Dusty Village, Almaty

Honestly, I think I should change my home address to "Dusty City".  I'm pretty sure I live in one of the dustiest places in town.  Almaty is already pretty dusty as it is:  in 2007, this city was in the top ten "most polluted" cities in the world.  Fortunately, it has improved over the years... but it still appears on some lists for being "dirty".

To me, it's really only the winters that feel polluted.  In the summer, the air is clean, skies are blue, the mountain-tops are lush and green, flowers bloom everywhere and the street-sweepers keep up with the demands (we live right off the dusty step, and all of the winds carry sand here -- it hits the mountains and settles here).  In the winter, however, the city cranks up the heat.  And that heat is powered by burning coal.

An autumn view from our old apartment --
the smoke stacks in the distance chug to life.

Let me explain.  In most of the countries I've been to, everyone has their own water heaters.  In Kazakhstan (as well as most former-soviet nations, I'm told), water is heated in a central location and piped into everyone's houses.  There are pipes under the roads for hot water, and separate pipes for cold water.  If road work is going on, you might not have hot water for the duration of the work since they have to shut down the hot water line.  Even worse, sometimes you have no cold water for the same reason. I say "even worse" because it's easier to live without hot water. Without cold, you can't run your washing machine or flush your toilets.  We can fill buckets and keep them by the toilet, but, honestly, do you want to steep in hot water the contents of your toilet bowl?  I thought not.  And try taking a shower with scalding water!  It's easier to heat up a bucket of cold water than to wait for a bucket of hot water to cool down.

The line on the horizon where layers of pollution meet.

The smoke stacks outside the window
of our old apartment start their winter duties.

So, in order to create enough hot water for each neighborhood, you'll see smoke stacks chugging out black coal dust as the fires burn. The skies turn gray and you can literally see a line in the air where the car exhaust fumes meet the coal-dust-laden air.  It's astonishing. Fresh snow on the ground will turn black and greasy within a day. On top of that, some people with very old houses still have a "banya" -- a sauna-like room with water heated with a wood-fire, used for steaming and cleaning themselves. Sadly, the banyas in our neighborhood seem to be powered with burning trash, old tires and whatever else residents can find/afford.  We have a lot of these old houses around us, so, it's more dusty here than in our old place. (After the baby was born, they moved us into a lovely little house near the school. It was bittersweet: we had a cozy apartment on the 8th floor, above the noise, with a gentle breeze and a view of the steppe on a clear day.)


Here in my little house, I have to dust twice a week to keep up.  I have to use soapy water to clean and not just a static cloth because it's not dust -- it's soot.  And even with mopping and sweeping, my socks become black with soot. In the bedroom, we have a humidifier that doubles as an air filter.  We have to vacuum out the air filter regularly or it starts to sound like it has emphysema!   I can only keep dusting and count the days until spring arrives. 

Our beautiful school campus in June:  clear blue skies and snow-capped peaks.