April 2024 Fourth Friday – Kazakhstan

Zika Khamitzhanova

Zika Khamitzhanova was born and raised in Kazakhstan.  She moved to the United States in 1996 and was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Zika attended high school in the USA and graduated from Indiana Wesleyan University with degrees in Criminal Justice and Political Science. 

Zika moved to Valparaiso in 2008 and worked as a case manager for 9 years working with people with disabilities in Northwest Indiana and is involved in the Special Olympics Program. Her journey to the USA is connected to her relationship to several missionaries who worked in Kazakhstan after the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of borders in the former Soviet Union Countries.

Zika presented on basic facts like size, population, geography of Kazakhstan, history, cultural highlights, the Kazakhstan society and expand on her personal biography and journey to the USA.

Zike describes herself as “a full Kazakh woman by ethnicity and upbringing, Asian by race, and an American in my life here.”