to all of Asia like they did before the Sea retreated.  I never do see sheep in Aralsk, or many fish.  The kid must still be focusing on the first part of the dream, but I accept this prediction with more grains than even the supersalinated Aral Sea can provide.

Except for the sheep, in the end is this really any different than the American dream?

—

Later in Kazakhstan, a shittier situation. Probably the second-longest string of poo jokes I’ve ever made in my life.

Waiting outside of the Migration Police office in Almaty, when all of a sudden it hits me.  Well, not me, but the driver and the car that I was sitting in at the time.

I had neglected to register my foreign presence in Kazakhstan within the allotted time, and so my host’s girlfriend’s cousin’s friend’s aunt (who had just retired from the bureaucracy) offered to go with me to sort it all out.  Alyiah (Dan’s girlfriend) assured me that it would all work out and I would have no problem as I tried to leave the country.

As Alyiah and Aunt went into the Migration office the three of us sat waiting in the parking lot.  As cousin, friend, and I are listening to music in the car the parking spot next to us is vacant.  In slow motion (at least as I recall it) a car, a black sedan, pulls forward into the spot.

*POP*

In what I remember vividly as a beautiful arc, a brown stream flies out from under the car next door directly towards our parking space.  A coward in the face of so filthy an enemy, I duck behind the passenger door.  The driver (“Friend”), with his window down and door wide open, has nowhere to go.

Taking stock of the brown spots mottling the car, the door, his sweater, his hand.  Cousin’s friend looks at his hand.  Raises it to nose level.  Sniffs.  Eyes widen, nostrils flare, gagging.  I don’t remember it now, but I’m positive that at that moment I learned the Kazakh words for “Oh, shit.”

Finally the smell really strikes in force, and there is no mistaking it.  The three of us flee the car, laughing in a kind of shell-shocked disbelief.  The driver of the black sedan steps out, looks on in amazement, and hands us a pocket-sized package of tissues.  Then walks away.

I don’t speak any Russian at this point, much less Kazakh.  These guys speak a bit of English, but who learns the vocabulary for this scenario?  We laugh.  Wipe some of it off with pocket-sized Kleenex, and grimace.  Look at each other, and at his sweater, and can’t help but to go back to laughing.

Having cleaned as much as possible, we move the car.  The sweater is now in the trunk, but I think it is probably a lost cause.  As Alyiah and Aunt come out of the office, Cousin and Friend get out the story while I am still laughing.  All laugh, at what could easily be the close of some strange new sitcom.

Later I text Dan, and tell him the story and that I want to do something nice for Alyiah’s family to thank them for their help.

“Don’t understand about the poo.  Rank.  Will sort something out as a gift, but this happens all the time.”

I’m relieved to learn that he was referring to the helping hand for friends and family.  I was worried he was talking about the poo.