Week in Aktobe

In a couple of weeks, there will be an election for president of Kazakhstan, and there was a general call for help in pre-election monitoring. Elections in developing countries are usually pretty interesting, and I took the opportunity to participate in the monitoring and visit another city in Kazakhstan.

Aktobe is located in the northwest of Kazakhstan about 100 kilometers or so from the border with Russia. It's a pretty big city with 300,000 people and a lot of new construction going on. Oil and mining are big industries in Kazakhstan, and Aktobe is near where a lot of that activity takes place. China is also a big investor in the area, and my flight from Almaty had a number of Chinese passengers.

The picture here is of the akimat (the municipal authority) building. The flower decorations shown were put up in advance of a visit from the president of Kazakhstan. There was also a lot of cleaning up and re-painting of curbs to spruce up the city for the president.

Pre-election monitoring consists of meeting with local representatives of political parties, media, and civil society. I was glad to have the help of a colleague from our office in Astana to help because these meetings helped me realize how little Russian I know or how much I forgot since taking classes last year. I was able to understand some, but comprehension got harder the longer people talked and people talked for a long time.

Almaty looks and feels like any big city, but Aktobe felt more like a suburb. All the buildings seemed more spread out and not as tall as here in Almaty. I also thought it was interesting that Kazakh language seemed more common that Russian there. Given the proximity to Russia, I was surprised to see a lot of shops and buildings with signs only in Kazakh.

One thing that I liked a lot was the fact that there was almost no smog in Aktobe. All winter, around 10 am or so, a brown cloud engulfs Almaty -- a combination of smoke from coal-burning stoves for heat and all the traffic. The sky in Aktobe was very clear. I was also glad that the temperatures weren't bitter cold like would be common that far north at this time of year. It's been getting slightly warmer in Almaty -- almost Spring -- and Aktobe wasn't much colder.

Presentation at American Corner

This past week, I was in Aktobe, a city in the northwest of Kazakhstan to help with our pre-election monitoring, and I was asked to give a presentation at the American Corner there.

The American Corner is a small library (usually part of a larger library in the host city) that contains a lot books, movies, and other materials in English for anyone who is interested to learn or improve their English. When I was in Peace Corps, other volunteers often gave presentations on a variety of topics at the American Corners in Macedonia.

I was encouraged (strongly) to give some kind of presentation while I was in Aktobe, and had just a short time to prepare. The request came on Friday, and I was to give the presentation on Tuesday. In addition to the pre-election monitoring, I was also in Aktobe to speak with local entrepreneurs, business consultants, and government officials about an entrepreneurship program USAID conducted last year. Given that, I decided to talk about preparing a business plan, and I thought I had a pretty good presentation. However, the 8 high school kids that showed up weren't so interested. Fortunately, there was also a college student who will be attending a graduate program in the US soon who had some questions, so I could feel like I did something useful.