Firewood for the winter, whatever the consequences?

After a pleasant night, the rooster calls us at six o’clock. “Let him crow,” I mumble and turn onto my other side, dog-tired. Every 10 minutes, the croaking tries in vain to rouse us from our sleeping bags, but we remain steadfast until seven o’clock. Then we pull ourselves together. “Could rest all day,” I grumble. “Me too,” I hear quietly. As if in slow motion, we put on our damp cycling shirts and shorts, stuff the sleeping bags into the Ortlieb compression bags, roll up the sleeping mats and put everything into the apsis. “How is my birthday queen?” I ask lovingly. “Unfortunately, it’s over again.” “Not quite. One day later, you’re still a birthday queen,” I say, because we’ve been doing it this way for years to prolong the pleasant feeling of the day of honor. Tanja smiles and opens the zipper of the tent. “Oh look how beautiful it is outside!” she exclaims. Virgin rays of sunlight steal through the poplars that form a screen between us and the road. As we are on the border road to Siberia, there is hardly any traffic. Only rarely does a rattling engine disturb the idyll of nature.

Because of Tanja’s post-birthday, we continue to take things slowly. Tanja puts water on the small stove for a delicious sun cake, of which we have plenty. In the pleasantly warming rays of the morning sun, we make ourselves comfortable in front of the tent and enjoy our muesli and a few cookies.

We don’t load up our donkeys until 9:00 am. “Oh, you’ve lost your tail light!” I remark. As Tanja loves her Sumobike and it has become a reliable companion on the many thousands of kilometers of our journey, she doesn’t want anything to be missing under any circumstances. Although it may sound strange, she has built up something of a personal relationship with her Intercontinental. “I’m going to look for the tail light,” she says determinedly. “But how are you going to find it? We pushed our bikes hundreds of meters through thick undergrowth and grass yesterday to discover this hidden place,” I reply. “Exactly, I can only have lost it in the tall grass or in the field. I’ll find it,” she answers with conviction, stands for a moment in the direction we came from, concentrates and runs off. While Tanja looks for her rear light, I continue to dismantle our camp. Although it is almost hopeless to find such a small part in the middle of nowhere, I am convinced of its success. I remember that Tanja wanted to find a piece of jewelry in one of the sunken ancient cities during our Taklamakan crossing (Desert of Death in western China). I had smiled at her at the time, but lo and behold, she had pulled a bronze ring out of the sand. A few years later, when we were searching for gold with a detector while preparing for our 7,000-kilometer trek across Australia, she found it in just three steps. Our professional gold digger friends at the time and I laughed out loud when Tanja shouted: “Look! I think there’s something there!” To our great surprise, she had indeed tracked down a nugget worth 7,000 dollars. Since then I have known that Tanja has a nose for discovering the most impossible things. In fact, she returns 10 minutes later, beaming with joy. “Here,” she says and hands me the small rear light. I immediately put it back on her bike.

20 kilometers later, in the border village of Uspenka, we fill up our water reserves at a village well. Suddenly, a young woman and a man of about 50 approach us. They speak to us in perfect German. “We are here to visit our family,” we are told. Pleased to be able to communicate in our mother tongue again after a long time, we take the opportunity for a nice chat. “My sister would like to invite you for tea,” says the man who introduces himself as Ivan. “Do we have time?” I ask looking at Tanja, as the border is still over 70 kilometers from here and we want to get as close to it as possible in order to cross it tomorrow in the direction of Siberia. “Sure,” replies Tanja, which is why we push our bikes into the nearby yard of Ivan’s sister, who lives here with her 80-year-old father.

“Come to our summer kitchen”, invites Ivan’s pretty daughter Irina. “A summer kitchen?” we ask. “Yes, people here in Kazakhstan often have a room where they cook and spend time in the summer. It’s an airy room outside the house. People can’t eat outside because of the countless flies, so they have a summer kitchen like this,” she explains. The 22-year-old Irina, who emigrated to Germany with her father and mother when she was just four years old, speaks German without an accent. She has been here with her father for almost three weeks to visit her grandfather and aunt and to help them renovate the old house.

