SKULLS

The Guba Mass Grave

Here in Guba we have a mass grave site. Its an ongoing archaeological dig that has a roof built over it and is enclosed in blue tarp about 50m by 20m on the side of a hill near our soccer field.

In order to avoid "controversy" all this post will be is some pictures and a transcription of the English language information sign the have there. (spelling and grammar mistakes and choice of words are part of the transcription, not my own)





GUBA GENOCIDE MASS GRAVE


1.ON 1 April, 2007 a mass grave was opened in Guba while doing ground works.
2.As a result of the primary research carried out by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan from 8 to 11 April 2007 it has been revealed that the site is a burial place of the local innocent civilians massacred by the Armenians in 1918.
3.To provide a more comlete explanation to the problem the Sciense Board of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan proposed thorough arcaeological investigations in the site.
4.A staff of seven researchers of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan have been investigating the place.
The results of the research carried out in 2007.
The first, main stage involved the archaeological investigation of the mass grave.
The second stage was the investigation of the burial place from a historical point of view and on the basis of archive materials.
The third stage included talking to the local residents,mainly the old people.
The total area of the site is 500 square meters.
were found.
As a result of the archaeological excavations two wells and two channels filled withcorpses were found.
All the victims bear signs of mutilation. Exhumations claimed that the victims were murdered cruelly and inhumanely-with dull instruments.The number of murdered were discovered by counting the skulls.
It has been found out that all the remains of the mass grave belong to the Azerbaijanis and members of other ethnic minorities living compactly in Guba.
Most of the skeletal human remains found in the mass grave are of children and women.
Besides the wells, 200 skulls have been uncovered in the mass grave so far.
-50 of them are of children of different ages
-54 are of women and the rest belong to old people
From a historical point of view and on the basis of archive materials is has been identified that in 1918,at the end of April a special “torture regiment”instructed by Stephan Shaumyan , the commissar of the then Soviet of People Commissars and Korganov , a military commissar was sent to Guba Region.
Under the command of the Armenian general Hmazasp about 40 thousand civilianswere severely punished by the regiment.
As a result of the ordeal only in Guba region 1800 children, about 2000 old men and women were murdered.
Part of them was buried in the place where we have been carrying out our research.
The research is still going on.




Here is the picture of the sign I used to make the transcription above

KIDS

Cause everyone like pics of cute kids.


This is the cutest kid picture ever taken in the AZ. This little girl came to the neighborhood bonfire to celebrate the Novruz holiday last week.


This is the son of a teacher that had to sit in the back of the room while his mom attended a 4hour seminar on how to improve English classes given for Azerbaijani high-school level English teachers.


Here are some of the rugrats that terrorize my neighborhood.

Housing Problems

So, after 3 months of PST and 4 months at site living with a host family we are allowed to move out into our own place or negotiate our own host family arrangements. I must find my own place. I've lived on my own for over 10 years and find living with other people extremely grating. Living with a roommate is one thing but living in another persons house, not as an equal but as a guest(or worse "as part of the family") is horribly oppressive.

PC Azerbaijan currently provides every Volunteer with 80AZN(about $100USD) per month for housing. I won't go into great detail now about what problems I've had in the search but instead will simply attach the report I wrote to PC about it.

See below-


Quba City, Quba Rayon
Chris Polen, CED


Housing Report


As of April 11th the host family agreement made between PC and the Kerimov family will expire. While the majority of the family is tolerant of my staying for the foreseeable future REDACTED/REDACTED/REDACTED.

I have spoken with my assigned counterpart & host family, all members of my organization, members of various community organizations and with nearly every community member I meet about housing. While everyone has promised to help in this search these community members have also said that the provided 80AZN is laughably insufficient.

I have been to inspect 3 possible housing options. All cost more than the housing allowance, none meet all of PCs housing guidelines.

1.The Mold Dungeon

A local hotel/business merkezi owner showed me around his hotel. In one section of his hotel he was able to offer me a 10ft x 10ft room with no windows attached to a similarly sized kitchen. The kitchen is accessed by a hotel corridor which also accesses 2 other dormitory style hotel rooms which would continue to be available to other lodgers. Also accessible by this shared corridor is a shared toilet and shower room.

