Footloose Scot

by Jim Glendinning

  My next stop was a fancy restaurant serving American breakfasts. Here I would order a plate of eggs and bacon with coffee and watch CNN on a TV mounted on the wall. After three months of local food, including horse meat, and simple village life this was pure indulgence which I didn't feel at all guilty about. Now I was ready to visit the Peace Corps office.

  Peace Corps Kazakhstan was a sizeable and well-run operation. They occupied two new buildings not far from the city center which included offices, meeting rooms, a doctor's office and a lounge for volunteers. Security was tight; all vehicles arriving in the compound were inspected for bombs. The English-speaking Kazakh staff, including a full-time doctor, were well able to cope with the 170 Peace Corps volunteers in Kazakhstan. The country head, Kris Besch, a conscientious and popular woman, had been a volunteer in Africa. Unlike in Russia, from where Peace Corps had been exiled the previous year, Peace Corps in Kazakhstan was welcome by the government. Besch really cared for the Kazakh people and also ran an efficient operation.

  We met the American ambassador a couple of times. I surprised him by telling him I had already heard him talk in Alpine, Texas. He had given a talk about Kazakhstan at Sul Ross University, and I had attended with a handful of others. He was an unassuming man, fluent in Russian, a diplomat of the old school. Part of his job was the difficult task of trying to move Kazakhstan towards democracy. President Nazarbaev paid lip service to the need for democratic change while stifling opposition and continuing to rule the country virtually as a dictator.

  After we had been in Kazakhstan for six months, a new American ambassador was appointed. He came to Shymkent, the closest major town to Zhabagly, to open a library with computer access, financed by the USA. He was of a different mould than the outgoing ambassador, younger and more direct in his style. Local Peace Corps volunteers were invited together with some other American expatriates to a meeting with the new ambassador in a Shymkent hotel. He asked us what impressions the people we came into contact with had of the USA. I told him that in my village, the USA had scarcely any image. Most people were just struggling to get by. An old man in our village, spotting me, seemed to be making disparaging remarks about President Bush, whom he pronounced "Boosh," and Iraq, but that was about the extent of the political comment. Volunteers from the city reported much more active opinions about the USA, usually favorable.

  What every volunteer relished was being invited to stay in a comfortable Western-style house with some good meals. After my talk in Almaty to the wives of diplomats and businessmen, I had met a British oil executive who worked for Exxon and his wife. They decided to visit Zahabagly with their family and I accompanied them to the famous mosque. Later they invited me to stay in their house in Almaty.

  To this sort of well-paid executive volunteers are a strange breed quite unlike their normal business acquaintances, and a volunteer is a novelty and a curiosity. These generous people invited me to their house in Almaty and fed me many fine meals. I later met them in England and gave them some riding tack which I had obtained for use by "Wild Nature" and which they brought to Kazakhstan as part of their baggage allowance.

  The long hot days of summer passed quickly enough. My time was divided between occasional guiding trips with visiting tourists, working on a business plan for Wild Nature and participating on training programs in the village on a variety of self-help projects put on by non-governmental organizations based in Kazakhstan. When there was nothing happening I took off, sometimes with the British volunteer, and hiked into the mountains, sometimes also sleeping out overnight on the grass with a fire burning close by. I also took regular trips to Shymkent and Taraz, the neighboring towns, to visit other Peace Corps volunteers and have a meal.

  One additional duty I was asked to do was to teach English to the village kids. Three times a week I would meet with my class in one of the houses which catered to tourists. I would sit on the floor at a low table with perhaps five or six ten to twelve-year olds, usually girls. The girls were much more vivacious and interested in learning than the boys. We followed a grammar book and sometimes played Scrabble. It was interesting that they would offer Scrabble letters to the others round the table so they could complete a word. There was little sense of competition. It was sad to think that these vibrant laughing youngsters would soon be caught up in marriage and housekeeping chores as likely as not with some dull fellow whose main chance of a job was digging ditches or tending livestock.

