Highlights of a day's work:
“Sasha, I am sorry I am late for class, I was arguing with Hamana Muellim (Teacher) over grammar.” It’s how they release sexual tension, arguing grammar rules. “Read this: I work the most of all. Would you say this?” “Sure. What’s wrong with it?” She’s dying to tell me. “You do not use the here. It should be ‘I work most of all.’” “Why? I would say,” and I write, “Of all the students, she is the best singer.” “No, it is not the same! ‘Best’ is an adjective here.” “Yeah, it doesn’t matter—” “It does matter! But Hamana said that words there are some verbs that act as nouns, and are treated as nouns in this sentence.” “Well, yeah, but—” “I don't really understand what she is saying. I have not learned this. If it is true, I must tell all my students about this adverb.” “I don’t know, it’s what we say—” “You would say, ‘She sang worst of all the students.’” “No, I would say, ‘Of all the students, she sang the worst.’” She literally threw the pen on the desk. I will hear about this tomorrow, in a “See, I told you” kind of way.
“Sasha, come to my house to teach me computer,” so I did, and she was like, “I want to know about English grammar. Are there grammar games on here?” “No, I don’t have any grammar games, but you can get them from the internet.” “Ok.” “Ok. Do you have internet?” “No, but you do. You have computer.” “Yeah, but there’s no internet in the computer. Do you have a telephone line?” “No.” “Then you can’t have internet.” “But you have computer.”
“Sasha, light the petch. Don’t be scared.” “I’m scared, Yusif.” It’s a fucking torch. “I will light it, don’t turn it off.” “What if I have to leave?” “Keep it on.” “When I go to bed?” “Keep it on. Tomorrow, what time do you come home from school?” “Twelve o’clock.” “Keep it on…If you need to turn it off, turn it off here, here and here, or it will explode, Kapppewww!”
Monday, December 22, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
1. The temperature in my apartment has been dropping a degree for four consecutive days. The gauge currently reads 6 degrees Celsius. If it continues at this rate, I should awake to a white Christmas on my face.
2. Kelsey on how to check if I turned off the stove: “Put your detector next to it, if it doesn’t beep then gas isn’t leaking, or your detector is broken.”
3. “Eat! Eat!”
“I’m full! I can’t!” I’d shouted back.
“Sasha, eat!”
The puke is coming, I know it. I can’t tear off fat from the goose meat, or sip more oil-salt based soup.
“Eat bread, Sasha!”
Now putting the spoon down. Host mother will be offended.
“I can’t, Sevda!”
“Sasha, eat!”
“I’m full!”
“Do you want tea?”
If I have tea I have to have cookies. But if I say no, she’ll be offended.
“No, I don’t want any.”
“No?! But you must! Drink tea!”
“I can’t!”
“Just one cup, Sasha.”
I felt like a toddler, crying when I wanted food, screaming when I didn’t. Explaining I have to wear leggings to school to cover my tattoo, defending why I have one in the first place. Insisting I can walk to school on my own, and travel to Baku on the bus, even with the language barrier. Trying to communicate I want to be alone, when in reality I never will be, not Azerbaijan.
In the first weeks with my training host family I couldn’t convey my displeasure for bosbocht again, or my discomfort with blaring midnight mugam music for the fifth night in a row. So I’d shut myself inside my room, inside my sleeping bag, with a headlamp and a book that would take me back to green, warm valley.
When we’re sad, this is what a lot of us Americans do: take a time out, and maybe cry alone, internalizing pain but reflecting on it to forge ahead.
When Azerbaijanis are sad, however, they huddle together and talk.
We open the window for fresh air and color, and they keep the drapes shut from their neighbors (or the KGB).
We believe in medicine, they in the rituals of the Persian Empire.
Americans eat the meat part, and Azerbaijanis the fat.
We write story, while they retell it.
Muddy flip-flops, spotless boots.
Blue jeans, black slacks.
One hour, one week.
Coffee, tea.
Cold, hot.
Ask, tell.
“Sasha, drink tea, and then we will eat. Here is an apple and persimmons and a banana. First eat this.”
At the dinner table last night Nativan filled the deep bowl with bosbocht, and passed it to my placemat with several pieces of Baku bread.
“Sasha, eat!”
I ate the loaded bowl, pulling out seeds from alcha, cherry pits used as a bitter sweetener in this soup.
“Sasha, give me your bowl. You must eat more.”
“No, Nativan, I’m full.” Three small children loitered, spooning imaginary soup into toothless mouths. “Eat, Sasha! Eat!” they mimicked their mother.
“Sasha, you are our guest, eat!”
“I know I’m you’re guest, Nativan, but I am full. I am finished.”
“Eat bread, Sasha!”
“Nativan, I will eat however much I want. I can’t eat any more. I am finished.”
“Why, Sasha? Eat!”
“Because I am full, Nativan. I will not eat more. In America this is not nice. You cannot tell me to eat more. I eat will what I want.”
“But Azerbaijanis like to feed their guests! You are a guest, Sasha, you must eat!”
Americans are taught that we can do and feel what we want, when we want, and express our opinions on any platform, indefinitely.
Azerbaijanis are not taught this. It is why they are astounded when I simply say, “No, I will not eat any more.”
Americans are raised to know what is best for the self, and to let others discover what is best for them.
Azerbaijanis are taught that the group matters. They are told guests should be given more than anyone at the table, even if the guest says she is full.
Host country nationals do not experience the awkward, scary, fragmented, liberating growth that PCVs do. Even if they did, they’d probably end on the same side they started, just as I have, but with more graceful ways to communicate it.
4. Cooked pad thai using ketchup yesterday. Don’t do that.
5. My counterpart’s daughter is more in tune with American culture than I ever have been. Like most Americans, Azerbaijanis live on credit, and here, they have satellite television to show for it. I had heard from PCVs that Brittany is back, and last night I saw her new pop video, which I swear is the same one that’s been airing for the past decade. “Madonna is helping her,” winked Altunay. The secrets of Hollywood, disclosed by a 14-year-old living in Azerbaijan.
Altunay was also the first to inform me news of the Iraqi journalist. She reported, “Man throw shoe at Bush.” After googling it, I realized there was no need to decode that one.
2. Kelsey on how to check if I turned off the stove: “Put your detector next to it, if it doesn’t beep then gas isn’t leaking, or your detector is broken.”
3. “Eat! Eat!”
“I’m full! I can’t!” I’d shouted back.
“Sasha, eat!”
The puke is coming, I know it. I can’t tear off fat from the goose meat, or sip more oil-salt based soup.
“Eat bread, Sasha!”
Now putting the spoon down. Host mother will be offended.
“I can’t, Sevda!”
“Sasha, eat!”
“I’m full!”
“Do you want tea?”
If I have tea I have to have cookies. But if I say no, she’ll be offended.
“No, I don’t want any.”
“No?! But you must! Drink tea!”
“I can’t!”
“Just one cup, Sasha.”
I felt like a toddler, crying when I wanted food, screaming when I didn’t. Explaining I have to wear leggings to school to cover my tattoo, defending why I have one in the first place. Insisting I can walk to school on my own, and travel to Baku on the bus, even with the language barrier. Trying to communicate I want to be alone, when in reality I never will be, not Azerbaijan.
In the first weeks with my training host family I couldn’t convey my displeasure for bosbocht again, or my discomfort with blaring midnight mugam music for the fifth night in a row. So I’d shut myself inside my room, inside my sleeping bag, with a headlamp and a book that would take me back to green, warm valley.
When we’re sad, this is what a lot of us Americans do: take a time out, and maybe cry alone, internalizing pain but reflecting on it to forge ahead.
When Azerbaijanis are sad, however, they huddle together and talk.
We open the window for fresh air and color, and they keep the drapes shut from their neighbors (or the KGB).
We believe in medicine, they in the rituals of the Persian Empire.
Americans eat the meat part, and Azerbaijanis the fat.
We write story, while they retell it.
Muddy flip-flops, spotless boots.
Blue jeans, black slacks.
One hour, one week.
Coffee, tea.
Cold, hot.
Ask, tell.
“Sasha, drink tea, and then we will eat. Here is an apple and persimmons and a banana. First eat this.”
At the dinner table last night Nativan filled the deep bowl with bosbocht, and passed it to my placemat with several pieces of Baku bread.
“Sasha, eat!”
I ate the loaded bowl, pulling out seeds from alcha, cherry pits used as a bitter sweetener in this soup.
“Sasha, give me your bowl. You must eat more.”
“No, Nativan, I’m full.” Three small children loitered, spooning imaginary soup into toothless mouths. “Eat, Sasha! Eat!” they mimicked their mother.
“Sasha, you are our guest, eat!”
“I know I’m you’re guest, Nativan, but I am full. I am finished.”
“Eat bread, Sasha!”
“Nativan, I will eat however much I want. I can’t eat any more. I am finished.”
“Why, Sasha? Eat!”
“Because I am full, Nativan. I will not eat more. In America this is not nice. You cannot tell me to eat more. I eat will what I want.”
“But Azerbaijanis like to feed their guests! You are a guest, Sasha, you must eat!”
Americans are taught that we can do and feel what we want, when we want, and express our opinions on any platform, indefinitely.
Azerbaijanis are not taught this. It is why they are astounded when I simply say, “No, I will not eat any more.”
Americans are raised to know what is best for the self, and to let others discover what is best for them.
Azerbaijanis are taught that the group matters. They are told guests should be given more than anyone at the table, even if the guest says she is full.
Host country nationals do not experience the awkward, scary, fragmented, liberating growth that PCVs do. Even if they did, they’d probably end on the same side they started, just as I have, but with more graceful ways to communicate it.
4. Cooked pad thai using ketchup yesterday. Don’t do that.
5. My counterpart’s daughter is more in tune with American culture than I ever have been. Like most Americans, Azerbaijanis live on credit, and here, they have satellite television to show for it. I had heard from PCVs that Brittany is back, and last night I saw her new pop video, which I swear is the same one that’s been airing for the past decade. “Madonna is helping her,” winked Altunay. The secrets of Hollywood, disclosed by a 14-year-old living in Azerbaijan.
Altunay was also the first to inform me news of the Iraqi journalist. She reported, “Man throw shoe at Bush.” After googling it, I realized there was no need to decode that one.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Iowa Monster Cookies
Well this is just about the damned best hunk of sugar you’ll ever eat. From Charles City to Azerbaijan and right back at'cha. Courtesy of my friend, Kelsey.
“We’re not really what you would call foodies in Iowa.” -Kelsey, while eating marshmallow fluff straight from the jar.
6 eggs
2 c. white sugar
1/2 tbsp. syrup
1 c. margarine
1/2 c. chocolate chips
3 c. peanut butter
2 c. brown sugar
1/2 tbsp. vanilla
1 1/4 tbsp. soda
9 c. oatmeal
½ lb. M&M’s
Well this is just about the damned best hunk of sugar you’ll ever eat. From Charles City to Azerbaijan and right back at'cha. Courtesy of my friend, Kelsey.
“We’re not really what you would call foodies in Iowa.” -Kelsey, while eating marshmallow fluff straight from the jar.
6 eggs
2 c. white sugar
1/2 tbsp. syrup
1 c. margarine
1/2 c. chocolate chips
3 c. peanut butter
2 c. brown sugar
1/2 tbsp. vanilla
1 1/4 tbsp. soda
9 c. oatmeal
½ lb. M&M’s
Mix in order. Be sure to mix in soda well. Drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheets and flatten slightly. Bake 12-15 mins. at 350 degrees. Yields two dozen, at least, but eat no more than two unless feeling pukey is your thing.
11/16
Post from Oroville to Azerbaijan
“SASHA!!!NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I know your a san francisco libral...but come on. this guy is going to kill us . . . if this article is how you feel about our country than maybe you should stay out of it, sorry but im tired of usa haters, especially bill mayher.”
This is an excerpt, all the slander about Obama left out because that much was expected. What’s included is what was not expected, and what’s kept me in near-tears for two weeks.
This letter was in response to an Onion article I sent a friend after she lambasted Obama’s win with multiple MySpace bulletins. “the only good thing about this is that racism is now over! there is no more white guilt, black people are not special anymore, they are just a regular ass hole like the rest of us.”
The headline was something like, “America Finally Shitty Enough to Vote for Social Progress.” I intended for it to piss her off a little, reasonably charm the anger out of her, and knock some sense into her conservative pea-brain noggin. “We’re family,” I thought. “She’ll find this funny.” That was so not true.
“how much do you think my mom should be fined or how long she should spend in jail for not getting health care for the kids, or taking obama’s mandatory health care because she feels it’s none of there god damn business what she does as far as thats conserned? do you think my mom is a bad mom? . . . i cant believe your an elitest with the family you got and growing up with me and my family. . .”
As a kid, her mom would tell me that I’d grow up, become a successful business woman, and forget about her family. “Of course I won’t,” I’d respond. “How could I forget you?”
They now live in Oroville, a four-hour, smoke-swathed drive up the five, just past Chico. After I transferred to SF State I had school, past-midnight work shifts, tutoring, and loads and loads essays. I focused on adapting to San Francisco’s neon bicycle hats, brunch with the girls, and freezing f’ing bondfires.
Carla was right, I grew up, moved on, and found a life I could live with. I visited them once, maybe twice a year. I didn’t see them before I left for Peace Corps.
“I cant wait to see what kind of change we are going to have, lol. mabe becoming sweeden, right?. . . sasha, i thought you were smarter than this, your a college graduate from a university!!!!! i cant even talk about this anymore, im supposed to be celebrating tonight because i just got hired today at radio shack.”
I want to tell to her she’s never been to Sweden.
I’d like to share that I am here to serve our country, not in the way that our Army friends do, but in a more peaceful, cooperative way, as naïve as that may seem.
She needs to know that before I left I was skeptical of the U.S. government and people’s complacency to blindly follow suit. But after having lived in Azerbaijan, I am ever more grateful to be an American citizen. I can’t wait to go back to teach, and learn more about my country.
I want to scream, You can’t reform California schools from a second-rate electronics shop!
I won’t tell her these things, though, because after reading her response, I felt like I often did growing up, when her mom would tell me I’d run away and never look back.
They just don’t understand.
“we are living here in america right now, feeling this pain, your not.”
She’s right, I am in my 45 degree apartment (it’s not winter yet!!), and I wonder if it’s all worth it. Not the Peace Corps, although this experience is part of it.
It’s all so f’king hard sometimes.
I could go back. I could rent an apartment in Carmichael with high school friends and attend Sac State to work as an English teacher. I could. I really could.
But I want resources for students that I didn’t have. I want support for local schools, teachers and students. I’d like to see real commitment from real committed people. In SF and here, they are the people I work with, whether or not they are “elitists.”
“i voted for john mccain because he represented me and my family, most people voted for obama because he was black..and i dont think thats any better than voting against him because he is black. your supposed to judge them by there character and conduct . . . ”
I voted for Obama not because he is black, but because he is empathetic. Obama is up for program reform, in health care and education, and in an economic system whose problems have been ignored for 200 years too long.
Mostly, Obama assures me that my day to day is right and good, and that’s a long haul from the posts of Oroville, California.
Post from Oroville to Azerbaijan
“SASHA!!!NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I know your a san francisco libral...but come on. this guy is going to kill us . . . if this article is how you feel about our country than maybe you should stay out of it, sorry but im tired of usa haters, especially bill mayher.”
This is an excerpt, all the slander about Obama left out because that much was expected. What’s included is what was not expected, and what’s kept me in near-tears for two weeks.
This letter was in response to an Onion article I sent a friend after she lambasted Obama’s win with multiple MySpace bulletins. “the only good thing about this is that racism is now over! there is no more white guilt, black people are not special anymore, they are just a regular ass hole like the rest of us.”
The headline was something like, “America Finally Shitty Enough to Vote for Social Progress.” I intended for it to piss her off a little, reasonably charm the anger out of her, and knock some sense into her conservative pea-brain noggin. “We’re family,” I thought. “She’ll find this funny.” That was so not true.
