Russia and Georgia and Us

I saw this on the new york times webpage reprorting on the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Russian air attacks over northern Georgia intensified on Saturday morning, striking two apartment buildings in the city of Gori and clogging roads out of the area with fleeing refugees.

Russian authorities said their forces had retaken the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, from Georgian control during the morning hours. They reported that 15 Russian peacekeepers and 1,500 civilians have been killed in the conflict.

So what does this have to do with Azerbaijan, and specifically, Peace Corps Volunteers in Azerbaijan?  Nothing, as far as I can tell.  I’ve realized since leaving America that there really is a significant difference between these little countries.  I always kind of assumed that such a small geographic region had to have semi-pourous borders, and much more in common than they have differences.  While there are a lot of commonalities in the Cacausus, they are indeed nations independent of one another.  So even though there may be an escalating conflict in the country next door, it might as well be a thousand miles away, because nothing in Azerbaijan has changed.  And I don’t think it will either.

AZ6

For those that don’t know, new groups of volunteers come to Azerbaijan every summer.  Since Peace Corps is a two year gig, that means one group leaves, and a new group comes in about the same time.  My group has been dubbed AZ5 because we are the 5th group to serve here.  I’m bummed the 4s are going to be leaving, but at the same time I’m happy for them that they are moving on.  I’m also excited for the new group to get here.  This is my post to you, AZ6.  If any of you come across this blog, and have any questions about anything PC or Azerbaijan, I’ll be happy to help.

Balkan Trip Photos

Some pictures from my trip to the Balkans can be found here.

Take a look.

Back in More Ways than One

I’m back.  On the blog and in to Azerbaijan.  I’ve just returned from a vacation in the Balkans.  Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia were all visited.  I’m also back because I haven’t written anything on the blog since I posted the youtube videos of my house (which I’ve moved from).

Getting into the details of my trip would be one hell of a post.  I was gone for about three and half weeks and visited some pretty amazing places, including Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Mostar, Dubrovnik, Hvar, and Split.  Feel free to do a google search on any of those places.

The short run down would be that I met up with my friend from Coos Bay in Zagreb, we’ll call him Mike, and we went to the EXIT music festival, in Novi Sad, Serbia.  It was a four day music festival held in an old fortress.  After the festival, we quickly went through Belgrade to go to Sarajevo, one of the most interesting places I’ve ever been.  We quickly went to Mostar so we could soak up the sun in Croatian coast, which started with Dubrovnik.  A few days were there fighting our way though the crowds of tourists and checking out what has to be one of the most amazing old towns in the world.  We left Dubrovnik by boat and went to three islands: Mjlet, Korcula, and Hvar.  From there, we went back to the mainland.  After a couple days in Split, Mike went back to Madrid, and I did a day in Zadar and a day in Zagreb alone.

So, now I’m back.  I’m not exactly excited about it.  I feel like I’m going to go from this really luxurious experience to a much more difficult one.  Coming here for the first time is one thing, but now that I know a bit more about what I’m going to face, the excitement isn’t the same.  I’ve got some things that I’ll be working on, though, so hopefully keeping busy will make things easier.

My House

They’re a few months old but here is a video, in two parts, of my house and yard. My hair has grown a bit, and the leaves have come in, but everything else is pretty much the same.

Crazy Frogs

I gotta get something off my chest.  The noise pollution here is killing me.  Usually, I can let it go, but lines must be drawn.  Admittedly, little background noises have always bothered me for some strange reason.  To give you an idea of what I mean, I don’t buy metal coat hangers because I don’t like the sound they make when they clang around in the closet.  But here, this seem to be exacerbated.  There’s a few things that really push my buttons in this arena lately.

The first one that’s really been bothering me is cell phones.  People here seem to really pride themselves in having a new expensive phone.  A friend was telling me about some new phone that he wanted to buy because it had a 5 megapixel camera on it.  He said his was only three.  I asked him what a megapixel was and he had no idea.  Still, five is better than three though.  On multiple occasions, for entertainment on a bus or on the street, I’ve heard people just go through all their ringtones.  Over and over again.  Similarly, a lot of phones have speakers on them, which is the preferred way to listen to MP3s rather than headphones.  It’s mostly young boys, but people just listen to their own little phones on the bus, in the street, or just about anywhere that people can see them and think “that guy has a phone.  he’s cool.”

While the phone thing has been bothering me since day one, the other two have to do with the house i’ve been living in for the last two months.

I didn’t realize it when i moved in, but I live on a relatively busy street.  Everyday at 7o’clock sharp, a guy drives by my house on a motorcycle with a little cart on the back.  This would’t be so bad, but there is absolutely no muffler on this bike, and you can hear it coming from a mile away.  To boot, there’s a speed bump outside my window, so I can hear his slow down for the bump, and then rev it back up again.  Everyday at 7 o’clock I think about what I can do to sabatoge this guy’s bike.

The last one is going to make me invest in a pair of ear plugs, because the frogs that live in the ditch by my room are going to drive me crazy.  I would guess that these guys are nocturnal, because they were going at it all night last night, but then again, they ribbit all day too.  It’s crazy loud, and it’s really steady.  It woke me up at 4 a.m. last night.  Imagine that.  A frog that is so loud it wakes you up when you’re sleeping.  Again, I was laying in bed last night thinking about how I could shut them up.  When the idea of pouring a ton of bleach into the ditch to kill them all, I decided that maybe I should just put my ipod on.  If I go crazy here, it will absolutely be beacuse of those frogs.  I didn’t see that coming.

My New Sitemate

Ujar welcomed it’s 5th volunteer a few weeks ago.  Shawn from Texas, a strikingly handsome man (his own plug), will finish up his Peace Corps stint in our quaint little town.  He’ll be working at a local NGO, helping them help other farmers in the region.

It’s nice to have a new sitemate in the mix.  It’s also pretty interesting that he’ll be here for all of 5 months before he moves on from Peace Corps. 

Cefri Tomas Beli

Here’s a link to my school’s website.

And here’s their entry on me.

I’m famous.

Some Numbers

Two countries that are often in my mind these days are the United States and Azerbaijan.

It is interesting to see where they are on this list, an index published by the reporters without borders.

Are they where they should be?  I guess it depends on what you want.

bogarting the deveploment

Having spent the weekend in Baku, the oil-boom capital of Azerbaijan, it’s easy to realize that this country is coming up.  Construction sites are literally everywhere.  There is a feeling that Baku is stepping up to become a first class city.

I have a little bit of an issue with this because I live out in the country, where some of the basics are still not available.  I see the construction going on it Baku, and I can’t help but think about the fact that many cities and villages in Azerbaijan are still without 24 hour gas or electricity.

To be fair, there is a gap between urban and rural in any (every) country.  And I’m sure the issue that I brought up above is much more complicated than I am portraying it to be.  Still, as the old adage goes, societies are judged on well they take care of their neediest citizens.  I keep this thought in mind as I work here, often with people who don’t have access to many resources, and back in America, where the ‘have-nots’ and ‘don’t-gets’ are left behind in the greater narrative of the country.

But as the wealth of Baku trickles out to the other regions (states, provinces, etc) of Azerbaijan, I wonder what this country will be like.