Kyzylorda gets a makeover 

On day in early November I set off for Kyzylorda, a city hadn’t visited since my trip to Zhezkazgan for two and a half years earlier. 

Kyzlyorda airport was one of the big square buildings jokingly known as “chicken sheds”. We were disgorged straight onto the tarmac outside the terminal. Inside, despite the largeness of the hall, the baggage reclaim was a tiny room to one side, built in the days when planes carried a dozen or so people not the several hundred they did these days, resulting in chaos as everyone tried to cram in and collect their bags at once. 

A night on the town

At the airport it was warm — an almost balmy plus nine while it was well below freezing in Astana. I was also surprised to see camouflaged bunkers around the airport, obviously in use. 

For the first time in my life, I was a “VIP guest” according to the name badge I was issued by the conference organisers at the airport, along with an invitation to meet two akin employees for dinner. 

Two hours later we all drove off through the dark streets — there weren’t a lot of streetlights outside the city centre — to a restaurant. It was decorated with patterned black and white wallpaper, faux Louis XV chairs and purple and white chandeliers.  I never got the name, but it was certainly very different from anywhere I’d visited before. 

We chatted in Russia, then I had a green salad and plate of white rice while they ate bowls of meaty stew, all washed down with vodka shots. As the vodka sunk in the bottle, our toasts became more flowery and elaborate. 

VIP or CIP?

The next morning I was given a “CIP” badge when I arrived at the conference, and I had to google it on my phone to find out what it meant – Commercially Important Person.

Sessions at the conference focussed on what Kyzylorda region could do to attract investment and diversify its economy away from natural resources. The region faced obstacles that were fairly typical of the Kazakh regions, and being particularly remote from the main population centres, it faced even more difficulty than most. 

Kyzylorda’s new mayor Krymbek Kusherbayev said the region had seen the largest increase in investments of any Kazakhstani region. “We are working to improve the business environment and conditions for investors,” he said.

The walk back to the hotel at the end of the day was the first chance I got to have a proper look at Kyzylorda in the daylight. I had been there twice before, in 2009 and 2011, was surprised to see it seemed to have changed for the better since my last visit. 

Work in progress

The streets were in better condition, there were new road signs and so on. New cafes and restaurants — including the one we went to last night and locally grown coffee and patisserie chain Brownies, which recently opened its fifth outlet — were mushrooming. I guessed some of the income from the new oil and gas and mining developments had trickled down to the general population. 

People I spoke to said the state of the city had improved since February 2013 when Kusherbayev, a former deputy prime minister and presidential adviser, was appointed. 

He had ordered a facelift for roads and parks, and introduced a no-tolerance policy on littering. Although I noticed potholed, barely lit roads outside the city centre, I heard that electricity supplies, heating and other utilities has improved and new housing was being built along the Syr Darya river.

I saw some of the new buildings going up alongside the wide misty river, flanked by muddy bank and reeds, heavily littered. Fishermen were waiting down by the river, while youths in black leather jackets sauntered along on the white painted walkway. 

In the market I saw Kazakh faces, traditional clothes, flashing gold teeth, the same as on my previous visit, but the path back to the city bordered lavishly with flowers — that was new.