Culture
Surprise
David and Eliza have been living in the
Silk Road Area for three years. Here they
pick out some memorable moments that
gave them a little case of culture surprise.
Is the local system as bad
as we’ve heard it is? David decided to
try it out when he had a back complaint. The
massage was great but the “electro-massage”
that followed left a bit to be
desired. In fact, the paddles,
poorly earthed to the
machine, left burn marks
up and down his back! At
the next session, David
took his own electrical tape to repair the wiring
himself. We are very thankful for access to
international medical centres in the city
but this experience gave us an insight
into what our local friends are
faced with.
Health
System
Our children have
enjoyed a succession of
feathered friends as pets, including
hens that we hoped would lay eggs for
our breakfast.
But a local friend,
who was keen to
sell us some of his
own poultry, was
quick to advise us
that we needed a rooster if we wanted the hens
to lay. David, who grew up on a farm and had sold
eggs commercially for a number of years, was at a
loss to work out how he could explain that hens
didn’t need a rooster to lay eggs. Only if we
wanted them to have chickens would
we need a rooster…
Pets
We feel like we have a
reasonable handle on the road rules
but last year the one-way street in our village
caught David out. He turned right one street too
late and the waiting policeman pulled him over to
inform him of his misdemeanour.
But the officer didn’t want to
speak the K language, he could
only speak the other main
language, which David doesn’t
speak. This confusing conversation
attracted the attention of David’s mates
at the nearby plumbing store, who knew which languages
David could speak and which language the policeman
should be able to speak. The officer could only take so
much of this teasing so he threw the documents back
at David, jumped in his car and took off. So much
for David driving the wrong way up the one-
way street!
Driving
Eliza
knew homewares were
significantly cheaper in the Silk Road
Area than in Australia. But even after three
years, that difference brought her undone. She
wanted to buy a set of 10 tea
cups as a gift for her mother.
When she asked the vendor
the price of the cups, he said,
“1000 tenge”. No worries, that
would mean 10,000 tenge, the
equivalent of $40 for the set. But when she got out a
10,000 note, he quickly corrected her. “No, no, 1000
for the set. The cups are only 100! You be careful
with your money, Eliza. Don’t wave 10,000
tenge notes around!”
Money
resonate
· issue 33 · page 7
Eliza is
always keen
to get involved
at the kinder where
their daughter Caitlyn
attends whenever she is
able, in order to deepen her relationships with the teachers
and to get to know the other families. But agreeing to drive
a handful of children to the museum on an excursion took her
involvement to a new level. Yes, the group visited the museum,
but also the fire station, central mosque, police station, a school
and the local swimming hole, making up the itinerary en route!
All of those visits were packed into an hour-and-a-half. Photos
were taken at every site of the children posing in front of
buildings, emergency service vehicles, stuffed animals,
and later in the day our Whatsapp group was
flooded with photos of the excursion. No
consent forms required.
Kinder