These pix took about 30mn to upload. Hope they can be seen.


First is my host-bro/counterpart and I monkeying about.











This is the Pink Lake in Masazir(between Sumgayit and Baku). Its a salt lake that is less than a meter deep at its deepest but stretches a few kilometers across. The only thing that can survive in it is a microbe wich causes the pink hue. Folk collect the salt from the lake by shoveling it into trucks and donkey carts.











Here is a random pic of me taken on Dec 5th, the day of the LPI and Repeal Day in America.








Finally a pic outside the McD's in Baku on our first trip. Charlie and John are rather uncertain if they really do "R heart McDonalds" but the fries were enjoyed by all.

SITE VISIT - Quba without Qastro

Luckily I live next to the highway that runs straight to Quba and 5mn from my
house is the marshrut stop. From this stop a direct marshrut to Qube runs
whenever it gets full. I left my house at 10:30am and the marshrut left
within 30mn. Perfect timing. Theres alot of construction on that highway now
so it took about 3hrs. When the construction is done it will be a fairly nice
2 lane highway and the trip should take less than 2hrs.
Imagine a minivan running as fast as its 4cyl engine can take it down a 2lane
slab of concrete with no shoulders, passing every car, semi, and dumptruck it can.
Playing chicken with the oncoming traffic wich is doing the same thing.
Both sides swerving back into their own lanes at the last second.
Periodically we passed the wreck of an accident and we saw 2 large lorrys
that had fallen of the side of the slab and tipped over onto their sides
because theres is a 1 foot drop down into a shoulder of loose sand.
The countryside reminds me alot of South Dakota near the Badlands; dry, dusty,
with some rocky cliffs and hills - though not quite mountains. Much like the
area surrounding Beijing though greener. Not many trees but lots of shrubbery.

Within 30mns of Quba the scenery changed alot. The highway was lined with birch
trees and farmers booths. Some selling veggies but most selling the local
specialty, apples. Every variety and color of apple imaginable available.
It looks just like northern Wisconsin if you replace our forests with their
mountains. Good country.

Soon we arrived in the center of Quba. A pretty place, much cleaner than
Tagiyev or Sumgayit, with a comfortable small town feel. I got off the
marshrut called my counterpart and waited for him to arrive. Just as I was
about to find the nearest convenience store a very curious police officer
came over and inquired about my welfare and interests. I thanked him for
his interest and told him all was well, that I would be working with the
government in this town and that my friend would be coming for me soon. My
Azerbaijani still isnt very good...indeed, I would be hard pressed to argue
with a 4 year old...my explanation seemed to concern the officer and he,
most graciously, insisted I come to the station with him to meet his commander.
Much as I would have loved the opportunity to network with the local
constabulary I thought it important to meet my counterpart as planned so I
called my friend the PC Security Director again to help translate. As they
chatted with each other my counterpart and the Direktor of the Ministry of
Economic Development - Quba/Xachmas arrived. They all chatted for a few
minutes and it was decided I really must take a rain-check on the officer's
nice offer.

Turns out the direktor is a cool old guy who had lived/studied in China for
3 months so he speaks a bit of Chinese that he likes to share. He is fluent
in Azerbaijani and Russian and also speaks "Lezki", the language of a local
ethnic group. Not to mention some Arabic and Farsi, some of the local version
of Hebrew because he lives in the Jewish quarter of Quba, and his English
is atleast equal to my Azerbaijani.

