From cold and dry to hot and wet

This is the final update for this blog not just because it is the end of spring but because it is the end of our time in Kazakhstan. Next week we will be starting a new life in Malaysia from where I will write a new blog.

The melting ice, I imagine all the way back to the Altay Mountains in China, caused the River Irtysh to swell and flood the land on the left bank as far as the eye could see. I hadn't understood why a path I often walk on is raised on an embankment, but that became a mile long jetty around a watery landscape with Sunday picnickers dotted along its route. The locals in Pavlodar aren't pork pie and a bit of tomato people; their picnics involved advanced pyrotechnics to barbecue skewered meat over twig fuelled fires. Now they've gone and the water has rapidly receded, but they've left all their rubbish behind.

Attitudes towards litter seem to be a clear marker between developed and developing countries. A couple of months ago I was travelling through Myanmar and remember on a rail journey carefully kicking the remains of my meal under the seat in the hope that it would eventually be found by a cleaner. I realised that if I left it in view a helpful Burmese would dispose of all the paper and plastic in the local manner by throwing it out of the train window.

When the ice outside our apartment building melted it revealed a layer of rubbish that had been held in its grip all winter and was quickly dealt with by a cleaner with a brush and cardboard box. But in contrast to this attitude I also saw community groups tidying and prettifying their surroundings. This I learned is subbotnik and we were involved in cleaning up Liz’s school one Saturday.

Subbotnik was keenly promoted by Lenin as voluntary Saturday work on community projects. It seems like a metaphor for the tragedy of 20^th century communism that it became debased from an opportunity for communities to work together, in order to take ownership of and pride in where they lived, to an enforced duty which effectively made it unpaid labour. It is good to see the tradition of subbotnik return to its original meaning nearly 100 years after it was first introduced, and it is a reflection on the hard working Kazakhs that they embrace it as a way to take their young country forward.

It may be easier to just not make the mess in the first place but, in a world where we interact with our electronic devices more than with our neighbours, there is a need for some form of shared social activity, and picking up litter can be as good as any.