“It’s not easy for me,” says Ivan. “I’ve been coming here every summer for four years now to spend my vacation. I should actually take a vacation, but of course I’m obliged to help my sister and visit my old father. These are purely working vacations. At the moment I’m tiling the bathroom. Unfortunately, you can hardly get any materials for it in the village. You can’t get the right glue, screws, nails, tiles or anything else. You have to get everything from the city of Pavlodar, 100 kilometers away. But for most people here it is not easy to reach the big city. They don’t have a car and it’s half a world trip by bus. In the villages, people do everything themselves. Laying electricity and pipes, building walls, installing windows, covering roofs, repairing cars. If the villagers call in a specialist from the city, they can hardly afford to pay him and the so-called specialists are also incredibly bungling,” he explains. “What do you earn a month here in the village?” I ask. “My father receives a pension of 22,000 tenge (120 euros) a month. He can’t survive on that. My sister moved here after my mother died to support him. She works a 24-hour shift at a petrol station and earns 19,000 tenge (103 euros) a month. That’s not enough either. You can see what life costs in Kazakhstan. “What do 24-hour shifts mean?” “Working 24 hours in a row and then two days off.” “And that for 104 euros a month?” “Yes. But some people only earn 9,000 tenge (50 euros) a month. The only way to survive is if the family helps out together and by preserving tomatoes, cucumbers, making jam, juice and so on. The main thing is that you don’t have to buy anything. Many people then reach for the bottle out of frustration. You often see the result on the street. Especially in winter, when it’s minus 35 degrees here, life is hard. You’ve probably wondered why the strips of forest that were planted to protect against snowdrifts at the edges of the road are often burnt down or patchy.” “We have.” “Well, people aren’t allowed to cut down these trees to burn them in their stoves, of course. That is forbidden. But if they are burnt down, no one can object to collecting worthless, burnt wood. So in order not to freeze to death in winter, the few trees are set alight. What remains is then collected and ends up in the ovens. Pure survival tactics.” “What happens when the trees are gone?” “Nobody thinks about that. First of all, it’s important to survive winter after winter. Even the roads unprotected by snowdrifts are of little interest to people. Due to the lack of a natural protective wall, the roads are buried meters deep under the snow. Most people don’t have a car anyway. They don’t care if the roads are impassable in winter.” “And what about supplies? I mean, a village like that has to be supplied with food and all kinds of essentials, especially in winter? If the roads are closed, can’t trucks come and bring goods?” “People don’t seem to think about that. It’s simply a disaster.” “Is there no firewood to buy?” “In Kazakhstan? The country is mostly steppe and wheat fields, at least in the north. But there’s plenty of firewood to buy. It’s brought here from Siberia. The Russians charge 7,000 tenge (38 euros) for a cubic meter. Hardly anyone can afford that.” “7,000 tenge?” I ask, shocked. “That’s usury.” “It is. But, as I said, wood is in short supply and that’s why the few forests are being burned down.” “Hm, I see.”

We could talk to Ivan and his daughter Irina for a long time, but we have to keep going to cover a few more kilometers on the asphalt today. Irina packs us a few fresh and tasty tomatoes to say goodbye. Then we shake hands and say thank you for the good tea and cheese sandwiches. As soon as we have rolled our Intercontinental onto the road, we are surrounded by a group of young people. “Please take this,” says one of them and hands me a book. I am speechless and am just trying to explain that there is no room for it in the trailer when he opens it and about 300 tenge (1.62 euros) in coins come tumbling towards me. The boy, who is about 15 years old, looks at me with shining eyes and waits for my reaction to his generous gift. “Thank you very much, but I really don’t have any room,” I try to refuse his well-intentioned offer, whereupon he disappears and arrives with a precious plastic bag. “He misunderstood me,” I say a little desperately to Tanja and wave to Ivan, who is watching our departure from his garden. Ivan explains our situation to the young man, whereupon he takes back his book and the savings inside. To ease his disappointment, I give him a freshly laundered terrycloth wristband. The boy’s eyes brighten again. Laughing, he joins his friends. Just before we start pedaling again, another youngster gives me a new, pretty Kazakh Muslim cap. “You have room for that,” he says. “I did,” I reply, thanking him and putting it in my handlebar bag.

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