Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again

I am coming up on the last days of my Peace Corps journey and I can’t seem to get the lyrics of “I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane” out of my head. Nor, it seems, the reoccurring dreams of being able to eat New England clam chowder soup, mushroom and swiss cheeseburgers, or green beans with roasted almonds whenever I want. I feel ready to leave. Twenty-seven months is a long time to be out of one’s own culture. However, I already have mixed emotions about going home.

I had my exit interview with my country director last week and she asked “What will you be most proud of from your service?” That is an easy answer for me; the cultural aspect of my service has provided me with the most amazing experiences I didn’t even know I could have had. I lived with the same family for two years which entailed one house, nine people, and a newborn baby. I made best friends with my counterpart and developed amazing relationships with a group of really motivated young women in my community. But that also comes with a lot of responsibility when it comes to leaving. It means I need to go over for tea and dinner at least two to three times before I leave to each house. It’s going to be heartbreaking saying good bye for the last time to some of these girls. Thankfully, most have Skype and Facebook accounts now (Facebook is in Azerbaijan in a BIG way). But, if these last two years have taught me anything, talking over internet just isn’t the same, and it gets harder as time goes on.

Along with my Azerbaijani contacts, I have made some truly lifelong friendships with Americans here. There are people I am absolutely only saying “see you later” to, for I have no doubt that we will be together again in the States. And now, I know all these great contacts if I ever plan to road trip across the country. I’m hoping to be able to run into the capital a few times in November to watch the election with them, spend Thanksgiving, and give lots of hugs before they go.

On the logistical side of the leaving path, I need to write documents regarding the sustainability of my individual, primary, and secondary projects, close my bank account, be checked out by doctors and dentists, hand in technical training manuals and books, prepare documents for my counterparts, and take a final test to see where my Azerbaijani language ended up.

As I said before, I feel ready to leave Azerbaijan. It feels like it is time. But with the looming countdown of a month to go, all of the events, activities, good-byes, and documents I need to attend to, and the nervousness I am experiencing about returning back to America, some days I feel completely unprepared. Fortunately, the dreams of knoephla soup, ice cream in the winter, and hockey games are enough to keep me going.

Proudest Moment

One of my proudest moments from my service in Azerbaijan came this past August. My sitemate, Matt, and I had organized the students in the city to participate in the Writing Olympics competition. For copywriting purposes, I think the name was officially changed to Write On! Writing competition or something, but I prefer its original title. It was originally put together by Peace Corps Volunteers in the surrounding countries of Azerbaijan, but has now expanded to over twelve participating countries. Students from grades sixth to eleventh, university students, and a professional’s category are proposed a question that they must write a response to in the given sixty minutes. The responses are then judged on the creativity of the answers and are only docked for grammatical errors if the essay itself is unable to be understood.

Our students from the city were a byproduct of the two volunteers in our city the year before we came to Goychay. They had established a small group of young adults for a regular conversation club in intermediate to advanced English and we had the luck to be able to inherit them. These kids are really great. One thing really wonderful is that there are about four young women who come to club who, without the previous young women volunteers establishing a relationship with them, wouldn’t have been able to come to my male sitemate’s conversation club. These clubs are the only reason they leave their houses’ without their families twice a week and to be able to continue that for four years has been really beneficial for them.

Leading up to the day of the competition, Matt had worked a lot with them on creatively thinking, writing, and defending different sides of an argument. When the hour came to write the essays, a few kids complained saying, “But we’ve already talked about this twice before!” Of the seven who submitted essays, we had four of our students place for Azerbaijan. Goychay took first place 11th form, third place 11th form, first place University (freshman) category, and first place professional’s category. Even more exciting, all the first place winners are then entered automatically for the international competition, and among twelve countries, our University student, Husniyye, won first place internationally!

Miss Husniyye is a beautiful, smart young woman. She is a success story on her own, but always says she wouldn’t be the person she is today if she hadn’t met Peace Corps volunteers when she was younger. Seeing her and our other students accept their certificates at an awards ceremony in Baku was one of the proudest moments I have had here. I will admit I shed a tear or two. It is not always the case that you see the profound affects you have on lives while serving. I’m fortunate to be able to see the differences the Peace Corps volunteers before me have made and take comfort knowing I will hopefully have done the same by the time I leave.

I was inspired by one of my friends to start writing down some of my memories from the last two years. I know I look back on them now easily, but they are ones that will fade with time. I was trying to think of a list, funniest, saddest, most embarrassing, but I’m sure there are some that don’t even fit into categories. I also thought this would be a good way to update my blog a little more frequently. So, if I am diligent about it, there should be a few more of these to look forward to. If there is a specific question you have about cultural or memories or anything at all, please let me know and I'll be happy to write about it.

