Most every Kazakh speaks Russian. Some of them are better speaking Russian than they are speaking Kazakh. But both languages live on in Kazakhstan.
Let me also give you the cast of characters. We are subletting an apartment in Almaty from a professor. She is a British citizen, but lives and works here in Almaty. She is going back to the UK to visit her mother. She speaks both Russian and English. And for the first couple days she was still here with us. Let's name this character Professor A (since Professor X is already taken.)
The apartment (or flat as Professor A calls it) is owned by a Kazakh couple who speak Kazakh and Russian. We will call them Landlord and Landlady.
In many countries, including Kazakhstan, one of the figurative doors which visitors must pass through is that foreigners must have their location registered. We came into Kazakhstan with no issues. US citizens can stay here for 30 days without a visa. But what must happen is that within 48 hours the host, the one who owns your accommodations, must tell the government that you are staying at a particular address.
Usually when you check in, the hotel or the host gets a copy of your passport. Then they fill out a form online that says your passport number, which country you are from, where you are staying, and for which dates. Note: the onus is on the host, not the foreigner.
In this case Landlord and Landlady needed to do this. The trouble is that they are computer illiterate. They don't own a computer, though they do have smart phones. The online form won't work on a phone. Or so I am told. By them.
Landlord and Landlady came over on Sunday evening to register us, but they couldn't figure out how. So they decided that on Monday morning, Alrica and I should join them going to some government office to deal with it. They also insisted that Professor A come along since she could be our translator.
Keep in mind, this is not the responsibility of the visitor. I'm supposed to provide my passport to be copied. Aside from that, I shouldn't be a part of the process. But this time, I was going to be.
Let me ask you this: If you were going to drive to a government office across town, wouldn't you find out where it was first? Apparently, no. Landlord and Landlady haven't had to do this since last July when Professor A moved into their apartment. They only kind of remembered where the office was. So what they did was drive us to that part of the city. Then Landlady, Professor A, Alrica, and I got out of the car and walked around this neighborhood looking for the government office. From time to time, Landlady would ask a passerby where it was and they would point us in the right direction. Okay, so we found it.
Inside the office was a man, we will call him Government Man. Note, I only know what happened there because Professor A told me what had occurred. It was all in Russian. Apparently, Government Man asked Landlady for her electronic identifier. It was explained to me that Kazakh citizens have two numbers. They have a national ID number. That is the main one, comparable to a Social Security Number in the US. They also have an electronic identifier number that they use to log into any government service websites. That's what Government Man asked for.
Landlady refused to give it to him. He said, I'm trying to help you with what you asked. She asked how did she know he wasn't going to use it for bad things like a scammer. Government Man got insulted and refused to speak to Landlady anymore. So we left without completing the registration.
Great, effective use of my time. Now we stood outside the government office. Landlady calls Landlord and he says he will pick us up. We wait. He doesn't pick us up. Landlord calls Landlady saying he's lost. She tells us to wait there and she goes off to find him. We wait. Landlady comes back and says we have to walk with her to where Landlord is parked. We end up walking back to exactly where he dropped us off.
Now we drive back into the more central part of the city. There is a big government building and beside it is a little office in which employees help citizens complete governmental forms. We go there. We have to wait. Eventually, it is Landlady's turn. Then Landlady says I need to pay 5000 tenge per person, so 10000 tenge total. That's between 20 and 21 dollars. But I'm like, wait a minute. Is this money going to the government? Or is this going to the employees at this helper office. Turns out it's going to the employee. So this payment only exists because Landlady doesn't know how to use a computer. I ask why I have to pay for the thing that is her responsibility and would be free if she just knew how to do it. In the end, we agreed I would pay 5000 tenge and she would pay the other half.
Then our new character, Helper Employee, says that according to her computer only one of the two of us entered the country. We never found out which one of us was not in Kazakhstan (as we both stood there unquestionably in Kazakhstan.) We said look at our passports. Each of them has a stamp that shows that we entered the country.
Helper Employee calls someone at the immigration office. That person can fix it, except the computer system is down. Ugh!
In the end, we did get registered. I paid 5000 tenge for the privilege of spending my morning in bureaucracy.
At this point Alrica is ravenous. Our bodies are still on China time. I am not usually a breakfast eater, but Alrica is. And her stomach thinks it is nearing 1PM because her stomach still thinks it is in China. (Maybe it was Alrica's stomach that didn't enter Kazakhstan.)
So that was our figurative door. But here is a curious thing about literal doors. We have all these double doors in the flat.
Normally when I use the term double door, I mean two doors in one frame with hinges on the outside and which meet in the middle. But that's not what I mean here.
The front door and the door to the lining room balcony and the door to the bedroom balcony are two doors.
On the front door the outer door swings out toward the building's internal staircase and elevator while the inner door swings into the apartment.
But on the balcony both did swing in toward the bedroom (or toward the living room.)
They are perfectly easy to use. But I don't understand the purpose. Alrica's hypothesis is maybe it helps insulate the apartment. That's a pretty reasonable guess. Though I may never know why.
To paraphrase Jim Morrison, there are the things we know and the things we don't know and in between are the double doors.
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