Thunderstorms and Lahij

Lately we’ve been having the most fantastic thunderstorms here in Ismayilli; thunderstorms that rattle the windows, shake the foundations of the house, thunderstorms that you can feel in your bones. Thunderstorms that seem more at home in the South Pacific during the monsoon season. It also hailed the other day.

In other shower news, we've started using our summer shower, which means no more bucket baths! Still have to light something to get hot water, but now we've got a real shower head and pretty decent pressure if you time it right (mostly mornings). My host family says they shower pretty much every day during the summer. Music to my ears.

And now for something you'll really like.

Last weekend, we went to Lahij (spelled here Lahic, because c’s are j’s here), a very old, small town near Ismayilli, that is a popular tourist visit during the summer and utterly cut off from the world during the winter. The reason being that the way one gets to Lahij is a windy, bumpy, unpaved road that creeps around the mountains of a river valley. During the winter, and in fact, any day with bad rain, the road becomes perilous (the fact that drivers hug the edge doesn’t help much either).

The day we set out looked like it would be one of these days. When I told my host mother we were going, she made us watch the weather report for about half an hour. Finally, she gave up and let us go. She was baffled by our decision to go, in part because we weren’t going guesting there; we were just going.

The road was exactly what we’d be warned. It keeps you on the edge of your seat, in fact quite literally as we bumped along the way. But as we climbed northward, the clouds dissipated and we could see the mountains betwixt we drove; towering mountains, with steep cliffs, sometimes due to dynamiting for the road.

Lahij is not much. It is basically one main road, a historical museum that was once a mosque, a communal hamam (shower/bath house) because they have only recently gotten running water, with no real hotel, no gas, and only two restaurants, one of which is a dark chayxana (tea place). What Lahij is, though, is relaxing. The streets are paved with river stones, and mostly too small for cars to pass. It is surrounded by beautiful green mountains and looks down on a once mighty river which sadly due to dams placed upriver has become distinctly diminished. Along the main road are a number of copper workers, for which Lahij is historically known, and stores with sheep wool hats, rugs, and coats. It reminded me of Colonial Williamsburg without the historical plaques on the buildings.

When we arrived we were escorted to the museum by one of the men who was on the marshrutka with us. There we encountered a group of government workers from Ismayilli who knew us all by name (eerie) and an impressively helpful and knowledgeable tourism office (helps to actually have something tourists come to see).

After the museum, we wandered down the main road towards the restaurant and village school on the other side. Un-amusing, we were not allowed to go into the school, which is just about the only school in Azerbaijan with murals on the walls, but amusingly, it turns out that the old woman who guards the school would also block the volunteer who worked there for two years from entering, until the school director would remind her that it was alright for him to come inside. Can’t imagine that was fun in February.

Lunch was kebab and fresh tomatoes and cheese, with sugary pear juice washing it all down. We sat on the top of a hill overlooking the river, covered by a green shade. By the time I got home, I was still filled with a lovely feeling of relaxation, which, try as it might, the bus ride home was unable to dislodge.

Eurovision: Mubarak Azerbaijan!

The big news here in Az is that the country won this year's Eurovision Song Competition. For those who don't know (by which I mean pretty much all Americans, or everyone who reads my blog), Eurovision is a continent-wide American Idol-like competition that has been around since the 1950s, and is responsible for unleashing ABBA on the world, never to be the same again.

The winning duo from Azerbaijan, who won with a momentous 221 points, Ell and Nikko, sang their song "Running Scared." Since the win, a number of my students have asked me what it means to "run scared," to which I pantomime running and screaming. They think I'd be a good actor.

But back to Ell and Nikko, whose real names are Eldar and Nigar. They dominated the finals, and the second place country, Italy, only received 185 points.

According to overthinkingit.com, Azerbaijan is a powerhouse in Eurovision, despite is geographic flexibility ("The song was written by the same team that composed “Drip Drop,” Azerbaijan’s entry last year, which placed fifth overall. (The year before that, Azerbaijan placed third. As it turns out, they are a perennial Eurovision powerhouse.) This song is definitely going to make the finals..."). I never know where to say Azerbaijan is. It's not Europe, but it's not Asia, and it's not the Middle East. Where in the world is Azerbaijan? (Should be sung to the tune of a certain TV game show/video game.)

So, without any further ado, for your listening and viewing pleasure, here is the toast of Azerbaijan, Ell and Nikko, singing "Running Scared."




Now that Azerbaijan has won, they face the daunting task of hosting next year's contest. I can't wait to see how into the contest people here will be then.

The Ambassador Comes to Town

This past week, the new ambassador to Azerbaijan, Matthew Bryza, spent three days traveling through the rayons (regions) for the first time, visiting Peace Corps sites, as an introduction to Azerbaijan and a celebration of Peace Corps’ 50th anniversary. His first visit was to Ismayilli, and then on to Oguz, Sheki, Mingachevir, Ganja, and Dashkeshan (for those of you with a map, that’s all over the country).

After learning of the visit during our Early Service Training Conference, where we received a very broad outline of the trip (basically what I have just given you), we began planning for real. Amy, the first volunteer in Ismayilli and who till lives and works in Baku, would be in charge of planning the Ismayilli visit. Azerbaijan is a top-down bureaucracy, so it was necessary to alert each national office and regional office about the visit. On top of that, there would also be an entourage of Azeri reporters along for the ride, and the events that were to be planned had to also cater to the media and their interests.

For a while, the embassy said they did not want assemblies or speeches (I don’t particularly blame them for this, of course), but would not say what they did want. We knew they were planning a visit to the ExCom, the executive power governing body for each region, and a visit to my sitemate’s organization, a new organization that helps disabled children and their families. Eventually, they agreed to a visit to the biggest school in Ismayilli to showcase the past accomplishments inspired by volunteers and the future plans with us current volunteers. My students and the director were a bit bothered that he was not going to our school, but when the details of the visit were made more clear, they understood.

