Emailed on Thanksgiving, 2009

(This was originally emailed on Thanksgiving 2009)

Here’s something interesting... the word “almaq” means “buy,” “receive,” and “get” – there’s no difference between those terms. So communism lives on in their language. I’ve never heard a local use the term “communism” here, in English or in Azeri. They call it “collectivism.” That’s a better way of saying how it affected them.

The organization I'll be working with is Azerbaijan Rural Investment Project. From what I can see so far, it was created by the Azeri government to help repair and develop the areas that have little access to government money. After 20 years of no Soviet/Russian support, things have fallen apart horribly everywhere. Most schools are freezing and have bathrooms you wouldn’t want to step into (I spend over 8 hours a day in those schools) and the hospitals, roads, and sewage systems throughout the country need work. Lots of people miss the Soviets because they kept the schools, roads, power, mail systems, and all infrastructure working. The current government doesn’t do that. There are billions of $$$ coming into the country from oil, but it’s not making its way to the people. The Peace Corps and many other international groups strive to help the organizations and people that can't get the money, so I was surprised to learn that the organization I’ll be helping is supported by the government (but funded by the World Bank). It’ll be interesting to see just what they do and how they do it. I’ve probably mentioned how big bribing is here. It’s standard practice. From what I hear, most – but not all - college diplomas are bought from real schools. And I hear that the police are kind of like gangsters.

The Peace Corps’ Azeri office has a very sharp guy running its Security section, and he’s on call 24/7 to help if anyone tries to take advantage of us. No matter who it is… government officials, police, neighbors, or even kids. A couple of weeks ago a few women trainees were being harassed (just verbally) by a bunch of guys who were about 18 years old. The guys were following them down a street saying - in English - what they wanted to do to them (you can guess - to them, all young Western women are whores). That’s pretty common behavior here. One of the women got fed up with the nuisance, so she called the Peace Corps security guy on her cell phone and then handed the phone to one of the young jerks. The kid took the phone and listened, and as soon as he hung up he was backing off from the women apologizing profusely in English and Azeri. I have no idea what the security guy said to the kid, but I’ve heard he can and will do just about anything for us. That’s a good feeling, especially since I’ve also heard that the Muslim extremists are out there. They probably have been for awhile; since Azerbaijan’s split from Russia in 1991 it has been trying to find its identity. Most Azeris consider themselves European, but the EU hasn’t accepted them. They do not see themselves as Mid-Eastern or Russian. What they’re closest to culturally is Turkey, and that’s probably their closest friend. Even their languages are about the same – nothing like Farsi or Arabic. Once I really learn to speak Azerbaijani I’ll actually be able to talk to Turks, too.

The people here are not religious, but their culture is definitely Muslim – much more so than many of them know. So, while searching for their post-Soviet identity, many Azeris are turning to religion. Even the family I’m staying with is. The 15-year-old girl spends hours properly donning her shawl garb to pray. I’m not sure how often she does it – I’m not usually home during the day – but I think it’s just once a day. And the Call to Prayer that comes (live!) five times a day from huge loudspeakers on the town mosque has gotten louder lately. And this week it started coming from two sources; one of them is a lot closer to where I live. So it looks and sounds like they’re becoming more Muslim. Most of the people here seem to want to lean toward Euro-American culture, but I probably get a biased view. The Azeris always like to be nice and tend to tell people only what they think they want to hear. Some of my Peace Corps trainee buddies are moving close to the Iranian border next month and it’ll be interesting to find out what they see and hear, particularly once their language skills improve. I hope to take a trip down there – I hear there are wild herds of camels running about down south. That would be something to see.

There’s a big Muslim holiday this week. It starts on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving (no, I don’t get Thanksgiving Day off), and is called Qurban Bayrami, which means “Sacrifice Holiday.” It’s about an Old Testament story that has something to do with a guy (was it Abraham?) who is supposed to sacrifice a sheep, but couldn’t get one and offered his son instead. So God gave him a sheep. Or something like that... I'm not well versed in Biblical history. Anyway, Muslim families celebrate the event by sacrificing a sheep and handing sections of it to their poorer neighbors. The family I’m staying with sure can’t afford a sheep, so we’ll see what happens here. Their relatives next door can afford it – they have a huge house and a Mercedes – so maybe they’ll do the sacrifice and bring us some meat. I sure wouldn’t mind some mutton, but let’s hope they keep the keep the slaughtering next door.

