The New Brave New World

Five weeks in, and we’re starting to have a feeling for the new part of the city. Or a lack of feeling. At times it feels more like a 2-D movie set rather than a real place. The layout of the new city is sprawling and lonely, with few people to be seen walking the uncomfortable distances between destinations. Many of the buildings themselves have an icy, futuristic design. No shortage of mirrored facades—but what do they reflect other than other mirrored facades and super-wide streets with a scattering of cars, like tumbleweeds, rolling by.

It’s a little like one of those post-apocalyptic nightmares we all have, in which we’re left alone in some vast, impersonal city with no human contact. A few scrubby bushes and a couple of billboards with bright, smiling people, link us to the life that’s been scoured away.

Do we exaggerate? We don’t think so.

We’ve never seen anything like this. It seems like exactly what it is. Ten years ago the president said let’s move the capital of the country to Astana—a town long in decline, populated by impoverished agricultural workers—and with big plans and a blank slate, the building began and it hasn’t stopped. There are still cranes everywhere. But there aren’t yet people to populate the new buildings. We took a tour of a $200,000,000 pyramid, designed by a British architect, and learned that the population of Astana has grown to 800,000 over the last 10 years. But the city that’s being built is designed to accommodate 3,000,000. (Where are these 2,200,000 people going to come from?) Much of the new city’s layout and design comes from a futuristic Japanese architect. But Tokyo, like our own Big Apple, is warmed by wall-to-wall people with easy access to storefronts and apartments.

Here, your feet ache just looking at the distance between things. And there’s no shade to coddle you if you don’t know the bus routes. It’s more like a walk through a desert mirage. Not so good for two pale-faces such as we.

Back on our side of town, the old town, the main street is filled with life. But it’s still not a life we understand. When we walk down the supermarket aisle, there’s always someone mopping the floor and she’s never hampered by our presence. If we don’t move out of her way, she’ll simply mop our shoes. Steve finds it robotic. In our local bakery, people just cut in front of you, if you don’t assert what you want right away (not so easy for a person relying on sign language and animal sounds to find out what’s inside that yummy looking pastry).

Our local Uzbek contact said that the Kazakh’s don’t share a western sense of politeness. Why should a culture built from nomadism have a need for the formality of curtsies and Mother May I’s? In fact, the Uzbek’s colleague—a Kazakh—explained to her that it would never occur to Kazakhs to thank their mothers for making a nice dinner or to thank their work-mates for handling the better part of a shared assignment. If that’s what they want to do, then why should they be thanked? We’re definitely not in Kanzas anymore.

Despite lots of western amenities, there’s still a heavy air of the Eastern Block around us. The water is unfit to drink—a small oversight by a government investing billions of dollars into urban development. Portions of the city’s heating pipes remain above ground—surprising, given that winters are long and hard with temperatures hovering at 30° below zero. And at our local supermarket, we have to check our diaper bag before shopping. We also must pay a security deposit to use a shopping cart, which is dispensed by an indifferent guard.

Our taxi service is another case study in cultural confusion. We had Dina, our translator, call them when we got here to set up a regular driving schedule. We were told that they would provide a free ride for every 7th trip to the same destination. The cost for each ride would be the same, no matter what traffic is like on any day. However, what’s happened is that we’ve been left waiting, curbside, a couple of times—because it turns out that a regular schedule isn’t regular for them. They also keep forgetting to give us our free rides, so we’re now playing catch up. Except that they keep forgetting, so we’re racking up more free rides. Just the other day, they let us know, via Dina, that the fare shouldn’t be free, it should be heavily discounted. So we’re now agreeing to pay a surcharge for our free rides, which they still keep forgetting to provide.

As Dina likes to say in reference to things she’s culturally proud of, we sense that this may be “100% Kazakh-style.”

Aldus may never have conceived of Astana, but he would have enjoyed a view of the city from the top of its Baiterek monument (a giant gold ball supported by an elaborate, 97-meter-high golfer’s tee).