The Bad:
-Rent: 80AZN + 15% hotel tax + utilities(it was not explained how/if my utilities could be distinguished from the other hotel rooms)
-The bedroom has no windows or ventilation in a room with a gas peç. When I went to inspect it in January the rooms walls were covered in mold and the smell was intolerable. After 15mn in the hotel I left with congestion due to the mold/smell.
-The kitchen door which accesses the shared corridor is made of flimsy plastic with a simple, small lock.
-The landlord has a bad reputation with my counterpart and struck myself and the other 2 PCVs in Quba as less than admirable.

The Good:
-Living in this setting I would be able to IRB with travelers & entrepreneurs on a daily basis.
-Located only 5mn walk from my host organization and Azerbaijani language tutor.
-Contains a bed, table, 2 chairs, peç, sink, and broken gas burner.
-I could rent the entire floor for 200AZN or less. The other 2 rooms on this floor did not have a mold problem and the entrance door to the corridor is quite secure.




2.The Sick-House Hovel

Last weekend my site-mate and I went for a walk around the 5-story apartment buildings in Quba looking for open apartments. During this walk we met a large group of approximately 15children and gained their assistance in asking all of their neighbors in the surrounding apartment buildings. Though many 10s of residents were asked only one apartment could be found. It was a very run-down one bedroom apartment on the top floor of one of the apartment buildings. The current owner/resident will soon be leaving for an extended stay in the hospital for a very bad cough with bloody expectorant.

The Bad:
-Rent: 150AZN + utilities
-The owners sickness appears to be very severe and of unknown contagiousness.
-The owner hopes to only be away until August before returning. We did not talk about the living arrangement once he returned(nor did we discuss what would happen if he died.....).
-In the bathroom one can see outside the building through the cracks in the wall.
-Unfurnished except for a peç, hotplate and the sickman's bed.

The Good:
-.....maybe he won't die if he receives rent money and can afford a better doctor.....this is not a good place but its better than being homeless.

3.The Free Meat Shack

My appointed counterpart/host-brother hired the local real estate agency recently to help us find a rental property. The agency could only offer one property that was within sight of my stated budget.

The Bad:
-Rent 120AZN + utilities
-Doorways are very low. The mantles are even with my brow.
-On the second floor(a small loft) there is a 7ft long area where one can reach ones arm outside the house between the roof and the wall. This may be a benefit as I could reach out and grab pigeons to get free meat.
-While there is a water pump in the house there are no water lines running to the bathroom or sink. If I lived here I would need to run water hoses and install my own water heater to live at a standard even modestly similar to my counterparts.

The Good:
-In a good neighborhood less than 3mn walk from my host organization.
-Fully furnished with a secure door and bars on the windows.
-The best of what Ive been shown on the budget available.









Local Factors

Rental property is scarce in Quba and what is available for a variety of reasons including:

-President Ilham Aliyev owns a home on the outskirts of town.
-Quba is a day-trip from Baku.
-Quba is surrounded by many resorts & guest houses popular with tourists and Baki's rich & famous for winter skiing, natural beauty and places to escape from the summer heat.
-Much of the new housing is owned by Baku's rich & powerful as second homes, raising land values and prices throughout the area.
-Quba is home to an university and a very reputable but expensive Turkish private school. Locals prefer to rent what rooms are available to Azerbaijani youth than to foreigners.
-Further, the Turks who teach at the private high school are willing and able to pay significant rents.

Finally, the people of Quba simply don't care for unmarried (foreign) men. When originally assigning me to this site my host organization was unable to find any host family that would take in a male. Only when PC staff searched through its records for previous host families in the area was one family finally found. Nearly everyone I have met has been informed of my situation but none have offered to take me in.

Housing History

My work counterpart is also my host brother. This has certain advantages but it is also very trying to be with the same person all of the time. Whats more his fluent English has been a detriment to my learning Azerbaijani and hence full integration into the community.

My current host family hosted a volunteer for his entire service previously. He reportedly spent a good deal of his own money on food, travel and other “perks”, well beyond what PC provides. And, as mentioned above, the lady of the house has expressed her wish that I move out.

