The long trek

It’s an hour each way. Or at least it used to be before we swapped drivers with Ali and Maribel. Now it’s about an hour and 15 minutes because the Colonel (ex-police) drives no faster than 90 km per hour. His driving was making Maribel carsick but it doesn’t bother us at all. And I like the Colonel’s Niva better than Nursultan’s Passat. No lingering cigarette smoke, bigger windows and better views so I can see the birds that are so plentiful here. There’s one kind called Saroka (my best guess at the Western spelling) and they’re my favorite. Medium sized black birds with white breasts and long black tail feathers that resemble partially folded ladies fans. When they fly alongside the car, you can see that their large wings unfurl from the top into pure white feathers that radiate out from each side with such harmonious elegance that the sight of them might have inspired Palladio himself. Along some stretches of the road, the winter branches are thick with what must be hundreds of their nests.

I asked Zac to make a drawing of one since we can’t seem to get a decent photo, but … well …

And what would you call it when you ask you spouse to do something that he can do better than you but then proceeds to get it all wrong? I mean, I don’t want to be a naggy old hen but what am I, made of stone?

One of the other treats along the drive is seeing horses in the fields. Kazaks are originally horse people, some of whom maintain their traditional nomadic lifestyles to this day. Horses were transportation, livelihoods, companions, and yes, even sustenance for traditional Kazaks so they hold a pretty special place in the culture here. Everybody in the cottage is looking forward to trying horse sausage, a traditional Kazak dish. Personally, I feel that it would be a sign of respect to my child’s ancestors and history to take advantage of anything I have the opportunity to experience of the culture. And anyway, considering the extruded pig snout and anus tubes that we’ve elevated to a cultural icon back home (Hot dog, how I miss thee!), I’m not so quick to hold my nose about anybody else’s cuisine. It’s not easy to find though, costly and reserved for special days. Maybe we’ll just have to settle for a platter of Five Fingers. That’s a meat and noodle dish that was traditionally eaten with the hands – five fingers. (For shame!)

The horses here look smaller and sort of tuftier than most horses you see back home. Maybe closer in size and build to Mustangs, though Kazak horses do seem to have bigger heads and I assume that their longer, thicker coats are more suited to the weather here. When we pass a horse farm just outside of Kokshetau, we often see them with their heads lowered to the turf, still as a collection of lawn ornaments scattered in the winter fields. We saw a Kazak cowboy there last week tending to his horse and he was wearing the most spectacular red velvet saddle. Er, the horse that is, not the cowboy though I’m sure he would have looked just fab in whatever he chose to don.

You can tell that our little niblet would be comfortable on a horse. In the music room where we have our visitations, there’s a hand-made rocking horse that would make child safety advocates back home hyperventilate. The minute we set Chloe on it (heavily supervised and supported, of course), she’s thrown her head back and is jiggling excitedly back and forth with a beatific look on her face. Genes will tell, and this girl definitely descends from people who were born on horses.