‘Irish emigrants get sold a lot of paddywhackery’

The city of Nur-Sultan, which rises from the flat plains of Kazakhstan and boasts flashy buildings and aspirational architecture, is home for Irish man Conor Doherty.

Once called Tselinograd and, until 2019, Astana, the city was built by Nursultan Nazarbayev, former president of Kazakhstan, who ruled autocratically from 1990 to 2019, after the country became independent from the Soviet Union.

Nazarbayev is still omnipresent, with schools, the capital’s airport and a university named after him, among other places.

Doherty, a writing centre instructor at Nazarbayev University, says that despite long winters, and subsequently much time spent indoors, he is enjoying a life far removed from the one he would have at home.

‘We have people working around the world who we’ve never met’

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‘You can leave the office by midday on Friday and no one bats an eyelid’

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‘Life is good here and we’re not going anywhere’

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“It’s an interesting place culturally and socially,’’ he says of the city of 1 million people with suprahuman public spaces, skyscrapers and eight-lane superhighways.

“I look forward to not having to tramp through the knee-high snow that blankets the city for about six months of the year. Once spring comes and you can spend time outdoors again, summers here are quite pleasant.

"I like climbing, but it's unremittingly flat here so I'm looking forward to travelling to Almaty and perhaps neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, which is very mountainous. Kazakhstan is the size of western Europe, so it will be interesting to see it," he says. In the meantime, Doherty climbs at the city's indoor gym.

Originally from Ballyjamesduff in Co Cavan, Doherty studied English, music and philosophy in Maynooth, beginning his studies in 2006. "Despite my aspirations to be a musician, I started a masters in philosophy in 2009. After completion, I lived as a deluded starving artist for a while, just as the recession was happening."

As a result of low wealth and few prospects, he moved to Italy to work as an English tutor in summer camps with Lingue Senza Frontiere in the summer of 2013. A stint working at the Azkorri Ikastetxea bilingual public school in Bilbao followed.

"I wanted to work in academia and moved to China in 2013. I was very lucky to find employment in Tsinghua University, where I lectured in philosophy and academic English." At Tsinghua, a public research university in Beijing, Doherty was given the freedom to design a syllabus, and write exam papers.

“It’s a very dynamic global university, which is renowned for its social commitment, but also very exciting to teach there.”

After a brief stint back in Ireland, working as a language instructor, he returned to China, this time to work at the Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, an international research-led, joint university in Suzhou, Jiangsu, where he taught academic writing between November 2017 to August 2018 before becoming a language assistant consultant at the British Council in Shanghai.

“I found Ireland very tough. Just buying a house and settling down, trying to eke out an existence isn’t easy in Ireland. I looked at the cost of starter homes, and it just seemed mad.”

Although Shanghai doesn’t come cheap either, and the air pollution in the city took its toll with grey skies for months on end, he enjoyed his time there. “But my exit in 2020 was like something akin to a sci-fi movie.”

‘Terrifying’

Doherty left China in February 2020. “When I was flying home, everyone was in masks on the plane. We didn’t really know much about the [Covid-19] virus, but I was wearing two masks on top of each other. Everyone was avoiding other passengers like the plague. It was terrifying.

“I ended up leaving everything behind, my one-bedroomed apartment and my small but adored whiskey collection that was in it.”

Landing in Europe, he found people were in total denial about Covid-19. "It was just bizarre. When I came home, I was telling people about the pandemic and it wasn't really clicking how bad it was here until March. Everyone was reluctant to buy into it, simply because it was so ridiculous."

As China closed its borders, Doherty didn't return, taking a short summer contract at Durham University working in academic writing.

Job hunting in Ireland at this point didn’t bear much fruit. “You need top -level experience just to get three-month contracts in universities back home. It makes for a lot of uncertainty and I was looking for a long-term contract, which I subsequently got here. So I moved again.”

Nazarbayev University is an autonomous research university, with international faculty and staff. An English-medium institution, it boasts more than 5,000 students from all around the world.”I get to live on campus, which is interesting. It’s a very safe place and there are great opportunities for academics.”

Doherty says he is happy to expand his horizons and live abroad.

"I'm lucky I've spent these past years in Asia. We get told a lot how much we need Irish culture when we go away, especially drinking culture. We get sold a lot of paddywhackery, which can make people cling on to an idea of home.

“But it’s great to move to a different country and embrace opportunities, while experiencing something completely different.”