The Ides of March

I spent the 15^th and 16^th of March in a small village called Bozavand in the Agsu rayon. As usual, I was there for a community gathering where the AzRIP people held their community project mobilization and training sessions. Like all other towns, Bozavand needs many things – probably everything AzRIP can help them with. And, as is always the case in that situation, the main road through the village is the most important project because it impacts everything immediately. Most people clearly see that schools impact everything in the long run, but even the schools require roads immediately because it and provides a way for building materials to get in when they build new schools or improve existing ones.

The roads are not only for cars, trucks, and marshutkas; they’re used even more by pedestrians, horses, cows, sheep, donkeys, and anything else with legs. In these mountain villages there is nowhere to walk without roads, and the current roads are so full of mud trenches, they’re nearly useless. So far, all of the roads in all of the villages I’ve been in are mud. On a rainy day (common in winter and spring) people are up to their ankles – sometimes knees – in mud just trying to get to and from a market or school. Cars are going down those roads, too, and they don’t pay much heed to the pedestrians. It’s a dangerous mess. That mud is on all of my clothing, and it’s not that easy to get out of anything made of cotton or wool. It’s impossible to get out of blue jeans with the tools available to me here. And my long, black wool coat is ready for the nearest garbage dump. Luckily, the slacks I brought with me are very easy to clean – they’re made of a fantastic fabric that doesn’t stain, wrinkle, fade, or change in any way, no matter what I do to it. And it’s soft, not plastic-ish, and it looks nice – the fabric and the design. I bought it from a friend who sells clothing from Jockey. It is perfect stuff for traveling or for living or working in harsh environments (check it out at her web site http://www.myjockeyp2p.com/salliematlack or smatlack@nc.rr.com).

When the roads are improved through AzRIP, they aren’t paved or black-topped. Pavement isn’t sustainable. That’s a Washington Word for the ability of the people who stay to maintain it themselves. Self-sustainable. These villagers don’t have the tools, the skills, or the money to repair pavement, so its improvements fall apart when the people who constructed it leave. Kinda like what happened to them when the Soviets left.

Instead of paving the roads, the mud is widened and leveled, and improved by mixing it with gravel, then covered and packed down with a tough, solid layer of high-quality gravel. That’s sustainable. And because all members of the community contribute money to the project (totaling 10% of the cost, which is thousands of $$ and a heck of a lot of money to them), and because they put most of the labor that goes into rebuilding the roads, they tend to take better care of them. That’s sustainability.

Not all of the roads in a village can be fixed; that’s too expensive. Usually just the main road that runs through it. And AzRIP can’t improve the roads outside the village boundaries, so not all of the villagers' road problems are solved. As soon as they get outside the town, the roads fall under the jurisdiction of the rayon, which is under the national government, and it’ll be a long, long time before they get around to fixing those. But just the main road in town is enough for most of their immediate needs.

Right now the big government is spending billions of $$ building an ultra-modern 21^st century, Star-Trek-planet-like city in Baku. Many people aren’t happy with what’s happening. Their 2000+-year-old history is being obscured (hopefully it won’t all be torn down). The planned buildings are beyond anything I’ve seen on earth; many of the buildings have architecture that I’ve only seen in futuristic movies. They’re building dozens and dozens of buildings along the coast of the Caspian and across the city. The pictures and diagrams are so impressive they’re frightening; mainly because I know the condition of the rest of the country. Online I saw a satellite photo of an enormous building shaped like the current president’s initials: ie. Nobody is certain that his initials are the intent, but it sure looks like it. Hopefully they’re being built to meet earthquake standards, because Azerbaijan is due for one. The last serious one was in 2000, and it was in Baku. That could really change the government’s plans for stardom.

Last night I redrew a map of the Azeri government structure for a guy I met from Washington (to be written in the next blog entry, for St. Patrick’s Day). It’s a map that was given out during Peace Corps training, but I only had a paper copy of it so I redrew it in Visio. Now I can do what I want with its file structure. I thought you might be interested in seeing it, too, so here it is:

(Remember you can make images bigger by double-clicking them, or by scrolling the ball on your mouse while holding down the [Ctrl] button.)

