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Pope Receives Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev
We have a former student who joined the Peace Corps after she graduated. Megan is serving in Kazakhstan. She keeps in touch with us through Facebook, blogs and e-mail. Her photos are wonderful. After reading about the pope I got an e-mail from Megan.
Megan sent photos of her recent visit to Turkey and Istanbul. More dots, today I also received an e-mail from my brother-in-law who lives in Germany. He and his wife just returned from a three week visit in Turkey. It is a very small world.
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Megan has helped me appreciate just how vast and diverse Kazakhstan is. It borders Russia, Uzbekistan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and the Caspian Sea. That is big. Megan has lived in a major city, traveled desert country and lives in Siberia. She has lived with U.S. volunteers, international volunteers and with Kazakhs of various ethnicities.
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So when the pope mentions the achievement of different religious groups getting along in Kazakhstan this is not little matter. It is a nation that is 60% Muslim, 40% Christian, mainly Orthodox. It is a nation of 15 million citizens of which 250,000 are Catholic. In a era in which people are killing one another over religious differences this is a success story.
Megan has seen a lot and learned a lot. She speaks some Russian and Kazakh. She visited Russia during a family vacation. She also visited Istanbul. Her pictures are wonderful. This is a person who values diversity and could savor the beauty of the Hagia Sophia as well as all of the mosques. My brother-in-law had a different experience. He was in a smaller city but spoke of the beauty of the nation.
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I hope to one day visit Turkey. I don’t know if I will ever get to Central Asia or Russia. However, if that never happens I certainly learned a lot from Megan. She helped me connect some dots.
Kazakhstan REAL COMMERCIAL against Borat
1 comment:
nice post. thanks.
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