Today, the International Museum Day is celebrated all over the world. Since 1977, May 18 has been a significant date for all those involved in the museum affairs, including business. Including-for tour guides. This holiday is a good reason to get to know them better. NUR.KZ visited the NUR ALEM Museum of Future Energy to find out what it’s like to work in the most unique museum in the country, to conduct excursions for world-class celebrities and politicians, what nuclear physicists do here, and how to find their soulmates.
Friday. At 09:45 in the morning, a group of young people gather in the lobby on the first floor of NUR ALEM Museum – everyone wears similar dark blue vests and jackets with a gray welt on the lapels, fit, energetic, they receive instructions from their manager and supervisors, wish each other a good working day, and go to their floors. They are stand assistants, employees of the museum, who introduce guests to its content.
Today, the Museum of Future Energy employs 35 stand assistants and 9 supervisors, and all of them are led by manager – Gulnaz Zhumagambetova. She jokingly calls herself their “mother” – after all, her subordinates are still very young guys, for whom NUR ALEM became the first place of work. She has been working here from the very opening, and during this time she has raised more than one galaxy of worthy guides.
“Before applying for a job in our museum, applicants go through several stages of interviewing, we equip them with information materials that they should study. After that, the future stand assistants pass the exam. Much attention is paid to articulation, appearance, knowledge of foreign languages is an important criterion, and the age – they shall be no older than 25 years old, the manager explains.
The guys get distributed from the evening – every day they work, together with a new partner and change the floors on which they conduct excursions. This is done to ensure that the stand assistants have complete information on each individual exhibition – whether it is the energy of space, sun, wind, water, biomass, kinetic energy or the national pavilion. This is probably why the work here is never boring, stand assistant Togzhan Serzhanova says. After all, every corner of the eight-story Sphere is a separate galaxy, the young lady says.
“I remember my impressions when I first visited NUR ALEM Museum of Future Energy. It was in 2017, during the “EXPO-2017 Astana” International Specialized Exhibition, where I, then a student, worked as a tour guide. Every time I entered NUR ALEM territory and put my pass card to the turnstile at the checkpoint, it was as if I got to Narnia, to another world. These were unforgettable three months, and when it was over, I thought: “I wish I could always work here!” After a couple of years, my dream came true, ” Togzhan recalls.
Togzhan has a degree in simultaneous translation from Kazakh into English. And the she also speaks an another foreign language – Spanish, which she once was useful during an excursion for a high-ranking official from Spain. This was during the first week of her internship in 2019, when the EXPO Congress Center hosted a large international forum with the participation of judges from different countries.
“I felt a great responsibility. I was struck by the fact that the President of the Supreme Court of Spain was interested in learning not so much about the content, but more about our traditions, legends and history. So, for example, after hearing about the tradition of “qalau”, when a guest, coming to the house, can tell the owner about something he or she likes, and get it as a gift of a favorite thing, he asked me to give him my jacket. Of course, it was a joke, “Togzhan Serzhanova recalls with a smile.
But for the stand assistant Azamat Yessenov – nearly a nuclear physicist, the most memorable meeting was with professors from Harvard professors.
“During the interview, when I applied for this job, I shared my plans and goals for the future – they are inextricably linked with science. Probably, our management immediately noted this, because during the visit of the professorial delegation from Harvard, I was purposefully assigned to meet them. It was very exciting – they gave their comments and shared their experience ” Azamat said.
According to him, each of the visitor is special in its own way and teaches something new.
“Some help me get to know myself, my new facts of myself – for example, the way I behave with them, the way I communicate, and provide information. Some of them are so “to the point” of alternative energy (for example, they work in related fields) that they themselves open up a lot of new things to us. But during my work here, I realized that NUR ALEM is a place that first of all gives people emotions, this is its charm. A lot of people come to us, and they may not always be interested in how all these technologies and mechanisms work, what they consist of, what their structure is, but they know for sure that they will get emotions and delight here, ” the insightful young man shares his observation.