“how much do you think my mom should be fined or how long she should spend in jail for not getting health care for the kids, or taking obama’s mandatory health care because she feels it’s none of there god damn business what she does as far as thats conserned? do you think my mom is a bad mom? . . . i cant believe your an elitest with the family you got and growing up with me and my family. . .”
As a kid, her mom would tell me that I’d grow up, become a successful business woman, and forget about her family. “Of course I won’t,” I’d respond. “How could I forget you?”
They now live in Oroville, a four-hour, smoke-swathed drive up the five, just past Chico. After I transferred to SF State I had school, past-midnight work shifts, tutoring, and loads and loads essays. I focused on adapting to San Francisco’s neon bicycle hats, brunch with the girls, and freezing f’ing bondfires.
Carla was right, I grew up, moved on, and found a life I could live with. I visited them once, maybe twice a year. I didn’t see them before I left for Peace Corps.
“I cant wait to see what kind of change we are going to have, lol. mabe becoming sweeden, right?. . . sasha, i thought you were smarter than this, your a college graduate from a university!!!!! i cant even talk about this anymore, im supposed to be celebrating tonight because i just got hired today at radio shack.”
I want to tell to her she’s never been to Sweden.
I’d like to share that I am here to serve our country, not in the way that our Army friends do, but in a more peaceful, cooperative way, as naïve as that may seem.
She needs to know that before I left I was skeptical of the U.S. government and people’s complacency to blindly follow suit. But after having lived in Azerbaijan, I am ever more grateful to be an American citizen. I can’t wait to go back to teach, and learn more about my country.
I want to scream, You can’t reform California schools from a second-rate electronics shop!
I won’t tell her these things, though, because after reading her response, I felt like I often did growing up, when her mom would tell me I’d run away and never look back.
They just don’t understand.
“we are living here in america right now, feeling this pain, your not.”
She’s right, I am in my 45 degree apartment (it’s not winter yet!!), and I wonder if it’s all worth it. Not the Peace Corps, although this experience is part of it.
It’s all so f’king hard sometimes.
I could go back. I could rent an apartment in Carmichael with high school friends and attend Sac State to work as an English teacher. I could. I really could.
But I want resources for students that I didn’t have. I want support for local schools, teachers and students. I’d like to see real commitment from real committed people. In SF and here, they are the people I work with, whether or not they are “elitists.”
“i voted for john mccain because he represented me and my family, most people voted for obama because he was black..and i dont think thats any better than voting against him because he is black. your supposed to judge them by there character and conduct . . . ”
I voted for Obama not because he is black, but because he is empathetic. Obama is up for program reform, in health care and education, and in an economic system whose problems have been ignored for 200 years too long.
Mostly, Obama assures me that my day to day is right and good, and that’s a long haul from the posts of Oroville, California.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
11/11/08
Yesterday I made a caterpillar alphabet. On the head I attached pipe cleaners for antennas and googly eyes, courtesy Mom. The patterned green, blue, red, orange and yellow slinks up and down the wall of my fifth form classroom, as a caterpillar would.
It’s the most eye-popping visual aid they've ever seen. “What is this?!” “Woah!” So bright, so funny, so new and weird.
Jenni told a friend that her work as a Youth Development Volunteer is terrible and amazing. Terrible because everything she does is grass roots and has never been done, and amazing because everything she does is grass roots and has never been done.
Same goes for teaching.
The walls are bone bare mostly, with three hand-drawn and painted posters hung where few eyes drift. John Galsworthy and Charlotte Bronte depict modern English literature. Some written in Russian to English instead of Azeri, paint peals off the visual aids from decades of blistering sun and zero restoration.
This school year is infinitely more enjoyable than last. Teachers have adjusted to me, and I to them. They understand what I expect, and what I have had to compromise. They know that I can make up lessons on the spot, but prefer pre-written plans to follow.
I understand their customs, mostly that children and home trump work. They can plan at school but not at home where they have to cook and clean and prepare winter jam. I know that I have to tell the director what we’re doing and when we’re doing it. I know more of what they want and need, and they tell me when I don’t.
This year one of my goals is to provide a more creative environment in which to learn. Both teachers are pitching in and are totally excited. I am restoring old visual aids, swapping Dickens for Vonnegut and Hemingway, and drawing quarky vocab flashcards to make students laugh.
All this takes this takes paper and markers, I tell Nushaba. And a little imagination. We’re working on that.
Yesterday I made a caterpillar alphabet. On the head I attached pipe cleaners for antennas and googly eyes, courtesy Mom. The patterned green, blue, red, orange and yellow slinks up and down the wall of my fifth form classroom, as a caterpillar would.
It’s the most eye-popping visual aid they've ever seen. “What is this?!” “Woah!” So bright, so funny, so new and weird.
Jenni told a friend that her work as a Youth Development Volunteer is terrible and amazing. Terrible because everything she does is grass roots and has never been done, and amazing because everything she does is grass roots and has never been done.
Same goes for teaching.
The walls are bone bare mostly, with three hand-drawn and painted posters hung where few eyes drift. John Galsworthy and Charlotte Bronte depict modern English literature. Some written in Russian to English instead of Azeri, paint peals off the visual aids from decades of blistering sun and zero restoration.
This school year is infinitely more enjoyable than last. Teachers have adjusted to me, and I to them. They understand what I expect, and what I have had to compromise. They know that I can make up lessons on the spot, but prefer pre-written plans to follow.
I understand their customs, mostly that children and home trump work. They can plan at school but not at home where they have to cook and clean and prepare winter jam. I know that I have to tell the director what we’re doing and when we’re doing it. I know more of what they want and need, and they tell me when I don’t.
This year one of my goals is to provide a more creative environment in which to learn. Both teachers are pitching in and are totally excited. I am restoring old visual aids, swapping Dickens for Vonnegut and Hemingway, and drawing quarky vocab flashcards to make students laugh.
All this takes this takes paper and markers, I tell Nushaba. And a little imagination. We’re working on that.
Monday, November 10, 2008
11/10/08
Excerpt from 6th grade text book
3. Listen to the dialogues and and pay close attention to the intonation.
3a. Now listen again and repeat.
3b. Translate the dialogues. Use your glossary.
I. Emil and Araz are talking
-It isn’t easy to make friends,Araz.
-It is not for me. I’m a good mixer.
-Really? Do you have many friends?
-Yes. Some are my schoolmates and visitors to our country. They live here with their parents.
-How did you get to know them?
-I met them at parties, at the stadium, during summer camps and in our playground.
-Are they all foreigners?
-No. Some of them are.
-What languages do you speak with them?
-Azeri, English and Russian.
-Oh, you know many languages.
-Not so many. But I’m going to learn French.
-That’s great.
How many languages do you know?
Are you a good mixer?
“Are you a good mixer, Gizbast?”
“No,” she pauses, considers her potential. “No, I don’t think. Sasha, are you a good mixer?”
“I don’t really know what a mixer is, Gizbast.”
“I think it is to have some friends, to approach people well.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Also, a singer is mixer.”
“Oh, a DJ!”
“Yes, I have seen on television.”
“Yeah, MTV Turkey. Many good mixers there.”
“Yes, they are mixing well.”
Excerpt from 6th grade text book
3. Listen to the dialogues and and pay close attention to the intonation.
3a. Now listen again and repeat.
3b. Translate the dialogues. Use your glossary.
I. Emil and Araz are talking
-It isn’t easy to make friends,Araz.
-It is not for me. I’m a good mixer.
-Really? Do you have many friends?
-Yes. Some are my schoolmates and visitors to our country. They live here with their parents.
-How did you get to know them?
-I met them at parties, at the stadium, during summer camps and in our playground.
-Are they all foreigners?
-No. Some of them are.
-What languages do you speak with them?
-Azeri, English and Russian.
-Oh, you know many languages.
-Not so many. But I’m going to learn French.
-That’s great.
How many languages do you know?
Are you a good mixer?
“Are you a good mixer, Gizbast?”
“No,” she pauses, considers her potential. “No, I don’t think. Sasha, are you a good mixer?”
“I don’t really know what a mixer is, Gizbast.”
“I think it is to have some friends, to approach people well.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Also, a singer is mixer.”
“Oh, a DJ!”
“Yes, I have seen on television.”
“Yeah, MTV Turkey. Many good mixers there.”
“Yes, they are mixing well.”
Saturday, October 25, 2008
8/3
“Salam, Mahir.”
“Salam, Sasha! Netirsuz?”
“Yakshiyem, sag ol. Yumurta lazamdir, sonra bir kilo pomidor ve yaram kilo badamjan.”
“Sasha, ders yakshidir?”
“Ha, bu il yakshidir. Gelen heft meshkala olajac. Hem de gargadala—“
“Hi, can I ask you a question?”
“What? Yes, what? Wasn’t expecting that. You speak English.” Pinstriped, fitted gray slacks and a mere gold tooth, he is a Baku man.
“Your Azerbaijani is very good. Have you been here for long?”
“Oh, thank you. A year. And I’ll be here for another year. But my Azerbaijani is not very good.”
“But they understand you, and you understand them. It’s good! And what are you doing here?”
“Teaching English.”
“In Baku?”
“No, here.” I point up the short road leading to the medium-sized secondary school where I teach.
“Oh. Why?”
Routinely, I explain that I’m an American Peace Corps Volunteer, that I’m here to serve two years, and that there are tens of us, scattered across this tiny country to help Azerbaijan develop. He nods, with a look of neutrality.
“I haven’t seen you before. You live here?”
“Yes, I live here. I have no reason to speak with you. My brother and sister also speak English but they are also old, have children. They don’t need to speak with you.”
Sabir works for BP Offshore in the Caspian. He is engaged and travels to our community twice a month to visit his family. He was less excited to see me than I him.
“Yes, I understand. I’m just surprised—“
“Why are you surprised?”
“Because there are few people here who speak English. Just the English teachers, and my host sister.”
“No, no, there are many people who speak English, you just don’t know them. They don’t need to speak to you.”
I guess they don’t. Damn, I’m not as famous as I thought I was.
Turning his head as he walks out the door he adds, “It is very strange that you live here.”
“Yes, I know.”
10/22
This blog leads me to
A typical marshrukta conversation, two hours after I have stared at Azerbaijan from my window while ladies in paisley headscarves have observed me like growing fungus.
“Excuse me, where are you from?”
“California.”
“Oooooh, Califoniya. Arnold Schwarzenegger, president.”
“No, governor.”
“Oh yes, governor. Where are you going?”
I fill in the messenger, as women, children, gross boys and the driver clamor behind seats, waiting for the reply.
“Are you Russian?” She asks in Russian.
“No, I’m American, I speak English and a little Azerbaijani.”
“You don’t speak Russian.” Bemusing.
“She doesn’t speak Russian,” she passes up the line of passengers.
“Where do you live?”
Same place, I say.
“You live alone?”
“Yes, I live alone.” It was more difficult when I lived with an Azerbaijani family, as Volunteer, little lone Host Family, is way weird of a concept.
“Your family lives here too?”
“No, they live in California.”
“Do you have a husband?”
“No, I live alone. Just me.”
“Children?”
“No, I live alone. Just me.”
It’s shock value, like skydiving, but they’ve never even heard of skydiving, so this bus ride is a waking revelation.
“Where do you work?”
“I’m an English teacher.”
“Oh, you must make lots of money. How much do you make?”
“About 250 manat a month. I am a volunteer.”
“No, no. 250 manat? That’s a little bit of money. You are American. You have money in America?”
“No. I am a volunteer. It’s just to live, to eat, to travel. It’s just me. I don’t need a lot.”
“It’s still a little.”
“Yes, ok.”
“You must be a guest!” At their house, they mean. “Gonag ol!” “Be a guest!” they say, and I can’t get the 10-foot dancing teapot out of my head.
“Yes, I will try.” If I took up every guesting invitation offered, I’d spend all of what little I make on marshrukta rides to the towncenter. Fortunately old Soviet types haven’t adjusted to the cell phone culture so no whipping out numbers. Only a young nuisance asks on occasion, and I bat him away, fortunate to live in a country where that is expected.
We pull to my stop on the dusty bed and they shout, “You are a beautiful girl! Come visit us!”
Nowadays it’s common that someone has met me, or their cousin or uncle has met me, so they transcribe to the bus my story, while I continue to stare out the cracked window to the oil rigs and dry cow pastures ahead.
“Salam, Mahir.”
“Salam, Sasha! Netirsuz?”
“Yakshiyem, sag ol. Yumurta lazamdir, sonra bir kilo pomidor ve yaram kilo badamjan.”
“Sasha, ders yakshidir?”
“Ha, bu il yakshidir. Gelen heft meshkala olajac. Hem de gargadala—“
“Hi, can I ask you a question?”
“What? Yes, what? Wasn’t expecting that. You speak English.” Pinstriped, fitted gray slacks and a mere gold tooth, he is a Baku man.
“Your Azerbaijani is very good. Have you been here for long?”
“Oh, thank you. A year. And I’ll be here for another year. But my Azerbaijani is not very good.”
“But they understand you, and you understand them. It’s good! And what are you doing here?”
“Teaching English.”
“In Baku?”
“No, here.” I point up the short road leading to the medium-sized secondary school where I teach.
“Oh. Why?”
Routinely, I explain that I’m an American Peace Corps Volunteer, that I’m here to serve two years, and that there are tens of us, scattered across this tiny country to help Azerbaijan develop. He nods, with a look of neutrality.
“I haven’t seen you before. You live here?”
“Yes, I live here. I have no reason to speak with you. My brother and sister also speak English but they are also old, have children. They don’t need to speak with you.”
Sabir works for BP Offshore in the Caspian. He is engaged and travels to our community twice a month to visit his family. He was less excited to see me than I him.
“Yes, I understand. I’m just surprised—“
“Why are you surprised?”
“Because there are few people here who speak English. Just the English teachers, and my host sister.”
“No, no, there are many people who speak English, you just don’t know them. They don’t need to speak to you.”
I guess they don’t. Damn, I’m not as famous as I thought I was.
Turning his head as he walks out the door he adds, “It is very strange that you live here.”
“Yes, I know.”
10/22
This blog leads me to
A typical marshrukta conversation, two hours after I have stared at Azerbaijan from my window while ladies in paisley headscarves have observed me like growing fungus.
“Excuse me, where are you from?”
“California.”
“Oooooh, Califoniya. Arnold Schwarzenegger, president.”
“No, governor.”
“Oh yes, governor. Where are you going?”
I fill in the messenger, as women, children, gross boys and the driver clamor behind seats, waiting for the reply.
“Are you Russian?” She asks in Russian.
“No, I’m American, I speak English and a little Azerbaijani.”
“You don’t speak Russian.” Bemusing.
“She doesn’t speak Russian,” she passes up the line of passengers.
“Where do you live?”
Same place, I say.
“You live alone?”
“Yes, I live alone.” It was more difficult when I lived with an Azerbaijani family, as Volunteer, little lone Host Family, is way weird of a concept.
“Your family lives here too?”
“No, they live in California.”
“Do you have a husband?”
“No, I live alone. Just me.”
“Children?”
“No, I live alone. Just me.”
It’s shock value, like skydiving, but they’ve never even heard of skydiving, so this bus ride is a waking revelation.
“Where do you work?”
“I’m an English teacher.”
“Oh, you must make lots of money. How much do you make?”
“About 250 manat a month. I am a volunteer.”
“No, no. 250 manat? That’s a little bit of money. You are American. You have money in America?”
“No. I am a volunteer. It’s just to live, to eat, to travel. It’s just me. I don’t need a lot.”
“It’s still a little.”
“Yes, ok.”
“You must be a guest!” At their house, they mean. “Gonag ol!” “Be a guest!” they say, and I can’t get the 10-foot dancing teapot out of my head.
“Yes, I will try.” If I took up every guesting invitation offered, I’d spend all of what little I make on marshrukta rides to the towncenter. Fortunately old Soviet types haven’t adjusted to the cell phone culture so no whipping out numbers. Only a young nuisance asks on occasion, and I bat him away, fortunate to live in a country where that is expected.