I'll be homestaying with a family that had a volunteer stay with them before.
Indeed the previous volunteer stayed with them for his full 2year tour so I
suppose they must be fairly good folk. Theyve a big 2 story house with plenty
big cast-iron gas fireplaces(pech) that keep the place warm. A big screen tv
with sattalite. I can watch FOX News - Turkey wich is a bit strange....still
waiting to see a voiceover version of Bill O'Reilly. Ive only found two
stations with English language news; AlJazeera and "Supreme Master"....
AlJazeera first - forget what youve heard this is a fairly quality news station.
Far less slanted and more hard news than FOX. No "missing pretty white girl" stories
like CNN. Interesting, unlike MSNBC. And everyone has a smarmy British accent like
BBC.
"Supreme Master" is a religious station. Not Christian or Muslim but......Vegan.
Yes, Vegan isnt a religion but Veganism, love of animals and nature,
and absolute reverence of "The Supreme Master ???????" seem to be their only tenents.
The Supreme Master seems to be a Formosan(Sri Lankan?) woman, who grew up with a
mix of Buddhist and Hinduism, moved to Florida sometime around 1990, and has created
a religeon with branches across the world. They seem to be especially big in Germany.
Anyhow, her TV station runs 24hrs a day running plays of her books, or shows about
global warming and the health/eco benifits of Veganism(Did U know that it takes
330gallons of water to make a single meal of beef, 2XXgall for a chicken meal, but
only 98gall to make a vegan meal of rice, tofu and veggies?....then they show
glaciers and ice caps melting....seems a mixed message to me.), and they play the
happy news from around the world. They dont show anything sad or talk about problems,
they just talk about success stories, political prisoners being freed, happy international
agreements. The coolest thing about all of this is that its 90% English but more
importantly they have subtitles for a minimum of 10 languages translating
everything at all times. From top to bottom its usually Mandarin & Cantonese
Chinese, Korean, English, Vietnamese, Azerbaijani/Turkish, German, French,
Portugese, Spanish, Malaysian, Arabic, Farsi, and others from time to time.
Its fascinating to be able to read that many languages all saying the same
bullshit all at once.

Forgive the tangent, moving on. They have a small garden area with one persimon(?)
tree and 2 chickens. Probly some space for a few veggies in the summer.
All in all its quite nice. My only complaint is that they have an outhouse
squatty-potty. Its not the squatty that really bugs me its that from my room
I have to walk down the hall, down the stairs, threw the family room(were folk often
sleep in the winter cause its the warmest room in the house), and go outside
to the potty every single time I wanna pee. When you drink as much tea as I do
this can be a bit exasperating. Especially since there is a toilet and sink that
have been installed in a corner next to my room but the tank hasnt been installed
on the toilet and the water is turned off to the sink because its so cold in that
part of the hallway that the pipes would freeze. Oh, and they havent been walled
off yet so evry time I gotta make a potty run I see that toilet laughing at me with
its gapping toilet seat grin in the corner of the hall.

The family are all good folk. The father, R, is a music teacher and owns his own instrument
shop. He has a workshop in the shed where he spends much of his time repairing used
instruments; accordions mostly. He speaks a few words of English & German, not to mention
being fluent in Russian and Lezgi. The mother, X, is a housewife. She does all the
cooking, cleaning, etc. She is master of all things inside the house. The sister, G,
is a high school student whose favorite subject is math and understands a bit of English.
She hopes to go to the Economics University in Baku. The host brother is also my counterpart.
He is in his latter mid 20s. Works at the Ministry of Economic Development and is partner
in a marketing firm. Works constantly on economic research projects that have him
running around town and the region almost all day. And there is another brother who seems
to be married and I dont seem him very often.

During the site visit I went to my office a few times. Was introduced to all the folk
there. I was also introduced to all the staff of the Transpaerncy-Azerbaijan office
accross the hall from the Ministry. The direktor there is a cousin of my host brother
and they all get along quite well. The AZ5 volunteer in town does a number of
conversation classes at the offices there and theyve invited me to do work there.
Best part is theyve got hi-speed(256kbs) internet with 2 computers free for public
use and which I can hook my laptop up to. Thinkin I might talk to them about
hooking up an old wi-fi box and creating northern Azerbaijan's first hotspot.
It wont help most folk because most dont have laptops with wi-fi but it'll help
both our offices alot. Ive also met the direktor of the marketing firm my
host-bro works with and hope to do some work with them. They also have nice
offices and internet I can use. Was introduced to some people who work at a local
micro-finance institution. Who knows where those connections will take me.
Was also introduced to a few local lawyers, some students, and most importantly
(to my stomach) the owner of the best doner resteraunt in town; best doner in
Azerbaijan according to the notoriously inaccurate Lonely Planet(dont get the LP for
AZ, get the book by Mark Elliot.