Somewhat fittingly, my first post is about my first night with my host family. I had arrived, unpacked my two suitcases, looked through what seemed like 1000 wedding pictures, and was shyly awaiting whatever was to come next. I had noticed the neighbors had been coming over throughout the past two hours to get a glimpse of the new foreigner. But then the men came in and the whole mood changed. Suddenly, everything switched to formal and my host mom brought out all of the nice china, a full tea tray, and plenty of candy, pomegranates, and cookies to match. I was sitting next to the grandpa, Baba, of the house when he told me to drink sugar with my tea. Traditionally, tea, chay, is drunk in a tea cup or pear shaped glass, and always either with sugar cubes, candy, or jam on the side. The sugar cube is usually dipped in the tea first to soften it, and then put in your mouth to slowly enjoy while you are drinking. Trying to appear sure of myself, I grabbed a sugar cube and almost put it in my mouth before my Baba stopped me and tried to show me to dip it in my tea. Not understanding, I just plopped it right into my tea and watched it sink to the bottom. Cute old Baba with all of his wrinkles started laughing and laughing and then showed me what I was actually supposed to do with it. It was good though, because he immediately lightened up the room with his big guffaw and I felt much better (or maybe I was extremely embarrassed and blushing, but look back on it fondly).

At the time, I could only say, ‘Hello, Good-bye, Thank you, and I want (pick from about twenty nouns I knew).’ A couple months ago I was visiting that family and retold them that memory and Baba laughed even harder the second time around. They were a really amazing family to be with for those first three months. I’m sure it took mountains of patience for my host mom listening to me practice my terrible Azeri, and I had displaced the three children from their one bedroom. One of my host sisters lived at her grandma’s the whole time, and the other two rotated the sofa and cot out in the living room. I have so many great memories of them, but that one with Grandpa is one of my fondest.

I couldn't find a pic of Gramps, but here is one with his wife, another North Dakotan volunteer and her host mother (we were "cousins")

A BIG Thanks to Mr. Josh Ehrenreich

As I have written about previously, I went to Turkey this past June with two friends from Peace Corps. I was contacted by my friend, Josh, about a potential yachting adventure last August. This had been his idea for years and years. And while getting ready to come to Azerbaijan, he started making this dream a reality. So for a year and a half he planned. He sent out a mass email to friends and family back home to see who would sign on and ended up with thirteen of his best friends and family and two of us from Peace Corps. The end result consisted of four days in Istanbul, a 15 hour bus ride to Bodrum, eight days on a private yacht, and four more days of bliss before returning back. Now to say, ‘Josh planned everything,’ may not sound that impressive. But let me tell you, it is impressive. He didn’t do this in America. This was done with shoddy internet connections, a bus line that only speaks Turkish, organizing thirteen people from America and three people from Azerbaijan to board the yacht together, and arrange payments on time. To top it off, he made every itty-bitty, teensy-weensy, tiny detail that could be made for himself for Mercedes and me as well. We didn’t do anything to prepare for this trip but PayPal Josh money (and once I did it wrong). Every plane ticket, hotel reservation, bus ticket, and hostel booking was done for us.

Needless to say, some thanks were owed, and we knew just telling him wouldn’t be enough. So through a few friends we got a brilliant idea. See, Josh collects fairy tales and myths from across the world, and a friend had told us about this book that Josh once found in an Ex-pat’s house in Baku. To hear him talk about it, you’d think he had fallen in love. It was this beautiful, big book with gorgeous illustrations which included all Azerbaijani fairy tales translated into English with intricate golden embossed pages and only bound and printed in Turkey.

Armed with the knowledge that this was going to be the best present ever, Mercedes and I collected money from everyone on the yacht trip (fifteen people splitting up a present reduces the hit on one’s wallet). But once we finally got around to trying to get our hands on a copy, we realized we did not exactly know how to go about tracking it down. Mercedes finally got the number of a “guy” in Baku that we could call. We only knew his name, but didn’t know who he was, if he spoke English, if he sold the book or knew someone who knew someone, etc. So after arguing a bit about who would have to navigate the phone call, I gave it a shot. The conversation went something like this:


Emily: “Hello, Is this Arif?”
Man: “Allo? Yes?”
Emily: “Hi. Do you speak English?”
Man: “Inglis? Okay.”
Emily: (In her head… “Obviously not.”) Switching to Azeri..
“Hi, I got your number from a friend who said you know that… you can find a book about…. Well I am looking for this book and it is about…. Somebody else is going to call you.”

