Lately I have been thinking about how it is human nature to not notice something that people elsewhere think is a problem. For example, when I was in junior high, two-piece swimsuits were popular. I didn’t let the fact that my ribs stuck out like a skeleton stop me from wearing one.
When my children were tiny, I would proudly take pictures of them to work. I guess I wasn’t very discriminating, because the office grump once took a look at the latest picture of my baby daughter and asked “So what’s wrong with her?”
Sometimes we volunteers are lucky enough to get a ride in a car. In our first few months in Azerbaijan, we would scramble around the back seat looking for a seatbelt. Now we know that usually either there isn’t one, or it doesn’t work. Recently another volunteer and I rode in a car with a new volunteer. When she nervously looked around for her seatbelt, we rolled our eyes at each other.
Another example is in housing. The Soviets built many apartment buildings to try to provide decent housing for workers. People could move from really primitive conditions in very old, obsolete homes to high-rise buildings with indoor toilets, running water and elevator access to the higher floors. Some volunteers live in this type of building and we all visit people who live in them. Besides the amenities, though, they feature mazes of wiring coming out of holes in the walls, stairwells that are dark at night (and sometimes during the day), litter everywhere and broken steps.
Azerbaijanis don’t consider the state of the common areas to be a reflection on them or that it is really any of their business. (The interesting things is that when you actually walk in the apartment, taking shoes off and putting slippers on is mandatory and most apartments are much more neat and orderly than American homes.) The volunteers mostly have come to accept these bad outdoor and stairwell conditions. We carry flashlights, step around the trash and ignore the wires.
Quite a few of our volunteers work with English teachers in schools. We were shocked at the condition of schools on our first few visits. The buildings typically look poorly built with cracked walls and crumbling steps. Often there are broken windows and trash all over outside. Playgrounds and athletic equipment are rare. Many blackboards are in such bad condition that chalk doesn’t work on them anymore. The bathrooms are usually unspeakably filthy and most teachers plan their days so they don’t have to use them. For some reason there are usually women who work as cleaners in the schools mopping the floors constantly but not cleaning the bathrooms.
Recently I went into a classroom to meet some students for a summer project in which we had to move the desks and chairs around. The desktops, as in many schools, were pieces of warped plywood covered with graffiti and carvings. They were perched precariously on metal frames. Most of the desktops were no longer attached to the base. The chairs at one time had all featured plywood seats and backs, but most of them now lack backs and some lack seats. I realized that the state of the school didn’t bother me anymore and I just got on with the project.
What most of my fellow volunteers have to keep reminding ourselves is that in American schools attended by poor children, these same conditions can exist. In addition, poor children in America can face weapons, crime, drugs and hunger, and may be homeless or pregnant. Kjds in Azerbaijan usually have nutritious food to eat, weaponless communities, drug-free schools and almost no crime. I have never heard of a homeless or pregnant student.
Last month, the New York Times reported that over 250 schoolchildren were shot in Chicago during the past school year. A new teacher had been greeted by her new students by being asked how many times she had been shot. When she replied she hadn’t, her students showed off their bullet wounds and several had been shot on different occasions. This would be totally shocking to Azerbaijanis, but Americans are apparently used to hearing about it.
Azerbaijanis have strange ideas about Americans—that we are all wealthy, our lives are easy and that since women are “free”, that women have no problems in America. When we tell them what things are really like, from our own different perspectives, they see problems that we have accepted as a matter of course.
One stems from the fact that Azerbaijanis help poor family members. It is common for one family member to partially support a poorer family member, buy a relative furniture, pay their medical bills, repair their home. Last winter, the hot water heater went out in my home. My host mother took the train to Baku to get the money from her sister. She also got money regularly from different relatives to buy clothing, pay utility bills and buy food. This woman’s husband moved to Moscow to find work. One in eight Azerbaijani men is working in Russia. The husband makes enough to support himself, but not his family. We recently had repairmen at our home for 7 weeks, painting and repairing things. The bill was paid by a nephew who works in Moscow and knew the house was in poor shape.
Of course, America is not a monolithic place, and I have noticed that in America, people I know who are from Mexico or who are black are more likely to help support their relatives than Americans as a whole. One volunteer whose family comes from Mexico says she suffered little culture shock in Azerbaijan, since many parts of the culture are similar.
So when Azerbaijanis learn that Americans, including children, are homeless, they can hardly believe it. They are also shocked that some people go to a food bank or soup kitchen to get food instead of getting food from their relatives. And that people have their utilities cut off for non-payment, but their relatives may not feel the obligation to pay the bills for them.
