June-July 2005 PST Davechi
Well, I made it, hope we don’t all get sent home. We have a volunteer
who just joined our group from Uzbekistan. Peace Corps evacuated there
because of political unrest.
We were warned to look out for political demonstrations, but so far
there haven’t been any in our little town. I am living in Davechi, a
small town, about three hours south of the capital, Baku. (That is
three hours on bumpy, unpaved roads most of the way, in an ancient
mini bus, equipped with more seats than you can imagine.
Everyday there is language training, I am in a group of just four, all
of us are business trainees. Wednesday we start our community-economic
development training.
The town reminds me a lot of central Mexico, most houses are built on
a couryard model, with walls lining the street and big metal doors
that open into a dirt courtyard. Chickens, ducks and geese wander down
the sides of the roads, and this time of year they are often followed
by their babies. One of the neighbors on my blocks keeps a small flock
of sheep in their courtyard. Every morning I wake up to roosters
crowing and lambs bleating, and cows mooing. Yet, this is a town. Oh
yeah, there is a lot of trash around, but you get used to it after a
while.
I live in a small house with a mother, Esmira, 47,: father, Ali, 52,
and two children, Vafa, a girl who is 16 and just graduated from high
school (11th grade here) and Kanan, a 12-year-old boy. They are middle
class by town standards. Our courtyard has fruit trees: peach,
mulberry, fig and something I don’t recognize and lots of huge
rosebushes.
We have an outbuilding with a shower (sort-of) and a pit toilet. No,
they are in totally separate rooms. My room is pretty nice, it’s
upstairs, and has three windows, two Azerbaijani carpets and a cabinet
along one wall that is full of china. Every house, it seems, no matter
how poor has a ton of fancy china. They do a lot of guesting here,
it’s a very important part of the culture.
The pace of life is so much slower, here, we have class, we go home
for lunch, we go back to class and get off at 5. Dinner is at 7 or 8
and then I usually sit with Esmira, my host sister (not mother,
because she is actually younger than me) and watch Spanish soap operas
dubbed badly into Azerbaijani and music videos. She is very patient
with me and will sit for an hour with my dictionary and try to
communicate simple things to me. I don’t really know where Ali goes,
probably to a tea house. Most of the men here seem to sit for hours
talking in these little cafes (no women allowed, unless in a big group
escorted by men, and mostly only crazy Americans would do that.) The
tea houses also serve beer and vodka.
People drive like maniacs, as fast as they can go, and no regard for
people on foot. Luckily few people have cars here, so it’s not so bad.
Mostly at night, I notice how quiet it is, no ever-present hum of the
interstate. I need to go out and look at the stars, since there is
virtually no light pollution.
This is like going back to childhood, we need permission to leave our
town, we are not allowed out after dark without our host family or
unless we are in a group with permission from the staff, so mostly
everyone goes home and does stuff with their family, which is of
course, how we are learning to acclimate and speak the language.
To me it feels as if months have gone by, while to you it hasn’t even
been two weeks.
I am learning the language pretty rapidly, but not as fast as I would like.
Things here are not as plushy as home, but I am far from suffering any
hardships. The toughest thing is missing my Alix and little beeble. I
can’t even look at their pictures without crying. Other than that, I
am so happy to be here and doing this. It doesn’t seem possible that
in just seven more weeks of training we will be off to our permanent
sites and will begin our jobs.
Our trainers are a native Azeri, Elmir and a really cool woman from
Oregon, Ann, who just got back last year from spending two years in
Mongolia as a Peace Corps business advisor. They have 30 potential
jobs for us 14 volunteers and will be trying to match us the openings
as we go through training.
Oh yeah, the food here is seasonal, so you eat what is growing. And
right now, it is tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, onions, potatoes,
herbs. At breakfast yogurt and bread, eggs if you want, lunch – bread,
cukes, tomatoes and something else, always involving lard or frying.
Dinner, bread, cukes, tomatoes, more frying and lard.
It’s all fine, I have already lost some weight, we walk to get
everywhere, and will undoubtedly lose more, because the food is just
not that interesting, so I am eating just enough for sustenance. A
good habit to get into.
As you can see, we do have internet. Actually, the internet cafe in
this town has an ethernet connection, so it’s somewhat fast fast. I come here every
other day or so. So please write back with news of yourselves when you
feel the urge, I would love to hear what is happening at home.
Hope you are all well,
Carol in Azerland
