A publication of the Tucson-Almaty Sister Cities Committee April 19, 2006
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CONGRATULATIONS, DAVID TINEO, Govenor's Arts Award Winner April 18, 2006
In 2003, David Tineo prepared a special gift for the Mayor of Almaty, Kazakhstan. Applying his muralist talent to a large canvas, David told the story of how Tucson and Almaty had forged a connection and a tradition by depicting the road traveled by a group of young Tucson Mariachi players on their way to perform in Central Asia for the first time. The group, correctly named 'Mariachi en el Camino Seda', or 'Mariachi on the Silk Road' were shown in the painting with their gitarons, vihuelas, violins and trumpets journeying from the cactus and sand of Tucson, along the Silk Road towards the steppes and sand of Almaty where a group of young Kazakh performers awaited them. David truly captured the spirit and historical placement of such a global 'first' in presenting Tucson and it's wonderful cultural tradition of Mariachi art in our sister city of Almaty for the first time in history.
Below is an article that appeared in the Tucson Citizen about the trip.
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 Tucson Citizen |
SISTER CITY SERENADE: Mariachis Almaty-bound
Kazakhstan trip excites teen musicians
GABRIELA RICO
grico@tucsoncitizen.com
A group of Tucson teens will travel 13,000 miles later this month to introduce Tucson's sister city, Almaty, Kazakhstan, to mariachi music. "I'm very excited," said Elyse Abbott, 15, who is among the 10 students in the group, dubbed Mariachi on the Silk Road .
This will be her first trip out of the country, said the Salpointe Catholic High School sophomore, who has been playing the violin for six years.
"I think this is a good opportunity for me," Abbott said.
For 17-year-old Ana Montijo, a Salpointe senior, the trip is a chance to learn.
"What I like about it is that we're going to go over there and learn about their culture and teach them about ours," the violinist said. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
The trip came about when Almaty Mayor Victor Khrapunov and his wife Leilia visited Tucson in 2000.
At a reception in their honor, they were entertained by a teen mariachi group from Tucson High Magnet School . The couple immediately requested that a youth mariachi group visit their city, said Jerry M. Gary, chairman of the Tucson-Almaty Sister Cities Committee board of directors.
Because of apprehension in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the trip is only now happening, he said.
The sister cities committee solicited youth mariachi groups from throughout Tucson , getting a response from Mariachi Monarca, a club at Salpointe High that includes students from other schools. Ten students from that group are scheduled to leave Sept. 29 and return Oct. 9.
Gary joked that the biggest challenge the group faces is transporting the guitarrón and four boxes of sombreros.
The city of Almaty will pay for the group's hotels and transportation while it is there, Gary said.
Locally, Tucson car dealer Jim Click donated eight round trip airline tickets, and Mayor Bob Walkup and City Council members Carol West and Kathleen Dunbar contributed money from their office budgets for the trip.
SISTER CITIES:
In 1987, the Tucson City Council passed a resolution recognizing Almaty , Kazakhstan as a sister city to Tucson .
The cities' two mayors formalized the partnership with a Protocol of Agreement and it was agreed that the two cities would practice "people to people diplomacy" by initiating exchanges in education, culture and economic development.
The first exchange happened in 1989 when a youth soccer team from Almaty traveled to Tucson to compete in a tournament.
Since then, hundreds of people have traveled between the two cities.
Source: Tucson-Almaty Sister Cities Committee
TO DONATE:
Mariachi on the Silk Road is seeking donations to help offset travel costs. Send donations to: TASCC P.O. Box 32527, Tucson , Ariz. 85751-2527. |
David will be on hand on Saturday, April 29th at the "Where In The World Is Almaty, Kazakhstan?" cultural evening to sign limited edition prints of his lovely and well received mural canvas. Where: Tucson Medical Center, Alamo Building. When: 6:30-9:00pm. Visual displays, Kazakh food, music and poetry readings are on the program, along with a silent auction and raffle, authentic Kazakh chocolate, Rahat, will be available for tasting and purchase. A scale model of Beiterek (the Tree of Life), which is Kazakhstan's new National Symbol, will be on display. Call Sally at 722-0033, or Barbara at 325-1420 or Jerry at 886-1260.