If you look closely, you’ll see that the President is directly over everything. They make an attempt to hide his authority over the judicial system, but it’s there via the Ministry of Justice. And most Azeri people I have talked to don’t see that there’s anything wrong with it. I don’t prod them for their views or anything; I’ve been instructed to stay away from confrontations about politics, religion, culture, and all obvious problem-causers. But these people do like to talk and ask probing questions, so I listen and usually respond to questions with questions, or with basic facts.

A couple of days ago Basira asked me about American presidents. She likes Obama, and she liked Clinton, Carter, and Kennedy. She thought Reagan was OK, but couldn’t stand either of the Bushes (particularly George Jr.) or Nixon. Then she said about Kennedy – “didn’t he have brothers?” I said yes, three, and that they were all dead.  Then she said “Yes, the Mafia.” Apparently they’re told that John and/or Bobby Kennedy were killed by the Mafia. Kind of interesting. I said “No” ("yox" in Azeri) and then stopped translating what she said after that. They do study American history in their schools, so one of these days I’ll have to ask someone what they’re taught. Or I’ll find a 25-year-old history book and an American who knows Russian, then ask them what it says.

(A quick aside: It’s very easy to turn off the language translator in my head - it’s just my brain’s relaxed state. Translating is exhausting! Just 20 minutes of translating spoken Azeri language is exhausting! Written language isn't so hard on me.)

Between life with the Soviets and the dictatorships they’ve been under since then, most of the Azeri people have little-to-no notion of how things could be different. It’s really not that much different everywhere else – most people I've ever met are happiest when they don't have to deal with change. But the people here are shown glimpses of where things are headed, through television from Japan, Europe, and the US. I don't know if that makes it harder or easier to change, but it does make it different.

Some of the concepts the AzRIP people bestow on the villagers during mobilization and training are so obvious to me it’s hard to see that people don’t see them. It’s like stepping back in time - centuries. The concepts are even new to the AzRIP people I’m working with, but they know the value of the new ideas… things like the advantages of taking out loans and repaying them over time, of putting gathered money in investments and taking it out over time when needed, and even of voting via closed ballots instead of raising hands (to be discussed in more detail in my St. Patrick’s Day blog entry).

They’re also not used to having normal things available to them – appliances, furniture, etc. All of it is available to people who can afford it today, but that hasn’t always been the case. Being able to go to a store to buy things – anything – is a relatively new concept. There are open markets all over the place where people go to haggle, buy, and trade. But real stores, like department stores, are a new and popular novelty. And compared to what we’re used to in the States, they’re not much. The only products where there they are given choices are what the things that come from America via Russia - things like shampoos, makeup, and toiletries. There’s a big department store near me; a chain called Univermaq. It’s like a cross between K-Mart, Hudson Belk, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Recently I looked for a raincoat there, and the coats ranged in price from about $40 to over $5000. The Univermaq in Samaxi is bigger than most. It’s three stories high, and half of one story is only make-ups and toiletries for women – like Hudson Belk, Dillards, Marshall Fields, etc. Except you can get things like Panteen or Head and Shoulders shampoos, or Colgate toothpaste there, as well as the pricey “designer” make-ups you see in glitzy American department stores (or their Russian equivalents).

Recently I spent two days looking for a raincoat in Samaxi, Sumgayit and Baku, and gave up.  I found some in Sumgayit, but nothing I wanted to buy. Admittedly, I shopped in American stores online and didn’t find anything I liked there, either, so it’s not just Baku – it’s the current worldwide fashion I don't like. It rains a lot here, and all I want is a long, black raincoat with a hood. I looked in L.L. Bean, Land’s End, and all the major department stores, and they all have the same short-short un-hooded coats I saw in the Baku. A long coat made of fabric that I can wipe mud off of is a necessity. So is a hood; I’m always carrying my purse, my computer, and a bag full of Azeri-English dictionaries and other notebooks, so I don’t have a hand available to hang onto an umbrella.And I'm always walking.

