Summer Travels

Pictures! The Literature Museum in Baku, Me standing in various places around the country, and MOSQUITOES! Gazillions of them!

The pictures of were taken in Ucar, Şirvan and Şamaxı. The one in Ujar is in front of a new massive building they are construction in the local park. I don't know what its purpose will be, but knowing this country it will probably serve as a massive museum/monument to Heydar Aliyev, the former president. If this is the case it will basically become a gigantic waste of money and space intended to convince everyone that Heydar deserves a place at the right hand of Allah because of his extraordinary greatness. The picture in Şirvan is with PCVs Jesse and Derek, standing on a mountain overlooking the river Kür, which has experienced severe flooding this year and basically ruined the entire town of Sabirabad. Derek was initially placed in Sabirabad with his wife, but due to the lack of organization of both the Azeri government and Peace Corps he had to return to the states after the town was flooded. Finally there's a picture in Şamaxı, standing next to the Tombs of the Shirvan Shahs. For a long time Şamaxı was the capital of ancient Azerbaijan, until an earthquake ruined it and the Shah decided to relocate to Baku.

News from "The Family"

Sorry to all I don't have new photos to post, although you can rest assured that you really don't want to see what it's like here right now. The rainy season has arrived, a bit later than last year, but equally as miserable. It's cold, rainy, dreary and dirty. There are weeds over six feet tall growing in my yard that my landlord has yet to come clean up because, well, it's raining all the damn time. Walking around in the streets is both gross and treacherous, and even the livestock wandering around town have a sort of depressed look in their eyes while they slowly ruminate and block traffic.

So, being the sharing sort of guy that I am, I decided to share the depression, in the form of this article. I know I've dropped a few hints about these sorts of dealings in corruption and such throughout my posts on the blog, but hopefully this will shine a bit of light on exactly how big and bad govt. corruption is here. I'm posting the article since I'm not technically allowed to say anything "bad" about Azerbaijan online while I'm here (silly US Govt. and their regulations...ugh!), so I decided to let the Washington Post say it for me. I have, however, linked the site on an Armenian website, which is by no means a breach of the limitations placed upon my blog, but a fun jab nonetheless. Enjoy!

In the Rainy Season

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(These pictures are from the beginning of February. A bit dated, I know, but it's hard enough to find a place with enough bandwidth to post at a reasonable rate, and I'm lazy. The one not snowy pic is from out March Mustache Madness/Ujar Fried Food Festival that took place during our Spring break. Rest assured, this is the first and last mustache I've ever grown, as I realize how ridiculous I look. Thanks to Dad for providing the wonderful shirt that topped off my award winning ensemble. The writing on my shirt says "My name is not English!", which I wear around town to let people know not to call me that, to marginal effect.)


Spring is here! Normally this would be cause for celebration. Flowers blooming, bees buzzing, critters running to and fro after a long winter slumber. And in a way, it is a celebration. In fact, here it's the biggest holiday of the year, Novruz. Originally a Zoroastrian celebration of the coming of a new year, the return of life to the Earth and all that good stuff, in Azerbaijan it has simply devolved into a mishmash of various ancient traditions combined with the two things Azeris love doing most: eating and drinking to excess. People jump over bonfires, sprout wheat in little dishes, cook pilaf and dolma, children collect candy from neighbors, men drink hurculean amounts of vodka, and generally a good time is had by all.

As for me, I had my own party, a reincarnation of a gathering I had last year known as the Ujar Fried Food Festival. Seeing as how I am one of only 4 or 5 volunteers from the South in this country, and the only one from Alabama, I felt it a personal duty to my fellow countrymen to introduce them to the best thing my state has to offer--namely, battering and frying pretty much everything. We had fried pickles, onion rings, chicken, and even some pork a thoughtful volunteer had the foresight to acquire from Georgia. We also had falafel, which I prepared for the wussy vegetarians who think that eating a huge pile of molten grease might not be "healthy". Bah! The way I see it, if eating deep fried yumminess is going to make my heart explode then clearly God intended for me to die young, otherwise he wouldn't have made it and me so wonderfully compatible. Throughout the day I kept getting various partygoers to help me in the kitchen, teaching them the alchemical arts of southern fried food, and after I got tired of cooking I did what any good chef does: I sent other people to cook for me. Despite making a complete wreck of my kitchen and nearly burning my house to the ground, they produced a passable example of fried goodness, and for the first time since I've been here I revelled in the wonderful feeling of teaching students and having them actually learn!

