The Garden House = Bağ Evi=庭付きの家

A month ago I finally moved into my own place. It was a dump. The only furniture in the house was a couple bed frames and a table covered in peeling paint. To make matters worse it was on the edge of town far from my Host Organzation(the place where I 'officially' work). But it was a very private, had a big garden and not many neighbors.

Pretty much everything you see in these pics I found in the garden. The big wood/gas stove, the silverware & dishes, the cabinets, the bricks and boards that make the shelves, all the flat stones on the floor which cover the crumbling, water damaged particle-board floor, all found in the garden. The food, table cloth & gas range are the only housewares Ive bought. The rest of the stuff was brought with me(ie the flag/curtains), PC issued(ie the big brown monsters{sleeping bag} & fire extinguisher), or found in that garden.

This is the only finished room in my house. It has my kitchen in the pic above, turning clockwise we see the door out to the "shed" behind the flag/curtains and here we have the guest bedroom/couch. The "shed" is another, slightly larger room which is unfinished. Its floors & 2 walls are bare stone, two walls are half broken windows and the foil backing to disintegrated insulation board.


Turning clockwise again we find the wardrobe and hanging on the walls are my calender/accounting/events chart. This corner is still kinda empty. They greyness seen on the lower half of the wall is a mix of water damage, mold thats been painted over, and crappy AZy powder paint that washes of when you wipe it down with ammonia to kill the mold.


In this corner is the master bedroom with bookshelves and whatnot.


And finally another clockwise turn brings us full circle back to the kitchen. Thus ending the tour of my room.

Be it ever so humble there is no place like home. It may be a craphole but its my craphole damnit.

Robot Head=ロボット頭

Let me introduce you to "Robot Head", my new little kitten.　子猫を紹介します！　これ”ロボットヘッド”って言う子猫よ。

He got his name from a bonfire game we played at my place over the weekend. One takes a cardboard box and draws a robot face on it, strategically cutting holes where the mouth, eyes, etc should be. Then you place this "Robot Head" over the fire an everyone chants "Robot head, robot head, robot head" slowly, rhythmically and with ever greater intensity and volume until its completely engulfed in the flames. Beats worshiping a boar's head and breaking Piggy's glasses.　どうしてロボットヘッドって言うのか？。。。説明チョウ難しいだって英語読んで見てね。


Anyhow, they day after that particular bonfire a bunch of us went for a walk around Quba touring the sites. I split off from the group for a bit to visit a local acquaintance who said I could have one of his new kittens. The kitten was finally big enough to take from its mother but it was very unhappy to meet me. How does one make the hour long walk home carrying a kitten who is half wild?

Stick him in a closed cardboard box, with a couple strategically cut airholes and carry it all home in a xanim bag(a cool looking reusable plastic shopping sack). Cardboard box, holes, strangeness, hence "Robot Head".

He's pretty small though. Just got off mothers milk and still has his baby fat. Been feeding him a good diet of yogurt, sausage and table scraps. Problem is he's lonely and whinges alot. And when I pick him up he climbs up my chest and tries to eat my beard.....its been two weeks since my last shower, maybe Im missing some food scraps in there when I bucket bath.... ;) Hoping to get him a little friend this week.　ロボットヘッドはまだスゴイ小さいだ。１月半間前だけ生まれた。母さんと兄弟で恋して泣いてる。　今週、子猫の友達を探して見る。

Here's hoping that in another month he'll be big enough to do something about the rat/mice in my ceiling whose scrabbling wake me up in the nite.　小さいけど多分二三月後,
子猫は天井に住むネズミが食べれる！

Breaking Down Gender Barriers

After the AIDS Awareness Program Jill accompanied the kids to visit the mass grave site.

Amy, myself, and the ever classy Julia(pictured in the middle) who was visiting from Siyazan decided to go for ice-cream and push the gender barriers a little by visiting one of the nicer çayxana(chai hhana)= tea houses.

Gender roles are fairly well set. Women stay home, cook, clean, don't talk to men outside their family, speak when spoken to, never drink alcohol(when men can see) or smoke cigarettes. To violate any of these rules is to put a big sticker on your chest that says "!PROSTITUTE!".... Perhaps I exaggerate, but not much.