Luckily, Mercedes and I did this in the Peace Corps office in Baku with endless sources of the best translators I have had the pleasure of meeting in Azerbaijan. We approached our language coordinator, Afet, explained the whole situation, and she called him back for us. Listening to her end of the conversation, we already knew it wasn’t promising. It turns out, the man we called is actually the illustrator of the fairy tales himself. We figured he was just a bookseller or something. In reality, he was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to illustrate pictures for this book and has his own gallery in Baku. What he relayed to Afet Xanim was that this book was originally sold but now has been taken off the shelves completely. No one is able to buy it and the only way to obtain a copy is to be an International humanitarian aid organization and send a letter on behalf of the agency to the Ministry to request a book. They would review the letter and determine if they would send a copy or two to the organization. Afet Xanim asked maybe four or five times if there was any way at all to buy a copy from the Ministry but the answer remained ‘no.’

Hanging our heads after hearing the news, Mercedes and I had some thinking to do. The good news is that Peace Corps qualifies for the humanitarian organization. The bad news is, it wasn’t guaranteed that Ministry would grant it, and we still had all this money from Josh’s friends. If we didn’t get the book, what were we going to do with the money? Take him out on a night on the town? PayPal seven dollars back to everyone in the States? We decided to see if we could find a replacement on the internet first.

Then the best news in the world came. While sitting at our Close-of-Service conference on the outskirts of Baku the next day, I received a call from Afet saying the illustrator had called her back. He was touched that we were so intent on getting the book for our friend that he made a few calls out to people, got his hands on the one and only copy available for sale, and would be in Baku the next day if we still wanted to buy it from him. And boy, did we. The problem was, we were at this conference and couldn’t leave, and he was only going to be in the city for one day (because he had to return to his Villa). Afet, who like almost all of our Peace Corps staff is amazingly kind, offered to use her entire lunch break the next day to go to the illustrator and buy the book for us. We sent our money along with a Peace Corps driver who brought it to Afet, who gave up her lunch hour to go on this goose chase for us. She even called to confirm with us that is was okay that we didn’t get a receipt because it was sort of an under-the-table kind of deal.

The next day when I saw Afet and received the book, I was in shock. It is, by far, the most beautiful book I have ever seen and touched. The illustrations are breath-taking, gorgeous. It is ineffable. It even included a CD-ROM audio recording. Once we actually had it in our own hands, Mercedes and I kept hinting to Josh about his present. We told him he’d love it and he wasn’t going to believe it, but when we told him he might cry when we gave it to him, he started to get skeptical and couldn’t handle the wait any longer. The look on his face was priceless. He didn’t cry, but I think it was the amount of air he sucked in from shock that prevented him from shedding any tears.

As Mercedes has pointed out, while we gave the best present EVER, we, ourselves, did not actually have to do a lot for it. But the story behind what other people went to at lengths for what is now, literally, a rare copy of a book is moving. The best part of it all is that we knew we couldn’t just say thank you to Josh. The work he did for a year and half to get ready was above and beyond a simple “Thanks.” I feel good knowing that we were able to show the extent of our gratitude. Without him, I wouldn’t know what it truly means to be on a once in a lifetime dream vacation.

No Holds Barred

One week without a fan during the hottest part of the year in August really brings out the bear in me. And I do not mean the cute cuddly kind that we buy for our children. I mean the mama-bear-defending-her-little-cubs-in-an-outrage kind of bear. See, it is not just being uncomfortable at night without a fan and sweaty at all times of the day, but it means that I am not really sleeping well either and the heat makes me not want to eat too much.


What happened to my fan? Well, simply, it broke. There are two kinds of fans you can buy in Azerbaijan. One is a twelve manat model, cheap and plastic. The other is 24 manat model, heavy-duty, industrial sized, and aluminum. Now, some (my sister) would attest to the fact that I can be cheap at times. But in my defense, I am technically “working for free.” Now, we get money to pay rent and have a cell phone and buy food, but money for a fan is not worked into our allowance. And let me tell you all, the allowance is a heavily debated topic every year. But, I’m getting off topic. My point being, I bought the cheaper of the two kinds and it came around to kick me in the butt. So here I am, in 40 degree Celsius weather, drinking at least three liters of water each day to make up for my sweat loss.


And I have been thinking a lot lately about my blog. I write about once a month, less than I wish, but I have come to realize that if I were to have only read my blog and known nothing else about Peace Corps and Azerbaijan, I would think this place and organization is all unicorns and rainbows and fairy dust. There is a lot of dust, but it isn’t sprinkled by fairies. I have noticed that every time I say something even slightly negative about the country, I follow it up with something nice, or an excuse, or anything really to negate that I just had less than great feelings and thoughts about this place I have come to call home. It reminds of a manager giving out constructive criticism at work and following it up with a strength so you walk away with your head still held high.