Adittionally, another gathering that had been planned for the same time was incorporated into my gathering, a fake holiday made up by another volunteer with impeccable facial hair and clearly too much time on his hands(pictured above wearing the big fur hat)--Mustache March. This is why, in the above photo, I am sporting a trash-stache that would make Kid Rock melt with jealousy. Since mustaches are the facial hair of choice for 90% of Azeri men (and about 10% of the women), my marriage proposals increased tenfold during the course of my anomalous facial growth. Alas, I got tired of looking in the mirror every morning and seeing a backwoods trailer park resident staring back at me, so I removed the offending hairs from my face immediately after the party was concluded.

So, is all this partying over a concept as simple as Spring really warranted? Here, definitely. That's because "Spring" really only lasts a couple of weeks here, followed by about a month straight of rain. The weather has been nice lately, but we had our first downpour yesterday, marking the beginning of a very wet, muggy, muddy, and generally gross month before summer. And once that ends, "Spring" is over, and summer comes right in with little regard for how I or anyone else feels about it. So in America, April showers bring May flowers, but in Azerbaijan they simply bring sweltering, overwhelming, inescapable heat. Wish me luck.

I've loaded these last two videos to give a bit of perspective into the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, aka Qarabağ, between Armenia and Azerbaijan. While there isn't any real right or wrong answer to this whole mess, hopefully this video will at least give you some insight into how the conflict is viewed here. I take issue with some of the translations, as I know enough Azeri and Russian to know when they are simply making the subtitles fit the story, but despite that I feel this is a decent introduction to the conflict for people who don't know about it, or might not even know where it is. Don't hate on Al-Jazeera, them's good news peoples.

Older pics

A couple of scenes from Azerbaijan, a wedding, and a picture of me with my friends Sahib (standing) and Javan (sitting).

More New Year's pics

Some pics from New Year's in Tbilisi, including a picture of a sign on a khinkali restaurant, one of the national foods of Georgia. Check out the writing, the Georgian alphabet is really cool looking. I'm trying to teach myself some of it, so far I've got the alphabet down but the language itself is absurdly complicated. The big gold statue is of Saint George slaying a dragon or some other big evil lizard looking thing.

The Baku Blues

(Me at a winehouse in Tbilisi; bowing down to Heydar Bey; Standing in front of the mountains in Zagatala; My friend Josh giving the thumbs up to Georgian cuisine; Magnus, The Monstercat...may he rest in peace)




Under normal circumstances, being in Baku would be totally rad. Not being in Ujar, especially in winter when it's cold, cloudy, rainy, muddy, and generally gross in virtually every respect, is almost always a good thing. That is, unless you're in Baku for a Peace Corps conference. Under such circumstances I would almost rather be in Ujar freezing and bored to death than sitting here listening to government bureaucrats drone on and on and on about a bunch of nonsense. One fortunate part of the whole business is that PC is obliged to put me up in a nice hotel with a comfortable bed, English news on the TV, and INTERNET! YES!

Therefore, I am taking this opportunity to appease my poor, forlorn family members and friends who have been missing me and relentlessly begging me to post some pictures of my smiling countenance for them to coo and fawn over and such. So, here you are!

New Years Pics

Finally, some pics from New Years!

Sakartvelo On My Mind

(note: This blog is supposed to include pictures, but somewhere between my computer and this one the pictures disappeared off my flash drive. Still, I feel compelled to post something about my amazing adventure in the land called Sakartvelo...pics will come later.)

