The Table Is Always Set

“The table is always set and ready for a guest,” the Kazakh proverb says.

None of this may have been important to you before. But if you ever leave your home and travel somewhere else, you will realize that how we treat different people has a lot to say about who we are and what we believe.

Hospitality may not be the first thing you experience when you set your foot inside Kazakhstan. But more than likely that first impression will be swallowed up and forgotten (until the next time you pass through the international airport) the minute you get to know the local people for yourself. Being overwhelmed by the hospitality of Kazakh hosts is typically reported by any new foreigner who steps into a local friend’s home; perhaps in keeping with their Kazakh custom of erulik, which is a celebration arranged in honor of a newcomer to help him/her quickly adapt to their new location.

The rule of thumb in Kazakh hospitality is that the host cannot rest until after every guest has been served and cared for, meaning she can’t really sit down and enjoy the meal with everyone else. Instead she presents a fully loaded dastarkhan – a table of plates and bowls filled of food that occupy every square centimeter. Her job is to seamlessly keep conversation flowing while in a constant motion of pouring drinks, serving food, and ensuring every morsel is consumed through her not-so-veiled manipulation: “don’t you like my salad?” or “don’t you like my soup?” (Only years later will you learn that every good host must insist, over and over again, that you eat because this is what polite hosts do; you don’t actually have to comply.)

Perhaps the first time you are invited to your Kazakh friend’s apartment the whole experience is painted and perfumed in colors and fragrances you will never forget. With a two-year-old toddling around, who generally doesn’t like sitting still and playing quietly, your radar should be turned on. But sitting around the dastarkhan, filling up with food and drink, you’re completely oblivious to what is happening in the rest of the apartment, loud shouts and laughing a constant reminder that all is well. Until suddenly it isn’t.

While trying to find room in your over-stuffed stomach, you enjoy the growing conversation and friendship as much as the tea you are sipping. And then you smell it. Perfume, wafting in through the kitchen door and overtaking every other fragrance in the room. Instantly you all jump to your feet and run from the kitchen to find the two smallest children – one yours and the other theirs – painted with mascara and doused in perfume. Mortified. That’s all you can feel in that moment.

In a daring act of hospitality, or a courageous extension of friendship, your host grabs his camera and snaps a photo to memorialize such a monumental moment. With a sigh of relief and laughs that bring tears, you offer to help clean things up. Later, with hugs a little bigger because of the recent bond forged, you say goodbye, hoping to reciprocate hospitality (minus the mascara and perfume) in your home sometime soon.

But the first time you invite local friends to your home will most certainly be filled with more cross-cultural blunders and bonding. The overwhelming spread on the table – dastarkhan – at your friend’s home sets a high standard, and you can’t help but wonder how their visit to your home will measure up. As you sit down around the table, instead of the many plates boasting a variety of salads on offer, you serve one giant Caesar salad to go with the one giant lasagna you’ve made – all served at once on the table rather than in courses with the salads and soup first followed by the main dish.

Walking into another cross-cultural matrix, you aren’t sure how to respond when your local friends don’t dig in and start serving themselves from the main serving platters in the middle of the table. Just a second too late, you realize they are politely waiting to be served since serving themselves is as culturally inappropriate as asking for second helpings (except of your homemade garlic bread, which received such a raving response as to momentarily depart from all cultural norms!). Inwardly you note that your hosting acumen hasn’t included the fine art of coercing guests to eat more, which your Kazakh friends expertly pulled off when you were guests at their place last week (in fact you were so engorged coming home then that you immediately flopped on your bed and popped the button on your jeans!).

Another thing when inviting local friends to your home – don’t be surprised when your guest walks into your kitchen to gracefully take things over. There seems to be a specific and much-appreciated way to serve guests and a Kazakh sees him or herself as host whether in their own apartment or yours. In any case, they are, in the broader sense, hosting you in their country, so try not to take it too personally, when your Kazakh friend takes the tea pot from you and not only makes the tea but serves it too. Instead take a moment to realize that you’re being brought into a coveted circle of friendship and you will certainly learn many things along the way.

As the years go by and you take turns hosting and being hosted by your Kazakh friends, you not only learn to admire their art of hospitality, but you realize that it isn’t actually a skill to master or an art to perform, it’s a way of life, a way of seeing and experiencing the world that’s as much a part of them as their blood and history. Even some legends and folklore tell stories of some kind of horrible calamity that happens to those who don’t receive guests. But typically the idea of having a guest comes across as almost sacred to Kazakhs, who don’t see uninvited guests as a nuisance, but rather as messengers from God to be treated with special honor and respect.

Over the years of living and raising a family in Kazakhstan, you will have a variety of opportunities to see this in action, whether it is sitting as a witness in your friend’s home when an unexpected visitor shows up or having the experience yourself firsthand. You will learn that it’s impossible to stop by a Kazakh’s home (or have a Kazakh friend drop by yours) to simply drop off or pick up something without being obligated to sit down (or invite in) at the table – even if it’s just to have a cup or two of tea with a couple cookies and small bite of bread. As a foreigner you will pick up on it right away – the vibe of respect that infuses the dastarkhan. You certainly don’t want to make the mistake of showing any kind of disrespect, even though you’re not quite sure you fully comprehend the significance of it all.

Kazakhs really do take hospitality to a whole new level that will leave you wondering if you’ll ever attain such heights yourself. To open up the door when you hear a knock and invite in a guest who’s showed up without any advanced notice (and who may stay for some unknown length of time) – takes a graceful flexibility most Americans aren’t familiar with anymore, forces us to stretch tight muscles that haven’t ever really been used. Just when your admiration soars to new heights though, you will take comfort in hearing your Kazakh friend quote another well-known proverb: “You made us happy by coming over and you made us twice as happy by leaving.” Maybe the super host has a human side after all.

As you marvel and wonder at the mystifying customs of Kazakh hospitality, never let yourself forget that this is a way of life – a way of being open and inviting people in, always being ready to make time to sit and enjoy being with another person. What can be more important than that? And hopefully the lessons learned about hospitality can be taken back across cultures – so that every time you welcome guests to your home, set your dastarkhan or prepare a pot of tea, you will remember what you learned: “If a guest comes, abundance comes with him or her.”

Sources:

“Representation of the concept 'Hospitality' in the Kazakh language” by Altynshash Kurmanali Chakyroglua*, Botagoz Suiyerkulb