We pull to my stop on the dusty bed and they shout, “You are a beautiful girl! Come visit us!”
Nowadays it’s common that someone has met me, or their cousin or uncle has met me, so they transcribe to the bus my story, while I continue to stare out the cracked window to the oil rigs and dry cow pastures ahead.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
7/17/08
I’m plopped underneath what my landlord calls an air conditioner, though I’m not sure what the hell it’s emitting. Air? Maybe. Cool air? Possibly. Grime particles from months—years, possibly—of disuse? Definitely.
The weather here has been unusual. It’s rained off and on, been cloudy and overcast on occasion, and sometimes it’s so hot, sprawled half-naked on my bed, I sweat tears onto literature.
The other day Gizbast laughed, “They say the English girl brought climate from California.” In Sacramento it’s often hotter than this, I’ve since notified neighbors, though in most parts of America there’s escape: air conditioned movie theatres with iced Coca-Cola. In my village, the government shuts off the power at approximately 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and midnight to 6 a.m., never permitting my freezer time to do its job. Consequently, I drink luke-cold liquid on a 100-degree day.
But there’s a silver lining to this cloudless heat.
Author Hosseini writes about how prior to Soviet arrival Afghanistan was a land of milk and honey, fruits and nuts, men who drank tea on white patios and children who flew hand-made kites, even when it snowed.
Many may be under the impression that Azerbaijan is a vast desert, a stretch of oil machinery between partially green mountains and unpaved roads. There are parts of this country that are like that, though much of the Middle East and then some (whatever you call this part of the world) holds enough vegetation to be split with many African nations.
Purple, yellow, green and red plums, at least that many breeds of cherries, small and large apricots, white figs, tiny strawberries, winter and summer apples, round watermelon, mulberries and blackberries the size of my thumb, pomegranates, and green grapes drape almost every Azerbaijani family’s front yard. These are the crops that make this harsh land gentler.
To save some of this fruit from Azerbaijan’s annual waste, Azeris make jam and “murraba,” a more liquidy and sweeter take (1 cup: 1 cup) of jarred fruit. Since June I have made six large jars of applesauce and cider for winter, and received numerous jars of jam from neighbors and volunteers.
Even so, I can’t eat the fruit or make jam of it before it rots. There is so much juicy vegetation in summer I have had to throw most of what my neighbors give me to the sheep.
At the end of this month I am on leave in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The plan was to beat the blazing sun, at its most intense in August. Unfortunately vacationing at this time means I’m missing prime sweet crop life in Azerbaijan. Hopefully they’ll jar me up a few containers of their all-natural jam.
9/7/08
I hope there’s never a tea famine
Three days ago the gas line to my apartments and surrounding houses exploded. As many families do, I don’t have a petch, an extra heating device in case an event like this goes down, or better, the government shuts off the line (like it does in winter when lowly citizens ask for warmth.)
My source of hope would have been the electric stove my landlord snabbed a couple weeks ago. But while I was drinking forbidden beer in Europe he was locking wash buckets, tables and kitchen utensils in the closet adjacent to my vanity mirror.
This apartment came furnished. Trying to be helpful, I think he was clearing out unused furniture and appliances to make room. Unfortunately, I use most of those appliances, the alternative stove among them. I beat the crumbling kitchen wall, yelling profanities about Yusif for taking part of my life away. My neighbor, clipping her husband’s white undershirts to the line, overheard and poked her head onto my porch, “Sasha, I know you are angry. There will be gas soon so we can drink tea.”
Tea is a tremendously important part of this culture. Each tiny cup is served with sugar cubes cut from a heavy block of white sugar and cream-filled Russian chocolates that feel like plastic on the roof of your mouth. After dinner, before dinner, while watching TV, or judging neighbors from their balcony, you can find a native slurping near-boiling teze (fresh) tea. Outside of chai khanas (tea houses) in 120 degree temps, Azerbaijanis play nard over tiny glasses filled with ginger-colored liquid. It is a cure for just about everything, from a headache (which couldn’t come from too much caffeine…) to an ear infection.
So the fact that I can’t eat isn’t my neighbor’s concern but rather the fact that I can’t brew Beta black. “What will you do?” I don’t know, I just don’t know.
9/12/08 ONE YEAR TILL FLIGHT TO SFO
9/17
The Patriotic Act
Fresh from vacationing in the Baltics, I slip off my shoes and into oversized slippers. To watch my toes before they trip on the dip after the welcome mat, I flip on the light switch in the musty hallway. No electricity. Throwing off my backpack, less heavy than it was when I left (I lose so many things travelling), I shuffle to the kitchen to cut veges for eggplant and chicken curry. No gas. Though I have adjusted to this diverse lifestyle (sometimes ya have water, sometimes ya don’t!), after a month backpacking Eastern Europe, it is a realization of the 360 more days I must stay in desolate Azerbaijan.
At PC’s mid-service conference for 2008 Volunteers, an American observer for Azerbaijan spoke about elections in October. Five years ago Ilham Aliyev, the current president, took his father’s seat in parliament. Before he took office, there were protests, riots and violence which led to the arrests of several dissenters. Despite public opposition, Ilham was elected by a landslide.
This year Ilham will be reelected. The election observer noted that there will be few protests (more like gatherings of a couple people) and the dissent, if any, will happen indoors. This is because one, Ilham is already president, and he has repaved highways and built schools and such, and two, opposition parties and their candidates aren’t visible in mainstream media. The latter is because of a new law that allows little airtime for candidates to spread their policy views. They say this is to give candidates equal opportunity.
Here’s the thing, I don’t feel moved by this, in large part because American politics needs campaign finance reform too. Like in Azerbaijan, parties and candidates with money have more airtime and media coverage than those without. From George Bush, we hopped almost straight over to his son, Stupid, notwithstanding protests on the legitimacy of his win. And under Stupid, in spite of critical failure in every possible policy sector, roads were repaved and schools were built and such, and so he was voted on for a second term.
Perhaps surprisingly, there are several small parties running for office and of those, nine are boycotting the election. “Why boycott? Why leave a better chance for Ilham to be reelected?” asked one Volunteer. First, because the boycotters know Ilham will win no matter what. Even if another candidate could rise before the election, Ilham has gained the support of the population. Mainly, though, the boycott is an international appeal. Those refusing to participate, demand justice. They want a guarantee of what every infant and aged democracy strives for: a free and fair election.
But my problem is not even this. It’s great that candidates are appealing to the international community, and that the citizens of Azerbaijan want to vote for their current president. What bothers me is that under these conditions, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I can’t encourage people to vote or to side with the little guys. I have to remain silent, not allowing my opinion to filter into classrooms or even into private homes. We are to stay away from political gatherings and discussions on any level.
Peace Corps is a non-political development organization. To speak poorly of host country politicians is olmaz (forbidden). It could put Peace Corps, its staff and Volunteers at risk. One could lose credibility for dissent or become at odds with their community if they side with an unpopular candidate. For my family’s sake, I don’t want to mention what could happen to a Volunteer in a violent political environment.
That is not to say we can’t talk American politics. I can and do with host country nationals. Our conversations usual involve the idiocy of G.W., how I disagree with so many of his domestic and foreign policy decisions, and how his administration single handedly pulled the U.S.’s GDP from a roughly two trillion dollar surplus to a deficit equaling that, at least. They usually laugh at this until someone asks, “How can you say that about your president?”
But when I say things like this, and things like, “American politics needs campaign finance reform,” I know there’s a difference between America’s campaign finance problem and all 47 African countries’.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but every blog I write ends on a positive note. It’s not the best thing to do with narrative, but here it’s what I have. I am American, and I don’t think in “It’s not possible,” “The government won’t permit it,” but rather, “I can” and “I will change it.” Whenever the electricity shuts, ironically, I feel more empowered to make change in my own country, where I can call George W. Bush stupid. How can I do that? Because the the American government doesn't have the right to turn off the electricity, and the American Constitution secures me the right to make sure they never will.
I’m plopped underneath what my landlord calls an air conditioner, though I’m not sure what the hell it’s emitting. Air? Maybe. Cool air? Possibly. Grime particles from months—years, possibly—of disuse? Definitely.
The weather here has been unusual. It’s rained off and on, been cloudy and overcast on occasion, and sometimes it’s so hot, sprawled half-naked on my bed, I sweat tears onto literature.
The other day Gizbast laughed, “They say the English girl brought climate from California.” In Sacramento it’s often hotter than this, I’ve since notified neighbors, though in most parts of America there’s escape: air conditioned movie theatres with iced Coca-Cola. In my village, the government shuts off the power at approximately 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and midnight to 6 a.m., never permitting my freezer time to do its job. Consequently, I drink luke-cold liquid on a 100-degree day.
But there’s a silver lining to this cloudless heat.
Author Hosseini writes about how prior to Soviet arrival Afghanistan was a land of milk and honey, fruits and nuts, men who drank tea on white patios and children who flew hand-made kites, even when it snowed.
Many may be under the impression that Azerbaijan is a vast desert, a stretch of oil machinery between partially green mountains and unpaved roads. There are parts of this country that are like that, though much of the Middle East and then some (whatever you call this part of the world) holds enough vegetation to be split with many African nations.
Purple, yellow, green and red plums, at least that many breeds of cherries, small and large apricots, white figs, tiny strawberries, winter and summer apples, round watermelon, mulberries and blackberries the size of my thumb, pomegranates, and green grapes drape almost every Azerbaijani family’s front yard. These are the crops that make this harsh land gentler.
To save some of this fruit from Azerbaijan’s annual waste, Azeris make jam and “murraba,” a more liquidy and sweeter take (1 cup: 1 cup) of jarred fruit. Since June I have made six large jars of applesauce and cider for winter, and received numerous jars of jam from neighbors and volunteers.
Even so, I can’t eat the fruit or make jam of it before it rots. There is so much juicy vegetation in summer I have had to throw most of what my neighbors give me to the sheep.
At the end of this month I am on leave in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The plan was to beat the blazing sun, at its most intense in August. Unfortunately vacationing at this time means I’m missing prime sweet crop life in Azerbaijan. Hopefully they’ll jar me up a few containers of their all-natural jam.
9/7/08
I hope there’s never a tea famine
Three days ago the gas line to my apartments and surrounding houses exploded. As many families do, I don’t have a petch, an extra heating device in case an event like this goes down, or better, the government shuts off the line (like it does in winter when lowly citizens ask for warmth.)
My source of hope would have been the electric stove my landlord snabbed a couple weeks ago. But while I was drinking forbidden beer in Europe he was locking wash buckets, tables and kitchen utensils in the closet adjacent to my vanity mirror.
This apartment came furnished. Trying to be helpful, I think he was clearing out unused furniture and appliances to make room. Unfortunately, I use most of those appliances, the alternative stove among them. I beat the crumbling kitchen wall, yelling profanities about Yusif for taking part of my life away. My neighbor, clipping her husband’s white undershirts to the line, overheard and poked her head onto my porch, “Sasha, I know you are angry. There will be gas soon so we can drink tea.”
Tea is a tremendously important part of this culture. Each tiny cup is served with sugar cubes cut from a heavy block of white sugar and cream-filled Russian chocolates that feel like plastic on the roof of your mouth. After dinner, before dinner, while watching TV, or judging neighbors from their balcony, you can find a native slurping near-boiling teze (fresh) tea. Outside of chai khanas (tea houses) in 120 degree temps, Azerbaijanis play nard over tiny glasses filled with ginger-colored liquid. It is a cure for just about everything, from a headache (which couldn’t come from too much caffeine…) to an ear infection.
So the fact that I can’t eat isn’t my neighbor’s concern but rather the fact that I can’t brew Beta black. “What will you do?” I don’t know, I just don’t know.
9/12/08 ONE YEAR TILL FLIGHT TO SFO
9/17
The Patriotic Act
Fresh from vacationing in the Baltics, I slip off my shoes and into oversized slippers. To watch my toes before they trip on the dip after the welcome mat, I flip on the light switch in the musty hallway. No electricity. Throwing off my backpack, less heavy than it was when I left (I lose so many things travelling), I shuffle to the kitchen to cut veges for eggplant and chicken curry. No gas. Though I have adjusted to this diverse lifestyle (sometimes ya have water, sometimes ya don’t!), after a month backpacking Eastern Europe, it is a realization of the 360 more days I must stay in desolate Azerbaijan.
At PC’s mid-service conference for 2008 Volunteers, an American observer for Azerbaijan spoke about elections in October. Five years ago Ilham Aliyev, the current president, took his father’s seat in parliament. Before he took office, there were protests, riots and violence which led to the arrests of several dissenters. Despite public opposition, Ilham was elected by a landslide.
This year Ilham will be reelected. The election observer noted that there will be few protests (more like gatherings of a couple people) and the dissent, if any, will happen indoors. This is because one, Ilham is already president, and he has repaved highways and built schools and such, and two, opposition parties and their candidates aren’t visible in mainstream media. The latter is because of a new law that allows little airtime for candidates to spread their policy views. They say this is to give candidates equal opportunity.
Here’s the thing, I don’t feel moved by this, in large part because American politics needs campaign finance reform too. Like in Azerbaijan, parties and candidates with money have more airtime and media coverage than those without. From George Bush, we hopped almost straight over to his son, Stupid, notwithstanding protests on the legitimacy of his win. And under Stupid, in spite of critical failure in every possible policy sector, roads were repaved and schools were built and such, and so he was voted on for a second term.
Perhaps surprisingly, there are several small parties running for office and of those, nine are boycotting the election. “Why boycott? Why leave a better chance for Ilham to be reelected?” asked one Volunteer. First, because the boycotters know Ilham will win no matter what. Even if another candidate could rise before the election, Ilham has gained the support of the population. Mainly, though, the boycott is an international appeal. Those refusing to participate, demand justice. They want a guarantee of what every infant and aged democracy strives for: a free and fair election.
But my problem is not even this. It’s great that candidates are appealing to the international community, and that the citizens of Azerbaijan want to vote for their current president. What bothers me is that under these conditions, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I can’t encourage people to vote or to side with the little guys. I have to remain silent, not allowing my opinion to filter into classrooms or even into private homes. We are to stay away from political gatherings and discussions on any level.
Peace Corps is a non-political development organization. To speak poorly of host country politicians is olmaz (forbidden). It could put Peace Corps, its staff and Volunteers at risk. One could lose credibility for dissent or become at odds with their community if they side with an unpopular candidate. For my family’s sake, I don’t want to mention what could happen to a Volunteer in a violent political environment.
That is not to say we can’t talk American politics. I can and do with host country nationals. Our conversations usual involve the idiocy of G.W., how I disagree with so many of his domestic and foreign policy decisions, and how his administration single handedly pulled the U.S.’s GDP from a roughly two trillion dollar surplus to a deficit equaling that, at least. They usually laugh at this until someone asks, “How can you say that about your president?”
But when I say things like this, and things like, “American politics needs campaign finance reform,” I know there’s a difference between America’s campaign finance problem and all 47 African countries’.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but every blog I write ends on a positive note. It’s not the best thing to do with narrative, but here it’s what I have. I am American, and I don’t think in “It’s not possible,” “The government won’t permit it,” but rather, “I can” and “I will change it.” Whenever the electricity shuts, ironically, I feel more empowered to make change in my own country, where I can call George W. Bush stupid. How can I do that? Because the the American government doesn't have the right to turn off the electricity, and the American Constitution secures me the right to make sure they never will.
Friday, July 11, 2008
6/18
Boredumb
My skin is flushed, my eyes sunk deep. I’m on my bed wondering how long I can critically read Infidel till my eyes tire. Maybe I can make applesauce again or type till my fingers loosely hang from their sockets.
I am so bored. I have never experienced such ennui. Today I spent ten minutes admiring the violet and green floral sheet I bought to match my pillow case. Looks to me more like a plastic table cloth, the patterned ribbon weaves in and out for perfect plate positioning; yet, it lightly layers my body like a good sheet should. Remarkable.