So, as some of you may know I spent my New Year's holiday in Tbilisi, Georgia. Some of you may also be aware that Tbilisi is not, in fact, a suburb of Atlanta. It is the capital of a small country in the South Caucasus, crammed in between Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Black Sea. It is also, in my opinion, the most awesome city in the world. As far as Caucasian cities go, it puts Baku to shame in just about every aspect imaginable. Since I'm currently a resident of Azerbaijan I'm not allowed to go to Armenia, but I imagine that Yerevan is probably about the same as Baku. Tbilisi, however, is about as amazing as a city can get.

The city itself is old...really, really, really OLD. There are castles and old churches sitting atop mountains scattered all across the city. The bulk of the city is centered in a valley through which a river runs, and travelling to any point in the city usually involves crossing the river at least once. This is a good thing, as there are countless examples of ancient and modern architecture, art, churches and all kinds of other stuff to see everywhere in the city. It is a bad thing because Georgians drive with an insanely homicidal lack of concern for pedestrians, traffic or themselves. I thought driving was bad in Azerbaijan, but Tbilisi takes the cake. Things like lanes, sidewalks, crosswalks and traffic signals have about as much tangible meaning to a Georgian driver as a Pollock painting does to a colorblind schizophrenic. Fortunately I managed not to become reduced to a greasy spot on Rustaveli Avenue, thanks in part to the fact that the local authorities had the foresight to shut it down prior to it being absolutely overrun by holiday revelers.

New Years itself was insanity. Imagine a frenzied warzone of wine-fueled partying, plus fireworks, clowns, puppeteers and concerts on every corner. After a while I just accepted that I was going to hear anything for the rest of the night after the 10th M-80 went off about 3 feet from my ear. In fact, I remember towards the end of the night people were throwing fireworks directly at my feet, my friends warning me "KEVIN GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY!" and me just walking on. I don't think I would do well in war, because after so many huge bangs in my general vicinity I tend to just ignore them. The whole night was amazingly fun, by far the best New Year's I've ever had.

Being a huge language dork, one of the most appealing parts of Georgia was their strange, almost unearthly language. Apparently named for Saint George in most other languages, the Georgian name for Georgia is "Sakartvelo". The Georgian name for Georgian is "Kartuli". I assume that whoever gave it the name Georgia probably did so because he couldn't understand what in the hell Georgians were saying to him. The Georgian language is ancient, and completely unique. The script, which Georgians claim was designed from the bends and curves of grape vines (it is, after all, one of the oldest wine making countries on earth), has been described by my fellow PC volunteers as either "The Language of Mordor" or wet spaghetti thrown on a wall. The language itself has enough consonant clusters and glottal stops to make a Klignon shudder. I know it's a very old language and that Georgians are very proud of it as a distinguishing feature of their heritage and culture, but really it just seems like a secret code they keep to annoy outsiders. When I was buying wine in a store, standing around looking like an idiot with a backpack on, some girl came up to me and started speaking Georgian and I almost wanted to scream. In an iconography shop some dude came up to me and started talking, without allowing me to interrupt, for about 5 minutes, before I managed to blurt out the only full sentence I know in Georgian: "Ar vitsi Kartuli", I don't speak Georgian. Also, my Russian has fallen into such a reprehensible state of disuse that every time I wanted to speak it I ended up speaking what I refer to as "Bakinese", namely the weird pidgin language that people in Baku speak that is a combo of Azeri, Russian, English and nonsense. Overall, I managed to get around fine, though not without feeling like an idiot every time I thought of a sentence in Russian and immediately said it in Azeri.

Overall, the best part of Georgia was just that, Georgia. It's so completely different from Azerbaijan that it's hard to believe that they exist right next to each other. Crossing the Azeri-Georgian border is like crossing from Mexico to the United States. And Georgians have such amazing things, like a working, democratic government, an uncorrupt police force, a non-oppressive, virtually equal culture, and really, really good wine. Azerbaijan is the polar opposite of all of these. In fact, it is pretty much agreed by every PCV in Azerbaijan that Georgia is paradise on earth, because after being here for so long and then travelling there it really does seem that way. The taxi driver who took us from the border to Tbilisi actually stopped and bought us all mandarins and coffee. The driver who took us from the border to Ujar overcharged me for my ride and kept putting his hand on Marina's leg. The apartment we stayed in cost less than a crappy hotel room in Baku, was a really nice place and in a decent part of town. The last time I stayed in Baku and payed for it my door had a hole in it and there was no running water. The people we met in shops were helpful, cheerful, and fun. People in Azerbaijan always look like they wish the world would end soon. In fact, Georgians buy their natural gas from Azerbaijan, but it is actually MORE EXPENSIVE here than there.

