The ailment first struck in the village in the spring of 2013 and has affected over 120 residents – around a quarter of Kalachi’s population.

I’m very on edge.”įor two years, residents have been falling into comas and suffering debilitating symptoms – dizziness, nausea, blinding headaches and memory loss – as a result. For six weeks, I didn’t know where to put myself. “After this slumber, my blood pressure started going up for no reason,” Kazachenko explained. He maintains a sense of humour about his predicament but it has had serious health implications. The motorcycle incident was his second journey in to the land of nod – “the first time I slept for three days,” Kazachenko says, laughing. Raisa Kazachenko has nursed her husband through two bouts of the sleep-inducing illness. He didn’t complain of any other injuries as a result of his sudden sleep. “That’s fast – a motorbike isn’t so fast!”. “It’s good it wasn’t that foreign vehicle,” he jokes, gesturing at his car standing beside his neat white cottage. Kazachenko blacked out while driving his motorcycle, with his wife riding with him. I understood in the hospital that I’d fallen asleep.” “I was going to town on 28 August ,” Kazachenko told, still disoriented by the experience. The mysterious illness has sent residents into comas, sometimes lasting days on end. I don’t remember.” Kazachenko had been hit by the so-called “sleeping sickness” that is plaguing Kalachi, a remote village about 300 miles west of the country’s capital Astana. He was driving to the nearest town on some errands, but he never arrived. O ne day last summer, Viktor Kazachenko set off across the steppe from his village in northern Kazakhstan.

Land of nod u village