The current AZ5 PCV in Quba has had a number of housing issues and problems with host families. She has had to change host families 4 times during her service. Her current shared housing costs 100AZN/month + utilities + food. It has unreliable gas(normal in parts of Quba this year) and no water for more than a month(not normal). This instability has interfered with her efficient service & emotional well-being.

Community Attitudes

-Every community member I have spoken to has said it will be extremely difficult if not impossible to find a host family willing to take in a male.
-Similarly community member have said that a rental for 80AZN is impossible. When told that this is my organization's limit most simply stop thinking about the subject(why worry about the impossible, qizmət).
- Community members all say that 120AZN would be the minimum for something acceptable though not comfortable. But that 150 would be needed to for something almost at the level of my counterparts.
-Many community members have said that a small 2-3 bedroom house with secure compound could be found for 175-300AZN. These community members have suggested that Quba's volunteers simply rent a house together. They've said this type of arrangement is not uncommon for the Azerbaijani migrant workers who go to Russia & Turkey and is widely known to be normal for Russians and Americans.

RECENT EVENTS - PCV Work & Life

Recent Events

Work -
Work at the Ministry continues. From my point of view the Ministry of Economic Development does little perceivable economic development work. At the local branch level it seems only to write reports for Baku, monitor local prices for foodstuffs & building material, to review contract proposals for area government projects & to offer consultation on credit and a governmental business development fund. Tasks my language level leave me unequipped to assist in.

Further, I've learned that the local branches don't have any budget at all. If desks, computers and the like are needed it must be requisitioned from Baku. There is no company car. The price monito must use his own car to make site visits. Common office supplies like pens and paper must be bought out of pocket, as must expenses for necessary business trips to surrounding cities. They must then request reimbursement from Baku. Generally these requests are ignored. The office only recently received a printer/fax machine. Internet is required to do the work that our office does yet we don't have any connection in the office. Requisitions to Baku for this service have apparently not yet been answered. In order to access the memos/orders sent from Baku to the office, to e-mail reports & to complete research we must use a computer at the computer resource center offered by the anti-corruption organization, Transparency, at the office across the hall from ours.

Pay, though significantly more than mine, is extremely low. PCVs currently receive about 100AZN per month. I hear that government officials start at about 150AZN/month. Common part-time teachers reportedly start at more than 100AZN/month but average at about 200AZN + whatever fees they can charge for tutoring, etc.


I have been working increasingly with an organization called the Quba Marketing Center. It began about 6-7 years ago as the local face for some projects being conducted by the OSCE and USAID. For 4 years it was primarily responsible for conducting trainings, seminars, and consultation for local business as part of USAID's ABAD project. The ABAD project worked in 6-7 sites across Azerbaijan working threw local “marketing centers”. At the end of the project the marketing centers were all to be privatized and left to survive on their own. Only two survived. Quba Marketing Center incorporated as an LLC the other I believe registered as a non-profit and though ostensibly still local, its employees & directors all operate out of Baku. The QMC has been operating as an independent for-profit business for a bit over a year now, maintaining client relations and keeping up with market research but has had trouble explaining to area small & under-developed businesses why they would want to pay for QMCs services.

Back between Chrismas and New Year I helped QMC write a proposal to be hired as the local implementation partner for USAID's Private Sector Competitiveness Enhancement Project(PSCEP). PSCEP is a project that is funded by USAID, subcontracted to a development company called Chemonics, which will implement a program based in 5 geographical areas of Azerbaijan where local business development service organizations will identify areas of greatest growth potential, develop and conduct seminars & trainings on closing gaps in the value chain, creating associations between business, modern methods, technology, finance options, export requirements, etc, and to find local business which is open to bringing in equity investors amongst other things. We found out just recently that, subject to some final negotiations, our proposal has been accepted.

I could easily work on this project full time. But, I'm not interest in limiting myself to just one organization on just one project(no matter how large-scale and important it may be).
Some other irons in the fire include -

Working with other volunteers in the area to improve their skills in teaching English & leading conversation clubs.
Developing relationships with business & organization leaders in the area in preperation for running some focus groups & meetings to see what the locals think their community needs.
Helping the AZ5 YD Volunteer in my town create a practicum(internship/job shadow) program for local youth in a variety of businesses.


This last seems the most important. The concept of an internship is relatively unknown in Azerbaijan. While it used to some extent in Baku it is unknown in the Rayons(the regions outside of the capital). I will write more about this in another post.