If there is any good reason for me to have my blog blocked besides the beauracratic nosiness of the American government it is this: Georgia is better than Azerbaijan, period. All the positive things I could say about Azerbaijan also apply there, but very few of the negatives.

Stay tuned for some pictures when I get time. Nakhvamdis (Goodbye, Georgian style!)

Toys Abound!

Here's a video I shot of the most recent "toy" (wedding) I attended. Just go ahead and turn off the sound because it's so ridiculously loud in there that it immediately blew out the microphone on my camera. It's not exactly a masterpiece of film, being shot on an outdated Pentax 5mp that Kris was kind enough to donate to my mission of showing off Azerbaijan. However, you can see people dancing, eating, drinking, and generally sitting around not talking because the music is too damn loud to do anything else. One interesting aspect is that everyone is expected to make a "donation", i.e. pay for their seat. I feigned ignorance and pretended like I didn't understand, then beat a beeline for the door when this came up. As it is I'm more broke than most of the people in my town, and I am physically incapable of eating and drinking what would be the equivalent of 30 manat (the standard "donation") worth of food and vodka here anyways. For example, at a restaurant you can get 5 kebabs, a full set of salad, pickles, cheese and greens, mineral water, fruit juice, sparkling pear juice, a bottle of wine and about 3 liters of vodka for that much money. Personally I hope I am never able to consume that much of anything in one sitting ever in my life. I just don't have the willpower to aspire to that level of gluttony.

Xoşbəxt Olsun!

(Me chilling at my local restaurant, along with the staff thereof. A bottle graveyard, a testament to the love of spirits here. Yes, those are all vodka and beer bottles, with a couple of wine bottles tossed in for good measure.

Finally, the two signs in Azeri read, respectively, "The martyrs' spirits will live on in our hearts" and "May Allah accept you in paradise".

Since my last post was thoroughly depressing, I decided I might as well spend the rest of my time here in the internet club trying to lighten the mood. So now a positive story! Hooray!

I went to my first Azeri wedding! I'm sure most of you would expect to be quite a different affair from our weddings in America since this is a Muslim country, and you would be right. However, not how you think. The bride and groom dress in Western wedding clothes, just like us. They have a small wedding ceremony at the house, where a red ribbon is tied around the bride's waist and they walk around a mirror three times and a bunch of other stuff I don't understand. Afterwards they are, at least in the eyes of Allah, married. However, this ceremony is restricted to family, and is just a small part of the whole. After this, the bride a groom load up in a Mercedes decked out with ribbons and flowers, and proceed to drive around town, followed by a line of cars, all of which are blaring their horns, flashing their lights, and generally driving like complete maniacs. After a few trips around town the new couple arrive at the "Şadlıq Sarayı", which literally means "Palace of Joy". Then the real party begins. This part of the event is officially known as a "toy", which means wedding. I think the real translation should be "testament to excess". Imagine a banquet/dance party created in collaboration with Madonna and the Shah of Iran, with a touch of Turkish flair...and you get the general idea. It's LOUD, and considering my feelings on Azeri music you can imagine how well this sat with me. It starts benignly enough with the bride and groom being officially married by the state, signing the marriage license, etc. Then the fun beings. FOOD, and I mean a ton of it. An endless stream of soup, vegetables, fruit, cold cuts, kebabs, and everything else in the Azeri culinary lineup. This is accompanied by drinks, and of course by drinks I mean vodka. There are two waiters to every table, and every time a toast is made your glass is immediately refilled. This continues until you either refuse or can no longer walk. Once everyone has been well lubricated by the copious libations and general cheer, it's time to DANCE! Azeri dancing is a rather foolish looking pratice, but increbidly easy to learn. Essentially you stand up, hold your arms out to your side, kick your feet around and look really depressed. I don't know why the last part is important, but apparently it is., because faces completely bereft of cheer dominate the dance floor until late into the night, when the more reserved people have gone home and the floor becomes a land of drunkards and maniacs. These things can go on for hours. I managed to stay for a total of three and felt rather proud of myself for even that much. Hardcore toy-goers can go on for 7-8 hours straight, eating and drinking enough to kill most mortal men.

