Atyrau

This week we had an opportunity to visit a city in the western part of Kazakhstan, near to the Baltic Sea.  The city is named Atyrau and it is in an oil rich part of the country.  There is a large compound of housing for Americans living there that work for oil companies.

We were invited to attend a celebration of the 10 year anniversary of an organization that supports handicapped persons in the area.  Here are some photos from our trip.

This is at a rehab center.  The woman leading the discussion is Lyzzat from Almaty.  She teaches handicapped persons to live independently.  She acted as our interpreter part of the time.  We enjoyed getting to know her.

A TV crew showed up to interview visiting guests.  Here, Janet from Astana is being interviewed.  Then they turned the cameras on us and put the mic in our faces and expected something coherent to come out of our mouths!  I hope the interpreter made it sound good.  We tried to say something about how we are all brothers and sisters and we have come from an organization that believes in helping people regardless of where they live.

This is our host for the event showing us a craft room they have for the handicapped people.  They are very talented.

This is cross stitch art.  I've done a bit of cross stitching, but these were amazing!

This art work was done by a man named Pavel.  It is wood and he uses an electric tool to burn images into the wood.  They were amazing!  I asked if he had a teacher but he said no.  He just learned how to do it.  He gets an outline and then etches it.

This is the artist, Pavel, chatting with our interpreter

This art work was done by one of the participants

This young lady did all this crochet work.

This little girl is the daughter of one of the recipients of an award.

This is the 10 year anniversary banner of this organization.

Our friend Lyzzat

Handicapped persons and their families.

This young man is the painter.

This was a wheelchair dancer and her partner.  Quite amazing!

These young people did a recitation of poetry.

These young ladies are quite the singers!

Sorry this turned out so blurry!  Our small friend Kenesari.

They wanted us in the photo!

This was quite a meal.  The main course was sturgeon.  A famous fish from the Baltic Sea.  They called in "Fish Bar Mac"  a play on the famous Kazakh horse meat dish Bish Bar Mac.

This is our "four star" hotel.  We had to pay in cash because they didn't have a credit card machine!