-TO BE CONTINUED-

"DETAINED FOR QUESTIONING"

-I will try to present only the facts, keeping all opinions to myself.-

We arranged for 4 of us to meet on the beach in Sumgayit with the plan to hike
from there, along the beach as much as possible, to my home in Tagiyev where
could have dinner. We met as planned, purchased some items to make a picnic
lunch and set out down the beach.
At one place we found the "Titanic" a ship from the Soviet times that has been
grounded on the beach and has become a rusted-out hulk, half-sunk in the
ocean, apparently popular with fisherman and tourists.
Further down the beach we found some "streams" and impassable swampland so we
walked into the city, found the main road between the two cities and followed it.
Its about 25mn by marshrut....approximately 7km. Roughly halfway there is
the regional power station and a few large factories. One of these factories
is near the beach and has a line a few rusty cooling towers that look like
those in the Simpsons and beyond that a tall tower that has flame shooting out
the top like a methane vent on an oil field or refinery which can be seen for
miles around.
As tourists do(oops, that's opinion isn't it?), we took pictures of all the interesting things we had never seen
before. After one of our number took a picture of the afore mentioned towers
with his large camera we discovered that a police officer was calling out to
us from behind. We spoke with him for a bit and learned that taking pictures
of the factory was forbid en. We thanked him for his concern and for teaching
us of this prohibition and prepared to continue our hike. Another officer came
in a car, then another, then a few plainclothes men. Our language abilities being
insufficient for the situation we called the PC Security Director. The
Security Director spoke with the police over the phone and our cameras were
taken from our possession. There was some confusion about what we were to do.
Another phone call was made and the Security Director said we were to accompany the police officer in his car
to the local station to fill out an incident report, that there was no problem and
it would all be taken care of quickly. The 4 of us piled into the backseat of
an old Russian Lada that was big enough for 2 and we rode down what would have been the rest of our hiking path,
threw my town to the police station on the other side.
At the police station we met a number of police officers who asked a number of
questions. Our language abilities were tested...the officers ability to speak
English was tested. We had had the same polite conversation with a large number
of officers. We had the same conversation with a number of officers all asking
roughly the same questions. One officer after the other, 5-8 officers in all, with
other listening and occasionally throwing in their own question. Every officer had to
ask for himself the same questions and take notes in his own notebook.
After a few more phone calls it was determined that our Security
Director and Staff Director would have to come to the station from Baku to
facilitate the events.
Tea was not available in the police station so we partook of our picnic lunch
and drinks in the offices of the police station. Though tempted we did not
drink the bottle of wine we had purchased to accompany our lunch.
3hours after meeting the first officer and 2.25hrs after arriving at the station
our representatives arrived to facilitate and translate. Incident reports
were finished and after our representatives fully translated its contents and
assured of its acceptability we each signed individual reports, the pictures
were deleted from the large camera and the we were free to go. Though requested
we were not allowed to keep copies of our incident reports.

When I arrived home I explained the events of the day to my host family. Not
knowing much of the vocabulary I had to do allot of miming. There was much
laughing.


One week later I began to receive text messages from various sources; the
national news service had reported in print and on tv that 4 Americans had
been detained for taking pictures of "strategic sites" and suspicious activities.
While the name of the organization with which we are affiliated was not mentioned our
names were published and said on tv(mostly incorrectly).

To clear up some questions folk have asked -
We were NOT arrested.
No handcuffs were involved.
We never even got to see the cells. We sat in offices the entire time.
From the first cop encounter to walking out of the station it all took 5-6hrs.

LINKS & ARTICLE:
US citizens photographed government facility in Azerbaijan arrested

[ 21 Nov 2008 18:35 ]
Baku.
Hafiz Heydarov-APA. US citizens photographed the government facility were arrested in Azerbaijan.

Law-enforcement bodies told APA Corey Stevens, 27, Brandon Rene Houser, 26, Amanda Kay Bruno, 23 and Chris Paul, 28 were detained while taking pictures of Synthesis-Rubber Factory of state-run Azerkimya Company in Sumgayit.
The US citizens were sent to the Ministry of National Security after the preliminary testimony.

Sumgayit City Police Office confirmed the fact and told APA that the US citizens were detained for photographing the Synthesis-Rubber Factory several days ago and sent to the Ministry of National Security.




This is a link to the article:

http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=92415

For the perspective of another of us miscreants go to - Corey's Blog


Yup.

Site Announcement -or- "You live here, is good."

