When I said Salam.

ABLE- Azerbaijan Boys Leadership Experience.

This is an awesome project in Azerbaijan and is one project that I am super passionate about. This is the only boys over night camp in Azerbaijan, the boys travel outside their villages from all over the country to the camp for five days. Boys are chosen based on leadership qualities and community service activities. The camp is filled with team building, leadership, health, gender and physical activities. There are also guest speakers like the Ambassador who come and give guest lectures about their experiences and how important being a leader in your community can be.

This coming summer me and another volunteer are on the Executive Committee of this camp, which means we are in-charge of putting on this whole camp. Wish us luck.

Summer Living in Azerbaijan is filled with visits to your local watering holes in Xaldan (my friend William’s village) and visits to your not so local watering holes to Atlant (A water park in Azerbaijan). 

The last couple of Independence Day’s in Azerbaijan have been spent in Xacmas, a city in the North East of Azerbaijan. Volunteers there have an Azerbaijani and American 4th of July celebration. In the one picture our Country Director got caught doing the Electric Slide. 

The bottom three pictures are of my last independent living house in Ucar before I left and moved to Ismayilla. I had a very large yard with many fruit trees including Pomegranates, Pears and Peaches. 

Then I went to some more Toys (weddings). This was at my friend Elnur’s wedding. My old site mate Dan new through his organization and then introduced him to me after I came to Ucar. 

Then I went to Gence to help my friend with a Health Awareness Camp. This camp was especially cool because it was at one of the S.O.S organizations in the country, which is similar to an orphanage but about 8 kids live in house with a house-mom who cooks and takes care of them. Not all of the kids are orphans some have unfit parents and that is why they are at S.O.S. 

Last Summer I traveled to the South of Azerbaijan to my friend’s village, Neftchala to help him with his summer camp. It was mostly a sports and activities camp where we played four-square, frisbee, yoga, Ninja, human knot and many other games.

While there we also discovered some wild horses.

There were some Weddings that I attended. 

Yes, the bride has on a pink dress. There are two different weddings in Azerbaijan a girls wedding (where she wears pink) and then the guys wedding (where she wears white)

Frisbee Clinic

A few months ago, at this point, my site mate Vince and I held our first event here in Azerbaijan. Not to discredit our conversation clubs, or sports clubs that we have in our town, but this was the first multi-regional event. We had a Frisbee clinic.

In Azerbaijan PCVs have set up a well-established Softball league. In fact it is so well established that a few teams have already become sustainable and do not have a PCV as a coach or coordinator. This is the ultimate, or one of the main goals of PC: to transfer sustainable skills to the host country.

A new project for PCVs is Frisbee. We hope to eventually have the same popularity and sustainability that softball has achieved. This is our first year, so one of the challenges is spreading awareness and also that many PCVs do not know how to play Frisbee. Hence the clinic; it isn’t just for the kids but for the PCVs as well. We did not host the event in Ucar, because it is way too hot here and we do not have good enough facilities to host an event of this size. The event was held in Mingechavir.

Vince and I rented a Marshruka (minibus) for the day to take our Frisbee teams. We were each supposed to bring seven kids from each of our teams, but this is Azerbaijan. More kids from his team showed up and less kids from my team showed up.

The event was awesome! About 20+ PCVs showed up and about 50 Azeri kids came from different regions. We started off with a lap and stretching, which to an Azeri kid is completely foreign. When we asked them to sit on the ground to do butterfly stretches, they all looked and laughed at us. Azeris in general do not like to get dirty and avoid sitting on the ground at all costs; they do not even like to sit on the floor inside a house. (If you are a girl and sit on the floor when it is cold the common belief is that your ovaries will freeze and you won’t be able to have babies.)

Anyway, after some stretching I taught the PCVs and kids about four or five different drills that I do during my weekly practices. I am not that experienced or that amazing at Frisbee, but just a few basic drills is enough to get a PCVs team started. We then had a Doner lunch break. My kids were so, excited for lunch. They do not get to eat Doner that often here, and some of them had never even been to Mingechavir, which is only about an hour and change away. They kept staring up at the big apartment buildings and being amazed.

After lunch we mixed all the kids up and divided them into teams and played a bunch of different mini games. Each team had a few PCVs on it too, just to monitor the kids and also to learn the rules of the game. After a few hours all the kids slowly whined down and stood in the shade. You know it is time to end, when an Azeri kid does not want to play anymore. We took the kids to get Dondurma (ice cream) and then got back on the bus and headed back to Ucar.

Mango

January 1, 2012-May 31, 2012

Mango was a beloved animal, great friend, but ultimately she was apart of the new family that I was trying to build here, which includes PCVs and Azeris. She lives on through her twin brother Scooter who lives in one of the Villages of Ucar. Mango loved eating Peanut Butter and chewing Azeri shoes.

In memory of Mango my Frisbee team, on there own, asked to name our team…

The Mangos.

Housing.

As most of you know or heard about a month and a half ago I was asked to leave my host family’s house. I have come to learn that it is because my host Baba was getting increasingly sick and it was going to be difficult to take care of him as well as me. The funny part was how much time they gave me to move out. They told me I had two days to find a place and move out… Well, they actually gave me one day but I had Peace Corps call them and get me two days ha.