PCV Life

PCVs in our “First Finger of Azerbaijan” been having monthly potluck meals. A food theme is selected and we all meet at someones house with whatever we could make for that theme. Currently every one is staying with host-families making this process very difficult. Some places are to small, others are just nervous to have too many foreigners in their homes, others freak out about having mixed groups of males and females. This last I'm still a bit fuzzy about, not sure if their worried about “what will the neighbors say?” or if they're concerned we will be a bunch of sex-maniacs or…..
So far we've had Chrismas, Mexican, Asian, and next week we're doing “whatever side dish you can make that doesn't need warming up because our house only has 1 burner, no oven and no microwave”. It's also Jake's(an AZ6 YD) birthday. Good food, good times, time to unwind and share experiences/advice(“reflection” is the hippy jargon keyword used daily at PST).

AZ6 was apparently the first group in this country to make it all the way threw training and Swearing-In without losing someone to either ETing or ASing(read ass-ing) or early COSing. ET = Early Termination; the Trainee/Volunteer decides to quit for whatever reason. Could be problems here, problems at home, disliking the job/country, could be getting a better offer, etc. Could be any reason. AS= Administrative Seperation; bureaucratic for “fired”. This can happen for gross incompetence(though that very rarely happens), obstinate refusal to adapt to the most important cultural rules(wearing shorts/halter top, smoking and drinking in your community if you're a TEFL) or most likely a rule violation of some sort. As always this last can be a matter of politics and personality. ASing doesn't happen very often, in the vast majority of cases you'll simply be asked to ET and thats almost impossible to fight. Finally, early COS= Close Of Service. COS usually happens at the end of the 27month contract but can happen early if one is diagnosed with health problems that can't be treated effectively in country(or within a month or two back in DC), if the country is evacuated(as happened in Georgia when the Russians invaded last August), or a few other rare reasons.
We were apparently the first group where everyone Swore-In. 61 people is a fairly large number of folk to do that. Well about a month after swearing in and moving to permanent site we lost one. Then in this last month two of my friends have left. It would be inappropriate to write about other folks personal decisions but one left due to family concerns and another because of problems at site and having a better offer back home. And then there was 58. Fortunately I am close enough to Baku that I was able to get to go and see them off both times. Good bye kids, ya'll are going back to a better place.

A few weeks ago I went to the 27th birthday party of a fellow who comes to the Transparency office fairly often. The birthday party was about 8 men sitting around the table with a few courses of food and lots of drinks. The women folk all partied and ate in the kitchen and from time to time the birthday-boy's mother would bring the next course. First was baked chicken pieces that are then placed in beaten egg & scrambled(a boneless version in Japan is called “oyako” = “parent & child”), then stewed mutton fried with greens, and finally “plov”; what we might call pilaf. Basically just rice cooked with some veggies or meat in it then baked so that the rice on the bottom of the pot turns a crunchy brown then flipped out onto a serving dish. And along side it all was the normal green onions & other fresh greens, fruits, pickled cabbage, peppers, tomatoes & cucumbers. All good stuff. The only woman that sat at the table and joined the party was Jill, the AZ5 PCV in Quba. Of the guests, only half of us were drinking. The birthday-boy isn't a drinker but his father offered frequent vodka toasts. Later the birthday-boy gave us a walking tour of his part of the village. Nugedi #1(there is a villiag on the other side of the river called Nugedi #2; the Soviets weren't very imaginative apparently) is a big, spread out, fairly well-to-do, farming village. Between the 2 Nugedi's there are about 18,000 people, the same as Guba City but the houses are all spread out even more so than in the US. Chickens, geese, turkeys, sheep, goats & cows wandering free with only one real paved road and plenty of mud and rock lanes. While there are a number of the usual ramshackle old houses and hovels that one usually finds in villages here, there are also a number of large stone houses, some new some old, some almost mansion sized.





Pictures to be added when I get to a faster 'net connection.

Here's a quick video tour of the walk from the door to my room at the host family's place.

This is the 14th time I've tried uploading this video. Either connection or electricity at site has cut out every time Ive tried befor. Now Im at the PC Office in the Lounge trying one last time. If it doesn't work you wont get to read this.