Before training I tried to do as much research about Azerbaijan as I could...
not much info about the country is out there(in English anyhow). After seeing
how the summer high temps could regularly reach 40+ I knew I wanted to be in
the northern mountains where it was cooler. But thinking on the job was
more difficult. CED here works in 5 major areas; NGOs, MicroFinance, Banks,
Agriculture & Government. Ag & banks didnt interest me. MicroFinance seemed
very interesting particularly as the originator of the concept just got the
Nobel last year. NGOs are a potluck, some have interesting missions & are
effective some don't/aren't. Government is the newest area for CED and has
only had a few volunteers thusfar. Most havent fully finished their service
for a variety of reasons. Though this doesnt necessarily speek to the the
position as the same is true of most areas of Peace Corps. Family
emergencies, health issues, better offers, etc. come up all the time. But
what the government job does lack is a clear definition. Volunteers who
get into this area generally have great independence in finding projects
and work to do. After reading the blog "Ash in Lankeran" I knew this was
what I want to do. The freedom and need to use one's entreprenuerial spirit
was extremly appealing....doesnt hurt that it also fits into my interest to
work in internetional law, business or diplomacy as the next path in life.

So, the same day as giving the presentation and taking the LPI I had a
meeting with the CED director about where I might be placed. Like the
placement process in applying for PC the applicant/trainee doesnt have much
say in the matter. Issues include the needs and job description of the
host organization (the organization which the Volunteer ostensibly works
for/with) and the availability of host families(some families wont take
men/women, no old folk or no youngins, no vegetarians, whatever), the
Volunteers health condition and availability of care, etc.
All these needs take precedence over the desires of the prospective
Volunteer. This being said they say they will try to accomodate ones
desires as much as possible and a number of us have the same or similar
qualifications.
Had the meeting. Told him exactly what I wanted, why I wanted it, and why
I thought I was qualified for the job and to my surprise the answer was
basically "OK".
Two weeks later all the CED and YD trainees(about 30 of us, no one's
been ASed or ETed yet, a PC Azerbaijan record!) all met in Sumgayit and
after a day of seminars, presentations, speeches and other official
tension builders they unfurled a big map and started announcing cities and
calling names. We walked up, got an informational envelope, and stuck
a pin in the map.

From December 11th I'll be going to the northern mountian city of Quba
working with the Quba/Xachmas Regional Branch of the Ministry of Economic
Development. Ya'll can Wiki search it as well as I can tell ya but Quba is
in the north is a medium large city or AZ about the same size and population
as River Falls, the city where I went to Uni.
Nestled at the feet of the Caucuses Mountains just south of the border with
Russia(Dagestan and Chechnya) and east of Georgia, its a temperate
zone like Wisconsin wich is warm in the summer and gets lots of snow in the
winter. It has Azerbaijan's largest(only) major Jewish community, the Region
is home to the town of the Xinalug people who have their own language and who
live in mountainside houses where on persons front garden is the next guys
roof. It has some parks, a nice shopping center, a 2.5-4hr ride from Baku,
skiing and hiking make it fairly popular with tourists.
My job description includes -

Misplaced the papers, get back to ya on this.

Language Proficiency Interveiw (LPI) - The First

Most of us had the mid-training language test on Fri 24 Oct. but due to
an accident or ilness or something my clusters test was postponed until
the following Monday. The extra time did NOT help. As it was Monday
was also the day I and another trainee had to give a 1hr presentation to
the CED group on "Business Plans". The presentation went well. No probs
there but 10mn after it was finished, just as I was getting interested in
the following presentation I was called in for my LPI.
It is a lot like the level checks I used to do working for the language
school, Nova, back in Japan. Naturally its alot easier to be the testor
than the testee.... The tester was nice enough and tried to put everyone at
ease but it was obvious she was unhappy with the disorganized schedule and
the fact she had to wait on our presentation schedules. We spent 10mn
chatting about languages, teaching methodology & the differences between
English, Azerbaijani, Russian & Japanese. Then the test started.
"What fruit do you like?", "What is your house like?", "What is in your room?"
etc. In the unnatural environment where it doesnt matter what you say
but wether you say alot and show your familiar with all the different
grammatical forms its a bit difficult to think of answers. All of the above
questions have one word to two sentence answers in real-life but for the
test your encouraged to expand ad-nauseum.
I leave it to ya'll to look up what the scores mean but I only got an
Intermediate-Mid. I had been hoping for Intermediate-High. By the end of
training CED & YD trainees are supposed to have Int-Hi. TEFL only need Int-Med.

Blog 2 - Training, cont

So where did we leave off....ObLaden's desk, I think. This reminds me
I must tell ya'll about the 2 encounters Ive had with the police thusfar.
Spending 5 hours being 'detained for questioning' isnt how I had planned
to spend that afternoon.....
But all that comes later. Now I'm at site! Where I'll be spending the next
2 years living and working, inshallah(god willing). They have
(mostly) reliable, hi-speed (256K) internet here so I should be able to
update a bit more often when I move here from December, inshallah.

