Uzbekistan. Karakalpakstan. Kungrad. 2010. In late spring the train to Kazakhstan from Kungrad is filled with men on their way to find work as migrant laborers in Russia and Kazakhstan. Its one day to Kazakhstan and three to Russia. Train conductors and border police extort money from the workers' bosses who move the men in groups to work sites abroad. The only work to be found in Karakalpakstan is in the gas fields on the dried Aral Sea, as taxi drivers, or in small shops. But to get a job in the gas field, the potential employee has to pay a 2 million sum bribe.