My hometown is a shithole (that’s what they say). It caused me a lot of trauma but I LOVE IT anyways. Same with my parents.
Like whenever I have a trustable lover, I am gonna take him to Kentau by 18 hour train from Almaty, and make him experience reading Idiot on the train. playing cards and eating doshirak, meeting my parents, sleeping in masakhana and going for a hike to my hometown mountains.

Kentau is a dead-end place, although Turkistan – that is like 30 km away – is growing fast and becoming more and more touristy. But for Kentau, you need a reason to go. So, whenever I have an opportunity to bring there friends, or send them there to visit my parents, I do that. Most importantly, QUEERS, to increase the representation for my parents and promote my hometown so zu sagen.

First it was a German couple that I met in Astana from couchsurfing. Like we met for 2 hours and I offered them to visit my parents, what they actually did.
Then it was my queer Canadian friend, who speaks MANY languages. My parents still remember him and ask me all the time how is he doing.
After that, it was an archaeological expedition with my queer friend and researchers from Germany, NYC, Almaty, and my dad buying them shashlyq and taking to the caves around that we know.
Then it was an archaeologist Gino Caspari that I met in Tyva. He is kinda famous now.
Then my queer Russian friends, activists, musicians, writers.
Then my queer bestie from Astana.
Then my Tatar queer friends, artists, activists.
Then my queer researcher friend writing a book on special holy sites around Kazakhstan.
Now my queer American-Thai friend, who is writing her PhD on Tengriism in Soviet times, is coming tomorrow to have a coffee with my mom, and my mom is gonna take her to local shamans lol.

I LOVE THAT, and I actually think it super positively affects my parents and my family in general, as they get exposed to so much more queer people, that are not only actively queer, but are doing very important artistic research work in general.