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.