This is what I found on short notice…

I scoured the town (is that the right word,scoured…?) I searched the whole town looking for a place to live. I checked with all my contacts including: family, friends, teachers, school directors, land lords who I had met, various business owners and randos who live in Ucar. I went to this apartment complex on the other side of town and asked for the land lord; he did not have any available apartments but he knew of someone who did.

We walked a few minutes to what would be my future land lord’s house; his name was Mubarez,he has fewer teeth then fingers and even fewer manners. But the house I looked at was pretty nice and I was kind of on a time constraint. Including: a small yard for Mango, a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom inside the house (which is HUGE for PC, not having to walk to an outhouse is something not many volunteers have.)

The next day I moved in…

I have been living here for a month and a half, without any problems and integrating into my new community pretty well. I go guesting a few nights a week with my neighbors and the local kids come and give me flowers daily in exchange they want to walk Mango. (Not a bad deal.)

Last week my land lord comes to me and says that by the end of May I have to find a new place to live. “Niya?” why I asked. As he shrugs his shoulders, attempting to blow me off I ask again. “Man sene istamiram.” I did not understand why he didn’t want me anymore. As I tried to probe him for further questions he refused and just walked away. Classic Azeri reaction. At least he gave me a few weeks and not two days…Ha.

Then things got a little weird. On Monday of this week he comes over and said his friend is coming to visit him. “Mubarek!” congratulations I said not knowing why he was telling me. After a few minutes he confessed he was telling me because his friend was going to be sleeping in my house. “Olmas.” I said it was not okay, because he was not my friend and that I was not doing him any favors for unjustifiably kicking me out. This led to an Azeri argument, which isn’t always a fight because they just repeat the same thing, as if you don’t understand them, but their voices gets increasingly louder. Confessing that I understood him perfectly and by continually denying his friend permission to stay at my house made him want to speak with PC.

I called my housing coordinator and told him the situation and asked him to do two things; first I wanted to know why I was being kicked out and second I wanted him to make sure my land lord understood that my house is not a hotel for people to come in and out of. This is how there conversation went, well, the one side I could hear.

Land lord: “Josh is disrespectful. He is culture-less. He is messy. His dog has flees. He had twenty people over for four days and they were fighting in the streets…” (The ‘culture-less’ comment is a big insult in Azerbaijan; it is something that people use to shame each other.) And then he finally said, “…Next month I have a family coming in who is going to pay 250 Manat and Josh only pays 100…” (That seems like a good enough reason.) Mubarez hands me the phone and I ask the housing coordinator what he said. (My Azeri is pretty good and I understood the whole conversation I wanted to confirm what I heard from another Azeri.) “He is your host and he does not want you to live there anymore…” Okay, that much is clear, but why? “He did not give a reason, he just wants you to move out…” Oh, how helpful the housing coordinator is.

Wish me luck on finding a new place before June.

Spring Break

Spring break in Azerbaijan isn’t exactly like spring break in the states, aside from having no school; there aren’t the herds of bros and babes heading down to Florida or Mexico to ‘go crazy.’ Things here are a little more tame then this. Coinciding with Novruz is spring break throughout Azerbaijan, all of the schools and most people take time off from work. At this point we were allowed to leave the country—you must wait at least six months before we could leave Azerbaijan. A group of volunteers and I decided to take this opportunity and go to the promise land, the land of wine, cheese and coffee, a place where men and women are equal, for the most part; we were going to Tbilisi, Georgia. There are no negative words I can use to describe Tbilisi, unless I am using them in an ironic way.

Getting to Georgia: Volunteers do not use vacation days if they are in country at another volunteer’s house, but as soon as you leave the country you start using vacation days. In order to avoid wasting another day, our group decided to make long journeys to our friend’s house in Tovuz. He lives about thirty minutes away from the border so we would be able to get up early and capitalize on our time in Georgia. After the three-hour bus to Tovuz, we as a group had to take a thirty-minute bus to the border, walk across and go through customs etc. and then we had to get on an hour-long bus to Tbilisi. Once in the city we popped on the metro for, “Do you think it is three or four stops to the hostel?” “I don’t know I have never been to Georgia…” “It’s four! Hundred percent. Trust me.” William was right, it was four; he had watched a ‘How To’ youtube video on how to get to the hostel from the bus station.

While in Georgia we ate and drank like Kings; filling our bellies with delicious bread, cheese, dishes made in small clay pots and then washing it all down with Georgian beer, homemade wine and this liquor called cha-cha. Cha-cha is kind of like crappy Sambuka; it is made from fermented grape leaves. After exploring the city and seeing some beautiful churches and scenery for two days we decided to go get some scrub downs. In this part of the world public baths are very popular. Half our group went to a Georgian bathhouse and got a private room for the five of us. While in the room there is a sulfur bath, sauna, and a marble scrub table. If you want to get a scrub down this huge Georgian man will wash you… Yes he will wash you. (Be warned the next few sentences may be graphic and are not for the squeamish or the prudes.) If you are not already naked you will be asked to take off your clothes so you can be naked while getting cleaned. He lays you on your back and properly lathers you in soap, then he puts his hands in these lufa-esque gloves and SCRUBS; taking off years of dead skin and dirt you didn’t know you had. And, he gets everywhere; everywhere. Obviously he flips you over and cleans your backside. To be honest I have never felt cleaner in my life, and I highly recommend get a scrub down.