Holiday and Travel

We missed writing for a week so here is two weeks worth of our continuing adventures. When we returned from Moscow it was the start of Nauryz Meiramy (New Days), the New Year holiday that is celebrated in most of Central Asia. The date is based on the ancient Oriental calendar and the day of the spring equinox. However, winter is still in control of Astana!!! Our translator, Zhanara, took us to an area of the city for some of the celebration. The lady below is dressed in traditional clothes.





Here you can see the traditional yurt verses their new city sky scrapers.

Last Saturday we flew to Almaty, a city about 700 miles south, to meet the members there and to do the initial research for a potential Vision Initiative. When we arrived at the hotel we were not very impressed. It was in a back alley surrounded by old apartment buildings and did not look inviting at all (see picture). Once inside it was quite nice and within walking distance to a mall and to the church. Fortunately, the mall had a food court where we were able to find some very good kabobs and we ate dinner there most evenings. The evening of our arrival, our friends the Shaws walked us to the church (so we could find it on Sunday) and introduced us to 2 wonderful ladies from Kyrgyzstan. They are 2 of the 4 members of the church in that country and live in the capital city of Bishkek which is a 4 hour drive from Almaty. We will be going there the end of June to help with a Neonatal Resuscitation Training for which we are the project managers. We went to dinner with them and enjoyed a great meal and conversation.

On Sunday we met Dr. Harrie and his wife who had come from Utah for the Vision Initiative. They are specialists the Church uses to help determine the best way to help a country with the eye health needs of the people. He is an Ophthalmologist and she is a nurse. We spent Monday with them visiting the Kazakh Eye Research Institute in Almaty.
On Tuesday we drove with them and our interpreter, Svetlana, to Taldy-Kurgan, a city of about 90,000 people 250 kilometers NE of Almaty (Almaty has about 1.5 million residents) to visit the regional hospital's eye center and to visit the local Blind Society. It was quite an adventure!! The roads are peppered with deep potholes (and Svetlana was always on her phone so she hit most of them) and the police change the speed limit at a whim so they can collect some extra cash. She got caught once and paid the officer to forgive us. While stopped, Bev Harrie and I could not resist going into the field to see the wild flowers while Viviane and Dr. Harrie kept an eye on Svetlana who was negotiating the cost of our escape.
Our first stop was to the office of the Blind Society of Taldy-Kurgan to pick up some official papers for the small project the Shaws had done with them in getting 80 glasses for members of their society. They were very glad to meet us ( they thought Viviane was Kazakh) and it helped us by getting their perspective of eye care options for their members. We discovered that the government gives free eye exams and surgery, if needed, but they have to pay for their own glasses. We went into town to their preferred eye glass shop. They grind their own glasses and fit them to the frames (see picture) so we may try to negotiate with the owner (in picture) to buy her new equipment if she will supply glasses for the Blind Society. She was open to the idea so we'll see if it gets worked out and approved.

The doctors at the regional hospital were very nice but didn't think there was any need for our help. There are 4 surgeons and they do about 10 cataract surgeries a week - total (Dr. Harrie said that in some countries they have visited there are hundreds of people waiting for surgery from one surgeon in each city) and have very good equipment. The drive back to Almaty was a bit smoother because I drove!!
We got back home to Astana on Wednesday evening after one canceled flight and a one hour delay for the flight we were on. Back to the winter climate - it was 60 degrees in Almaty and we enjoyed the break from winter weather.

Our very sweet landlady bought Viviane a new vacuum cleaner!! Viviane was VERY happy!

We are doing well and enjoying our time with these wonderful people. It is a blessing and not a sacrifice to be here trying to serve them.