First a recap of whats happened so far.
After a week with my host family Ive fallen into a daily schedule
that generally looks like this -

8:30 - Wake-up, get ready, eat breakfast, make sure I did my homework
9:00 - Make the gruelling 4mn walk to school for Azerbaijani language lessons
9-13:00 - Marathon language class. Usually two 20mn breaks. This started
as a class with only the 5 members of our "cluster" but after a few weeks
we merged w/ another cluster then divided back into two classes based on
ability and interests. All in all Im happy with the results of this.
13-14:45 - Go back home for lunch, study,
14:45 - Begin 7mn walk to CED training session but because all the kids
and many of the men stop me for greetings and hand shaking it takes more
than double that.
15:00 CED training session. We have various projects to do, seminars,
guest speakers such as current Volunteers, local experts from universities,
NGOs, various organizations, etc.
17/17:30 - Go home.
17:30-??? - Get home and change out of my 'professional' clothes into a
t-shirt and sweat-pants(shorts seem to be verboten but its been to chilly
wear them anyhow), study, eat dinner with the family, sometimes a neighbor
or extended family comes over to join us for dinner or just chatting
in the evening. If one of the host-fathers brothers comes over he usually
brings a small bottle of vodka over and we(the men) drink it over dinner.
I sit and listen to the chatting trying to understand the occasional word.
Sometimes a question is thrown my way. Mostly we all sit in the living room
around the tv. I study or play games on my computer. A special thanx
goes out to those who gave me all of the ROMs for the old Nintendo games.
Dragon Warrior 4 has been a huge time waster. Without the distraction my
Azerbaijani would be so much better or I would have ETed by now....not sure
which.
I usually go to my room around 21:30-22:30 depending on if I want to watch
a particular Turkish soap-opera with the family. Its called "Melekler Adisi"
(Island of Angels). Its on 6 days a week, new episode every day. I think
its on reruns. Good quality production, very dramatic melo-drama but not
as over the top as some.
Then I generally watch a movie, read a book, or finish whatever homework
I didnt do before.
0-1:00 - Sleepy time

We have language classes 5 days a week. CED session most days. Sundays are
(usually) free.

In Quba

Ive arrived with almost all my stuff. Big ole box of stuff still being held for me by the h-family in Tagiyev. Ensures I'll be back to visit soon.
My room is pretty big. Almost as big as my last apartment in Japan but Ive gotta walk downstairs, threw the house and outside to use the toilet. Annoying when you drink as much chai as I do. Ive got a big gas furnace in my room that keeps things plenty warm. Ive got a teapot ontop of the heater boiling away all the time to make tea or coffee or cup-ramen whenever I want.
Discovered that my Japanese Wii wich is designed for 100V AC doesnt like it if you plug it into 220V AC for more than 5mn. Fortunatly I unplugged it before the transformer started to smoke too much..... Its all OK but Ill need to find a step-down converter or a Euro transformer before I try to play with that again.
It snowed the day before I arrived and there are still patches of it left in the shade. Snowing again now and by the looks of it we could have a few inches(7-15cm) by morning.
The new host family is good. There where some communication problems with the h-mom at first but now I realize she just sarcastic and always says "No, no" or "Its bad, no good" with a wee smirk when she actually means the opposite. Good food, warm house, no problems. More on all that later.
Start going into the office to work tomarrow. Told theyll be giving me a computer for my desk. Its been sitting on a shelf because the viruses overran it a year or so ago. So getting that baby fired up will be my first task. Also be a test of my Russian as all the software here is in Russian.....should probly learn the Cyrillic alphabet tonite.
Will post more when I can get my laptop hooked up to the network.
Till then "salam".

SWEARING IN

We all swore in yesterday and Im going to site tomorrow.

Now that Im a volunteer I will be able to update this blog semi-regularly. Until now I had the combined problems of irregular internet access and a Trainee Blog Policy that my conscience would not allow me to submit to. The Volunteer Blog Policy however is reasonable.

Sometime next week there should be a flood of posts including reports about training, local culture, host-family, my new site, and that time I was "arrested"(wasnt really arrested but thats what everyone is calling it).

Until then.