Tea houses here tend to be dingy little places where men go after work to drink tea, smoke, play dominoes or nerd, which is a form of noisy backgammon, and just relax. Some teahouses though are very nice. They may have cake or other small food items or have picnic tables outside in the sun. Here in Guba we have a very nice looking teahouse next to the fountain in the middle of our main park between the main mosque and the Culture House.

We've never seen any women there but this is a tourist town with many of Baku's rich & famous coming every summer and we felt this might be the right time to push the boundry a little bit. To show people that just because your a woman and at a tea house doesn't make you a "bad girl". Afterall, its quite common in Baku and other Muslim countries and over the last couple years the attitude in the regions has been slowly shifting towards being slightly less rigid in these matters.

So here they are. Another crack in the cultural walls boxing women in. Julia & Amy sitting in the park at the teahouse waiting for our tea to come. And the nice thing was nobody really seemed to bat an eye about it. We didnt get anymore stares from the local folk than we get everyday here. The tea came, we drank, relaxed, talked, enjoyed the sun, laughed at the boys who were dunking there heads into the fountain with the green water, it was great!....until that great bane of tea drinking hit - the need to pee. Don't know how they do it but Ive never seen a tea house with a toilet. This place in the middle of the park was no exception.


Final note. One of the little charms you can only find in Quba are these little stones painted like mushrooms. There everywhere in Quba, sprouting in corners, nooks, streetsides and gardens like...well, like mushrooms. Quba is the only city in the country to have this. I'll write more about them later & the "crazy" man responsible.

AIDS Awareness Event

Over the weekend my sitemates Jill and Amy arranged an AIDS Awareness Day in Quba. They arranged for children from our local equivalent of juvenile hall, some local students and other interested community members to come, listen to a presentation and participate in a Q&A session with a health expert from Baku.
In Azerbaijan presentations & speechs tend to be dull affairs where a speaker gets up, reads a prepared statement in a monotone voice & makes no attempt to engage the audience while the crowd sits and quietly talks amongst themselves. This presentation was no different. It was rather dry and boring for my taste and some of the adults who sat in the back talked amongst themselves. But the kids were surprisingly well behaved, listened and really seemed to learn something. As is usually the case nobody wanted to speak up for the Q&A session but Jill, who understands Azerbaijani fairly well, came with a list of questions she wanted answered for the kids.

Ive spoken to a few men here who frequent prostitutes and they all laugh when I tell them that in America it is standard procedure to wear a condom for preventing deseise and pregnancy. They tell me that its an affront to their manhood and that to prevent deseise all you need to do is urinate right away afterwards....makes me wonder if they think that works for the prostitutes(and their wives) also. I wanted to ask the expert if this was true(obviously I know its not but I wanted the little juvi-kids to know) but sadly my Azerbaijani isn't good enough to ask this diplomatically.

After the presentation & Q&A we all walked down to the park for a candlelight memorial & moment of silence.













Some of the kids.







All in all it was a good day. Oficially there are only 3 cases of AIDS/HIV in Quba but the testing rate is abysmal. And the level of AIDS awareness in this country is unfortunatly low especially considering the high rates of needle use(both for illeagal & leagal drugs), the inavailability of condoms and the frequency with wich I know some married men purchase sexual services. Hopefully the kids all learned something and maybe it'll save a couple lives.

FIVB - International Womens VolleyBall in Quba

This last weekend Quba hosted a qualifying round for the 2010 FIVB volleyball championship that will be held in Japan. Teams from Azerbaijan, Israel, Ukraine, Belarus and others came to compete.
週末、グバ市にバレーボール大会あった！アゼルバイジャン、イスラエル、ウクライナやベラルーシのチーム来た。
Here to the left you see the Azerbaijani team lined up for the singing of their national anthem. The version played here at the games sounded alot like an awesome old James Bond opening credits theme.
これはアゼルバイジャンのチームだ。



Isreal vs Belarus.
イスラエル　VS　ラルーシ












Former President Heydar's everpresent gaze, watching over his country.













At every event Ive gone to see at the Olympic Center there is always a special section roped off for the soldiers. Its gotta be great R&R for them...plus the always clap & cheer the loudest for Azerbaijan....and boo the loudest for everyone else.