  A Peace Corps volunteer in a nearby village was exclusively a teacher, not a part timer like me. He was gifted at his job, and popular. What disturbed him was that, after only a week at his school, the principal called him into his office and told him that he should, when grading his students, use a pencil. It didn't take long for the volunteer to work out that the principal would likely alter certain grades depending on the political importance of the student's family.

  I took a trip with a Peace Corps staff member to a village near Astana, the new capital.

  The village was on the steppe land of north Kazakhstan. The adjacent area comprised 980 square miles of lakes and marshes that were on two major bird migratory routes. It was a nesting site for Central Asian water fowl, most famously for 5,000 pink flamingoes for which this is their most northerly habitat. It sounded like a good site for an eco tourism business.

  At this time, however, it was January and everywhere was icebound, and the temperature way below freezing. With the Peace Corps staff member I walked around town, visiting the house where I would probably stay if my placement materialized. When he pointed out that an icicle was growing from my nose, we decided to get indoors fast.

  The other reason for starting a tourism venture there was its proximity to Astana, the new capital. It was likely to attract visitors expatriates and tourists in Astana much the same way as Zhabagly got visitors from Almaty. Astana was an amazing work in progress. Nazarbaev had personally decided that Kazakhstan's new capital should be more in the center of the country, unlike Almaty which was in the southeast corner, and had picked the site. The city was brand new.

  Government departments were ordered to plan to move there, and pressure was put on foreign embassies to do the same. Later foreign airlines would revise their schedules to fly into Astana. First the city had to be built. Here is where Nazarbaev used his dictatorial power and huge reserves from oil and gas revenue to transform a stretch of flat steppe near the Russian border into a brand new city with avant garde buildings designed by the world's best known architects.

  The best known and most appealing is the 318-foot Baiterek (Baiterek means tall poplar in Kazakh) tower, a structure of white painted steel surmounted by a gold-tinted sphere on the top. In addition to overstated public buildings which abound, a purple-colored shopping mall with an indoor sand beach was in the planning stage. The architectural style says "Look at me; we are wealthy and powerful in Kazakhstan!" a holdover from the Soviet days of heavy handed artistic expression.

  "Wild Nature" meanwhile was slowly growing, despite having no funds. Sveta and Vladimir were good people and talented wildlife biologists. It infuriated them that the administrator of the national park should charge poachers to shoot exotic animals and pocket the money personally. They also had a problem, as products of the Soviet system, in understanding how supply and demand worked in a free market. I pointed out to them that some of their charges, for example for horseback rides, were too expensive. I suggested if they lowered the price, more tourists would come and they would end up making more money. This was a difficult concept to grasp, conditioned as they were to Communist economic way of thinking.

  Of Russian origin, they had chosen to remain in their adopted country after Kazakhstan became independent. At that time, citizens of Russian ethnicity were given the chance of emigrating to Russia, or staying in Kazakhstan. They, hoping for the best, decided to stay. Towards the end of my stay, Vladimir was surprisingly appointed akim(administrator) of the village. This was surprising since Russians formed only five
percent of the village population.

  Vladimir wanted to validate his appointment by holding an election in the village, and inviting other candidates to run for the position of akim. "What if you lose?" I asked him.

  "It doesn't matter," he said. "This is the right way." In Shymkent, the nearest city, I mentioned this urge for a democratic election to a doctor. He was skeptical that a democratic seed was about to bear fruit. "You're talking about tribes here. Everyone will vote according to family loyalty. You will need to wait 50 years for democracy to take root. We are still nomads at heart. You can't rush things." Still, I was heartened by Vladimir's decision.

