Being Black in Atyrau is interesting, to say the least. People here are not used to seeing Blacks and don't hesitate to show their interest whenever they see us. Before I came here the first time, I thought my husband was exaggerating whenever he mentioned people wanting to take pictures with him and not letting him leave events he attended quickly. I even told him that he probably fancied himself to be Denzel Washington or something! However, when I arrived with our kids for Christmas last year, I got to experience first hand what he meant right off the bat. The night we arrived, we had to go to a couple of supermarkets to shop. Along with the relief that many brands were familiar was the uncomfortable realization that we were being watched by almost every pair of eyes in each store. In the second store, a teenager was so entranced by my 6-year old's cornrows that she followed her around the store touching her head - I kid you not! This, as you can imagine, was not very welcome to a little girl who was already jet-lagged and cranky in a strange environment, and she decided to cling to me for every step, with a minor meltdown on our way home in addition.
It was also our first encounter with the ubiquitous camera-phones that tend to be whipped out whenever we go to a public venue. People come up to us waving their phones, obviously asking to take pictures with us - the language barrier results in a lot of hand-waving and sign language. My older daughter and I were more inclined initially to agree to the pictures, but even to our outgoing personalities it quickly grew old. My son hated it right from the first night and subsequently he bluntly refused to go shopping with us, unless he absolutely had to. He came up with the brain wave of writing a sign saying "Photo - 500 tenge" (the tenge is the local currency), which I had to strictly prohibit him from taking along whenever he went out. My husband and older daughter however adopted the principle of it, and whenever people come up to them now asking them to take pictures they say "Tenge, tenge", and make the international sign for money of rubbing their fingers together - that usually makes the requester stand down! Me, I just say "nyet" and shake my head.
People are openly very curious about everything about us, from our country of origin (usually guessed to be America) to our ages - the positive aspect is that people are often enthusiastically surprised to learn our ages, and generally indicate that my husband and I look younger than we are! Very few people speak any English, but even with the language barrier there are creative ways of getting the message across - writing or drawing familiar words, symbols or numbers, for example. The cultural differences are also evident in the pointing and / or open laughter, as well as calling friends or co-workers over to where we are to openly gawk. This tends to be disconcerting and was my son's main reason for refusing to go out, the fact that people were "laughing at him", as he put it. We tried to explain to him that it's not considered rude here the way it would be in Canada or Nigeria, and he should just ignore it, but that's hard for a teenager who is already at a pretty self-conscious age. It's a tough lesson in cultural adaptation that we're all having to learn.
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