With school I could keep my mind and emotions reeling with student needs, lesson plans, reading about activities, building excitement for never-before-seen methodology, oh! Now, well, now I spend most of the hours in a bright day watching “Grey’s Anatomy.” After I’ve been witness to George, Cali and the rest of Seattle Grace’s romance and letdowns, I think about my own.
Maybe I should spend my time doing development work, you say. Well if there were willing participants than absolutely I would. But most are also worn from the heat and unlike me from a history of civic indifference. So while I’m trying to motivate those people, on the side I am trying to motivate myself to get this room clean, to finish my quilt, to read the novels stocked from the Peace Corps lounge, and finish projects for my newly established art class.
Yes, I have things I can do. I am realizing this as I type. I am also realizing why female volunteers gain an average of 15 pounds before returning to America. I have thought for months that it was what we eat in winter, the breads, the potato, the lack of veges produced in season. But really, really, it is how much we eat once the newness of a place wears off to be substituted with (sometimes boring) action we must create.
6/20
Reconsidering
“Do you speak English? Azerbaijan dili danishirsiz?”
“No, no,” he gleams with teeth reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution’s dentistry work I’ve read about.
“Where are you from?” I try. “Beijing? Shainghai?—“
“Chendu, Chongqing…” He appeases me, as if, like my students do with America, I am boasting the regions I have learned.
“I don’t want anything, no, I don’t want anything.” A construction worker kneeling in the shade of a future cosmetics shop swats the travelers to the opposite side of the road.
“You understand them?” he asks me.
“No, no, they don’t speak English or Azerbaijani, only Chinese.”
On the back of a motorbike in Vietnam my driver pointed to the long road entwined by tropical trees and limestone masses. “That is the Great Highway. The Chinese are building it, from Beijing to Hanoi and into Thailand and Laos.” Henry understood the road’s impending gravity.
As a then-freshman international relations student I was enamored by the capacity of China, considering what I’d seen in SE Asia: Chinese restaurants, fizzy soft drinks, migrant workers, small businesses popping up in some of the world’s poorest rural areas.
Ganja, the second biggest city in country, just opened its first ever Chinese restaurant. At a mere $2-3 a plate it complements a Peace Corps Volunteer’s wallet as well as her taste buds.
Our conversation ends abruptly at a lone-room music shop full of bad American ‘80’s and modern Turkish pop tapes. Dropping amassed straw bags before the clerk they try to pawn off cheap goods to an impoverished population wiser than American consumers. “Don’t buy that, Sasha, it is from China. It is not good product,” my counterpart once cautioned me.
Reported in Newsweek recently was China’s infrastructural and business investment in war torn Africa. The Chinese government, with the help of Westerners and few host country nationals are exerting great effort to reconstruct roads, build hospitals, health clinics and schools, and implement decade-long plans for large-scale trade. Yeah, it’s ambitious.
All the while two tired thirty-somethings towing cheap blow dryers are rejected again. And again and again, I’m sure, because even peasants (as my counterpart calls herself) won’t buy appliances that work a meager year before yielding zero dry heads.
Azerbaijanis look at non-Western, usually darker complexion immigrants as beneath them. Even their own internally displaced peoples are shunned by most communities.
Some Asian-American volunteers have learned to cope, but they are often mistaken for one of these Chinese vendors and are then treated like second-rate citizens. These guys have traveled half the length of the United States to stay god knows where to be turned away from a people suffering traumatic inflation, living on monthly salary that I used to make in a night. Which begs, how much are these guys making?
Curious that they are in my village, too. I saw these same vendors in the town center a few days before. We crossed paths on the main road in front of a new, primary-colored play ground my community insists I build for the local kindergarten. I stared off to their direction, though the gesture wasn’t reciprocated.
I thought to myself, “If I see a foreigner in a country with few ex-pats I’m gonna at least make eye contact with that person, even if they’re from another country.” Acknowledge me, damn it, I wanted to say. I suppose waving to the frazzled white girl might be trivial, considering their load.
6/22
Readjusting
We had debated whether to go to the hot spring, known as isti su, the wildlife reserve where thousands of migratory birds flock, or the Caspian, three kilometers east of my town center.
Jenni, Detroit-grown and full of ambition, had trouble locating the details for the reserve. Ten manat to go, but how much to get in? Double the price for foreigners? Must we speak with officials at the Ministry of Ecology in Baku, as the guidebook stipulates? Is it open on the weekends?
Locals don’t travel, too expensive and no time. So they offered little help with answers that could be found on the net in America.
Since we needed more information on the city’s estranged park reserve, and Jenni hadn’t seen my charming pad, we settled for the sea.
Sitting down to bean burgers with spicy ketchup Jenni laughed, “Oh yeah, did I tell you, someone cemented over isti su.”
Perhaps from the restaurant owner’s vantage the hot spring’s medicinal use was no longer profiting, so he layered the boiling thing in mud and concrete. Understandably, Jenni, I and the author of the aforementioned guidebook are probably the only to ones to have taken interest in it recently.
7 a.m. and hit the alarm. We wanted to make it early to beat the torment of the afternoon sun. I waited another hour to hear my friend stir, and into the kitchen we cooked sunny-side up to serve with day-old soft tendir.
We figured we could take a cab from the town center for a couple manat or walk if taxis were over a few dollars. The walk wouldn’t be far, a mere 20 minutes, my counterpart had assured me.
After 30 minutes of internet time we inquired at the UNICEF-funded computer center. Where can we get a cab to the sea, and do you know how much it will cost?
“I don’t know,” the employee in her short, Jetson skirt replied. “There are taxis on the road by the bazaar you can ask. I have only been to the sea in Baku.” She is always staffed here—I think she works seven days a week. Born into this town but not onto its beach-front, so she’s never seen it.
I should have realized the troubled guesstimation. It came from my counterpart who has been to the town center twice in the past six months, with her husband’s permission. 20 manat the taxi driver said. That’s like $25. There is no road so the car must drive on a bumpy dirt surface, and he must wait since there will be no taxis by the beach this early in season.
I called the other volunteer in my town whose commitment to travel with us was varied, especially after having told him we may walk. Brent is a well-seasoned volunteer. He has been here for two years and spent seven months in Bangladesh before being evacuated prior to its civil war. I asked him how much it would be to the beach from his house, in a settlement not far from the town center. On the map it looks a few kilometers away.
“My host father will take us for 24 manat. It’s just the gas price.”
Up and down we paced the main road, Jenni’s sandals rubbing against her heels. Walking was now out of the question.
“If the three of us go it will only be 8 manat,” Jenni said.
“That’s so much money, though! It just seems ridiculous. It’s three kilometers away!” Rewarding myself for a school year complete, I had spent a large piece of my living allowance for June hanging in Baku. Now I had 40 manat left, a week and a half to my next pay check.
“I’ll lone you the money.”
“And, it’s the Caspian Sea. It’s so polluted. We can’t even go in!”
“Come on, Sasha, I really wanna go. I came all this way.”
“I just don’t get it. It’s so close! Why is it so difficult? Why is everything here so difficult?”
We walked the stretch back to catch the bus to Brent’s host family where we would be brought to a clean, frequented beach.
My host mother caught us from across the narrow road.
“Salam, Sasha!” Quickly I shared our desire for fun which comes with its abhorrent cost.
“For you Sasha, yes, it is too high. I will ask our neighbor but I think you can go for 18 manat.”
With three people that would be 6 manat, a few days’ worth of food, with four people the price would drop to 4.50, the amount I had crossly decided a trip to a polluted beach I would gawk at for an hour is worth.
We walked the same road we had sweated down twice already. Here a wall clears the right side of the road, across from an Islamic paraphernalia shop and a store whose odds and ends are bright red and shimmering pots and pans.
“What’s in there?” Jenni asked about the other side of the wall, as if it was a vacant paradise.
“It’s just a yard, I think. There’s just fruit there.”
“Oh, I’m not interested in that.”
“Sorry I’ve been so negative…You know, in San Francisco you can take the bus to the ocean. Right to the beach!” I threw my hands out like the Pacific Ocean was the murky puddle ahead of us.
“This is not America, Sasha.”
“I know, but really—“
“You just can’t compare the two.”
This was an end-of-term test to be certain that what I have learned recently, that I can’t operate the way I do in America, through research and problem solving, asking questions and understanding legitimate replies is true.
In the room where my quilt lays unfinished, Jenni and I discussed the day before a Peace Corps Volunteer’s enlightened one-year assurance: It’s just how it is.
In 27 months of living, eating, loving, speaking Azerbaijani, I will never be able to understand the secular Islamic, post-Soviet way of life. Why not have a clean beach? Why not make it easily accessible? Why don’t any of the locals know how to get there?
I maintain an open mind, is how I cope. I walk down the road several times over, it bends, I adjust, I readjust. I get used to it, folk.
We stopped for ice cream in front of an automotive shop with a freezer. Like birds on worms we pulled out two creamy Snickers bars from the bottom of the stock. In summer, nearly every shop, clothing, automotive, sells ice cream. That’s a difference I can deal with.
6/23
Yusif is a tall, fragile man. His hair line creeps to the middle of his head where grey strings assemble and loosely hang to his ears. His teeth look like tiny flanks of driftwood, and for some reason he hasn’t embedded half the golden caps that most Azerbaijanis do. In the U.S. I would guess him to be 70, but he’s probably closer to his mid-fifties.
I like Yusif not just because he’s painter, a rare occupation even in America. Yusif is understanding and patient. Unlike neighbors and shop owners, he waits for me to sort grammar and vocabulary to produce an intelligible sentence in Azerbaijani.
I called Yusif as I must for a refill on my water tank. Rightfully so, he doesn’t trust me to call the water guy myself. Confusion would abound about my presence here, not because people think I’m a spy but because they can’t understand how I can be here alone, how my father could allow me to travel this far from home. To save moments of confusion to emotional resolution, water may be delayed.
Yusif didn’t show the day I asked. This is normal. Azerbaijani-time is months to our minutes. Still, the American that I am I can’t help but be irritated when he says Yes, I’ll come, but shows a day or two after.
A volunteer shared that her mother had been ringing her when before going out she had accidentally left her cell on the dining room table. Like most Azerbaijani landlords, hers was perusing her apartment, searching through personal items, or whatever landlords do when they break and enter homes.
On her mother’s third attempt, her landlord picked up the phone. “Alo?”
“Alo?! Who is this?! Where’s Rachel?!” her mom demanded.
When Rachel eventually got the call, she assured her mother that it’s normal, privacy here is a farce and she’s adjusted to the constant company of Azerbaijanis.
Like most Azerbaijani landlords Yusif comes and goes like it’s a road he must traverse from work. When I first moved in Yusif visited to assure I was surviving alone, had enough food, knew how to cook and clean, and that I was not starting any wild California-girl parties in his apartment.
Now he comes once a week, pretending to gather art supplies from the large closet connected to my guest room. It is here he keeps thin orange and brown brushes, dried paint and stacks of oil portraits with no home in which to be hung in. Two of the most poignant are of Lenin and Gorbachev, the one who brought democracy to the East stacked on top of the communist organizer. Recently, on the guest bed, Yusif laid communist calendar posters, propagating workers’ fantastical lives. With black ink he began to demonstrate remodeling the toilet room on these sheets, when I shouted, “Don’t write on that!”
He laughed, unable to understand the allure of these pictures. In 2008 he has every right to scribble all over them.
The day after I called he comes to casually collect few of his brushes for a project in the town center. He gazes at his brushes like they are his true love, not the arranged marriage his community sees him in. “Beautiful,” he says.
I confidently walk into the closet where Yusif stands admiring an old landscape. “Yusif, I need water.”
As if it will fall from the sky into my tank, “Yes, Sasha, it will come,” he says.
“When, Yusif?”
“At one o’clock.”
At one o’clock, when the tap is dripping just enough to wash my hands, he pulls in a white extension cord he attaches to a pump which coerces water from my neighbor’s tank to mine. My neighbor knows about this yet I’m still uneasy, partially because I don’t understand where my $6 to the fill the tank is going. I ask Yusif when the water truck comes.
“It comes when you need it.”
“Yes, Yusif I need it now. You are taking water from my neighbor’s tank. Why?”
“Because the water car came on Saturday. Were you here?”
“Yes, but I didn’t need water then.”
“Well, it came.”
“But when will it come again?”
“When someone needs water.”
But I need water, I think.
Defeated, I walk to my overheated room and continue Teaching to Transgress, unable to be sure to whom the book relates.
There is a one-inch hole near the top of the rusted water tank. When this begins spewing water we know the tank has reached its limit. From my window I watch Yusif run like Gumby to turn off the valve. While he’s there I turn the nozzle to fill one bucket with orange sediment and water. This is normal, at least for the first two buckets. I heat it to wash my dishes anyway, in hopes I can scrape out the fluorescent residue when it floats to the top.
“Sasha, is there water?” asks Yusif.
“Yes, there’s water but it’s not a lot.” This happens too: the faucet accumulates the metal deposits which aren’t pressured into my drinking water.
Yusif takes his multi-purpose hammer from the collection of trinkets in his room. He beats the tap a series of times, and the residual pieces should be pushed out with delayed water. This time, the tap pops off.
“Now there’s a lot of water, Yusif.” Like a dam burst, water floods from the 50-year-old pipeline.
He wobbles down stairs, cranking the main water valve to a stopping point. At least seven gallons of water, like five loads of dishes, catch in my big plastic container used for laundry. Good thing, since the tub leaks to the downstairs neighbor’s.
Yusif returns and explains that he needs tools to fix this “small problem.”
Four hours later with a handkerchief, a foot-long screw driver and medical tape he secures the tap into what I see now is an oversized pipe. But again, I have water in my home, and that’s more than I had imagined when I signed up for the Peace Corps.
6/27/2008 ONE YEAR IN AZERBAIJAN
Boredumb
My skin is flushed, my eyes sunk deep. I’m on my bed wondering how long I can critically read Infidel till my eyes tire. Maybe I can make applesauce again or type till my fingers loosely hang from their sockets.
I am so bored. I have never experienced such ennui. Today I spent ten minutes admiring the violet and green floral sheet I bought to match my pillow case. Looks to me more like a plastic table cloth, the patterned ribbon weaves in and out for perfect plate positioning; yet, it lightly layers my body like a good sheet should. Remarkable.
With school I could keep my mind and emotions reeling with student needs, lesson plans, reading about activities, building excitement for never-before-seen methodology, oh! Now, well, now I spend most of the hours in a bright day watching “Grey’s Anatomy.” After I’ve been witness to George, Cali and the rest of Seattle Grace’s romance and letdowns, I think about my own.
Maybe I should spend my time doing development work, you say. Well if there were willing participants than absolutely I would. But most are also worn from the heat and unlike me from a history of civic indifference. So while I’m trying to motivate those people, on the side I am trying to motivate myself to get this room clean, to finish my quilt, to read the novels stocked from the Peace Corps lounge, and finish projects for my newly established art class.
Yes, I have things I can do. I am realizing this as I type. I am also realizing why female volunteers gain an average of 15 pounds before returning to America. I have thought for months that it was what we eat in winter, the breads, the potato, the lack of veges produced in season. But really, really, it is how much we eat once the newness of a place wears off to be substituted with (sometimes boring) action we must create.
6/20
Reconsidering
“Do you speak English? Azerbaijan dili danishirsiz?”
“No, no,” he gleams with teeth reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution’s dentistry work I’ve read about.
“Where are you from?” I try. “Beijing? Shainghai?—“
“Chendu, Chongqing…” He appeases me, as if, like my students do with America, I am boasting the regions I have learned.
“I don’t want anything, no, I don’t want anything.” A construction worker kneeling in the shade of a future cosmetics shop swats the travelers to the opposite side of the road.
“You understand them?” he asks me.
“No, no, they don’t speak English or Azerbaijani, only Chinese.”