To show the broad influence of Peace Corps in Ismayilli, Amy coordinated a panel of speakers including English teachers from School Number 1, who worked with two volunteers, my counterpart, who has worked with several volunteers, two computer teachers, and my host brother who has just been accepted to the Muskie program, through which he will study at the University of Utah for two years. We invited representatives from every school and organization in the Ismayilli region that has hosted a volunteer in the past eight years.

The entire event would be MC-d by a student who met Amy when she was in fifth grade and is now about to graduate from high school. As her aspiration is to be a journalist, she acted as an interviewer exploring the influence of Peace Corps in the community. My students and I would be the grand finale, and two students were chosen (by popular vote by the other club members) to read the letters they had recently written to their American pen pals (“pen friends” to most Azeris).

The night before the event, we met with all the speakers to go over what they would say and to stress that they would only have a minute or two to say it in. Now, people here love assemblies, and there is a protocol to what is said. It took a bit of convincing that they should dispense with the formalities and go straight to the main ideas, given the length of the event. It was rewarding, however, to realize just how much their lives had been touched by their experiences with volunteers and how excited they were to talk about it.

The morning of the visit it was raining, and after way to long agonizing over what to wear (I blame color blindness), I trudged up the road to my school. Most of the students were there early, but we had a minor panic when one of the readers did not, and a search party was dispersed. Stretched out along the road, we made our way to School Number 1. Throughout the walk and the lead up to the event, my students continually asked me questions about the event, showing how nervous they were to possibly be on TV. One of the readers asked me several times if the news crews were going to ask him about his letter.

Ambassador Bryza was about a half hour late getting to Ismayilli, due to intense fog in the mountains along the road. When word came that he was on his way, we went out to the front yard to greet him. A few small children were there to give the ambassador flower bouquets.

The event went smoothly, though several teachers did go on for longer than expected. Everyone, including myself, spoke in Azeri, for the media, and Ambassador Bryza had an assistant translating for him. I was nervous about speaking in Azeri (it’s hard to sneakily practice a speech when you’re up on stage), but everyone was complimentary afterwards, and I don’t think I butchered it too much. My host brother told me only one word was difficult to understand, and in the video replay, it doesn’t seem like I “um”-ed as much as I thought I did on stage.

My students nervously climbed up to the stage for their readings, but I was proud of how well behaved they were. The ambassador rose and spoke to the audience afterwards, and then it was time for cake and photographs. He posed for several photos with my students, who weren’t quite sure what to think at first, with the camera bulbs flashing, but warmed up to it. They wanted to get their photos taken with a woman who was a former FLEX student, but were too nervous to ask her themselves, and had me approach her about getting their picture.

The entire time, the media milled about, filming random parts of the event, and afterwards approached me for a short interview (thankfully in English). I don’t know when the event will show up on TV, but they said they’d edit it to make me look good. The message of the event hopefully planted ideas in my students about goals for the future. The importance of trying new things, of working hard, of striving to meet one’s goals. These are the ideas I really want to share and spread at my school. These are ideas that are more important than having new computers to show off or simple test scores, or learning English just to go to America.

A Chapter Closed

News of the death of Osama bin Laden has reached us here in Azerbaijan. A text message sent out by the CD erroneously announced that President Obama had gone on the air to speak about the death of “Obama bin Laden,” something that certainly won’t help Obama’s fight against the Birthers and those that pay too much attention to his middle name.

Ten years ago, I came home from a Boy Scout meeting to see the live coverage of the World Trade Centers falling. We didn’t know exactly what was going on, but knew that the attack had caused a huge amount of damage and deaths. On the other side of the world we still felt the repercussions. Friends went home, recalled by the government or by their companies. Security was raised at the school. I listened repeatedly to the Concert for NY album. Just as for those who were in the United States, it was a time that we could never forget, but I always noticed how different and slightly distant the effects of the event were in Indonesia. I was more directly touched by the bombing of a nightclub on the island of Bali in 2002, in which a teacher from our school died.

I can’t help feeling that it is a bit fitting that just as I was abroad for the events of 9/11 and the immediate aftermath, I am abroad now, as the man who claimed to be the mastermind behind the attacks, Osama bin Laden, has been killed. Even though bin Laden’s death does not mark the end of al-Qaeda, nor does it mean the end of the War on Terror, his death does create a symbolic bookend.

Here I am, abroad again, just as I was when the towers fell. But it is not just as it was, for the world has changed, and I have changed, in the past ten years. I was in middle school in 2001. I lived in a rented house in Jakarta with my family. We had a maid, a driver, a gardener, just as most expats in Indonesia did. Now, I live with another family, an Azerbaijani family, though a family I can still call my own in a way. I work at a middle school. I shop and cook for myself. In these past ten years, I have adapted to American high school life, participated in an exchange program in Japan, gone to college, studied abroad in India, graduated from college, and entered the Peace Corps in Azerbaijan. I have grown physically, of course, but have also changed in other ways as well.

There have been constants, as well. There are people, two friends in particular, who have been with me over that time. One predated Indonesia, one I met there. And though I am on the far side of the world, they are still my friends, people I would not want to be without. In the ten years that have passed, what has bin Laden’s life been like? Has he had friends that he has been in contact with this whole time? Has he changed in these ten years? He has become such a symbol for the fight against terrorism that it is easy not to think of him as a person, but an evil entity that lurks in caves and makes videos condemning America and the West, or a cartoon character lampooned by the likes of South Park or Family Guy. I wonder if, at the end, when his life came to a close, how he looked back at the ten years that have passed since the attack in New York.