Tea and Milk

For as much as I've been talking about this at work, I probably should have made a note earlier on the blog. While I was in Aktobe, I had an interesting experience regarding drinking tea with milk.

When I was in Macedonia, community and friendships revolved around coffee -- Turkish coffee in the villages and espressos in the cities. I thought that was a near-universal aspect of life outside the US, so I tried to build up my tolerance for caffeine before leaving Washington DC for Kazakhstan. I was a bit surprised to learn that it's tea culture in Central Asia, black tea or green tea are commonly offered at meetings and as part of lunch deals at restaurants.

I'm not a fan of the flavor of tea, especially green tea which seems more bitter. Black tea is fine with a few cubes of sugar. It would probably be a bit embarrassing to put as many sugar cubes into green tea as I would need to make it drinkable. However, I've learned that adding milk to tea can create a nice taste, so I occasionally ask for that when I'm offered tea.

During one of our meetings in Aktobe, we were offered tea and graciously accepted. One of the ladies in the office prepared two cups for my colleague, Elvira, and me. Elvira took the first cup, and I took the second. Both had milk, so I didn't think anything of it. Just as I was about to take my first sip of the tea, the woman who had prepared the tea reacted like she realized that she had accidentally poisoned me. I was about to drink green tea with milk.

The woman was clearly embarrassed and troubled by the fact that she had mistakenly offered me such a foul concoction, but I certainly didn't know any different. I told her it was no problem, and I drank it anyway. I thought it was pretty good, actually. Almost a reason to drink green tea.

Afterwards, I was curious to know what the big deal was. People put milk in tea all the time. Elvira said that green tea is only for people who are dieting. I hadn't heard that before, but it also didn't seem to account for the woman's reaction when she realized that I was about to drink it.

Back at the office, I asked some of my local friends. When I asked if they had ever tried green tea with milk, they all gave a face like it was something that wouldn't taste good at all and said that they just don't go together. Of course, they hadn't tried it, so they didn't really know what it tastes like.

One of my friends gave me a more thorough and reasonable explanation (though she had never tried green tea with milk either). She said that black tea leaves and green tea leaves are prepared differently. Black tea is roasted, and green tea is dried. Because of these different preparation methods, milk sours when added to green tea.

Of course, since no one had actually tried green tea with milk in it, one could think that these explanations are just rationalizations for a cultural belief that no one really understands. One of my goals now is to get one of my local friends to try green tea with milk and see what they say.

Opening of Cinnabon in Almaty

Being new to working in the foreign service, we are encouraged to do short-term assignments with other departments and other foreign service agencies. In Almaty, we're fortunate to have an office of the Foreign Commercial Service (FCS), and I thought it would be interesting to do a "TDY" (temporary duty) with them.

Their office has a small staff, one American Commercial Officer and several local hires, and they work with American companies that might be interested to work in Kazakhstan.

I had heard that we might be getting a Hardee's (not sure if that's happening or not anymore), and as it got closer to when my assignment with FCS would begin, I found out that Cinnabon would be opening in one of the big malls here. I helped the Commercial Officer with a speech for the opening, and she invited me to come along (which was my plan all along).

I was a little surprised by the reaction from my American co-workers and some of my DLI colleagues around the world. I know Cinnabon is good, but I had no idea of the love people had for it. One of my colleagues in Indonesia said she would trade the hundreds of Dunkin Donuts locations there for one Cinnabon. As it turns out, Cinnabon gets its cinnamon from Indonesia, so I'm sure they must have at least one.

We met with managers of the company that bought the franchise, and I heard about other chains they have brought to Kazakhstan and others they are planning to open. The worlds of development and business are quite different, and it was nice to get back into the business side and hear about the practical issues of operating chains in developing countries. It's this kind of interaction that will help later when I'm working on AID projects to improve the business environment for just these kinds of businesses.

Presidential Election in Kazakhstan

Last weekend, Kazakhstan held an election for president, and I was able to participate as an international observer. Having worked as a poll clerk back in 2004, I was interested to see how elections were run here. In addition, the reports we would make would inform media statements by the chargé (the head of the mission while the ambassador position is being filled) about the fairness of the election.

The job on election day was simply to observe the process of voting and counting to make sure that the steps were followed correctly and there was no funny business. I'm happy (and a bit sad) to say that everything I saw that day was entirely legitimate. No jamming of bunches of votes into the ballot boxes. Nobody voting for other people. The count reported to the district was the number we all counted with the poll committee.

One of the things I enjoyed about observing was the opening ceremony. At the opening of the polls, the national anthem was played, and four people were brought in to cast the first votes of the day. One was an elderly woman who was recognized as a "veteran of labor". There is still a bit of reverence for old folks and the service they did during Soviet times. Another was an 18-year-old first-time voter. Everyone clapped when they dropped their ballots into the box.

In all, my counterpart (a woman from the office who was translator and explainer) and I observed voting at 8 different locations. At one, a woman gave a mild complaint that there was no music playing -- it should have been more lively, like a celebration, she said. At a couple of polling places, they did have music, and it did seem a bit more fun.

At the end of the day, we returned to the polling place where we watched the opening in order to observe the count. As this picture shows, it was done by hand. There were around 600 or so votes, so it took a little while to separate and count them all. There was a discussion over how to count votes where people crossed out three names and marked the fourth differently. It was clear that people were making a selection, but my understanding was that people were only to mark for one candidate. The committee staff and local observers talked about how they should resolve it and came to the conclusion that it would be OK to keep those votes and count them for the appropriate candidate. There was a more substantial discussion about the fact that one ballot was apparently missing.

At the beginning of the day, we watched the committee pull the ballot papers out of a locked safe and count them, so we all knew how many ballots were available at that precinct. The number I wrote down was 1277. At the end of the day, an observer from the Election Control Commission said she had written 1278 and grilled the precinct committee about where this other ballot was. The discussion kind of burned itself out, and I mentioned to one of the local observers that I had 1277 as the number. That was pretty much the end of it.

The day started at 5 am to get up in time to check in at the office and head out to a polling place for the opening of the safe at 6:30. The polling place where we observed the count closed on time, at a little after 8, but the count and preparing the official vote report took more than 3 hours. I got home at midnight. I think we need to work on a project to upgrade the system to electronic voting.