I try to tell them about our culture of personal responsibility, how jobs used to be available to many people who needed them, that Americans need to save a lot of money to cover medical bills, their old age and university expenses. Many Americans feel that unless they have money saved for all of these things, it is premature to give to their relatives. And that they may feel that their relatives should work harder or smarter and make better choices, such as not drinking or taking drugs. I also tell them that many Americans feel that incentive is important and can be taken away when relatives give money. I also point out that we are very charitable to strangers or foreigners who have suffered in disasters.
Azerbaijanis I know aren’t buying it. They say that when a family member needs help, the family should give them the money they need, children shouldn’t suffer because their parents can’t provide for them and that the best security is in knowing that when you need help you will get it.
A lot of volunteers still shake their heads when they see fields full of trash, people throwing trash in beautiful natural areas and in the lack of environmental regulations in Azerbaijan. But we soon realize that most Azerbaijani families generate very little garbage, use their own containers at the bazaar, buy few packaged items and live in fairly small homes, which require little electricity.
We Americans in Azerbaijan prompt ourselves to remember that we pollute the earth and air in many countries with our consumer culture, have 5 percent of the world’s population but produce 25 percent of the greenhouse gases, we pollute our own waterways with the excrement from huge factory pig and chicken farms, we blow the tops off mountains in West Virginia for cheap coal and don’t clean up the mess and don’t heed the pleas of many other countries of the world who fear that our carelessness will affect the existence of their countries. Then we have to admit that even though we are looking at a field full of trash or a dirty apartment stairwell, this Third World country of Azerbaijan is doing a better job on the environment than we are.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
Travels with Dave
Random things that happened to me and my son; he visited Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey with me for three weeks:
On our first day together, we were in Istanbul. Due to unfortunate circumstances we only had one card to use to get cash. Most of our transactions needed to be in cash. We went to an ATM and pulled out some money. We forgot to wait for the card to come out of the machine. As we walked down the street a Turkish man chased us down to return the card.
Weeks later, in Azerbaijan, we bought a small handmade carpet in Baku. We went into a restaurant and left without the carpet. The waiter chased us down the street to return the carpet.
To minimize the culture shock, I planned to start with him in Istanbul, work our way through Turkey, then less-prosperous Georgia, then to rural Azerbaijan. We later visited the sophisticated capital city of Baku, but at the border, the vibe was very rural. After we crossed the Azerbaijani border, Dave could tell he was not in America or in Turkey anymore. Our bus was actually a beat-up van with homemade seats. A chicken was sitting placidly in a bag next to us. As the driver shifted gears, the shifter broke off. He looked at it contemptuously and threw it aside. After that, when he needed to shift, he reached way down to the floor to a tiny nib that remained.
Shortly, the engine sputtered and died. The driver rummaged around the back of the van, emerged with a two liter soda bottle and dumped the contents in the gas tank. I had to inform Dave that this was normal—spare gasoline in two liter bottles is even sold by the side of the road.
Earlier on a van going from western Georgia by the Black Sea to the capital city of Tbilisi, I asked where we were. To my surprise the driver said “South Ossetia.” It looked pretty bucolic.
Neighbors can be strange in Azerbaijan as they are in America. But a different kind of strange. A week later as we prepared to take the midnight train from my home to Baku, my host family was entertaining guests and we walked in and out of the gathering. A man suddenly appeared with a bouquet of flowers. My family introduced me and my son to him—he was a neighbor that I hadn’t met. As he handed me the flowers, he spoke to me in halting English saying, “I have a Ph.D. in animal insemination and I would like to get to know you better.” Dave was amazed that he would say this to me and said he may try this as a pickup line at home in America.
On our first day together, we were in Istanbul. Due to unfortunate circumstances we only had one card to use to get cash. Most of our transactions needed to be in cash. We went to an ATM and pulled out some money. We forgot to wait for the card to come out of the machine. As we walked down the street a Turkish man chased us down to return the card.
Weeks later, in Azerbaijan, we bought a small handmade carpet in Baku. We went into a restaurant and left without the carpet. The waiter chased us down the street to return the carpet.
To minimize the culture shock, I planned to start with him in Istanbul, work our way through Turkey, then less-prosperous Georgia, then to rural Azerbaijan. We later visited the sophisticated capital city of Baku, but at the border, the vibe was very rural. After we crossed the Azerbaijani border, Dave could tell he was not in America or in Turkey anymore. Our bus was actually a beat-up van with homemade seats. A chicken was sitting placidly in a bag next to us. As the driver shifted gears, the shifter broke off. He looked at it contemptuously and threw it aside. After that, when he needed to shift, he reached way down to the floor to a tiny nib that remained.