グバ市にある大会いっぱい軍人いつも来る。







I went with some fellow PCVs and we got to sit in the VIP seating because on of the volunteers is family with some big-wigs with the Israeli team.
On my left was the Ukranian Embassy delagation, big guy in the middle is the Ukranian Ambassador to Azerbaijan who seems like a really friendly guy. Despite losing to Isreal he promised to send their team a bottle of vodka in thanks for the vigourous competition.
ボランチアー友達と一緒に見に行った。友達のイスラエル人の家族も来たからわしら外国VIP所に腰にかけた。　これはウクライナの大使だ。すごい優しい奴だ。






Here we have some of the Israeli spectators waving something one doesn't often see waved in a Muslim country.











But of course, a PCVs work is never over. Morning, day or night, weekday & weekend, at the office, on the street & in our homes we are always on duty. This became apparent when I & my sitemate started getting urgent texts from contacts in the Ministry of Youth & Sports. It seems the translator fell through and the organizors of this event needed someone to help translate the press-releases from Azerbaijani to "təmiz inglisca"="clean English". Quba Qang PCVs came to the rescue. I, with translating experience and the Y-chromosome necesary to talk to the male officials and be taken seriously, and my sitemate, Amy, with her superior knowledge of the rules and terminology of volleyball. Not to knock our Azerbaijani abilities but its a good thing that reporter/official spoke decent beginner level English because we could read his notes to save our lives. In the end we translated his press releases fairly well and got invitations to meet him again at the central offices in Baku someday.

notherebuthere: The Fire Land: fostering creativity

notherebuthere: The Fire Land: fostering creativity

This is a blog posting written by friend and colleague, Alexis. She says many of the things I've been wanting to say about creativity, thought and the evil of Soviet culture that I've been intending to write about. Fortunatly she's saved me the work by writing it herself.

Hanging out in my garden.

Had some visitors last weekend to watch the Womens International VolleyBall qualifying championship here in Quba. The stadium is just a couple blocks from my place so it was a good place for everyone to meet and get ready.

Here's a pic of myself, the Siyazan volunteers, one of my sitemates and one of the the girls who works at the hair salon whose back door opens into my garden.

Super Adventure Weekend

Recently, a pair of the volunteers in Siyazan(about 1hour south of Quba, 1hour north of Baku) arranged what they named, Super Adventure Weekend, for area PCVs. Over the weekend about 10 of us got together for a weekend of good food, ex-pat(PCV) conversation/unwinding, sports and hiking up the local holy mountain.
This mountain is called Beş Barmaq (Besh Barmag) or "Five Fingers". (top pic borrowed from Flicker, thanks & rights go to Leigh Newton)
最近、ボランチアー友達たちと一緒に｛べス　バルマグ｝山＝五つ指山に登って行った。

Its considered a holy place and has a hut at the top for praying & chanting. It takes about 2.5 hours to climb the 3km slop up from the rest-stop by the new highway, up the slope, and then up the 700 or so stairs that take you up and around the rock face ascending to the holy-hut at the top of one of the fingers.アゼルバイジャンのいイスラムの人にとしてこ山は巡礼地だ。

If you ask me it doesnt look anything like five fingers but it was a nice climb. From the arid flats covered with scrub, salt, sheep and ground-seep oil at the bottom; to the lower reaches where a new aqueduct is being built and the steep hills become green pasture land for cattle and horses and looks just like the hills over the "Fire Swamp" in The Princess Bride; and finally the uncountable steps(because one gets tired & no-one can agree whether this rock or that ladder should be considered a step) which wind up the crags and through the rocks and past begging xanims finally to one of the peaks where you can get a veiw of all the surrounding countryside and the sea.　でも五つ指に見ないと思う、でしょう？





Here you can see the holy-hut at the top.
山の上に小さい’神宮’がある。










The beginning of the interminable stairclimb.　Everyone had sore legs the next day. この階段がすごい長い。６００脚立より登りちゃった！次の日、足は大変苦しいだったよ。














Micah, another First-Finger PCV, enjoying a fit-of-peak on a crumbling wall overlooking the Caspian Sea.　古い城の壁の上｛やった！｝って












Finally, the holy-hut at the top. Most folk never see it from this angle as it required I do some extra rock climbing/scrambling/falling to get around to the north side. When we arrived at the top there were a number of worshipers and a fellow chanting inside.　山神宮に到着した。

25% Overseas Ballots are Lost - 海外からの不在者投票

Having been an overseas voter for about the last 7 years İ can attest to the accuracy of the following article.