On the back of a motorbike in Vietnam my driver pointed to the long road entwined by tropical trees and limestone masses. “That is the Great Highway. The Chinese are building it, from Beijing to Hanoi and into Thailand and Laos.” Henry understood the road’s impending gravity.
As a then-freshman international relations student I was enamored by the capacity of China, considering what I’d seen in SE Asia: Chinese restaurants, fizzy soft drinks, migrant workers, small businesses popping up in some of the world’s poorest rural areas.
Ganja, the second biggest city in country, just opened its first ever Chinese restaurant. At a mere $2-3 a plate it complements a Peace Corps Volunteer’s wallet as well as her taste buds.
Our conversation ends abruptly at a lone-room music shop full of bad American ‘80’s and modern Turkish pop tapes. Dropping amassed straw bags before the clerk they try to pawn off cheap goods to an impoverished population wiser than American consumers. “Don’t buy that, Sasha, it is from China. It is not good product,” my counterpart once cautioned me.
Reported in Newsweek recently was China’s infrastructural and business investment in war torn Africa. The Chinese government, with the help of Westerners and few host country nationals are exerting great effort to reconstruct roads, build hospitals, health clinics and schools, and implement decade-long plans for large-scale trade. Yeah, it’s ambitious.
All the while two tired thirty-somethings towing cheap blow dryers are rejected again. And again and again, I’m sure, because even peasants (as my counterpart calls herself) won’t buy appliances that work a meager year before yielding zero dry heads.
Azerbaijanis look at non-Western, usually darker complexion immigrants as beneath them. Even their own internally displaced peoples are shunned by most communities.
Some Asian-American volunteers have learned to cope, but they are often mistaken for one of these Chinese vendors and are then treated like second-rate citizens. These guys have traveled half the length of the United States to stay god knows where to be turned away from a people suffering traumatic inflation, living on monthly salary that I used to make in a night. Which begs, how much are these guys making?
Curious that they are in my village, too. I saw these same vendors in the town center a few days before. We crossed paths on the main road in front of a new, primary-colored play ground my community insists I build for the local kindergarten. I stared off to their direction, though the gesture wasn’t reciprocated.
I thought to myself, “If I see a foreigner in a country with few ex-pats I’m gonna at least make eye contact with that person, even if they’re from another country.” Acknowledge me, damn it, I wanted to say. I suppose waving to the frazzled white girl might be trivial, considering their load.
6/22
Readjusting
We had debated whether to go to the hot spring, known as isti su, the wildlife reserve where thousands of migratory birds flock, or the Caspian, three kilometers east of my town center.
Jenni, Detroit-grown and full of ambition, had trouble locating the details for the reserve. Ten manat to go, but how much to get in? Double the price for foreigners? Must we speak with officials at the Ministry of Ecology in Baku, as the guidebook stipulates? Is it open on the weekends?
Locals don’t travel, too expensive and no time. So they offered little help with answers that could be found on the net in America.
Since we needed more information on the city’s estranged park reserve, and Jenni hadn’t seen my charming pad, we settled for the sea.
Sitting down to bean burgers with spicy ketchup Jenni laughed, “Oh yeah, did I tell you, someone cemented over isti su.”
Perhaps from the restaurant owner’s vantage the hot spring’s medicinal use was no longer profiting, so he layered the boiling thing in mud and concrete. Understandably, Jenni, I and the author of the aforementioned guidebook are probably the only to ones to have taken interest in it recently.
7 a.m. and hit the alarm. We wanted to make it early to beat the torment of the afternoon sun. I waited another hour to hear my friend stir, and into the kitchen we cooked sunny-side up to serve with day-old soft tendir.
We figured we could take a cab from the town center for a couple manat or walk if taxis were over a few dollars. The walk wouldn’t be far, a mere 20 minutes, my counterpart had assured me.
After 30 minutes of internet time we inquired at the UNICEF-funded computer center. Where can we get a cab to the sea, and do you know how much it will cost?
“I don’t know,” the employee in her short, Jetson skirt replied. “There are taxis on the road by the bazaar you can ask. I have only been to the sea in Baku.” She is always staffed here—I think she works seven days a week. Born into this town but not onto its beach-front, so she’s never seen it.
I should have realized the troubled guesstimation. It came from my counterpart who has been to the town center twice in the past six months, with her husband’s permission. 20 manat the taxi driver said. That’s like $25. There is no road so the car must drive on a bumpy dirt surface, and he must wait since there will be no taxis by the beach this early in season.
I called the other volunteer in my town whose commitment to travel with us was varied, especially after having told him we may walk. Brent is a well-seasoned volunteer. He has been here for two years and spent seven months in Bangladesh before being evacuated prior to its civil war. I asked him how much it would be to the beach from his house, in a settlement not far from the town center. On the map it looks a few kilometers away.
“My host father will take us for 24 manat. It’s just the gas price.”
Up and down we paced the main road, Jenni’s sandals rubbing against her heels. Walking was now out of the question.
“If the three of us go it will only be 8 manat,” Jenni said.
“That’s so much money, though! It just seems ridiculous. It’s three kilometers away!” Rewarding myself for a school year complete, I had spent a large piece of my living allowance for June hanging in Baku. Now I had 40 manat left, a week and a half to my next pay check.
“I’ll lone you the money.”
“And, it’s the Caspian Sea. It’s so polluted. We can’t even go in!”
“Come on, Sasha, I really wanna go. I came all this way.”
“I just don’t get it. It’s so close! Why is it so difficult? Why is everything here so difficult?”
We walked the stretch back to catch the bus to Brent’s host family where we would be brought to a clean, frequented beach.
My host mother caught us from across the narrow road.
“Salam, Sasha!” Quickly I shared our desire for fun which comes with its abhorrent cost.
“For you Sasha, yes, it is too high. I will ask our neighbor but I think you can go for 18 manat.”
With three people that would be 6 manat, a few days’ worth of food, with four people the price would drop to 4.50, the amount I had crossly decided a trip to a polluted beach I would gawk at for an hour is worth.
We walked the same road we had sweated down twice already. Here a wall clears the right side of the road, across from an Islamic paraphernalia shop and a store whose odds and ends are bright red and shimmering pots and pans.
“What’s in there?” Jenni asked about the other side of the wall, as if it was a vacant paradise.
“It’s just a yard, I think. There’s just fruit there.”
“Oh, I’m not interested in that.”
“Sorry I’ve been so negative…You know, in San Francisco you can take the bus to the ocean. Right to the beach!” I threw my hands out like the Pacific Ocean was the murky puddle ahead of us.
“This is not America, Sasha.”
“I know, but really—“
“You just can’t compare the two.”
This was an end-of-term test to be certain that what I have learned recently, that I can’t operate the way I do in America, through research and problem solving, asking questions and understanding legitimate replies is true.
In the room where my quilt lays unfinished, Jenni and I discussed the day before a Peace Corps Volunteer’s enlightened one-year assurance: It’s just how it is.
In 27 months of living, eating, loving, speaking Azerbaijani, I will never be able to understand the secular Islamic, post-Soviet way of life. Why not have a clean beach? Why not make it easily accessible? Why don’t any of the locals know how to get there?
I maintain an open mind, is how I cope. I walk down the road several times over, it bends, I adjust, I readjust. I get used to it, folk.
We stopped for ice cream in front of an automotive shop with a freezer. Like birds on worms we pulled out two creamy Snickers bars from the bottom of the stock. In summer, nearly every shop, clothing, automotive, sells ice cream. That’s a difference I can deal with.
6/23
Yusif is a tall, fragile man. His hair line creeps to the middle of his head where grey strings assemble and loosely hang to his ears. His teeth look like tiny flanks of driftwood, and for some reason he hasn’t embedded half the golden caps that most Azerbaijanis do. In the U.S. I would guess him to be 70, but he’s probably closer to his mid-fifties.
I like Yusif not just because he’s painter, a rare occupation even in America. Yusif is understanding and patient. Unlike neighbors and shop owners, he waits for me to sort grammar and vocabulary to produce an intelligible sentence in Azerbaijani.
I called Yusif as I must for a refill on my water tank. Rightfully so, he doesn’t trust me to call the water guy myself. Confusion would abound about my presence here, not because people think I’m a spy but because they can’t understand how I can be here alone, how my father could allow me to travel this far from home. To save moments of confusion to emotional resolution, water may be delayed.
Yusif didn’t show the day I asked. This is normal. Azerbaijani-time is months to our minutes. Still, the American that I am I can’t help but be irritated when he says Yes, I’ll come, but shows a day or two after.
A volunteer shared that her mother had been ringing her when before going out she had accidentally left her cell on the dining room table. Like most Azerbaijani landlords, hers was perusing her apartment, searching through personal items, or whatever landlords do when they break and enter homes.
On her mother’s third attempt, her landlord picked up the phone. “Alo?”
“Alo?! Who is this?! Where’s Rachel?!” her mom demanded.
When Rachel eventually got the call, she assured her mother that it’s normal, privacy here is a farce and she’s adjusted to the constant company of Azerbaijanis.
Like most Azerbaijani landlords Yusif comes and goes like it’s a road he must traverse from work. When I first moved in Yusif visited to assure I was surviving alone, had enough food, knew how to cook and clean, and that I was not starting any wild California-girl parties in his apartment.
Now he comes once a week, pretending to gather art supplies from the large closet connected to my guest room. It is here he keeps thin orange and brown brushes, dried paint and stacks of oil portraits with no home in which to be hung in. Two of the most poignant are of Lenin and Gorbachev, the one who brought democracy to the East stacked on top of the communist organizer. Recently, on the guest bed, Yusif laid communist calendar posters, propagating workers’ fantastical lives. With black ink he began to demonstrate remodeling the toilet room on these sheets, when I shouted, “Don’t write on that!”
He laughed, unable to understand the allure of these pictures. In 2008 he has every right to scribble all over them.
The day after I called he comes to casually collect few of his brushes for a project in the town center. He gazes at his brushes like they are his true love, not the arranged marriage his community sees him in. “Beautiful,” he says.
I confidently walk into the closet where Yusif stands admiring an old landscape. “Yusif, I need water.”
As if it will fall from the sky into my tank, “Yes, Sasha, it will come,” he says.
“When, Yusif?”
“At one o’clock.”
At one o’clock, when the tap is dripping just enough to wash my hands, he pulls in a white extension cord he attaches to a pump which coerces water from my neighbor’s tank to mine. My neighbor knows about this yet I’m still uneasy, partially because I don’t understand where my $6 to the fill the tank is going. I ask Yusif when the water truck comes.
“It comes when you need it.”
“Yes, Yusif I need it now. You are taking water from my neighbor’s tank. Why?”
“Because the water car came on Saturday. Were you here?”
“Yes, but I didn’t need water then.”
“Well, it came.”
“But when will it come again?”
“When someone needs water.”
But I need water, I think.
Defeated, I walk to my overheated room and continue Teaching to Transgress, unable to be sure to whom the book relates.
There is a one-inch hole near the top of the rusted water tank. When this begins spewing water we know the tank has reached its limit. From my window I watch Yusif run like Gumby to turn off the valve. While he’s there I turn the nozzle to fill one bucket with orange sediment and water. This is normal, at least for the first two buckets. I heat it to wash my dishes anyway, in hopes I can scrape out the fluorescent residue when it floats to the top.
“Sasha, is there water?” asks Yusif.
“Yes, there’s water but it’s not a lot.” This happens too: the faucet accumulates the metal deposits which aren’t pressured into my drinking water.
Yusif takes his multi-purpose hammer from the collection of trinkets in his room. He beats the tap a series of times, and the residual pieces should be pushed out with delayed water. This time, the tap pops off.
“Now there’s a lot of water, Yusif.” Like a dam burst, water floods from the 50-year-old pipeline.
He wobbles down stairs, cranking the main water valve to a stopping point. At least seven gallons of water, like five loads of dishes, catch in my big plastic container used for laundry. Good thing, since the tub leaks to the downstairs neighbor’s.
Yusif returns and explains that he needs tools to fix this “small problem.”
Four hours later with a handkerchief, a foot-long screw driver and medical tape he secures the tap into what I see now is an oversized pipe. But again, I have water in my home, and that’s more than I had imagined when I signed up for the Peace Corps.
6/27/2008 ONE YEAR IN AZERBAIJAN
Thursday, June 5, 2008
5/1/08
The Engagement Party
The table is set. Forks and spoons of different sizes and shapes are hurriedly left on the right side of each plate. Thick cups above cheap china wear and shot glasses, 10 minutes before ceremony, clenched in men’s hands. Roasted chicken, dolma, stalichni salad, bosboscht, plov and greens swell under the giant, heat-entrapped tarp. Small boys I haven’t seen in the fit of days preceding, relay Coke and Fanta bottles to each table. Each second, like a quarter of real time, ascends as the clock ticks to.
Will the guests leave happy? Will people dance and eat? Will they tell others that they had a good time, or will it just be a front, a momentary acquisition of kindness because of this special day?
This is like being on the set of The Hours, Azerbaijani time. Gizbast Teacher loiters in my face as panic moves her closer to the engagement party of her first-born daughter.
“Sasha, please help Nisa.”
“With what? Where is she?”
“Sasha, I don’t know.”
The night prior we lugged boiled potatoes, carrots, jarred peas, mayonnaise, steamed beef and onions to Grandpa’s house to cut into retardedly tiny pieces for stalichni salad, a Russian side served at all Azerbaijani events. For nearly 150 people, the dish was prepared in just under four hours. It was a teaser to the day ahead.
Three hours to, I watch the khanams, in the moist, oppressive outside kitchen, slice tomatoes and cucumbers and arrange them diagonally on one of several shades of white plates.
“What’s wrong?” or “What’s up?” or “What are you doing?” asks a curly-haired lady.
“Nothing. Can I help you?” I try, though I think I ask if she can help me.
“Take the chicken. One for each table,” she repeats five times.
“I understand, I understand, I understand.”
I grab three plates of the roasted chicken. Before I swing waitress style around to the dining area, a white-haired old hag with a three golden teeth asks me for tea. I light a match on the burner since my hand will catch on fire if I try the popular pull-away method with a lighter. I balance the porcelain tea pot with the kettle on the circular steel plate.
As I leave the preparation area, the sun shocks my senses. I determine today am a full-fledged member of the party staff, not a World Heritage site as I’m commonly perceived.
The chicken gets distributed so I glide upstairs like Cinderella to locate sugar and candy. There wait stacks of kielbasa to be cut, but no nasty Russian chocolates.
Hoping the khanams have gone the five feet to serve themselves, I flip to the other side of the room to serve a loaded dish.
“Take these greens,” she says without looking up. “Take these greens,” she repeats as my hands jerk the plate from her next cucumber. “I understand.”
“Sasha, why you not wash these?” Nisa asks about the silverware as I set down the first round of veges. Nisa is Gizbast’s niece and an undergraduate of international relations at one Baku’s top universities. She has been learning Arabic, Russian and English and dreams of working as a foreign policy advisor. I like her when she’s not assistant to wedding parties.
“Please help, Sasha.” I give in, clearly having not been of use in past hours.
“You need to tell me which ones to wash.”
“Ok Sasha, wash these.” I wipe four forks before she carts away the wet box of silverware.
“We must have, get drinks.”
Young boys rush out with soft drinks as if Nisa snapped her fingers and wrinkled her nose.
I turn to help when I realize Brent is sitting at a table for five alone.
“Hey Brent, how ya doin’?”
“All right.”
“Are you havin’ an all right time?”
“Yeah, just talking to these guys.” He points to the men sucking down hydrogen peroxide, which passes as vodka in Azerbaijan.
Brent is a lanky Oklahoman who lives 25 minutes south-west of me. He’s a quiet guy and doesn’t travel much. He enjoys the comforts of community and still lives with his host family, eating Azeri meals and speaking the language near-proficiency. Unfortunately this leads Volunteers to ask me more about my boyfriend in America than about my site mate, one of their coworkers and friends. Like so many PCVs do, I have forgotten about him in the frenzy of affairs.
