Xinaluq

The most remote village in all of Azerbaijan, though the new road will get you from Quba to there in about 2hours. The people living here are of a separate ethnic group and continue to use their own language which is quite distinct from all other languages used in the Caucasus. The people here claim that their town has existed for 5,000years. The village is perched above the treeline on a hilltop, nestled in the Greater Caucasus, under the shadow of the tallest mountains in Azerbaijan.


If ever you get the chance I cannot recommend going there enough. A few weeks ago in May I joined a couple AZ5 volunteers for a trip up there. We hired a fellow named Heybet to drive us up in his little 4x4 Russian-made Niva hatchback. Heybet is one of the funniest Azerbaijani men I have had the honor of meeting and though he can't speak any English he can keep any tourist entertained & educated. He was constantly pointing out interesting sites along the road; a bear cave, one of the President's mansions, waterfalls, interesting trees & historical sites, and very, very often, the site where a drunk driver ran of the road, over the cliff, and fell 300m to their deaths. Heybet is a very good driver and apperently one of Azerbaijan's top race car drivers. Given that the fuel for the trip costs 30AZN & he spends his whole day driving & guiding the correct price for a summer trip is about 60AZN for a carload(4tourist + driver) of people. Though if there is any snow or bad conditions you should pay a fair bit more.

When we got to Xinaluq we parked and spent a couple hours wandering around the town. We climbed a hillside overlooking the town and met a sheepherd sleeping while his sheep grazed and then chatted with some of the townsfolk. The buildings in town are made of mountain stone and dung/mud bricks. Some of the richer people in town can afford building materials like tin roofing and some wood. The only buildings that look like typical Azeri archetecture are the newly refurbished school and the military base in a neighboring valley.

As we wiled about the day there we learned we had to head back to Quba early because a townsperson had just died in a neighboring rayon and that they would be bringing the body back for the funeral and many family and friends would following. "100 cars" would be coming up the road Heybet told us and he wanted to get back as quickly as possible before the one-lane road winding up switchbacks through the mountain got jammed. Heybet put his race car driving skills to the test driving as fast as safely possible around the twisties. Great fun, but there where a number of corners where my stomach sank as the tires squeeled and the 300m drop of the cliff was only inches away.

It was only when we got back to Quba that I learned the dead man was the brother of the director of one of the organizations that I work with. Small country, it often seems like everyone is related.

*Cultural Note* In Azerbaijan beards are frowned upon for local men. Having a beard marks you as a Muslim fundamentalist and a probabal Wahabi terrorist, having a trimed goatee marks you as a probabal homosexual(either of these offenses can get you shunned or even harmed....though its better to be a Wahabi). But a thick mustache marks you as a real, macho man. Just the opposite of the US stereotype of the '70s gay porn-stache.
But, when a close family member dies here men traditionally stop shaving for 40 days to mark the mourning period.
Indeed, the Azerbaijani word for to shave = qırxmaq and the word for forty=qırx.

For more information go to www.Xinaliq.com

Random Pics of Me

Guesting with some local folk in a villiage outside of Tovuz, a town on the boarder with Armenia. I sat with the men folk and ate cheese & bread that had just been freshly baked by the women folk, drank vodka, and listened to one fellow play the Azerbaijani guitar, the tar. Friendly folk but if you go to this area be prepared for the first 30mn of any conversation to be about how evil the inhuman Armenians are.


Qala Alta - This a big wall/castle ontop of a small mountain on the border of Siyazan and Devechi rayons. Joined a group of Azeris, PCVs and PCV family members who came to visit; we all got in a rickety old van with a goat, travelled up to a picnic area atop the mountain, slaughtered and BBQed the goat, and spent the day chatting, eating kebab & drinking vodka. Good times.


















Crazy Face - No particular reason. Just the regularly scheduled Friday nite bonfire.


Xinalug - They most remote villiage in all of Azerbaijan. They claim to have been there for 5,000years. A seperate ethnic group with there own language distinct from any other in the Caucases. Above the tree line, nestled in the mountains, economy based on sheepherding and increasing tourism.


















Super Adventure Weekend - Our hosts gave us homemade headbands to decorate as we liked. Good time, great(G Rated)party game.

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。