Every stand assistant at the Future Energy Museum has their own favorite floor. For some, this is the fourth – “Biomass Energy”, which is presented in the form of a square with a green panorama, here they feel connected to nature and find comfort. For the others – the fifth level – “Wind Energy”, the third like the second floor, dedicated to the energy of water. “Energy of the Space” is the favorite one to Azamat Yessenov.
“Each floor has its feature, its highlight. For example, the most popular among visitors is the eighth floor, where everyone is looking for a glass bridge. Personally, I like the seventh level, which presents ideas for generating energy from space. These are hypothetical technologies of the future that can be used beyond Earth. This is a bit of science fiction, but it is quite realizable, it fascinates me, ” the stand assistant says.
Working in the Museum sphere, you can meet not only high-ranking officials or world-class celebrities, but also the love of your life. So, for a few years, NUR ALEM has played its role in the formation of two social units. One of them is the family of supervisor Abay Abrayev, who married his colleague-a stand assistant.
“We got married in August 2019, and she came to work at the museum a year before that. I noticed her at once and immediately took action (laughs), we started dating, and later I proposed marriage to her. Now we have a child, he is nine months old, his name is Amre. Frankly speaking, we have not brought him here on an excursion yet, but I think everything is ahead, ” Abay says with tenderness.
He also started as a stand assistant in 2017, but after 2 years, due to his leadership qualities, he upgraded to a supervisor – a person who coordinates the work of a stand assistant.
“If we are informed that Italians are coming, I need to prepare a stand assistant who speaks Italian, think over the route. It happens that delegations have only half an hour or an hour of time, and you need to show the most interesting expositions,” the supervisor says.
For stand assistants who work in the Museum of Future Energy, it is necessary to be fluent in Kazakh, Russian and English languages. But also, many of them speak other foreign languages like Turkish, French, Korean, Arabic, etc.
“The main qualities and skills that a guide should have in our museum are also the ability to communicate with people and being sociable. A variety of people come to us, and everyone needs to be able to find an approach ” Abay emphasizes.
Children are the most favorite visitors for Nursultan Yessenbek, stand assistant.
“The kids are our most sincere and grateful guests. They are happy about everything, surprised, do not hide their emotions, they ask about everything, it is a pleasure to work with them, ” he says.
Nursultan divides visitors into 2 categories – those who come to the museum to learn new things, and those who come to be photographed. In the era of social networks, it has become common.
“You can understand them too, it’s beautiful everywhere” the 19-year-old stand assistant says sagely.
Nursultan is a future IT manager. He first visited NUR ALEM as a teenager – at the age of 16, then still a student of the Kazakh-Turkish lyceum, he worked at the exhibition as a volunteer. Since the fall of 2020, he has become a real guide here, who in a short period of time has mastered all the subtleties of the profession – the ability to captivate listeners with stories about expositions, to conduct a conversation, to be tactful and polite. He says that he has never encountered conflict situations, as a rule, the guests of the museum are very good-tempered.
“There was a case when a grandmother and her grandson came to us for a tour. The grandmother extremely liked how I explained to her grandson the processes of obtaining energy from water in an accessible and simple way that out of gratitude she invited me to get a haircut at the salon where she works as a hairdresser,” Nursultan recalls.
Work in the museum gave stand assistant Alibi Yerbulekov, a student of Nazarbayev University, future mechanical engineer, an invaluable skill – the ability to speak in public.
“Before becoming a tour guide, I had great difficulties in presentations, it was difficult for me to speak in public. Now those days are over. But the most important thing is that I met friends here. I think what distinguishes this place from others is that people working here and energetic, versatile, erudite, who inspire, ” Alibi concludes.
If after reading the stories of our heroes, you would like to visit NUR ALEM Museum and learn more about the energy of the future, then you can find the schedule of the museum and its contents on the website https://qazexpocongress.kz/ru/.
Due to the COVID-19 epidemiological situation, NUR ALEM Future Energy Museum complies with all sanitary standards.
Link to material: https://www.nur.kz/society/1912926-ya-rabotayu-v-nur-alem-odin-den-iz-zhizni-stendistov-muzeya-energii-buduschego/