“Hey, I’m going to try to find some juice to put in the fridge.”
“That’s a great idea.”
He seems content, if bored. That’s an honorable mood at an event like this.
Teachers and shop owners file in. This is a great group, I think to myself. I know people, they’re smiling, laughing, this could work.
“Sasha, why you not help her?” Who? Mrs. Dalloway insists I pick up more greens as a centerpiece to the tables. On my way to hear instructions five times over, I notice a bitter woman without tea. She looks at me like I had masterminded the Soviet takeover of her country.
I pour her and her younger friend a cup of hour-old tea. On the way to her chair, half the Beta black spills on my foot. Why would she put me in charge of this? No doubt to see if an American girl is capable of simultaneous matronly chores. Now she understands I’m not. That’s not bad information to pass along.
Boxed juice is found in the back cellar with pickled vegetables for winter. I seize a cherry juice and ignoring curious faces, run to the kitchen to stash it next to the refrigerated kielbasa.
In the room over is the bride-to-be. After three hours of plastering on a powder-cover up combo the thickness and shade of her wedding dress, she now has a deep black pencil cocked to her eye. Her pupils are dilated in the light and her eyes against her dress seem evermore bloodshot. She spots me from around the corner. “This is nice, Sasha?” You look like a vampire, I want to tell her. “Gesheng giz.” Beautiful girl, I say.
Her younger sister, on the other hand, is worth antagonizing. I instruct Altunay to come help.
The bride's eyes remain on the mirror while she dramatizes her sister’s carelessness. “She is lazy bones,” she says.
Watching Al Jazeera on Gizbast’s satellite would be like a quick across-the-bay vacation, but I advance down stairs to the engagement party for exactly what I left in San Francisco— except this time, it’s with a grace of no-pay.
Already guests are demanding refills and more stalichni salad. I object of the grueling work to my counterpart for 30 seconds before the commencement begins.
I look back and the tent has filled. Women are split to the front side of the room, most in thick, cotton jackets with bushy flowers or beaded designs on lapels. Most two-piece suits here look as if Azerbaijani women had acquired Bedazzled sets.
“Sasha, sit down. Please sit down.” Gizbast busts her way through the crowd, leaving few self-assured, drunken men standing.
The crowd ingests the call for silence. Except for the leader of the pack and her accomplice, the party staff sits still and hushes.
Close friends and family, in red tailor-made power suits and blazers with sleeves an inch too long, dance a trail of crimson cloth leading to the stage. Big bouncing baskets full of the most expensive chocolates and lotions for the bride are delivered to her bouquet of gifts.
And by way of her, in the shape of Liberty Bell, Farida eloquently unites the segregated room.
5/27/08
Graduation Day
She chases him wildly, swooping around the chairs three times, and without hesitation turns back to chalk “VIb!!!” on the black board. Using her whole forearm, Sonay’s class number is scribbled large and proud.
We all have favorite doodles, and for Azerbaijani students their class number is one of them. Ten years of the same students, first to fifth period, neighbors and cousins, marriages and workmates, till death do they part.
Friday is the last day of school. 11th form students will run off to university in Baku, or stick to a village job in a big shop on the roadside. Either way, they will bring along one or two friends whom they will value for the rest of their life.
My counterpart Gizbast has known her neighbors for 55 years. 55 YEARS. What does that number even mean? Through two wars and Azerbaijan’s independence, unjustified deaths and the births of children, they have been friends and political enemies, and by this time in this country, they’re sure to be relatives.
I am 24 years old, and if not for that website we all hate to love, MySpace, I would have kept in contact with exactly three friends from high school.
Still, I remember thinking at my high school graduation I wouldn’t be all sad that the “era,” as everyone called it, had come to an end. Let’s face it, I was a terribly awkward and wasn’t at all popular. Everyone knew the name: Sasha Kinney, but when placed with a face it was like learning the definition of word you thought you knew. “Oh, that’s who Sasha is.”
I won’t beat on about it, but the point is, as Azerbaijanis say, I thought, “I will not miss.” And the day came. And I was I ok till grad night when preparing for the bounce house run, a friend I had known since grade school approached me. He looked at me with the same two eyes which had once donned medium-sized, metallic-rimmed glasses, but which in middle school had matured into handsome, sophisticated contacts. He said to the then-basketball superstar standing beside him, “This is my buddy, Sasha. We’ve known been going to school together since kindergarten.” His hug was tremendous, and I have a photo with his arm around me to prove it. I knew he’d miss me, and I shed and concealed a tear. High school, as it does, had forced us to realize our differing economic statuses and therefore divided us. But under the green and yellow banner that read, “The class of 2002,” I was suffocated into the understanding that our era had come to an end.
Though three years ago this friend wouldn’t add me to his MySpace list because of a spitfire political cyberspace debate between the two of us, he will always be part of summer holidays, camp, football on muddy days and over-the-fence weekend chats, till death do us part—at least in memory.
With that, I can’t imagine how this group of teens will be separated. Even though most of them will eventually return to this village, it will never be the same: no gossip halls or canteen tea breaks, no more chalk board sketches declaring love for their classmates.
This Saturday the secondary school where I teach will have what my host sister has called The Last Bell. Seniors will present gifts and wishes to incoming first-form students and young ones will sing national hymns praising the outgoing generation. It will be interesting to witness this culture’s display of graduation, what moving on means to them and how they will deal with the absence, even if brief, of the people who have shaped them.
6/3/07
“Mua mua mua mua. Mua mua mua. Mua. I’m selling fish. Mua mua mua mua.”
“No, thank you, I don’t want to buy fish today.” I answer what I can from a language I still misinterpret as one I have yet to learn.
“No. Honey.”
Ah, yes, bal vs. balig. I’m sure locals make this mistake too. “How much?”
“Six manat.”
“Great, I’d like to try.”
“It is very good,” declares the man. His teeth are a testament to its syrupy appeal. From his blue satchel displaying a half-naked woman, he lifts a “Boronbaker’s tomato paste” jar to the sun.
With the tip of a spoon I extract a dab of golden thickness. “Mmm, yes, this is very good.” He hands me the jar as if that confirmed the buy.
I carry the stickiness to my kitchen when I set the honey down and make for my room to grab a 20.
“Do you have change?” I walk down the hall asking.
Now’s his chance: “Mua mua mua mua mua. Two for 10 manat. For your children.”
“I don’t have children.”
“For your husband.”
“I don’t have a husband.”
“For your children.”
“No, there are no children here. I have no children.”
“Then who lives here?” Surely not just her.
“Just me.”
“Mama? Dada?”
“No, just me.”
He pauses, considering, much like his first 10 seconds with me, the possibility that I don’t speak his language.
He attempts Russian.
“No, no. I’m American. I don’t know Russian. I speak English.”
“Yes, England. You are alone here? Why?”
“I have lessons at that school.” I point beyond the pharmacy to the Soviet eyesore where I teach.
“Yes, good, good. But why do you live alone?”
“Because Americans like to be alone. In America many people live alone.”
As if shifting to his own fairytale (mine is too perverse, a world in which people, particularly women, live alone), “England is nice,” he says.
Given Azerbaijan’s historical background, with elderly I let the geographical perplexity of where the Promised Land is withstand. But in the near dark of my stairwell with this short, balding honey vendor, I feel a brief North American geography lesson is only appropriate.
“America and England are different countries. I’m American. I’m from America. It’s south of (can’t think of the word for Canada in Azeri) and north of (don’t know the word for Mexico).” I drop the powerless dialogue and draw the shape of America on my door, in between what I hope is ketchup and a mud smear. Apparently the U.S. outline is not as impressionable as the rhinoceros shape of the continent of Africa.
Now he looks more alone than I, in bewilderment, and out into some world he doesn’t know. And like that, his decaying teeth shown, I’m alerted a perfect smile.
“Where are you from?”
“Ganja.”
“You came from Ganja to sell honey?” I don’t mean to sound shocked but this is like traveling from Reno to San Francisco to sell apples. Though I suppose one would if it was his trade.
“Mua mua mua mua. You are here alone?”
I know it was time to shut the door, not because, like I do in America, think that he is going to assault or rape me, but because I have given him all the information I can (or can express) about my world. And I have gotten a fish or whatever out of the deal.
“All right, pal.” (That was in English.) His budding face shuts in toward the door till I fashion the door to the frame.
I watch him from my balcony saunter on to sell sweetness to my neighbors, and probably to further speculate about the lone English woman living in apartment number nine.
The Engagement Party
The table is set. Forks and spoons of different sizes and shapes are hurriedly left on the right side of each plate. Thick cups above cheap china wear and shot glasses, 10 minutes before ceremony, clenched in men’s hands. Roasted chicken, dolma, stalichni salad, bosboscht, plov and greens swell under the giant, heat-entrapped tarp. Small boys I haven’t seen in the fit of days preceding, relay Coke and Fanta bottles to each table. Each second, like a quarter of real time, ascends as the clock ticks to.
Will the guests leave happy? Will people dance and eat? Will they tell others that they had a good time, or will it just be a front, a momentary acquisition of kindness because of this special day?
This is like being on the set of The Hours, Azerbaijani time. Gizbast Teacher loiters in my face as panic moves her closer to the engagement party of her first-born daughter.
“Sasha, please help Nisa.”
“With what? Where is she?”
“Sasha, I don’t know.”
The night prior we lugged boiled potatoes, carrots, jarred peas, mayonnaise, steamed beef and onions to Grandpa’s house to cut into retardedly tiny pieces for stalichni salad, a Russian side served at all Azerbaijani events. For nearly 150 people, the dish was prepared in just under four hours. It was a teaser to the day ahead.
Three hours to, I watch the khanams, in the moist, oppressive outside kitchen, slice tomatoes and cucumbers and arrange them diagonally on one of several shades of white plates.
“What’s wrong?” or “What’s up?” or “What are you doing?” asks a curly-haired lady.
“Nothing. Can I help you?” I try, though I think I ask if she can help me.
“Take the chicken. One for each table,” she repeats five times.
“I understand, I understand, I understand.”
I grab three plates of the roasted chicken. Before I swing waitress style around to the dining area, a white-haired old hag with a three golden teeth asks me for tea. I light a match on the burner since my hand will catch on fire if I try the popular pull-away method with a lighter. I balance the porcelain tea pot with the kettle on the circular steel plate.
As I leave the preparation area, the sun shocks my senses. I determine today am a full-fledged member of the party staff, not a World Heritage site as I’m commonly perceived.
The chicken gets distributed so I glide upstairs like Cinderella to locate sugar and candy. There wait stacks of kielbasa to be cut, but no nasty Russian chocolates.
Hoping the khanams have gone the five feet to serve themselves, I flip to the other side of the room to serve a loaded dish.
“Take these greens,” she says without looking up. “Take these greens,” she repeats as my hands jerk the plate from her next cucumber. “I understand.”
“Sasha, why you not wash these?” Nisa asks about the silverware as I set down the first round of veges. Nisa is Gizbast’s niece and an undergraduate of international relations at one Baku’s top universities. She has been learning Arabic, Russian and English and dreams of working as a foreign policy advisor. I like her when she’s not assistant to wedding parties.
“Please help, Sasha.” I give in, clearly having not been of use in past hours.
“You need to tell me which ones to wash.”
“Ok Sasha, wash these.” I wipe four forks before she carts away the wet box of silverware.
“We must have, get drinks.”
Young boys rush out with soft drinks as if Nisa snapped her fingers and wrinkled her nose.
I turn to help when I realize Brent is sitting at a table for five alone.
“Hey Brent, how ya doin’?”
“All right.”
“Are you havin’ an all right time?”
“Yeah, just talking to these guys.” He points to the men sucking down hydrogen peroxide, which passes as vodka in Azerbaijan.
Brent is a lanky Oklahoman who lives 25 minutes south-west of me. He’s a quiet guy and doesn’t travel much. He enjoys the comforts of community and still lives with his host family, eating Azeri meals and speaking the language near-proficiency. Unfortunately this leads Volunteers to ask me more about my boyfriend in America than about my site mate, one of their coworkers and friends. Like so many PCVs do, I have forgotten about him in the frenzy of affairs.
“Hey, I’m going to try to find some juice to put in the fridge.”
“That’s a great idea.”
He seems content, if bored. That’s an honorable mood at an event like this.
Teachers and shop owners file in. This is a great group, I think to myself. I know people, they’re smiling, laughing, this could work.
“Sasha, why you not help her?” Who? Mrs. Dalloway insists I pick up more greens as a centerpiece to the tables. On my way to hear instructions five times over, I notice a bitter woman without tea. She looks at me like I had masterminded the Soviet takeover of her country.
I pour her and her younger friend a cup of hour-old tea. On the way to her chair, half the Beta black spills on my foot. Why would she put me in charge of this? No doubt to see if an American girl is capable of simultaneous matronly chores. Now she understands I’m not. That’s not bad information to pass along.
Boxed juice is found in the back cellar with pickled vegetables for winter. I seize a cherry juice and ignoring curious faces, run to the kitchen to stash it next to the refrigerated kielbasa.
In the room over is the bride-to-be. After three hours of plastering on a powder-cover up combo the thickness and shade of her wedding dress, she now has a deep black pencil cocked to her eye. Her pupils are dilated in the light and her eyes against her dress seem evermore bloodshot. She spots me from around the corner. “This is nice, Sasha?” You look like a vampire, I want to tell her. “Gesheng giz.” Beautiful girl, I say.
Her younger sister, on the other hand, is worth antagonizing. I instruct Altunay to come help.
The bride's eyes remain on the mirror while she dramatizes her sister’s carelessness. “She is lazy bones,” she says.
Watching Al Jazeera on Gizbast’s satellite would be like a quick across-the-bay vacation, but I advance down stairs to the engagement party for exactly what I left in San Francisco— except this time, it’s with a grace of no-pay.
Already guests are demanding refills and more stalichni salad. I object of the grueling work to my counterpart for 30 seconds before the commencement begins.
I look back and the tent has filled. Women are split to the front side of the room, most in thick, cotton jackets with bushy flowers or beaded designs on lapels. Most two-piece suits here look as if Azerbaijani women had acquired Bedazzled sets.
“Sasha, sit down. Please sit down.” Gizbast busts her way through the crowd, leaving few self-assured, drunken men standing.
The crowd ingests the call for silence. Except for the leader of the pack and her accomplice, the party staff sits still and hushes.
Close friends and family, in red tailor-made power suits and blazers with sleeves an inch too long, dance a trail of crimson cloth leading to the stage. Big bouncing baskets full of the most expensive chocolates and lotions for the bride are delivered to her bouquet of gifts.
And by way of her, in the shape of Liberty Bell, Farida eloquently unites the segregated room.
5/27/08
Graduation Day
She chases him wildly, swooping around the chairs three times, and without hesitation turns back to chalk “VIb!!!” on the black board. Using her whole forearm, Sonay’s class number is scribbled large and proud.
We all have favorite doodles, and for Azerbaijani students their class number is one of them. Ten years of the same students, first to fifth period, neighbors and cousins, marriages and workmates, till death do they part.
Friday is the last day of school. 11th form students will run off to university in Baku, or stick to a village job in a big shop on the roadside. Either way, they will bring along one or two friends whom they will value for the rest of their life.
My counterpart Gizbast has known her neighbors for 55 years. 55 YEARS. What does that number even mean? Through two wars and Azerbaijan’s independence, unjustified deaths and the births of children, they have been friends and political enemies, and by this time in this country, they’re sure to be relatives.
I am 24 years old, and if not for that website we all hate to love, MySpace, I would have kept in contact with exactly three friends from high school.
Still, I remember thinking at my high school graduation I wouldn’t be all sad that the “era,” as everyone called it, had come to an end. Let’s face it, I was a terribly awkward and wasn’t at all popular. Everyone knew the name: Sasha Kinney, but when placed with a face it was like learning the definition of word you thought you knew. “Oh, that’s who Sasha is.”