I don’t know if I’m going to pass the official language test, but nobody is ever booted out of the Peace Corps for failing. I think the only way you can get booted from the Peace Corps is to do something illegal. Once you're accepted by passing all the tests, investigations, and evaluations needed to get sent somewhere for training, you’re in - unless you decide you want to get out (it’s not like the military; we can leave whenever we want). I take the final language test on Dec 2 and am supposed to make Intermediate-level Azeri speech – yes, intermediate after just 8 weeks of classes. This week I learned that volunteers who don’t make it get four months to reach their goal. They give us an allowance for language tutors and I’ve already started looking for one by contacting other volunteers in my new town. My boss (the Peace Corps one, not the AzRIP one) said I’m gonna need it. My job is going to take me to lots of places where nobody speaks anything but Azeri or Russian. He gave me the email address of the woman who just left the position I’ll be entering, so I contacted her. She might be able to connect me with a good tutor and tell me more about the place I’ll be working.

Well, the power went out again so I’d better shut down and thank Allah for my laptop’s backup battery. I write my emails on my computer at home in Word, then put them on my flash drive and copy/paste them into Gmail when I can make it to the Internet Club. Every time I do that the flash drive picks up lots of viruses, but Norton 360 is protecting me well. I carry my laptop to the Club as often as I can to update its protection. So now I’ll shut down and try to study the language without my computer…. yaxshi yol!

Next day… Over the past week the power has been on barely 50%. Shutdowns are frequent. Lately it’s been due to wind. They don’t think it’s at all strange to walk in wind so strong that you have to struggle to force yourself through it. We’re talking hurricane-force winds, and they’re normal. When I was walking into the wind trying to get home a few days ago, all I could think of was Dorothy when she was trying so hard to get home in the beginning of The Wizard of Oz. I’ve been through lots of tornadoes and hurricanes and have never felt any wind like I’ve felt in here. Not much rain, and no storms. Just wind. So now I know one reason why there’s nothing sitting out in yards and on streets – no trash cans, flower pots, nothing. The only thing that hit me while I was walking through it was continuous salt and sand from the sea.

Last week I watched a woman have a heart attack. For real. Right here at home. And there’s nothing that could be done. It was about 11pm – I think it was Wednesday night – and they woke me up to see if I had any medicines to help. They knew I have a big First Aid case full of pills and stuff that the Peace Corps gives each of us, but it’s not like the Corps makes plans to treat heart failure. Far from it. If my heart was in that bad of shape they would have found out during the dozens of medical tests I had to take to become a volunteer and wouldn’t have let me in. Anyway… the family woke me up, and to make them happy I pulled out the First Aid kit, sat down at a table across from the woman who was having the heart attack, and thumbed through the meds. At the time I didn’t know what was wrong with the woman (“Bibi” is what they call her – that means the “aunt from the male side of the family”), but she was making a horrific noise while she sweat then shivered and sweat then shivered over and over again. She kept passing out on and off, too. Once she passed out long enough that I thought she was dead. There were six of us in the room – Bibi, her sister (don’t know her name), Mehpara (whose house I’m staying in), Mehpara’s two teenagers (Nigar and Iosef), and me. Her sister fanned her, Mehpara and I watched her, Nigar went back and forth between the soccer game on TV and the heart attack, and Iosef barely looked up from the soccer. Apparently this isn’t an unusual event. And there was nobody to call. There is a phone number for emergencies, like for ambulances and fire departments, but nobody trusts them. Very few doctors in Azerbaijan are what we would call doctors. They’re basically people who decide they’ll be doctors one day and put a sign out that says they are. They probably buy their certification (read: bribe) and have some sort of training, like home remedies and superstitions handed down from the family, but people tend to trust their own family training more than what the “doctors” offer them. And I have to admit that the time-tested family remedies may be more reliable. I considered calling the Peace Corps’ main doctor, Dr. Fuad (we have three doctors, also not "real" by American definition, to take care of us 24/7), but he’s in Baku and by the time he’d arrive she’d either be dead or the heart attack would be over and she’d survive. Plus, Peace Corps volunteers are supposed to stay out of stuff, and this sure looked like it could be stuff.

Well, she didn't die, and the next day I talked to Fuad and he told me that staying out of it was the right thing to do. I have to admit it was interesting to watch her. Now if I ever write fiction I’ll know what to write if a character is having heart failure or dying.

