Shymkent

To understand the codes, you really have to understand the environment that produced him.

So Grabovoi was born in 1963 in Shymkent, which is in modern-day Kazakhstan.

He grew up in the Soviet Union and eventually graduated with a degree in mechanics.

He actually found work with the Uzbek Civil Aviation Administration.

The Kazakhstan-Texas comparison is real, and it's weirder than it first appears.

Shymkent, the third largest city, has been called the Texas of Kazakhstan since Soviet times.

The reasons, geography, south-central part of the country, cattle, lots of them, and a wild west,

independent spirit.

I love that.

The comparison isn't something outsiders imposed.

It's something Shymkenters embraced.

The Soviet era origin is that Westerns were popular in the USSR, and South Kazakhstan was seen as rule-less and tough, so the cowboy archetype mapped neatly onto the local self-image.

So I think there's more pressure in the regions for people to go and vote, do their so-called civic duty, whereas you get more apathy in places like Almaty, the big cities, Astana.

Although Shymkent had a high turnout.

Another thing that surprised me was the turnout in Almaty this time, which was around 43%, which is very unusual for Almaty.

Very high.

That was, um, a long while ago, I guess.

So when I was 16, I, uh, grew up in Shymkent.

Uh, that's, uh, the city based in south part of Kazakhstan and, um, usually considered as one of the, the cultural, uh, and slash traditional spots, uh, worth to visit.

So, um, I was a teenager, and basically in my 16s, I was trying to figure out where and how to engage myself into this social work because of the feeling of, of, I guess, belonging.

So we basically launched it back in two thousand and ten.

Starting from two thousand and ten to '11, we had this first Silkway, uh, that-- there was this Silkway International Model UN, which then got really popular.

Before that, we had this, uh, Shymkent International Model UN, from where it evolved to Almaty, and from Almaty it evolved to Astana, Karaganda, so on and so forth because the group of people, teenagers with whom we been actively evolving and devol- developing this program then applied to universities, and then they started in their own universities arranging such club.

So basically, it just spread all around Kazakhstan now.