So I wanted to tell you a few things that really just plain tick me off here. They aren’t the big things. I could go on for hours and hours about the bribery system here, or the school system, or child-rearing, or lack of critical thinking… the list could and does go on. But I’m just going to give you a glimpse into what I have come to realize I just cannot be flexible about. They are things that I thought over time I would get used to, or that at least they wouldn’t bug me as much. But they just do not feel any different than the first day I noticed them.



EATING HABITS
Besides for eating at a table here and (usually) three times a day, sitting down for a meal here is really different. At a normal dinner, lunch or evening meal, talking is discouraged. But unlike America, it is encouraged to eat as comfortably as possible, which means, with your mouth open, slurping, elbows up, usually hands (there are NEVER knives), and soaking up food with bread. If you do talk, it is okay to talk with food in your mouth, smacking as you chew, etc. It is also not rude to reach over people and so there is usually an arm or an elbow across you looking for bread or a glass. Eating from the communal salad bowl with your fingers is par for the course. Again, I feel the need here to follow this up with an excuse or explanation. But I’m not going to this time. I’ve ate at what feels like a hundred different Azeri homes, in both formal and non-formal situations, and I’ve yet to be at a place that did not have at least two or three aspects of this list (which is not even complete). It drives me bonkers. There have been times where I felt like I could not finish my meal because of hearing and seeing the person and the food in their mouth in front of me. Dramatic? Yes. But it just can get so incredibly overwhelming. (Also, it is fly season in Azerbaijan and we eat outside and there are at least 20 flies on the table, food, and person at all times. Remember, one fly always feels like five are actually around. We have at least 20).

LOUDNESS
Things just seem louder here. People listen to the television on almost the highest volume it can be turned to and music is always at full blast whether it is a young teen’s cellphone on the street or blasting in your ears at a wedding. Also, at least in our house, no one ever, EVER, walks to another room or up the stairs or into the yard to relay a message or tell someone to come to dinner or give them a cellphone. They always, ALWAYS, yell. And yell. And yell. Until somebody, whoever gets fed up with listening to the calling of the person’s name, responds. And then if that person was not the actual target, and just the first one to respond, they go out and call for the right person until they respond. But above all, when people get into arguments here, they yell. Scream at each other really. In a way that you just do not see in America and it makes me really uncomfortable. I have seen it among teachers in the hallway at school (we would consider this highly inappropriate), taxi drivers, policeman, my family members, children, everyone. In your face, screaming, on the verge of hitting someone. And then it is just over. And, again, not only do I severely dislike the noisiness of this all, it also makes me really uncomfortable.

NON-DESCRIPTIVENESS
I used to think it was just a language thing that made people appear to not be describing things very well. But I do not think it is. I think it is just cultural, because Azerbaijani’s have the words in their language to explain better than they do, and often they just do not. Almost all directions are given with a general region, maybe a nearby “name your landmark here.” It could be within four blocks of that, north, east, south, or west, but you would not know which way. Another example would be when people tell you they want you to talk about America, or teach them about computers, or describe the foreign education system. Where to begin, really? I think this is a hard category for me to even put into words, which I think makes it a bit ironic. But it is like when I ask where a pan is and my host mom says the kitchen. If I could say, Thanks Captain Obvious, I would, but I don’t know that, yet. I asked my host cousin, who is the village to city taxi driver, where I could get my fan fixed and he told me in town. Really? I must not have known that before I started loading my fan into your trunk to be taken into town, thank you for the information. I ask my post-grad university students what they want to do with their next two, five, ten years. Usually their responses are, work, or get out of Azerbaijan. But when I say,” Where will you work?, How will you find a job?, What work do you want?, Do you have a C.V. (resume)?”, they just shrug their shoulders and say, work.

COLD
This category could be as big of a rant as the education system, but I’ll try to use some brevity here. In a nut shell, cold is evil, the devil, it makes you sick, and it comes in many, many forms. In one hundred degree heat, everybody must wear socks, because your stomach will hurt if you do not, from the cold. Even at stores, the refridgerators are only turned on between May and September and ice-cream doesn’t appear until June. You cannot have wet hair, it must be dried immediately. No cold milk, water, juice, wine, etc. Always socks. Wrap your stomach at night. Always a hat from November until March at all times. If you get ill at all, it is from the cold, in some form, whether you remember you encountered it or not. If the temperature is under 35 degrees Celsius, that is reason enough. It doesn’t matter if you have the flu, chicken pox, a headache, gas pains, dyptheria, whatever, it is from the cold. As I type this, the daughter-in-law at our house will have a baby in the next week. Because of a threat to the baby’s health from cold, she is not allowed to sleep in the one room (hers) that has an air conditioner. At night she sleeps outside, and during the day she moans and groans from being in pain and being overheated. Sometimes I can understand why people say what they do. But most of the time, it just is not true. And I feel like I have turned a little crazy in my need to defend this point. But I’m not wearing socks in the summer and that is not why my stomach hurts. I truly believe, if people were as diligent about germs and bacteria as they are about avoiding anything that has to do with the cold, there would be Significantly less illness in this country. Significantly less.


