The Local Celebrity

written December 6, 2008

We have a woman in the house this morning. An extra. We've only had a couple of people by the house since I moved in - the first, the cleaning woman who vacuumed my room, second, the locksmith, who installed the new lock on my bedroom door, and now this woman. She is the curtain hanger (for lack of a better term). Apparently my host mother has ordered new curtains for most of the house and today this woman has come to hang them up.

As I emerged from my bedroom this morning, quite groggy and in desperate need of the bathroom, my host mother pulled me aside and insisted that I meet this woman in our house. So, I obliged. As I returned from the bathroom, the woman, now alone, told me that she needed help with some English. She had a word that she had heard somewhere and she wanted to know what it meant in Russian (as she doesn't speak any English). I'm not sure where she heard the word, or why she knew that she should bring it with her so that the native English speaker in this local house could translate it for her, but that's Kazakhstan. I'm constantly being asked to live with people (as they boast about their various amenities) I have to admit that the hot water amenity usually trips me up a bit in my usual polite refusal, or to teach them English, or to teach their children English. This all usually comes before they've even learned my name. One woman even wanted me to marry her son. She started spouting off all of his traits that made him a worthy husband - he doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink - it was at this time that my counterpart began to rush me out of the magazine.

And I know that I'm not the only volunteer that experiences this. A friend of mine living in the north of Kazakhstan actually received a phone call (at his host family's house) from a local woman who had heard he was in town and would like to commission him to teach her English. He has no idea how she got his phone number or knew where he lived, but that's how things work in these smaller communities. People hear about the "American" and everyone gets to talking and someone knows that you live with the Berekova family and before you know it you're receiving phone calls during dinner from a woman you've never met.