I won’t beat on about it, but the point is, as Azerbaijanis say, I thought, “I will not miss.” And the day came. And I was I ok till grad night when preparing for the bounce house run, a friend I had known since grade school approached me. He looked at me with the same two eyes which had once donned medium-sized, metallic-rimmed glasses, but which in middle school had matured into handsome, sophisticated contacts. He said to the then-basketball superstar standing beside him, “This is my buddy, Sasha. We’ve known been going to school together since kindergarten.” His hug was tremendous, and I have a photo with his arm around me to prove it. I knew he’d miss me, and I shed and concealed a tear. High school, as it does, had forced us to realize our differing economic statuses and therefore divided us. But under the green and yellow banner that read, “The class of 2002,” I was suffocated into the understanding that our era had come to an end.
Though three years ago this friend wouldn’t add me to his MySpace list because of a spitfire political cyberspace debate between the two of us, he will always be part of summer holidays, camp, football on muddy days and over-the-fence weekend chats, till death do us part—at least in memory.
With that, I can’t imagine how this group of teens will be separated. Even though most of them will eventually return to this village, it will never be the same: no gossip halls or canteen tea breaks, no more chalk board sketches declaring love for their classmates.
This Saturday the secondary school where I teach will have what my host sister has called The Last Bell. Seniors will present gifts and wishes to incoming first-form students and young ones will sing national hymns praising the outgoing generation. It will be interesting to witness this culture’s display of graduation, what moving on means to them and how they will deal with the absence, even if brief, of the people who have shaped them.
6/3/07
“Mua mua mua mua. Mua mua mua. Mua. I’m selling fish. Mua mua mua mua.”
“No, thank you, I don’t want to buy fish today.” I answer what I can from a language I still misinterpret as one I have yet to learn.
“No. Honey.”
Ah, yes, bal vs. balig. I’m sure locals make this mistake too. “How much?”
“Six manat.”
“Great, I’d like to try.”
“It is very good,” declares the man. His teeth are a testament to its syrupy appeal. From his blue satchel displaying a half-naked woman, he lifts a “Boronbaker’s tomato paste” jar to the sun.
With the tip of a spoon I extract a dab of golden thickness. “Mmm, yes, this is very good.” He hands me the jar as if that confirmed the buy.
I carry the stickiness to my kitchen when I set the honey down and make for my room to grab a 20.
“Do you have change?” I walk down the hall asking.
Now’s his chance: “Mua mua mua mua mua. Two for 10 manat. For your children.”
“I don’t have children.”
“For your husband.”
“I don’t have a husband.”
“For your children.”
“No, there are no children here. I have no children.”
“Then who lives here?” Surely not just her.
“Just me.”
“Mama? Dada?”
“No, just me.”
He pauses, considering, much like his first 10 seconds with me, the possibility that I don’t speak his language.
He attempts Russian.
“No, no. I’m American. I don’t know Russian. I speak English.”
“Yes, England. You are alone here? Why?”
“I have lessons at that school.” I point beyond the pharmacy to the Soviet eyesore where I teach.
“Yes, good, good. But why do you live alone?”
“Because Americans like to be alone. In America many people live alone.”
As if shifting to his own fairytale (mine is too perverse, a world in which people, particularly women, live alone), “England is nice,” he says.
Given Azerbaijan’s historical background, with elderly I let the geographical perplexity of where the Promised Land is withstand. But in the near dark of my stairwell with this short, balding honey vendor, I feel a brief North American geography lesson is only appropriate.
“America and England are different countries. I’m American. I’m from America. It’s south of (can’t think of the word for Canada in Azeri) and north of (don’t know the word for Mexico).” I drop the powerless dialogue and draw the shape of America on my door, in between what I hope is ketchup and a mud smear. Apparently the U.S. outline is not as impressionable as the rhinoceros shape of the continent of Africa.
Now he looks more alone than I, in bewilderment, and out into some world he doesn’t know. And like that, his decaying teeth shown, I’m alerted a perfect smile.
“Where are you from?”
“Ganja.”
“You came from Ganja to sell honey?” I don’t mean to sound shocked but this is like traveling from Reno to San Francisco to sell apples. Though I suppose one would if it was his trade.
“Mua mua mua mua. You are here alone?”
I know it was time to shut the door, not because, like I do in America, think that he is going to assault or rape me, but because I have given him all the information I can (or can express) about my world. And I have gotten a fish or whatever out of the deal.
“All right, pal.” (That was in English.) His budding face shuts in toward the door till I fashion the door to the frame.
I watch him from my balcony saunter on to sell sweetness to my neighbors, and probably to further speculate about the lone English woman living in apartment number nine.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
3/11/08
International Women’s Day
March 8th
Like Mother’s Day but for children, grandparents and single ladies, too
Lots of gifts, including:
six murraba or lemon saucers,
from a shy 7th-form student who asked his friend to hand me the unwrapped gift: a makeup kit with orange lipstick, hairspray and perfume that smells like baby wipes,
a porcelain plum covered candy dish depicting two Greek ladies entertaining a man holding a water jug, handmade by Hbast & Czjeks, since 1792,a blue mug and saucer proudly illustrating Mecca, contrary to Volunteer belief, not made in China but in the Czech Republic
A speech by the director, a long one as usual
Performances by kiddies, memorized dutifully like good post-Soviet Union children do
A quick something by me, about how International Women’s Day is sadly not celebrated in America, except for at some college campuses like SFSU where we speak about gender inequality in other nations but like it doesn’t exist, not in America
Applause for the English teacher who still speaks with a translator
More dutiful performances
More long speeches I can’t understand
Off to the doctor’s to unclog my left ear, on the way hearing, “Teberik edirem!” “Congratulations to you!”
Novruz
Springing to life, March 20 and 21
One, two, three bonfires stretch across our lawn. This is fire jumping, which culminates the weeks of Novruz.
Khanam announces we will jump over each fire, three times over for a prosperous year. I remind Khanam that if my leg burns I will be sent home, which would be pitiful, not prosperous. Khanam, having learned ‘pitiful’ hours before when we saw a child in a shop bawling for candy, reminds me that I am only here for two years. “Not pitiful Sasha. Fun.”
And so with this information, I gather my thoughts and conclude like I so often do here: Ok, everyone else is doing it, and no one’s dieing, at least that I see.
I watch Khanam jump the flames first. Her short stature and strong torso make me think, if given the chance, she could champion the Olympic Gold Metal in the 50k. Khanam’s physique is cute and suits her sweet character well. Still, every morning I see her downstairs doing pull-ups on the gas pipe (yet another disconcerting activity not questioned in Azerbaijan). Weeks ago while in the upstairs kitchen she told me it’s not to harness strength (why would she do that?) but to stretch her body up, up to be less like a five-year-old and more like a true adult. I laugh at this notion and say, “First of all Khanam, look at my body, I am an adult, and secondly, it doesn’t work.” “I saw it on TV,” she says, like I just told her the world is not round. (There was a time in American history when people stretched their bodies using elastic instruments sold on after-noon infomercials. That was just 50 years ago. In so many ways the people of Azerbaijan are at least half a century short of where America is; that is, if you don’t count the Ancient-Mesopotamian act of fire jumping.)
Khanam’s short legs take her over the fires like a baby gazelle. In less than 90 seconds she’s planted like Super Woman in front of my face. In between pants, “Ok Sasha, you go.”
My host father continues to build the fire with damp branches from the yard. The flames measure maybe three feet though they feel as tall as our two-storey house. I want to hold my breath and close my eyes and let an imaginary force carry me over the fires. I back up for a shot I hope will catapult me between each, but the first, second, third to the last jumps are awkward and off kilter: one leg dangles centimeters from the flame and the other makes small leaps on the grass to carry the weight of the rest of my body. “Oh my God!” and “Mommy!” come with each pathetic stretch. I bounce with my legs in an L-shape across the yard. I make it back and Khanam applauds with a laugh at my effort.
My host father, finished piling wood to my distress, stands to the side wondering why I’m so old yet know so little about life.
Novruz reminds me of several holidays at home. As Easter celebrates the vernal equinox and spring’s renewal of life, so does Novruz. Children even paint boiled eggs to display in baskets.
Although Novruz is celebrated by most Muslim nations, much like Halloween, it pre-dates current religion and culture. Kids wear masks and go trick-or-treating for nuts, baked goods and candy to drink with chai. (This version is much more dynamic—a hat is secretly thrown into a house, then children run from the door to hide. While the hat is being stuffed with the goods other children in the house may try to find where the child is hiding and who is behind the costume. The child secures his or her identity at all possible costs. Then the hat is placed in the yard to be snatched back from the masked candy thief.)
Like Christmas, Novruz is celebrated with heightened anticipation. It was the first holiday my host family in training spoke about, as Christmas is the first family gathering in so many American children’s memories. Decorations, laughter and baked goods subsist in every last drop of the day.
The bright lights and embers along our dirt road remind me of Independence Day. Khanam told me that no more than four years ago all the kids from the neighborhood gathered to jump the community-wide bonfires. Her mother would call them in at 11 pm, but they refused. They set rubbish and twigs ablaze far into the spring night, making wishes to the spirits of long ago. I was never really into the hullabaloo surrounding lighting anything on fire, but her story reminds of every summer on July 4th, two hours after hotdogs and a cool Pepsi, sitting on the Carmichael curb, with the sun partly behind the horizon, partly breaking through the big drifting clouds, watching the fireworks race from behind the trees to the sky.
If you ask an Azeri child why Novruz is celebrated, unlike Ramazan, he can’t pin down even close to a reason of why it could possibly be on the calendar. If pakhlava’s served, the history behind anything doesn’t matter. Isn’t this like so many holidays in America?
4/4/08
Safe in my Slumberjack in my new pipe rotting, electricity-sometimes, slightly-leaning-to-the-east apartment. Ah, what it’s like to be home.
After six months as Peace Corps Volunteers in Azerbaijan we can move out of host family’s and into a Peace-Corps approved rental unit.
With that, I moved into this old Soviet building on April Fool’s Day, and what a joke on me it was.
Pots and pans were caked in not cake, but dirt and grime and amber stickiness that’s only found—I don’t know, I don’t know how it gets on cooking ware. Vodka bottles dating from the early 19th century amassed the top half of the peeled cupboard. The sink and stove were plastered in dust as if a woman hasn’t been staying here once a month for the past three years. The potatoes were dusty, as was the saffron and licorice dried at the bottom of six metal Russian tins.
After intense boiling of pots and scrubbing of metal crevices, the three-day cleaning ordeal is over; in the kitchen, that is. Next is the toilet room, skipping the bathroom with plans to replace the brittle pipes, going on to my room where I’ll deal with dusty Cyrillic manuscripts and shake three carpet cutouts, the room adjacent needs a heavy dust-over, aside from a closet cleanout, and the room across from that needs a trash sweep of the whole refrigerator (and why wouldn’t the fridge be in the room with the coach?).
On the up-and-up, the building is a two-minute walk to my school. If neither of the buildings would fall apart while doing it, I could zip line from my classroom to my balcony.
I will miss my host family immeasurably, but homemade salsa and a messy room I will reclaim.
International Women’s Day
March 8th
Like Mother’s Day but for children, grandparents and single ladies, too
Lots of gifts, including:
six murraba or lemon saucers,
from a shy 7th-form student who asked his friend to hand me the unwrapped gift: a makeup kit with orange lipstick, hairspray and perfume that smells like baby wipes,
a porcelain plum covered candy dish depicting two Greek ladies entertaining a man holding a water jug, handmade by Hbast & Czjeks, since 1792,a blue mug and saucer proudly illustrating Mecca, contrary to Volunteer belief, not made in China but in the Czech Republic
A speech by the director, a long one as usual
Performances by kiddies, memorized dutifully like good post-Soviet Union children do
A quick something by me, about how International Women’s Day is sadly not celebrated in America, except for at some college campuses like SFSU where we speak about gender inequality in other nations but like it doesn’t exist, not in America
Applause for the English teacher who still speaks with a translator
More dutiful performances
More long speeches I can’t understand
Off to the doctor’s to unclog my left ear, on the way hearing, “Teberik edirem!” “Congratulations to you!”
Novruz
Springing to life, March 20 and 21
One, two, three bonfires stretch across our lawn. This is fire jumping, which culminates the weeks of Novruz.
Khanam announces we will jump over each fire, three times over for a prosperous year. I remind Khanam that if my leg burns I will be sent home, which would be pitiful, not prosperous. Khanam, having learned ‘pitiful’ hours before when we saw a child in a shop bawling for candy, reminds me that I am only here for two years. “Not pitiful Sasha. Fun.”
And so with this information, I gather my thoughts and conclude like I so often do here: Ok, everyone else is doing it, and no one’s dieing, at least that I see.
I watch Khanam jump the flames first. Her short stature and strong torso make me think, if given the chance, she could champion the Olympic Gold Metal in the 50k. Khanam’s physique is cute and suits her sweet character well. Still, every morning I see her downstairs doing pull-ups on the gas pipe (yet another disconcerting activity not questioned in Azerbaijan). Weeks ago while in the upstairs kitchen she told me it’s not to harness strength (why would she do that?) but to stretch her body up, up to be less like a five-year-old and more like a true adult. I laugh at this notion and say, “First of all Khanam, look at my body, I am an adult, and secondly, it doesn’t work.” “I saw it on TV,” she says, like I just told her the world is not round. (There was a time in American history when people stretched their bodies using elastic instruments sold on after-noon infomercials. That was just 50 years ago. In so many ways the people of Azerbaijan are at least half a century short of where America is; that is, if you don’t count the Ancient-Mesopotamian act of fire jumping.)
Khanam’s short legs take her over the fires like a baby gazelle. In less than 90 seconds she’s planted like Super Woman in front of my face. In between pants, “Ok Sasha, you go.”
My host father continues to build the fire with damp branches from the yard. The flames measure maybe three feet though they feel as tall as our two-storey house. I want to hold my breath and close my eyes and let an imaginary force carry me over the fires. I back up for a shot I hope will catapult me between each, but the first, second, third to the last jumps are awkward and off kilter: one leg dangles centimeters from the flame and the other makes small leaps on the grass to carry the weight of the rest of my body. “Oh my God!” and “Mommy!” come with each pathetic stretch. I bounce with my legs in an L-shape across the yard. I make it back and Khanam applauds with a laugh at my effort.
My host father, finished piling wood to my distress, stands to the side wondering why I’m so old yet know so little about life.
Novruz reminds me of several holidays at home. As Easter celebrates the vernal equinox and spring’s renewal of life, so does Novruz. Children even paint boiled eggs to display in baskets.
Although Novruz is celebrated by most Muslim nations, much like Halloween, it pre-dates current religion and culture. Kids wear masks and go trick-or-treating for nuts, baked goods and candy to drink with chai. (This version is much more dynamic—a hat is secretly thrown into a house, then children run from the door to hide. While the hat is being stuffed with the goods other children in the house may try to find where the child is hiding and who is behind the costume. The child secures his or her identity at all possible costs. Then the hat is placed in the yard to be snatched back from the masked candy thief.)
Like Christmas, Novruz is celebrated with heightened anticipation. It was the first holiday my host family in training spoke about, as Christmas is the first family gathering in so many American children’s memories. Decorations, laughter and baked goods subsist in every last drop of the day.
The bright lights and embers along our dirt road remind me of Independence Day. Khanam told me that no more than four years ago all the kids from the neighborhood gathered to jump the community-wide bonfires. Her mother would call them in at 11 pm, but they refused. They set rubbish and twigs ablaze far into the spring night, making wishes to the spirits of long ago. I was never really into the hullabaloo surrounding lighting anything on fire, but her story reminds of every summer on July 4th, two hours after hotdogs and a cool Pepsi, sitting on the Carmichael curb, with the sun partly behind the horizon, partly breaking through the big drifting clouds, watching the fireworks race from behind the trees to the sky.
If you ask an Azeri child why Novruz is celebrated, unlike Ramazan, he can’t pin down even close to a reason of why it could possibly be on the calendar. If pakhlava’s served, the history behind anything doesn’t matter. Isn’t this like so many holidays in America?