A
publication of the Tucson-Almaty Sister Cities
Committee April 6, 2006
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"Of Gold and Grass: Nomads of Kazakhstan"
Discussions are underway between the Arizona State Museum, on the campus of the University of Arizona, and the Foundation for International Arts & Education in Bethesda, Maryland to bring the Kazakhstan National Exhibition to Tucson in the Spring of 2007. Like the famed King Tut exhibition of Egypt, "Of Gold and Grass" will bring anthropological data and artifacts on the ancient cultural and societal heritage of the nomads that roamed the steppes in the Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan. The United States tour will begin in September at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego. The next stop will be in Tucson, the sister city of Almaty, Kazakhstan since 1987. Anyone interested is being a part of this exciting event are encouraged to contact Jerry Gary, (520)886-1260, jerrymgary@aol.com or Barbara Chinworth, (520)-325-1420, blueturtle@gainUSA.com .
"Where in the World is Almaty, Kazakhstan?"
Did you ever find yourself asking that question? Many people have, so TASCC wants to give you an answer. On Saturday, April 29, 2006, a cultural program that includes food, music, art, clothing, poetry reading and stories about Kazakhstan will be presented. The Alamo Building at Tucson Medical Center is the place, between 6:30 and 9:00 pm. Join in a silent auction, raffle, baursak, shaslik, sounds of the qobyz and dombra and views beautifully adorned clothing, glassware and artifacts. Among silent auction items will be a beautiful book titled "The Soul of Kazakhstan", a replica of Baiterek, or The Tree of Life,
the National symbol of the Republic of Kazakhstan, a silver and turquoise pendant, similar to this one, created by Dennison Tsosie, Navajo Silversmith 
, signed, limited edition prints of works by Tucson muralist, David Tineo and many other items. For information, contact Sally Allison at 529-8145x201, Jerry Gary at 886-1260 or Barbara Chinworth at 325-1420.
News from the Kazakhstan Embassy
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
By Christopher Pala
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published April 1, 2006 , Page A7
ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- The first phase of a project to rehabilitate the northern part of Central Asia's desiccated Aral Sea has been completed far ahead of schedule, with more than 300 square miles of formerly dry seabed already covered by water.
The drying up of three-quarters of the Aral Sea, once one of the world's largest lakes, is considered one of the biggest man-made ecological disasters.
The $85 million rehabilitation project, funded by the World Bank, consisted of improving irrigation and other water works along the Syr Darya River, which flows into what is now known as the Northern Sea, and building an eight-mile dike to raise the level of that part of the sea by 10 feet and reduce its salinity. Due to excessive draining, the Aral Sea split into three parts -- two in the south and one in the north.
"We're almost there," said Masood Ahmad, the World Bank official in charge of the project. "We expect we'll have achieved our goal this April."
"In the satellite imagery, you can clearly see the Northern Sea has risen significantly since last August," said Philip Micklin, an Aral Sea specialist at Western Michigan University.
When the project was approved in 1999, it was expected that it would take five to 10 years to fill the Northern Sea, but the irrigation rehabilitation work cut waste and increased the river's flow into the sea by a greater margin than expected, he said.
Second phase
A second phase, to be carried out by the government of Kazakhstan, is expected to raise the sea by another 13 feet by the end of the decade.
The brackish Aral Sea, shared by Kazakhstan in the north and Uzbekistan in the south, was once the world's third-largest inland body of water, but the Soviet government chose to sacrifice its rich fishery to attain self-sufficiency in cotton, diverting the waters from the Syr and Amu Darya rivers that had sustained the sea to irrigate cotton fields.
In fewer than 50 years, it lost 75 percent of its surface, baring a seabed poisoned with toxic herbicides and fertilizers that sent respiratory disease rates in the region soaring.
By the time Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan became independent, days before the Soviet Union was dissolved on Dec. 26, 1991 , the two main ports, Moynak and Aralsk, were more than 50 miles away from the water. The most southern part is so salty that only brine shrimp survive in it.
