ohhh Kazakhstan....you little rascal.

Its about 6 A.M , and while tired, im pretty amped to get to France and see my family. I am at the airport in Almaty groggily checking in for my flight, and then heyoooo – gametime. (I really like this country, but its not America, and in general people are more aggressive and would appear to be “less polite” - if you were so bold as to make cultural value judgments – nonetheless you gotta be on your toes…even at 6 A.M.) Well here we are at the ticket counter and my suitcase is apparently overweight by 7 kilos. Ive been doing pushups like every Sunday, so you can picture my surprise when this bag that I practically levitated was too heavy (it was also pretty much everything from here that I wanted to send home and don’t want to carry on my travels after Peace Corps, so all important stuff). The fine for these 7 kilos amounted to 210 Euro. Myself mot being much of what Young Jeezy would consider a “Balla”, I had the equivalent of about 13 bucks in my pocket, so I was stuck. But the sly ticket lady quickly took my suitcase and “don’t worry about it, go through customs, meet me over by the gate and just give me 100 Euro, or ill throw your bag away”. I was a little confused and stuttered “what…um, no I don’t even have-” “Next!” she shouted. Oh worst, im getting bribed. So I went through customs trying to think of what to do. When I was at the gate, I immediately when to the bathroom to hide and assess. Emerging from the bathroom she was there waiting – with a baggage handler. Efffff. So I went over and she asked “if I was prepared?” No I said, im not gonna pay, ill just take the weight out – hoping this would be an easy solution. But she was not pleased, and immediately retreated and was anxiously whispering with her friend. Seeing this I realized that she might have already put my bag on the plane and lost her advantage. “Well we are going to take your bag then”. Now or never, I was in this gambit all the way. “No, just let me take some things out” She was pissed, “Oh, that’s against the rules!” I laughed, “the rules!?, lets ask a manager what the rules are!” “No, No!, ummm just give me your boarding pass and ill go get your suitcase”. At this point I just walked away and prayed that my suitcase was already on the plane. I had a 10 hour lay over in Amsterdam (which is an amazing and beautiful city) so I tried to forget about the situation. In the Amsterdam airport I decided to see if I could check if my bag made the flight transfer. At this point I should mention that during all the construction work I was doing, mentioned below, I got a lot of debris in my eye. This resulted in me having to go to the hospital in France, but in the mean time my eyes were extremely red, bloodshot and teary. As I was trying to explain the situation to check on my bag, detailing this exciting story of corruption and intrigue the KLM employee looked at me like I was crazy and said “It says in the computer that your luggage is on the plane – think maybe your just being um…paranoid”. Anyway, it did make it and I was happy.

My welcome home to Kazakhstan was not much different. Again early, I was trying to find a cab to take me to the Peace Corps office from the airport. After asking around to see what prices I could get, I found a guy who offered 500 tenge (about a quarter of what everyone else was asking). This should have tipped me off…but im cheap, and got in. He then picked up 3 of his friends and we were off. Usually people are so charmed that I speak Kazakh that they will not try to rip me off by as much. But not today. We got to the street I needed and when I went to get out, the guy sitting next to me asked for the equivalent of $200. I thought he was joking and laughed….but he meant business. He tried to convince me by arguing that I should just man up and give him at least 90 dollars, and that since gas was 80 cents and we drove about 15 miles I owed him 200 bucks? And the best was that because the car was full of his friends that it was a VIP taxi and I should pay accordingly. When all this impressive battle of logic failed, he suggested that we would have to fight to figure it out. (Not only did he think that he deserved this absurd amount but so offended when I offered him the normal rate that he threw it in my face). This was not good seeing as I still had a backpack in the trunk and there were three of them. We were now standing outside and luckily I had just viewed the new James Bond on the airplane so I was preparing myself to stab them all in the throat with a pen I had in my pocket. Luckily, reason, and the fact that I wasn’t wearing a suit combated my Daniel Craig instincts and I decided to just write down the license plate number and start walking away. Nice move Hannon. This scared the driver and he quickly gave me my backpack and told me to get lost.


however, it does feel great to be back at home in my village! With lots of new projects and work on the horizon.