These are just a few of the small pet peeves to large campaigns I have concerned myself with while being here. Now, I will say this, remember that I have been without a fan, good sleep, and an adequate diet in the last week. You can take this post with a grain of salt if you would like. Or, embrace that I am feeling comfortable to finally not gloss over every aspect of this experience. Because I know, when I get back to America, I am going to have the coldest can of Diet Pepsi I can find and relish in the fact that no one will harp in my ear, “That’s cold, don’t drink it, you’re going to be ill.”

Time Flies When You Are Having Fun

It has already been a full month plus some since I have been back from Turkey. It feels like just last week I got home. It has been a good and busy month, though, and it is nice to get back into the groove of things. I re-read an email I had sent to my friend at the beginning of July, and it was not very upbeat in reference to Azerbaijan. Coming back from vacation is difficult, especially one as amazing as our yacht trip. As hard as it was, however, I’m back into my routine.
Immediately I attended an Azeri wedding of our mutual friends with a few other volunteers, I celebrated the fourth of July with a barbeque, potato salad, beer, and watermelon, and helped my sitemate put on an Open Mic concert in our city for the youth.













Two weeks ago I finally made my first trip down to the southern part of the Baijan. My friend, Sally, was putting on an arts camp in Masalli for seventh and eighth graders. We made edible color wheels, recreated cave paintings, and attempted Andy Warhol-esque art. After the nine to one art camp, we had the rest of the day to relax, eat, and watch Woody Allen movies. One day we went down to Lankeran (right on the Caspian Sea) and ate chicken stuffed with walnuts, went to the beach, and per usual, got scammed out of a taxi ride on our way home. We also went to the Isti Su, Hot Water, area near Masalli. It is famed for its hot mineral springs and has beautiful restaurants and camping spots for vacation. Fun informative fact: The forest near the Isti Su area is one of the only areas in the world ( Southern Azerbaijan and northern Iran) which contains “Iron trees.” Now maybe there is a true name for them, but this is a direct translation from Azeri. The trees are so dense that they sink in water, and are too difficult to chop down, making it resistant to any deforestation attempts.









I also just got back from a few days of vacationing with Azerbaijanis. This is quite a trip in its own right. We loaded up one mini bus (marshrutka) and two small cars full of 19 people, food, pop, bread, dishes, cups, blankets, pillows, rugs, soccer balls, and clothes for two full days and one night in the mountains. It took us about two hours from Goychay to finally get to the spot, but it was really beautiful. It reminded me a lot of going to the Lakes in Minnesota with my family as a kid. We would be in these remote backwoods resorts and it makes one wonder how you ever heard of something so far removed in the first place. But it is tradition and everyone has a good time so families keep returning. We made kabob and ate watermelon and cake and drank a lot of tea and mountain spring water. Even though it was only knee deep, we all sat and laid in the river and climbed up the mountains to take beautiful pictures.












When I am not tramping from region to region, I have been tutoring kids at my house every day. So far it seems to be one week on, one week off. I have a sixth grade girl that comes in the morning for two hours, and then two older girls that come after her for another two hours. When I am in the city, I try to tag along to my sitemate’s clubs and see the university kids that are home for summer break. I’m supposed to be training for a half marathon as well, but considering I have only run once in the past three weeks, it is not looking promising.
As much as I always think things are going to slow down and I will be bored, it never seems to be the case (I wonder if my mind will ever adjust to this?). Come August, I will tutor for two weeks, and then (if approved) go to Georgia for a few days to hike up a mountain and see a glacier, return for a few days, and then leave to see my friends in the North, go to a Close of Service Conference for Peace Corps, and head to the region where the half marathon will be taking place. Two weeks after that school starts. I now have a little less than four months before I board a plane out of here and I have a feeling it will be the fastest passing four months of my life.

More pictures

Here are more pictures from the yacht. Most of these are downloaded from people on the yacht and are not actually my own pictures. Thank you to Adam for his beautiful photos.