  Kazakstan is home to the tulip, and is a popular destination for Dutch people wanting to visit the site of their national emblem. In spring, we would walk across whole hillsides blooming with wild tulips. It is also home to the apple. Almaty, in Soviet days called Alma-Ata, comes from the Kazakh word alma meaning apple. We had many apple orchards in our village and nearby and, throughout the winter, in freezing cold and sometimes in the dark, local women would huddle with boxes of apples on the platform of the train station waiting for the express train from Almaty so they could sell their apples to the passengers.

  Horses also play a part in Kazakhstan's history, and researchers from England came to Zhabagly to test the DNA of the local horses. Horse meat is commonly eaten, and I knew I would have to eat it sooner or later. Sure enough, I was invited to the home of a young woman training to be a teacher of English. I gave her some lessons, and she asked me to come and meet her family. The Wild Nature people told me that the family was well connected politically and I should expect a big meal.

  I arrived at the house which looked a lot better than most, and was warmly greeted by the whole family. It was an elaborate spread, but just for me and the father. No alcohol, I had told her previously. There were lots of small dishes as starters like cucumbers and fish, then hot dishes. A plate of horse meat was brought in from the kitchen and, although bursting, I ate most of it. It wasn't too bad - dark in color, not unlike beef but with a certain tang.

  At times I was lonely as a volunteer, and talking with the British VSO volunteer who lived in the village or visiting nearby Peace Corps volunteers was not enough. So I retreated into books. I had been sending articles on my experience in Kazakhstan to a local paper in the Big Bend area. I also wrote a letter to the same paper requesting some books to read. Such is the generosity of the folks in Alpine, including some people I had never heard of, that I was sent a total of 90 books, plus some pots of jam and other items to eat. I got a real lift from the response, and a real escape with my new library.

  As winter arrived and the snow fell, wolves could be heard as they came down from the high mountains. We had an early snowfall of four feet, which blocked the road to the village for five days, closed down the school and brought down the telephone lines. The snow plough had run out of gasoline so the road remained blocked long after the snow had stopped falling. These inconveniences served as a reminder of how few services work reliably and how little cash is available for emergencies particularly in the countryside.

  I was shoveling snow to clear a path to my house, when I hurt myself. The Peace Corps doctor told me it was a hernia. I also told him that I had been experiencing a loss of energy. He did some tests and said I had ghiardia from drinking unclean water. This was a stupid error on my part, since we had been given water filters to prevent just such a problem. The doctor did some other routine tests and was surprised to see I had been exposed to tuberculosis.

  I thought that I had probably got this from my school kids since I was often in close contact, especially when playing Scrabble. The doctor said that this was not particularly unusual. It would not affect my energy or general physical well being, nor would I pass it on to others, so long as I remained otherwise healthy. To double check, he took me to a hospital in Almaty for a stomach scan. Telling me that in Communist days all party members at age 60 received this procedure, he suggested I do the same. In a plush Communist era hospital with carpets on the floor I watched with increasing nausea a TV screen which showed the multi-colored inside of my stomach, being photographed through a tube down my throat. There were no problems.

  The hernia would need an operation, and the ghiardia would take some time to get rid of. It was unlikely whether these two medical conditions could be corrected within one month which is the maximum period for recovery that Peace Corps allowed for volunteers wishing to continue. I thought not, and made the decision to take "medical separation," which meant terminating my Kazakhstan posting and heading back to Alpine, Texas to get treatment there.

  That is what I did, disappointed not to have had the satisfaction of completing the full period of service but glad to have done twelve months. Peace Corps served me well, and Kazakhstan needs Peace Corps and NGO's from elsewhere to help it move forward. One of my strongest memories was of taxi drivers in leather jackets, always smoking cigarettes and always ready to overcharge me. From the mafia-owned casinos in Almaty to the head of the national park there was evidence everywhere of rampant corruption. Pressure from outside the country may help the Kazakhs finally to claim their own country, and Peace Corps and other similar agencies have a role to play in this.

