My lovely horse

Last Sunday, NDN, my next door neighbour and minder here in Kaz, took me to show me the school. First we went to buy some paper for the school. NDN, a retired Kazakh Government official, pointed out Nazarbayev's portrait, looking up at it with starry eyes.

"That's our President," she said. "Our President. That's our President." I nodded and assented with stepwardly upward force. "I know it's your fucking President. You can hardly escape him can you? Is he the Kaz 'government official' who bought a 65 million Euro apartment in Paris in November?" I didn't say.

For some mysterious reason, she stopped the car about a hundred yards away from the Presidential Palace. "Please look here," she said. "Yes?" I replied, thinking I was going to be shown another architectural expression of the benevolent refulgence of The Father.

Instead, she wanted me to get out; and said that she would pick me up from the same spot in five minutes. The area was deserted, yet hostile. I walked nervously around the huge building with the bitterly amusing name, "The Ministry of Justice", aware that two policemen in a nearby police car were watching me, hairspring alert.

I decided to turn back and wait for her. Out of nowhere, I saw this huge black clad man staring at me from about twenty yards away. He was walking in a slow, wide-legged way towards me, gun stiff at his side. At that moment, she arrived to pick me up. He watched me get in, his eyes tracing me.

Seeing the outside of the school filled me with a foreboding almost unto sickness, because of the irreversibility of what I had done. Afterwards, NDN took me to an agreeable little caff nearby. I ploughed my way through the nearest thing to vegetarianism that I could find -- a chicken and potato pie effort, a carrot salad that seemed to go on and on and on, reproducing itself in the dish as fast as I ate it, with a side of potatoes. I had this odd pre-sweetened tea. Here's the bill for two of us. There are 400 Tenge to the pound.

On my way to my first day at school, I stared from NDN's car at the half-mile of golden, reflecting glass windows of the curving edifice of government buildings which acts like a protective parabola to shield the Presidential Palace behind it. Fear, insecurity, and temporary power as architecture. I had a dissociative, fatalistic feeling, a resignation to death. A stress reaction, certainly; an unglamorous out of body experience, perhaps.

The school is on one of those unplanned, scruffy Soviet-style estates
where smoking urchins hang out of windows and shout down to people
below. There's a dodgy looking little shop and the building itself is
placed at a jaunty angle facing no street in particular. Inside, it's Soviet-modern: black lettering on gold-coloured plates just to let you know what floor you're on, but only a single plug socket in each classroom.

As NDN said goodbye and handed me over to Lidia, my mentor at school, I felt this urge to grab her coat tails and and beg her not to leave me. Lidia was lovely though, a rare example of an adult Kazakh who can smile, and to my great surprise, the first day went reasonably well; and there was one moment when I looked out to see a black cat plunging with feline delicacy into the snow with every step, and I had to resist a premature hope that this might actually work out for me.

The propect of eating with the other teachers in the canteen had been another colour to my fearful, sleepless night, but Lidia was an expert translator-cum-canteen host. I had borscht and bread for 50p. I am the sole male member of staff in the school, and I have been informed that they consider me too thin and that I would benefit from some proper Kazakh food. I'm trying to steer the horse away by stressing how much I love the range of vegetables you can get here.

I sat down with Lidia afterwards, who said that I'm the third native English teacher this academic year. "Please don't leave us looby. Please stay until the end of the year at least. I saw a fire in your eye this morning looby" (Lidia, that was fear), "and you're the first person ever to mention wanting to learn Kazakh."

When I got in there was an odd email from the London office. "Please be careful with what you say to any local teacher in the school. Don’t say anyone that you are experiencing problems apart from Lidia. No one should know you [have] had a long break [from teaching]. Some of the local teachers see us as a threat and will report everything what you say or do to a director, anything can be used against us." I'm not surprised. The native English teacher is paid a lot more than the other teachers, doesn't have to work Saturdays, and gets to live in a rent-free flat that they wouldn't be able to afford.

And one from my brother, reporting that my Mum, who is convinced I live in a wooden hut with only a friendly horse for company, is willing to send over the fare home immediately, should I desire it. The untravelled visit their anxiety on the traveller: Kim told me that my flat might be bugged.

Turn the radio up, Winston

The school and I are in a state of co-dependency, which provides both parties with equally good a hand. And so far, I'm having a fine time here, easily funded with not much. I changed £100 at the airport six days ago for 40 000 Tenge, and I've still got 17 000 left. The line between drunkard slacker and breadhead can be a fine one.