A backpack sounds like part of the solution, but it isn’t acceptable here – not for a woman my age who wants to blend into the community. I already offend them with my boots. The women here, all ages, wear dressy black leather boots, with heels. Often spiked heels. And they’re walking in mud and navigating torn up rocks and huge potholes, puddles, and cars while they walk in those things. I’m wearing very comfortable, flat brown suede boots with rough soles that get me through the mud, rocks, hills, snow and other ground crud safely. Every day when I’m walking to/from work, the markets, the Internet café, or wherever, someone looks at my shoes and then up at my face and gives me a look that’s either pity or disgust. Usually it’s a young girl or an elderly woman.

But every now and then I see a woman who looks at my shoes, then up at my face and smiles. Not laughing at me – a genuine smile that says she’s happy that I’m wearing comfy, useful shoes. Sometimes I even see envy there, but that’s pretty rare. Usually it’s women in their 30’s, 40’s and maybe 50’s; sometimes older. The younger ones don’t waver from the norm (not yet, anyway), and the oldest ones seem to be stuck in the past somewhere. Most of them look pretty unhappy.

When people find out what I’m doing here I don’t get so much negative judgment. There are some women I see every day on my way to work who are always friendly – some even stop and talk. They weren’t like that when they first saw me, but they're getting used to me. And no doubt they've been talking about me, because they’re all very close and they're all very nice to me now. I’m sure Basira and her relatives have told them I’m an American who is here for free, who likes their country, and is only here to help - not to take. When I visit the small villages, the women learn right away that I’m from “America” (they don’t know the acronym “USA”) and that I’m trying to help, so I get only smiles. Lots of women want to take me off somewhere and sit me down for tea, treats and conversation. Usually I take them up on their offers.

Recently, in a town called Qesende (pronounced Geshenda), I let some women and a couple of their 20-something sons take me off to the back room of a city meeting house for tea and cakes while my AzRIP colleagues continued their community training in the main hall. As soon as I sat down, I pulled out my digital audio recorder, turned it on, and placed it on the table in front of us for all to see. Then I sat there while they commented on what was going on out in front. I have no idea what they said - they have a different accent and they speak too fast - but they had a great time talking to me, talking about the community, and talking about AzRIP. And I caught it all on digital “tape.” After about an hour, one of the young guys asked me if that thing on the table was my cell phone. And I told him it’s a recorder. That shocked him a bit and I could see him flush a little and his eyes roll up and sideways back into his memory to figure out if he said anything incriminating. Then I saw a little bit of relief go across his face. Anyway, the audio file is now in my computer, waiting for my Azeri skills to improve so I can understand what they said. Every day I understand more.

Here’s the young guy who asked me if the digital recorder was my phone (he insisted that we take this photo so I show it to people in America):

And here’s his community, inside the community hall – they’re voting for projects to work on:

Here are the people outside voting by ballot for people to head the projects:

Here are some women voting:

Qesende is in a beautiful rayon called Ismayili. It’s in an area of the Caucasus that has enormous, snowy mountains surrounded by green pastures. It looks like the Alps in “The Sound of Music,” and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Ismayili is where the movie was filmed. I’ve been through there several times now and it’s usually foggy, so I don’t get to see much. But this time the sky was clear and I could see a lot. Likely I’ll go back to some other villages there. It’s only about 40 miles away from where I live, but it takes about two hours to get there because of the thick fog, the winding mountain highway (a narrow two-lane), and the lousy mud-and-pothole roads when you get off the main road.

Here are a few photos of Qesende and Ismayili:

One of the biggest issues with getting a community project going is mobilization – that’s getting the village people to the meeting house to take part in all of the voting on project priorities, project leader elections, etc. Whenever I’ve been there, on the second day more people show up than on the first day, and it is partly because I’m there. I’m a novelty. The people who are there the first day go home and tell their friends and family that there’s an American there, and they all want to see it. Most of them have never seen a Westerner of any flavor before, but an American is an immediate icon. They really pull out the red carpet and treat me like a movie star. I don’t know why, but they’re respectful and friendly about it, so I let them do it.

After our first day in Qesende an older woman died, so the second day started off with less than half the people as the first day. After a couple of hours, the people who went to her funeral showed up. And eventually there were more people than on the first day.

