Kazakhstan

I finally saw Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and like everyone in the world I found it hilarious. But I had a particular interest in seeing this film:

I’m the only person I know who has actually been to Kazakhstan.

I spent a week there in the summer of 1993, on the heels of a month of study in Moscow. Dmitri, a good friend from Trent University, was from Kazakhstan, and invited me to stay with his family once my studies wrapped up. After my final essay, I boarded an Aeroflot jet and flew to Almaty (then called Alma-Ata) for an eye-opening week in a country most people had never heard of.

So, was it anything like Borat’s Kazakhstan? No, of course not, but it hardly matters, does it? Don’t worry, I’m not going to write an indignant defense of Kazakhstan, nor assault Sacha Baron Cohen’s artistic license. I won’t even review the film, because CBC.ca colleague Katrina Onstad has already written a stellar review.

But I think it might be worth seeing if my experience of the country sheds light on your experience of the movie. And it’s a chance to drag out some photos that predate my Flickr.

Geographically, the film depiction isn’t far off – the green hills backed by mountains you see in the film are actually Romania, but it’s fairly similar. Flying into Almaty reminded me a bit of flying into Calgary – a city of a little over 1 million, with mountains on one side, grasslands on the other (except that beyond the Almaty grasslands is a desert, and China.)

You’ll recall that the early 1990s were a rough time for most former Soviet republics. Kazakhstan got lucky – they had a stable government and a West-friendly president. And the nation is swimming in natural resources - more than 90 per cent of the elements on the periodic table can be found there. The big one is oil (not the “superior potassium” mentioned in the “national anthem” sung by Borat). Even in 1993 Almaty was crawling with Texas oil men.

In Borat, the Kazakhstani people are uniformly represented by backwards peasants, and while it makes for a good laugh, it won’t surprise you to learn it isn’t accurate. Ethnically, the population of about 15 million is split almost evenly between Caucasians (mostly Russian) and Kazakhs (more Asian in appearance.) Almaty is a rather exciting split of east meets west. [At left is a good example: a traditional “yurt” hut, which a family was living in while their new brick home was under construction. I was hoping for a yurt reference in the film, but alas.]

Kazakhstan also enjoys a 50-50 split of Christians and Muslims, and for the most part the different races and religions get along better than they do in the rest of the world.

There’s no “running of the Jew” – in fact, Judaism isn’t even on the radar – but there are some clashes between the two halves of the population. According to Dmitri, the real divide is between the urban and rural dwellers. The citizens of Almaty are more Russian and better educated, and some see the rural Kazakhs the way we see the Borat peasants. When said peasants come to town to party, there can be trouble (just before I arrived, Dmitri’s brother was badly hurt in such a scuffle.)

But for the most part, people of different backgrounds generally got along famously. Dmitri’s friends were a mixed bunch, but they immediately took me under their collective wing. Which was a little unnerving, because his little gang was involved in activities that appeared quasi-legal at best.

These were the first, heady days of post-Soviet, Wild West capitalism, and Dmitri’s friends were getting in on the action. They had somehow cornered the import market on Absolut Vodka, and distributed it to various kiosks, collecting what appeared to be protection money in return. I was taken to see other ventures that were of the “import/export” variety, but I never really figured out what was considered above board and what was below. I’m not sure the authorities were clear on those lines themselves.

Anyhow, you’d be hard pressed to find friendlier people than the Kazakhstanis. I had tea with their grandmothers, vodka and barbeque at their dachas (cottages up in the mountains, some of which I must admit looked like the hovels in Borat.)

The ride up to the dachas was something of a turning point in my life. Dmitri’s friends all drove Ladas, but in typical young man fashion, they raced the hell out of them. We’d be swerving the little deathtraps in and out of traffic like it was The Italian Job, Dmitri howling that we’d never catch his friend because he had the big new 1.4 litre engine to our 1.3 L. (It was a little like this.)

Then you get out of town into the mountains, and you start racing along cliff sides.

My turning point came about 10 seconds into the first race, when I realized the Ladas had no seatbelts. I kept fumbling for one, nails digging into the seat in front of me, mind racing through my options. Ask them to slow down? Driving off a cliff at 40 mph isn’t a big improvement on doing so at 70 mph. Stop the car? No, I’d only have to take a worse car back, or walk – and to be a pedestrian around these guys was even more dangerous.

And I was going to be here for a week, and there would never be a seatbelt. That’s when it dawned on me: I was either going to die, or I wasn’t. It was completely in God’s hands, and no amount of fretting was going to influence His decision. So I sat back to see which way He was leaning.

That moment has served me well later in life. There are times when things are out of your hands, and it’s OK to stop worrying. I now understand the phrase Insha’allah.

Anyhow, that was about the extent of my Cultural Learnings. It doesn’t really have much bearing on Borat, come to think of it. But I can enthusiastically say the people there aren’t anything like the incestuous, prostitute-loving goat herders in the film (and to be crass for a moment, the women don’t look much like the trolls Borat was married to, as you can see from this picture - that’s me on the right.)

Like much of the former Soviet Union, the people and the history and the geography are both inspiring and heartbreaking. I keep thinking that the Kazakhstanis I met would probably get a real kick out of their portrayal in Borat. We’ve heard the official reaction, but in truth the film is so ridiculous as to be non-threatening - nobody really thinks this is what Kazakhstan is like. Do they?

I wonder if there are a bunch of Dmitri types that have already watched it on some pirate DVD or download, and laughed even harded than I did. I bet there are.

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 11-19-2006 | 03:11 AM
Posted in: Blather