4/4/08
Safe in my Slumberjack in my new pipe rotting, electricity-sometimes, slightly-leaning-to-the-east apartment. Ah, what it’s like to be home.
After six months as Peace Corps Volunteers in Azerbaijan we can move out of host family’s and into a Peace-Corps approved rental unit.
With that, I moved into this old Soviet building on April Fool’s Day, and what a joke on me it was.
Pots and pans were caked in not cake, but dirt and grime and amber stickiness that’s only found—I don’t know, I don’t know how it gets on cooking ware. Vodka bottles dating from the early 19th century amassed the top half of the peeled cupboard. The sink and stove were plastered in dust as if a woman hasn’t been staying here once a month for the past three years. The potatoes were dusty, as was the saffron and licorice dried at the bottom of six metal Russian tins.
After intense boiling of pots and scrubbing of metal crevices, the three-day cleaning ordeal is over; in the kitchen, that is. Next is the toilet room, skipping the bathroom with plans to replace the brittle pipes, going on to my room where I’ll deal with dusty Cyrillic manuscripts and shake three carpet cutouts, the room adjacent needs a heavy dust-over, aside from a closet cleanout, and the room across from that needs a trash sweep of the whole refrigerator (and why wouldn’t the fridge be in the room with the coach?).
On the up-and-up, the building is a two-minute walk to my school. If neither of the buildings would fall apart while doing it, I could zip line from my classroom to my balcony.
I will miss my host family immeasurably, but homemade salsa and a messy room I will reclaim.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
3/10
He tosses a wheely to harness my attention. “Salam Sasha Muellim!” My fifth-form student’s round dark cheeks are illuminated in the sun, which has been burning like this for three weeks. There’s been a cool breeze off the Caspian with sun that’s taken a trip from Santa Barbara to my village.
“Salam Rasim! How are you?” I expect diligent students like Rasim, six months into classroom time with a native English teacher, to store useful phrases like “how are you?” in their little noggins. But Rasim looks to the ground. I repeat the greeting in Azerbaijani: “Necesen, Rasim?”
“Yaxshiyem Sasha!”
“Good, Rasim. O ‘good’ dir.”
“Good,” he whispers, practicing to the air. He nods, popping his front tire as if avoiding a passing turtle in the road.
Though the weather is still cool there are bursts of light and with it that summer smell, which reeks of nearby garbage.
Girls pass, still dressed from school with their white collared button-downs, pleated black skirts and bunched scrunchies that hold common braids. We wave, with giggles from both sides.
Rounding the corner, passed the Internet café without online access (though the place carries several versions of Auto Theft), I wave to the storeowner whose warmth pervades him. “Netirsen, Sasha?” Like most Azeri men he wears his thigh-length black leather coat, black slacks and shined shoes in an environment in California that would be saved for tattered Levi’s and a t-shirt.
“Yaxshiyem.”
“Netirsuz?” I try, still finagling with the suffix for my elders.
“Yaxshiyem.”
I kick the gravel rock, torn up from the broken road that was paved less than a year ago. The storeowner ahead has bragged to the whole village that I buy credit for my cell phone from him exclusively. “Hello, Sasha,” he says with less confidence than he should. I wave to him and the chatting men, who after all these months maintain a look of confusion when I pass. They are all dressed alike.
There is at least 15 feet before I hit three more convenient stores and the brick skeleton of the early 20th-century bazaar. White grocery bags dangle from leafless branches posed over the building. The bags almost reveal the splendor seen in American Beauty; but this here is real life. They are a distraction from the way winter can mend the earth.
I run my hand along the rusted gas pipe free to whatever a 14-year-old boy might do to it, and notice a woman in the street flailing her arms, as if warning me of an oncoming car.
“Sasha mextub var!” The post lady announces to the neighborhood that is a letter for me in the tiny, pink, hexagonal building facing the road. All village post offices are like this, the shape and size endears at first, though it quickly becomes another square structure. The post lady’s hair is pulled up in a gold and black clip and her chubby old cheeks rise above her crooked chin. Though my Azeri has improved exponentially in past months and all my packages come from America, she speaks to me in Russian. “I don’t know Russian,” I say in Azerbaijani. I cross my fingers that it’s from Eric, though she pulls out the bi-weekly mailer: an update from the office of staff comings and goings, a note from the country director, and two Newsweek magazines to keep me moderately informed about American politics and entertainment.
With a lofty “salamat!,” the formal goodbye, I step out into the world whose color, with the exception of the spring sky and the rose post office, is perpetually dull. Into this fading winter, hues of brown layer the earth: dirt, clay brick, exhaust from white Ladas and dried, tired branches. On my way to anywhere, though this day on my way to Baku, I walk down this same semi-paved road in this syndrome of plain. There are few moments I don’t realize this, and what it does to my soul is only thwarted by salams.
He tosses a wheely to harness my attention. “Salam Sasha Muellim!” My fifth-form student’s round dark cheeks are illuminated in the sun, which has been burning like this for three weeks. There’s been a cool breeze off the Caspian with sun that’s taken a trip from Santa Barbara to my village.
“Salam Rasim! How are you?” I expect diligent students like Rasim, six months into classroom time with a native English teacher, to store useful phrases like “how are you?” in their little noggins. But Rasim looks to the ground. I repeat the greeting in Azerbaijani: “Necesen, Rasim?”
“Yaxshiyem Sasha!”
“Good, Rasim. O ‘good’ dir.”
“Good,” he whispers, practicing to the air. He nods, popping his front tire as if avoiding a passing turtle in the road.
Though the weather is still cool there are bursts of light and with it that summer smell, which reeks of nearby garbage.
Girls pass, still dressed from school with their white collared button-downs, pleated black skirts and bunched scrunchies that hold common braids. We wave, with giggles from both sides.
Rounding the corner, passed the Internet café without online access (though the place carries several versions of Auto Theft), I wave to the storeowner whose warmth pervades him. “Netirsen, Sasha?” Like most Azeri men he wears his thigh-length black leather coat, black slacks and shined shoes in an environment in California that would be saved for tattered Levi’s and a t-shirt.
“Yaxshiyem.”
“Netirsuz?” I try, still finagling with the suffix for my elders.
“Yaxshiyem.”
I kick the gravel rock, torn up from the broken road that was paved less than a year ago. The storeowner ahead has bragged to the whole village that I buy credit for my cell phone from him exclusively. “Hello, Sasha,” he says with less confidence than he should. I wave to him and the chatting men, who after all these months maintain a look of confusion when I pass. They are all dressed alike.
There is at least 15 feet before I hit three more convenient stores and the brick skeleton of the early 20th-century bazaar. White grocery bags dangle from leafless branches posed over the building. The bags almost reveal the splendor seen in American Beauty; but this here is real life. They are a distraction from the way winter can mend the earth.
I run my hand along the rusted gas pipe free to whatever a 14-year-old boy might do to it, and notice a woman in the street flailing her arms, as if warning me of an oncoming car.
“Sasha mextub var!” The post lady announces to the neighborhood that is a letter for me in the tiny, pink, hexagonal building facing the road. All village post offices are like this, the shape and size endears at first, though it quickly becomes another square structure. The post lady’s hair is pulled up in a gold and black clip and her chubby old cheeks rise above her crooked chin. Though my Azeri has improved exponentially in past months and all my packages come from America, she speaks to me in Russian. “I don’t know Russian,” I say in Azerbaijani. I cross my fingers that it’s from Eric, though she pulls out the bi-weekly mailer: an update from the office of staff comings and goings, a note from the country director, and two Newsweek magazines to keep me moderately informed about American politics and entertainment.
With a lofty “salamat!,” the formal goodbye, I step out into the world whose color, with the exception of the spring sky and the rose post office, is perpetually dull. Into this fading winter, hues of brown layer the earth: dirt, clay brick, exhaust from white Ladas and dried, tired branches. On my way to anywhere, though this day on my way to Baku, I walk down this same semi-paved road in this syndrome of plain. There are few moments I don’t realize this, and what it does to my soul is only thwarted by salams.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Sorry I haven't posted in so long. I'll have my own place soon, and I'll get internet access. Love and miss you all.
2/23
Gosh, I wonder what Sasha’s doing right now (That’s what I’d be thinking if I were you!)
Monday-Friday, for the most part
7:15am Wake up, roll over, snooze for five minutes, I unzip my Slumberjack, hating my body as it adjusts to cold
7:30am Sneak pee cup out of room to toilet 100 feet down stairs and into the frosty yard, wash my hands in shower room next door, grab pan for scrambled eggs or bowl and spoon for oatmeal from outside downstairs kitchen
7:36am Appreciate consolidation of places and goods in American homes
7:59am Wash boots because dirty shoes=judgment from the children, the teachers say
8am Walk to school, keeping my puppy away from students because they’ve never known a kind dog, and keeping my puppy away from sheep, cows and geese and other animals that could potentially harm him since like the children he doesn’t know any better
8:20am Pull my co-teacher away from gossip so we can teach the children
8:25am-11:30am (Seasonally shortened to 35-minute classes! Not an exclamation mark because I like it!) Teach really amazingly bright students from amazingly retarded textbooks
11:30am Walk ahead of teachers while I try to understand local gossip, avoiding mud puddles
12:30pm Eat lunch, probably a soup
2:30-3:30pm Beginner or Advanced Conversation Club, or English Writing Club (new!)
3:30pm-4:30pm Tutor overzealous 20-something trying to get a job with an oil company on Mon. and Tues., and two cute Russian-speaking eight-year-olds on Wed. and Fri.
5pm Read or think about writing
6:30pm Eat dinner, probably a soup
7pm Watch movie/work on quilt/read
10pm One last venture to toilet
11pm Slumberjack and me till I have to use pee cup at approximately 2:13 am
1/14
Parsley, basil, garlic, chili and oregano are the ultimate offense to an Azeri host mother. Eric sent me spices for my own cooking, dating two months from today when I can move into an apartment as a single gal and cook all-American food all the time. Butter, sunflower oil, Crisco, salt and sugar overcompensate for the lack of natural herbs and spices this country produces. So my host mother pretends not to stare as I avoid the bread, also a compensatory food, and sprinkle two of the McCormick Tabletop Spices onto my nothing mashed potatoes. The sweet basil and dried garlic with a little istiot, pepper, spice my life like nothing I ever appreciated in America.
12/16
A week in December dinner menu:
Scrambled eggs. Cabbage dolma. Russian oatmeal, not like Quaker’s. Bosbosch, a beef-based soup boiled with potato and rice mixed in a beef ball. Mutton soup. Scrambled eggs. Bosbosch. Chicken with rice soup. Attempted over easy, resulted scrambled eggs. Mashed potatoes. Told host mother I am tired of bosbosch: boiled potatoes and chicken. Oatmeal with cherry murraba, not so bad. Pumpkin puree, no problem there. Grape leaf dolma. Oatmeal with murraba. Spaghetti noodles lathered with oil topped with jarred tomato sauce and onions. Fried fish. Scrambled eggs at the request of my host mother who says they’re going bad. Chicken meat patties with potatoes, my favorite. Bosbosch, like she forgot about it. Oatmeal. Mashed potatoes. Cabbage dolma (we rotate). Oatmeal with brown sugar from CitiMart. Spaghetti, same but caresses my tummy like home. Mutton soup with onions.
11/1
I’ve taken to eating creamy peanut butter with my index finger, straight from the jar. In America I eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches, not fried. But bananas here are hard to come by, costly and shitty mostly. Peanut butter can be found in CitiMart in Baku and maybe large regional town centers, but not in mine. So under the covers I dip my finger, far into the stronghold of the plastic Reese’s jar. In my chilly bedroom I try not to concentrate on the cream stuck to my arm hairs or the health of matter. I hide the container when my host sister passes. On second thought, looking at the food we eat, it wouldn’t faze her. Though, half the fun is knowing I would never play like this at home. I’d add banana for potassium.
This peanut butter was sent from Eric’s mom. I opened it without permission from Eric and half way through, saliva caressed on the jar sides, he told me to finish it off.
2/23
Gosh, I wonder what Sasha’s doing right now (That’s what I’d be thinking if I were you!)
Monday-Friday, for the most part
7:15am Wake up, roll over, snooze for five minutes, I unzip my Slumberjack, hating my body as it adjusts to cold
7:30am Sneak pee cup out of room to toilet 100 feet down stairs and into the frosty yard, wash my hands in shower room next door, grab pan for scrambled eggs or bowl and spoon for oatmeal from outside downstairs kitchen
7:36am Appreciate consolidation of places and goods in American homes
7:59am Wash boots because dirty shoes=judgment from the children, the teachers say
8am Walk to school, keeping my puppy away from students because they’ve never known a kind dog, and keeping my puppy away from sheep, cows and geese and other animals that could potentially harm him since like the children he doesn’t know any better
8:20am Pull my co-teacher away from gossip so we can teach the children
8:25am-11:30am (Seasonally shortened to 35-minute classes! Not an exclamation mark because I like it!) Teach really amazingly bright students from amazingly retarded textbooks
11:30am Walk ahead of teachers while I try to understand local gossip, avoiding mud puddles
12:30pm Eat lunch, probably a soup
2:30-3:30pm Beginner or Advanced Conversation Club, or English Writing Club (new!)
3:30pm-4:30pm Tutor overzealous 20-something trying to get a job with an oil company on Mon. and Tues., and two cute Russian-speaking eight-year-olds on Wed. and Fri.
5pm Read or think about writing
6:30pm Eat dinner, probably a soup
7pm Watch movie/work on quilt/read
10pm One last venture to toilet
11pm Slumberjack and me till I have to use pee cup at approximately 2:13 am
1/14
Parsley, basil, garlic, chili and oregano are the ultimate offense to an Azeri host mother. Eric sent me spices for my own cooking, dating two months from today when I can move into an apartment as a single gal and cook all-American food all the time. Butter, sunflower oil, Crisco, salt and sugar overcompensate for the lack of natural herbs and spices this country produces. So my host mother pretends not to stare as I avoid the bread, also a compensatory food, and sprinkle two of the McCormick Tabletop Spices onto my nothing mashed potatoes. The sweet basil and dried garlic with a little istiot, pepper, spice my life like nothing I ever appreciated in America.
12/16
A week in December dinner menu:
Scrambled eggs. Cabbage dolma. Russian oatmeal, not like Quaker’s. Bosbosch, a beef-based soup boiled with potato and rice mixed in a beef ball. Mutton soup. Scrambled eggs. Bosbosch. Chicken with rice soup. Attempted over easy, resulted scrambled eggs. Mashed potatoes. Told host mother I am tired of bosbosch: boiled potatoes and chicken. Oatmeal with cherry murraba, not so bad. Pumpkin puree, no problem there. Grape leaf dolma. Oatmeal with murraba. Spaghetti noodles lathered with oil topped with jarred tomato sauce and onions. Fried fish. Scrambled eggs at the request of my host mother who says they’re going bad. Chicken meat patties with potatoes, my favorite. Bosbosch, like she forgot about it. Oatmeal. Mashed potatoes. Cabbage dolma (we rotate). Oatmeal with brown sugar from CitiMart. Spaghetti, same but caresses my tummy like home. Mutton soup with onions.
11/1
I’ve taken to eating creamy peanut butter with my index finger, straight from the jar. In America I eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches, not fried. But bananas here are hard to come by, costly and shitty mostly. Peanut butter can be found in CitiMart in Baku and maybe large regional town centers, but not in mine. So under the covers I dip my finger, far into the stronghold of the plastic Reese’s jar. In my chilly bedroom I try not to concentrate on the cream stuck to my arm hairs or the health of matter. I hide the container when my host sister passes. On second thought, looking at the food we eat, it wouldn’t faze her. Though, half the fun is knowing I would never play like this at home. I’d add banana for potassium.
This peanut butter was sent from Eric’s mom. I opened it without permission from Eric and half way through, saliva caressed on the jar sides, he told me to finish it off.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)