The next day Nigar told me it was a heart attack. I can’t be sure that’s what it was, but whatever it was looked serious enough to pass for one. She’s a very smart girl. So is her mother. Both were top students in the school down the street, but Mehpara couldn’t afford college or anything else, so she got married. Nigar wants to be an English teacher, which is a valuable occupation here – women can get into it and they’re sure to get jobs. Learning English is very, very big here. She’s pretty good and hopefully she’ll make it. She knows her verb conjugations better than lots of Americans I know, but she needs a lot more vocabulary and practice. Kinda like me with her language. She helps me with Azeri daily and doesn’t expect me to help her with English – that’s part of the contract they have with the PCorps.

They’re paid pretty well to keep me here. Roughly $150/month to feed me and give me a place to sleep. That’s a lot of money here. Going out for a really good meal costs about $2-4; a cheap meal is about 20-40 cents. A bottle of the best water costs 20 cents, a bus ride costs 20 cents, a cab ride across town costs about $2. The only thing I’ve found to be expensive is bananas; they’re about 50 cents each. When I eat out, lunch usually costs me about $1.

And real estate isn’t cheap. Houses cost about the same here as they do in Raleigh, and with an average income of about $5000 (Raleigh is around $40,000), that’s a fortune to these folks. In Baku, real estate prices are comparable to London and New York and they’re continuously building more and more huge condos downtown. If you can ignore the disgusting air, it’s a beautiful city. It's very European and looks like a cross between Zurich, Paris, and Istanbul. The buildings look like Zurich with a little bit of Turkish trim, and the shops and sights look like all three. In a few years it will be a real planetary landmark – construction is going on everywhere and the pictures I’ve seen of what's to come are amazing. People who have been here a couple of years have told me that the recent development of areas around Baku, like Sumgayit, are incredible. It’s obvious that the huge houses are new and some of the schools are new, and there’s some new infrastructure, too – buses, power, etc. But most are not government run. Buses are privately owned; each driver owns his own. I’m not sure about power. Things are changing fast, but the most serious problems aren’t visible. I’m just beginning to learn about them, so you’ll read about them later.

Heart failure is the most common cause of death here and people have it when they’re very young. Mehpara’s husband died of a heart attack just a few years ago; he was in his early 40’s. The way people eat here, it’s no surprise. Most live on sugar, starch, and fat, with an occasional veggie or bit of protein tossed in. I expected to see a lot more smoking here and it’s nice to see so little of it. Cigarettes are cheap, but no women smoke. And I haven’t seen many men smoke. With their diet maybe all the smokers are dead.

Mehpara gives me protein every day in two hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, but I had to struggle to get it ... Dr. Fuad was a huge help. But I still don’t get enough protein to make me feel right, so I’m looking forward to moving. In my normal American diet, I ate less bread in a year than I eat in a week here. And I ate more protein in a day than I get in a week here. I'm certain I’d know a heck of a lot more of the Azeri language today if the bread in my diet had been replaced with protein.

So there are lots of fat people here. Azeri women and men are absolutely beautiful in their 20’s. In their 30’s they look like a fat 40, and at 50 they look about 70. They rarely live to 70, so I can’t tell you what they look like at that age. But all of that is changing and I look forward to seeing what things will be like here in a couple of years.

Cancer is big here, too. The Soviets built factories all over the place and dumped the waste everywhere – the rivers, land, sea, air… absolutely everything was loaded with cancer-causing crud until the Russians left in the 1990s. And where there were no factories there were farms loaded with pesticides. Most people don’t know what the crud does to them, don’t know it’s there, and don't care. Few are interested in learning, so they do nothing about it. One of the things the Peace Corps does is to help educate the young folks (and anyone else who wants to learn) about the environment so they learn to care and are motivated to act.

The people here are very bright and they will learn, but the way they were taught to learn in the Soviet era hasn’t gone away yet. In school nearly everything is rote memorized and they don’t learn how to think beyond what’s right in front of them. Historically, Azerbaijan has had lots of brilliant thinkers – poets, scientists, philosophers, etc., and those ways of thinking are respected and admired here, but I don’t think they know that it can be learned and spread. Hopefully they’ll tend more in that direction while looking for the new Azeri identity and not gravitate toward Mr. bin Laden and his buddies.

Well, this has gotten way too long again, so I’ll cut it off. The Peace Corps is closed for Thanksgiving, but all of us trainees will be in Azeri language classes that day.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Julie