Funerals last a long time here (weeks), but the body is buried right away. No dilly-dallying over things like body prep and paying respects. The body is put into the ground or cremated immediately. The cemeteries I’ve seen in these 1000 year old villages are pretty small and I see funeral urns in markets all over the place (in one near me they’re sitting on the shelf right between the flip-flops and the potatoes), so I think they cremate a lot of them. Sounds like a good idea, particularly for health reasons. There are a lot of diseases here and the Azeri post-WWII baby boom generation has been in their local life expectancy years for about a decade. Their sons, many now in their 40s, are starting their heart attacks (rarely the daughters). So there are lots of funerals here, and lots and lots of people with bad health. Even the Americans.

(Warning! This section might not be so good to show to people you want to entice to join the Peace Corps. But it’s the reality of life in most of the world…)

So far this year, two PCVs have been forced to return to the States for medical reasons. One was the oldest Volunteer in the entire Peace Corps – Elaine. She is over 80 and had a stroke. Last month someone found her unconscious in her home in Ganja. They rushed her to a hospital in Baku (rush = about 8 hours) and she is okay, but one mild stroke often leads to another more serious one, so they sent her back to the States. Another woman, Andrea in her 30’s in Mingechevir, is going home next week. She has a dead bone in her foot. I don’t know how it happened, but it sounds awful and awfully dangerous (maybe leading to gangrene?). Apparently they don’t have the facilities to treat it here, so she’s going home after Novruz. (You’ll read more about Novruz soon.)

Most volunteers have had something go wrong with their health. I’ve been sick constantly since mid-October. I’ve had four colds, maybe five, but before coming here I hadn’t had one in 10 years. It feels like I’ve had one constant cold for five months, and it fluctuates between bad, not so bad, and not bad at all, then it suddenly gets really bad again. I’ve had an ear infection since mid-January and an intestinal parasite that needs to be dealt with. Today I have an infection in my eye and in my mouth, but neither looks like a big deal. Just the total number of things going wrong makes everything seem like a far bigger deal than any one ailment alone.

The worst thing yet is a prescription that was filled for me here. I was given a bad drug in mid-March. About 18 hours after I took the fake stuff, my head went berserk. I’ll spare you the details of what it did to me; it’s enough to say that it was a scary situation. And it was extremely dangerous. After about 7 or 8 hours my head settled down enough that I was able to realize what had happened to me and I called the Peace Corps’ emergency medical line, waking someone up (it was 6am). She told me to come to the office in Baku. Yeah, right. Here I am with a head gone wild, and she wants me to make the 6-hour trip: hike all the way to the Avtovagsal (bus station, about two miles), get on a marshutka, wait an hour or two until it leaves, arrive at the Baku Avtovagsal two hours later, get on another bus into Baku, get off at the right place (the busiest intersection in the city), cross through the intersection, and walk down the street to the PCorps HQ. The trip is only 60 miles, but it takes hours of high stress activity surrounded by people who only speak Azerbaijani and Russian. But we needed to talk, live and in person, and they needed to evaluate my health, so I grabbed my coat, passport, and purse and went to Baku to see what we could do.

I left Samaxi at about 7am and arrived at the Peace Corps offices in Baku before 1pm without any serious problems. I even slept part of the way – a good thing with the thick fog, the mountain roads, and a wild marshutka driver at the wheel. I was sitting at the front of the marshutka to help keep me from vomiting (lots of people do on the Samaxi-Baku road trip, due to the winding mountain roads and insane drivers).

When I got there, the med person who told me to go to Baku on my own was being reprimanded for doing it - the PCorps has SUVs and drivers ready to help us when we need it. One of them should have been sent to get me. They were relieved when I walk in the door - they said that Allah was watching over me that day.

My health situation might sound bad, but I’ve really been very lucky. My immune system should be ready to take on any cold virus roaming around this country soon, so the last cold I ever plan to have here is clearing up now. I’ll get rid of the intestinal parasite in a couple of weeks (after Novruz, at the equinox), and I will feel wonderful again for the rest of my life. That's my plan.

AzRIP - the folks I work with here - invited me to relocate with them this summer, and offered to pay for it. They're moving to a place called Balakan. It’s about 400km northwest of Baku, on the border of Georgia. That’s about eight to ten hours from Baku by train. I’ll tell you about that some other holiday.

Happy Ides of March...