The “Откуда” Test

I want to start off for apologizing for the 5-month hiatus in my blog communication. Due to a blocking of Google blogger from Kazakhstan servers, a difficult winter, and just laziness, I have not blogged.

Five months is a long time to make up for, and I’m not going to try to do that today. So - many of you may have no clue exactly what I’m doing for my work, where I’m living, etc. I’ll save that information for another time. Right now, I want to write about something my sitemate (another volunteer who lives in the same city) and I call The “Откуда” Test.

One of the neat things about Kazakhstan is they have these little convenient shops practically every 20 meters. In Russian the word sounds like “magazine.” Even when we’re speaking in English we call them magazines, because they really aren’t like shops we have in America. They have everything in this little shop: bread, eggs, butter, tea, meat, cigarettes, vodka, beer, juice, water, sugar, flour, etc… you get the point. Most people have “their” magazine – the shop closest to their house where they can run out in their pajamas to get bread in the morning or a couple eggs at the last minute. It’s SO convenient – there are several on each block. Rather than buying all their groceries once a week, people here tend to stop in their magazine daily and just get what they need for dinner.

Because it’s usually the same worker everyday, and people stop in almost everyday, you get to know your magazine lady. My sitemate Molly and I have experienced two kinds of workers: The kind who are impatient with our bad Russian, scowl, and don’t say thank you for our business, OR the kind who are so helpful with the language barrier and are immediately curious where we are from and what we’re doing here. We can usually make this judgment based on one word (or the lack of one word) – “откуда?” (pronounced “otkooda”) It means where from? If they are interested where we are from, they are friendly and we like to go back and support their little magazine or stand.

When I lived with my host family, the magazine on the corner of the street was run by the nicest lady – she DEFINITELY passed the откуда test. My first week I went in and bought water, and later that week she told my host mom what great Russian I spoke. This was funny since I literally said three words to her!

A week ago I moved into an apartment. It’s in an area I don’t know very well – about a 20 minute walk from my work. Every day this past week I have spent my walk home stopping in different magazines, seeing what they have to buy, and more importantly, seeing if they pass the откуда test. I was a little sad the first few days to find that many stores were not passing. The most important thing was to find one really close to my apartment that passed. My apartment is in a big square of apartment buildings, and when I first moved in, I saw two magazines. Neither of them passed the test. I was really bummed. But then…. just when I had giving up hope, I noticed one more magazine just one building away from me!

I didn’t need anything at that moment, but I really wanted to do the test. I walked in with butterflies in my stomach and asked for eggs. She asked how many, and filled a bag with eggs. What else? she asked. I was a little sad that it wasn’t immediately откуда but being she was my last hope, I thought I’d meet her half way. I saw some peanuts in a bag, so I pointed and asked for them. What else? she asked again. I was getting a good vibe from her even though she hadn’t asked the question, so I decided to get something else. I asked for snickers. What else? (long pause) Ummm, I replied. I was running out of things I could use – and money! So looked at some meat and asked for half of the summer sausage (I don’t even really like this.) And then the magic question came – in a slightly different form. “You’re not a local, are you?” I leapt at my chance and replied “No! I’m from America, and I’m working in Kokshetau. I just moved in the apartment next door, so you’ll probably see me often!” She smiled and said, “Come back anytime.”

Mission accomplished. I have my magazine – откуда test qualified. I’m happy to report that in the past three days I have made four trips already for water, juice, milk, and sugar.

That’s it for this post! I will try my best to be better about posting stories and information about life in Kaz. Even if nobody reads this, I think in years to come I’ll appreciated that I documented a little of my experience.

Hope all is well on the other side of the world!
~Crane~