Дос жылатып айтады, душпан күлдіртіп айтады

It’s a saying in Qazaq: ‘дос жылатып айтады, душпан күлдіртіп айтады’ (‘a false friend will make you laugh; only a true friend will make you cry’). I think it’s actually a very good saying – the friends you can trust are the ones who won’t be afraid to correct you when you do something wrong, even if it hurts you.

This is difficult for me to write about even now. I was invited to Nurgül Täte’s house for Courtney’s birthday party, but I was in an emotional shambles that day – my lesson had gone very poorly, and I had gone into a tailspin trying to plan my following lesson, and my host nephew and niece were trying to pick the lock on my room with a spoon. When I arrived at the house, I was on the verge of tears, and I tried to calm myself down in another room, but this caused everyone there to start worrying about me. In hindsight, I should not have gone there at all in that state, since it was offensive of me to be arriving at a birthday party when my emotions were not good – I was spreading my bad mood onto everyone else. Indeed, I had offended my host sister so badly she would hardly speak to me at all for the next two days (when we finally sorted it out). Asem and Nagima had to take me aside later and tell me bluntly that I needed to change my attitude completely if I wanted to work effectively (or at all) in Qazaqstan, that I needed to change my attitude toward my fellow Trainees and in general be more flexible.

It wasn’t easy at all to hear. But I’m glad they were honest with me – my trainers, and indeed all of my fellow Trainees, are far truer friends to me than I gave them credit for. They aren’t afraid of telling me what they think. It was good of my trainers to tell me that I need to learn to take their criticisms more gracefully, and also to have more human grace toward my fellow Trainees in general, because they are good people, every bit as good as the people in AmeriCorps, and I had been misprising them severely. They are undergoing the same trials I am, and they are dealing with them in different ways – they deserve what support I can offer. I had been holding them and myself to an impossibly high standard, and to be perfectly blunt, I needed a good slap in the face from my true friends to realise it.

Since then, I’ve been taking their advice to heart, without being overly hard on myself. I had a good discussion with Laura Marshall (whose blog site, ‘The Central Asian Times’, has some link-love in my volunteeroll to the right – visit her! If she writes half as well as my discussions with her have gone, you won’t regret it!) about how to handle cultural differences and how to manage my own stress. I’m still learning, and I should treat myself as such.