  PART V, CHAPTER 14

  TRAVELER-WRITER

  _______

  2000

  NINE TRIPS

  STEVENSON TRAIL, FRANCE

  In September 1878 a twenty-seven-year-old Scotsman called Robert Louis Stevenson arrived in a remote corner of southern France for the purpose of taking a hike. An aspiring writer, Stevenson had already written An Inland Voyage - a canoeing adventure story, also set in France. As material for his second book he had picked an area of France with a historical and religious connection to Scotland called the Cevennes. This mountainous region of the Massif Central was the home of Protestant Huguenots who fled from persecution in France in l685, some settling in Scotland.

  The simple peasants of the tiny village of Le Monastier in the Cevennes were astonished when a tall, dignified Victorian gentleman arrived in their village. They were even more startled at the sight of some of the foreigner's supplies: a bottle of brandy, a leg of cold mutton, an egg beater and a revolver to guard against wolves.

  In addition to these smaller items, the traveler had constructed a voluminous sleeping bag. To carry all these items he purchased locally a donkey, a diminutive "she-ass" named Modestine. The resulting story of this nine day, 140-mile journey by the city-born author with no experience of pack animals became a delightful minor classic called "Travels with a donkey in the Cevennes." In July 1999 I planned to follow the same route and find out what was happening in today's rural France.

  The trail which Stevenson took, with a series of mishaps which characterize the early part of the story, follows footpaths, ancient drove roads and bridle ways. There are guidebooks about the trail, in English and in French, and the trail itself has signposts and blazes (red and white markings on trees and fence posts) so following the route is not difficult. The elevation starts at 3,100 feet, goes up to 5,574 feet at Mount Lozère, and then drops down to 623 feet at St. Jean du Gard, the last town on the route.

  On my trip the weather started off warm during the day but quite chilly at nights; later there was occasional daytime rain. Beyond Mt. Lozère, a watershed, it was very much warmer. Previously the rivers had flowed west. Now they flowed south towards the Mediterranean, and vineyards started to appear alongside the trail.

  France is full of long-distance hiking trails which follow for the most part old pilgrim routes, sheep and goat tracks or military roads. The French hiking authorities have designated numbers to all these trails. The Stevenson Trail (Chemin de Stevenson) is GR 70, GR meaning Grande Randonnéé.

  As I passed through small villages the local folk would ask, "Are you doing the Stevenson? Where is your donkey?" In fact, I could have hired a donkey or a horse, but I preferred to take the simpler way and rely on my feet. So I wo
uld shout back to the villagers "No donkey, only feet."

  To walk the Stevenson Trail today is to walk through 1,000 years of French history. In every village, and at many an intersection, there is evidence of passage of time and continuity. On one stretch, on the higher reaches of Mount Lozère, are tall standing stones, a smaller version of Stonehenge in England. Each is marked with a Maltese cross carved into the surface, indicating that Crusader knights used this route. There are also signs of social and economic strife in the region: memorials to the victims of religious wars of the eighteenth century or abandoned villages indicating that the inhabitants could no longer support themselves economically.

  In every village there is evidence of the devastating effect of the First World War. Always at the center of the village, and usually with a description such as "To our glorious dead" is a war memorial with a list of names of local casualties, sometimes with the same family names occurring two or three times. In a village with 100 inhabitants there might be fifteen names of those killed. It was through picturesque villages with their grim historical reminders that I plodded, doing -12 to 16 miles a day, and carrying 40 pounds of camping gear, food and clothing.

  While some of the historical memories were undoubtedly grim, today's rural France shows relative affluence. Each small farm would have one or two new-looking cars as well as a tractor and other farm equipment. The main farm activity as I passed by seemed to be bringing in the hay. The hay had been recently cut and baled in large, round balls waiting to be brought to the barns to feed the dairy cattle which graze everywhere. The farms are small, some only 50 acres, but they support the whole family. Wood stacked in piles indicates the source of winter heating. Rabbits and chickens in the farm yards are another food supply.