In Aralsk, a hospital physician, Dr. Marat Turemulatov, said cheap, abundant and fresh fish from the sea have already appeared in local markets.
"Before, we only had small amounts of fish from the lakes," he said. "The sea had become too salty for most species. But now, we're seeing fish from the sea in the markets."
Health will improve
"We have an epidemic of tuberculosis and we have chronic anemia, and poor nutrition is a major component in both," Dr. Turemulatov said in a telephone interview from Almaty, Kazakhstan's economic capital. "With people eating more fresh fish, their health is going to improve," he said.
The key to the success of the project lay in the waterworks along the Syr Darya. The other river that once sustained the sea, the much larger Amu Darya to the south, loses nearly all its water to irrigation so that most years, not a drop reaches the sea.
Deterioration of the river's hydraulic infrastructure had considerably reduced the amount of water it could carry.
According to Mr. Ahmad, the World Bank official in charge of the restoration project, when mountainous Kyrgyzstan upstream needed to release water through its dams in winter to generate electricity, the river downstream was already full, and the water used to generate electricity had to be diverted to lakes created along the river.
But in summer, when demand for water for irrigation is highest, the water's level is naturally low, so until now little has reached the Aral Sea.
After six years of rebuilding sluices, dams and channels along the Syr Darya's descent from the mountains of Kyrgyzstan (not shown on the accompanying map) through Kazakhstan, its capacity of 35,000 cubic feet per second has been doubled, Mr. Ahmad said. Thus, a far greater proportion of the water released by Kyrgyzstan in winter now reaches the Aral.
In addition, Uzbekistan had protested that the water used to raised the level of the northern Aral would be that much water that would fail to flow into the southern sea. Now, Mr. Ahmad said, because the Syr Darya's flow has been so dramatically increased, the southern sea will actually benefit from the project.
Still, whether it will be enough to compensate the effects of evaporation in the southern part of the sea remains doubtful.
Aral once rich in fish
According to Dr. Nikolai Aladin of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a Russian biologist who has been studying the sea for nearly three decades, the Aral was exceptionally rich in fish.
"Before it dried out and became too salty, it had about 100 pounds of fish per acre," he said.
Aralsk once had one of the biggest canneries in the Soviet Union, and the whole sea produced 50,000 metric tons of fish a year.
But from the 1960s, the Soviet Union made a decision that self-sufficiency in cotton was more important than fish, and the waters of the two rivers were greatly diverted to irrigate cotton fields on a vast scale.
By the end of the century, the Aral Sea had lost 70 percent of its surface and retreated nearly 50 miles from Aralsk. Hundreds of rusting ships now dot the former sea bottom, providing shade for camels, horses and scrap metal to scavengers.
The collapse of the Soviet economy left the population of what was already a backward region in deep poverty just as fresh fish ??? a vital source of protein and minerals necessary to prevent anemia ??? became scarce and expensive. As for fresh fruit and vegetables, none grow in the region's salty soil, so when Soviet-era subsidized transportation from other regions ceased, these too became too costly for the local population.
Today, residents say, not only are the markets full of cheap, fresh carp, pike perch and flounder, but Aralsk has already resumed exports of fish to Russia and Ukraine.
Changing times
The World Bank project was signed in 1999, when Kazakhstan was still in crisis. Now, seven years later, the economy has nearly tripled and state coffers are overflowing from income from oil and metals exports.
With a nearly guaranteed future as one of the world's top five oil exporters, with a ratio of oil income to population similar to Saudi Arabia's, President Nursultan Nazarbayev has announced that some of this money will be used to raise the Northern Sea's level another 12 to 20 feet.
This would cover another 400 square miles of dry seabed and restore the Northern Sea to about two-thirds of its previous size. It would also bring water back to within a couple of miles of Aralsk.
The project is estimated to cost about $120 million and will involve digging upstream canals, raising the dike or both. It would achieve one of biggest reversals of an environmental disaster in history, though there is no hope of filling the southern, larger part of the sea, specialists say.
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