I've already got two more wedding invitations for the month of December. Next time I'll try to bring a camera and get some upclose shots of the action as it unfolds. Till then, xoşbext olsun! (be happy!)

Spoils of War

(I'd like to reiterate what is written at the title of my blog. There is a reason this blog is password protected, and that is so that I can say some things that Peace Corps or the government of Azerbaijan or the US in general might not agree with. Everything I am about to say it based on my own experiences with people I have met here, and are only that. It has nothing to do with PC, AZ or the US government. The people quoted below will remain nameless.)

I once again apologize profusely for neglecting my blog. I'd like to say it's because I'm busy but it isn't. I'm just lazy. There's an internet club in my town now, so I can check email and such on a regular basis without travelling to another region. However, it's so eat up with viruses that I can't use a flashdrive there, so posting on the blog still requires me to travel all the way to Göyçay. Also, there hasn't been much of anything interesting going on so I never feel compelled to come and spew a bunch of marginalia and nonsense all over the internet; there's far too much of that already.

So, featured above are some pictures from around Ucar, including the stadium (actually just a big mud pit covered in weeds with some bleachers on the far side) and the "Shehidler Xiyabani", or Martyr's Lane. There is at least one in every town, dedicated to soldiers who fell during the war in Karabakh. They are solemn places, but unfortunately most of them are neglected. The one in Ucar is filled with weeds, someone knocked the nose off the main statue, and I've never seen anyone other than maintenence guys there. I had a short chat with one of them while I was taking pictures. I didn't understand all of what he said, he kept talking about the Kurds in Turkey and something about war, but then he went up to a grave and pointed at the date. 1970-1992 it read. A 22 year old kid who was gunned down trying to defend a patch of land that most people in the world have never even heard of. Then the guy pointed to all the other graves. I looked around...and every single one of the soldiers listed was my age or younger. "They're just kids!", I said to the guy, "All kids!". I thought that was the point he was trying to make. But then he said "See here, 1992. All of these children died after Heydar Aliyev showed up. Everyone here talks about him like he is the greatest democrat ever. But him, and his son, they're not democrats...they're dictators. This isn't a democracy, it's a dictatorship!"

I was dumbstruck. This guy, making $100 a month to clean weeds out of a forgotten cemetary, has come out and said to me what most people here are terrified to even let themselves realize. I dunno if he said it to me because I'm a foreigner and he wanted me to know, or he just needed to vent his frustration, but it really got to me. The sort of helplessness felt here is overwhelming, especially considering the war-torn, unstable history of this country.

I've recently started hanging out with a couple of soldiers who were in Karabakh, asking them about what they saw, how they feel about it, etc. Obviously they don't want to talk about it, and if I had seen what they saw I wouldn't either. But one of them, while I was at a tea house, started showing me a video on his phone. It was a bunch of guys getting off a helicopter and walking through a field. I asked him if it was the war and he just said "watch...". Suddenly the camera pans down, and in a ditch is a body...then two...then five...and then the camera pans across the field. As far as the field of vision is a line of bodies, all thrown into a ditch. Azeris, Armenians, Russians....soldiers and civilians all mixed together. I was struck silent, I didn't know what to say. So I asked him "Well, we have these Martyr's Lanes everywhere, the government always talks about the war and uses it for political means, and you were there and saw all of this in defense of your country...what do they do for you now?" "Not a damn thing" he replied, "I drive a taxi for a couple of dollars a day, I do what I can".

It's hard being presented with experiences like this. As a Peace Corps volunteer I'm not allowed to talk about politics, but at the same time I feel compelled to learn about these people's experiences. It puts me in a bind that's hard to escape from, so I try to avoid it when I can, but sometimes people feel compelled to tell me things that they may be afraid to say to another Azeri, and I can't help but feel conflicted, as if they want me, a "foreign dignitary" as it were, to do something about it. In the end I'm just as helpless as them, and all I can do is hope that one day things will change for the better, and these experiences and lives won't be isolated here in this little country on the Caspian.