May 13, 2009

Report: One-fourth of overseas votes go uncounted

Jim Abrams

One out of every four military personnel and other Americans living abroad may have been thwarted in their efforts to vote in the 2008 election because of communications and bureaucratic problems, according to a congressional report released Wednesday.

"Registration deadlines, notary requirements, lack of communication, mail delays, poor address information and state laws that put in place untenable mailing dates are all severe problems," Sen. Charles Schumer, chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, said at a hearing.

Schumer, D-N.Y., said the study prepared by the committee and the Congressional Research Service, while providing only a snapshot of voting patterns, "is enough to show that the balloting process for service members is clearly in need of an overhaul." He plans to work with Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., in crafting legislation dealing with the issue.

The study surveyed election offices in seven states with high numbers of military personnel: California, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and West Virginia.

It said that of 441,000 absentee ballots requested by eligible voters living abroad — mainly active-duty and reserve troops — more than 98,000 were "lost" ballots that were mailed out but never received by election officials. Taking into account 13,500 ballots that were rejected for such reasons as a missing signature or failure to notarize, one-quarter of those requesting a ballot were disenfranchised.

The study found that an additional 11,000 ballots were returned as undeliverable.

Gail McGinn, the Defense Department's acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness, told the committee that the Pentagon "has taken extraordinary steps to ensure that members of the uniformed services, their family members and overseas citizens have an opportunity to vote."

She said the department will issue a report to Congress in December on the results of the 2008 election and said other surveys, while providing useful information, should be viewed with caution if their results are based on non-random populations.

Schumer later provided data from his home state of New York concluding that two out of every five military absentee ballots go uncounted. It takes as much as 82 days for New York State troops stationed overseas to go through the absentee voting process, he said.

Schumer's office said that because a person living abroad must request the absentee ballot and show a clear intention to vote, voter negligence is not thought to be a major factor.

Rather, Schumer said in a statement, there is a chronic problem of military voters being sent a ballot without sufficient time to complete it and send it back.

Among the states surveyed, California had 30,000 "lost" votes out of 103,000 ballots mailed out. An additional 3,000 ballots were returned as undeliverable and 4,000 were rejected.

The hearing took up possible problems in the Pentagon's Federal Voting Assistance Program, which handles the election process for military personnel and other overseas voters.

___

On the Net:

Senate Rules and Administration Committee: http://rules.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseActionCommitteeSchedule.Hearing&Hearing_id4bbecb7a-f4b9-487b-a1e6-47065a293ccf

The Associated Press


この記事によると、２５％ぐらいアメリカの海外｛かいがい｝からの不在者投票が消失している。ぼく住んでいた州に海外｛かいがい｝からの不在者投票のは簡単けど時々問題があった。　
日本人は海外｛かいがい｝からの不在者投票できるの？難しいの？どんな問題があるの？

Azzy Engrish part 2

Massive failure when it came to naming all of these products.

Azzy Engrish

I give you, the Kafe DABLIN, in downtown Baku. 2for1s during Happy Hour every night on their finest selection of watered-down cocktails & 300%marked-up cheap beers. Plus, in celebration of the 250th Anniversary of Guinness Brewery, don't miss 1/2price tap Guinness Stout for only a days pay on a PCV's allowance.
Open from 11 untill...blackout.

BAKLAVA=PAXLAVA=バクラバ

Baklava comes in all forms and shapes here in Azerbaijan and, indeed, across the region. Here's a picture of Quba's version sold in a relatively clean shop, alongside the local bus station.
アゼルバイジャンの田舎でいっぱい種類のバクラバがある。　＜－－これはグバ（Quba)のバクラバだ。　美味しいけどすごい甘いやべとつくだ。