The remaining members of a Kazakh Czech community over a century old are leaving the vast nation on the Asian steppes following the Czech government's approval of a repatriation program earlier this month. The Interior Ministry has set aside some 40 million Kč ($1.8 million) a year to help the nearly 200 Czechs relocate and return to their homeland.

The reason? Their living conditions in Kazakhstan have been growing steadily worse since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Czechs say.

Kazakh Czechs have been trickling back since 1994. Some 700 have already made the move.

"We had no idea what to expect. We had seen a few pictures, but that was it," he says. Like most members of the Kazakh Czech community, Samek had never been to the Czech Republic. His great-grandparents moved east from Moravia, along with hundreds of other Czechs, in the late 19th century to work as farmers, cultivating the land of Kazakhstan's plains. Separated from their homeland by thousands of miles, they retained their language and culture and eventually founded Borodinovka, a Czech village in the Aktyubinsk region in what is now western Kazakhstan.

Like most in that fold, Samek was born in Borodinovka, speaking Czech and eating Czech food but knowing almost nothing of his ancestral homeland.

His first days in the Czech Republic were a sobering experience. The Samek family arrived here in the middle of a blustery autumn to a barely furnished house with no heating that the government had located for them in the tiny village of Biskupice.

"I was surprised," recalls Samek. "We were excited about moving to Europe. But the house we moved into didn't look unlike those in Kazakhstan."

Fortunately the neighbors were friendly and it didn't take too long before Bohemia started to feel like home.

"It never really felt like home in Kazakhstan," he says. "Especially in the last few years there."

Unwanted

Part of the reason is the rise of Kazakh nationalism, according to Šimon Pánek, director of the humanitarian organization People in Need, which helped organize the first effort to relocate Kazakh Czechs in the 1990s.

Part of the Soviet Union until 1991, the newly independent Kazkhstan has undergone a national rebirth of sorts.

"Some of the Czechs living there began to feel unwelcome," Pánek says.

And it wasn't just Czechs. Members of the local German and Polish communities also began returning to their homelands following the USSR's collapse.

"People would let you know that you're a foreigner, that you're not really a Kazakh," Samek says.

He now looks forward to being joined by his three siblings and their families, who are still in Kazakhstan and expect to move here as part of the last batch that the government is helping to relocate.

A total of 170 people, or 50 families, have been given permanent residency permits in the Czech Republic.

Once here, they will need to wait five years before they can apply for citizenship — the same as any other foreigner with a residency permit. In the process of officially becoming Czechs, they will need to renounce their Kazakh citizenship.

Several cities — among them Olomouc, Prague, Brno and Plzeň — have agreed to provide accommodation for the transplants.

Ivan Rašták, spokesman for Olomouc City Hall, says the city just has located a suitable three-room apartment for one family. "We already provided housing for a family that moved here from another former Soviet republic three years ago," he says. "The family settled in really well, so, based on this experience, we decided to help out again."

Of course, the towns aren't doing this purely out of the goodness of their hearts; for each family they accommodate, the municipality receives 500,000 Kč in subsidies from the state.

No regrets

According to Pánek, none of the 700 returning families who moved during the '90s have changed their minds and tried to move back.

"Of course it wasn't easy, especially for the older people," he says. "Some families didn't assimilate quite as well as others. But there haven't been any major problems."

Even young families like Samek's had their share of hurdles to overcome.

"As soon as I would start speaking Czech, people would look at me as a foreigner," Samek says. Although he grew up in a Czech-speaking household — "My parents wouldn't even allow us to speak Russian at home," he recalls — his Czech still bears the traces of a light Russian accent.

That sometimes proved an obstacle in his search for work. "Czechs don't always like to employ foreigners, and of course they had no way of knowing that I had Czech roots."

The move also wasn't cheap. After factoring in all the application fees, it cost Samek's family some 70,000 Kč. But it was worth it, he says, adding that you can't even begin to compare the quality of life.

"The last time we went back to Kazakhstan for a visit, it was like entering a different world. Our home is here now."

It is a very different home than the one they were used to. Every once in a while, Samek confesses, he still misses the vastness of the Kazakh steppe.