Bazarda

Some pics from the local bazaar, where you can buy pretty much anything you want or need. Clothes, food, spices, housewares, construction supplies, agricultural supplies, livestock, medicine, even get a haircut, whatever. Most people who I asked didn't want to be photographed, they feel like they have to be all made up at fancy in order to have a picture taken, but I didn't manage to sneak a pic of the nice old lady who I buy pickles from. You can see in front of her piles of pickled cabbage, cucumbers, prunes and cheese and curds, all homemade and super tasty! Also there's a huge pile of herbs which are used in pretty much everything here, or just eaten right off the stalk. Included are cilantro, dill, mint, opal basil, parsely, radishes, spinach and arugula.

Everyday stuff

I apologize profusely once again for my lack of regular updates, but between school recently starting, my continuing translation project at the local history museum, and a debilitating bout of extreme laziness I haven't had the gumption to get off my butt and come to Göyçay to post anything. At the behest of my step-mom I have included some pictures from around town to give you an idea of what I see every day, and hopefully more of these to come in the future once school gets a bit more stable. Also is a pic of my host-mom with her grandson (I guess techincally my host-nephew) and my host-dad sporting the awesome shades I bought in Istanbul.

So, in case you didn't gather from the above paragraph, school is underway. Here in Azerbaijan, that means about a month of absolute anarchy in every public school across the nation, followed by a week or two of relative stability, followed by yet another bout of chaos and then things finally settle down about two months into the process. Right now we're at the one month mark, and things are seeming to finally be set and in order, but I'll not be fooled too easily. I refuse to write down a set schedule for myself until the end of this month, just so I don't get frustrated when I show up for a class at 8am on Friday and find out it's been moved to 1pm on Tuesday.

You may be wondering what all the chaos is about. Suffice it to say that despite the public perceptions--and realities-- of a huge overbearing beauracracy which controls every aspect of everything everywhere, in real life it is basically left up to the schools to figure things out for themselves. This means that the crisp, clean and freshly prepared schedule sitting on the vice-principal's desk is turned into a worn out messy pulp of repeatedly erased paper by the capricious whims of teachers and students alike. Requests are made and arguments insue regarding what time what teacher teaches what class with consideration given to their own personal schedules outside of school, which all conflict with one another. Since my schedule is centered entirely on when I teach, I usually just sit back and watch the chaos or go sit outside when it starts giving me a headache.

On the positive side, now that I've been at school a year I am much more prepared for the job and much more readily accepted by teachers and students. My language skills have improved dramatically over the summer, due to hours spent sitting around by the store near my house and randomly being invited as a guest to tables by complete strangers at the local restaurant. This means when kids start getting out of line I don't have to wait for the teacher to get them to sit down and shut up, because I can yell at them myself. I've decided the height of basic conversational language proficiency is being able to yell at children when they misbehave and yell at grownups when they piss you off. Also, since I've had a year to become accustomed to the local schools I'm not the least bit surprised when a teacher doesn't show up because of some phantom sickness caused by something that doesn't actually make people sick, like cold liquids, wind, or sitting on the floor. I've learned to take it all in stride, and it has made my life decidedly less stressfull. If only I could convince Magnus to be so passive instead of crying incessantly for something--I'm not even sure he knows what it is.

Speaking of Magnus, he has become my official wildlife control agent for my yard. If it has a pulse and resides in the general area surrounding my house, he has murdered and devoured it with extremely extreme prejudice. I found half a frog in my kitchen last week, and two weeks before I found enough feathers to cover the better half of a full-grown chicken strewn all across my porch and yard. The chicken itself was nowhere to be found, so he either got eaten or escaped with decidedly less plumage and a very informative lesson on the disposition of felines towards potentially tasty birds.

That's all for now. If I have some time left at the internet club I'll try to post some more pics I took at the bazaar today. Peace.