Shortly, the engine sputtered and died. The driver rummaged around the back of the van, emerged with a two liter soda bottle and dumped the contents in the gas tank. I had to inform Dave that this was normal—spare gasoline in two liter bottles is even sold by the side of the road.
Earlier on a van going from western Georgia by the Black Sea to the capital city of Tbilisi, I asked where we were. To my surprise the driver said “South Ossetia.” It looked pretty bucolic.
Neighbors can be strange in Azerbaijan as they are in America. But a different kind of strange. A week later as we prepared to take the midnight train from my home to Baku, my host family was entertaining guests and we walked in and out of the gathering. A man suddenly appeared with a bouquet of flowers. My family introduced me and my son to him—he was a neighbor that I hadn’t met. As he handed me the flowers, he spoke to me in halting English saying, “I have a Ph.D. in animal insemination and I would like to get to know you better.” Dave was amazed that he would say this to me and said he may try this as a pickup line at home in America.
Friday, August 6, 2010
AZ8
This post is for the new crop of volunteers, who will arrive in late September to begin their training. They read the blogs of current volunteers for clues on what their lives will be like and how they should prepare.
Most volunteers spend a lot of time choosing the stuff they will bring with them. They figure that for 27 months they will not be able to buy much here and their favorite foods will not be available. I remember the time I spent trying to guess what I should do before I left. So here are my suggestions for AZ8 (the 8th group of volunteers coming to Azerbaijan).
1. Most things are available in Azerbaijan. If not, you will travel to Georgia or elsewhere and buy stuff or people will send you packages. So don’t panic.
2. Put aside some clothes in a separate box that you may need or want here and leave them at home. Make a list of what is in there and take it with you. When/if you want the stuff, your relative or friend can pull it out of the box and send it.
3. I have bought summer sandals, t-shirts and other things in the bazaar. I live in a larger town and there are awesome second-hand clothing stores here with gently worn things from Europe for men and women. There are at least 10 of these stores in my city and most volunteers can visit my town. I got a beautiful Italian wool coat for $10; also jeans, sweaters, etc.
4. If you are CED like me, you may be packing the wrong stuff. I packed like I was going to be hiking for 2 years, only to find out I needed business attire like I had worn in my bank job in America. I had the wrong clothes.
5. The PC suggestions on long skirts for women are okay, but Azerbaijani women have asked me why my skirts are so long and Azerbaijani women in my town don’t dress as conservatively as my first clothes. (Things are changing for women teachers. In my town, at some schools teachers wear jeans. Of course, PC volunteers don’t wear them.) I rarely wear skirts now.
6. Essential recommended clothes for women and men are a couple of pairs of black tailored pants and good walking shoes. Casual shoes for men and women are everywhere and are cheap. And if you are CED, I recommend a nice coat to put over your business clothes—a trench or wool coat. I walked around in business clothes under a ski parka until I found my second-hand wool coat. Not good.
7. People preparing for the Peace Corps spend a lot of time buying and choosing stuff. My recommendation is totally different. You won’t know what you need, so pack some of the things listed above, warm winter clothes, a few things for summer and don’t worry. You can buy it here or have it sent. Here is the top recommendation:
8. The Peace Corps has language training materials that are to be downloaded from the site for study before coming. Most people spend weeks choosing and packing their clothes, but come unfamiliar with the language materials. New volunteers come here not knowing how to say hello, goodbye, thank you or any of the basics. You will meet your host family soon after you get here. What will you say to them?
Your success depends in a large part on how well you know the language. This will affect your relationships, your experience, where you can travel and is very important.
You should know these 23 lessons by heart. Put them on your iPod and start studying them at least an hour a day. If you don’t have time, stop shopping and reading blogs.
Also, you won’t need a lot of reading material at first. This is because instead of reading English books and watching English movies, you should be studying Azerbaijani. Besides, the Peace Corps lounge has thousands of books that other volunteers have left behind. So if you don’t have a Kindle, don’t worry about bringing a lot of books. Some volunteers talk about all the movies they have watched and books they have read, but can’t speak Azerbaijani. Don’t be one of those people.
Most volunteers spend a lot of time choosing the stuff they will bring with them. They figure that for 27 months they will not be able to buy much here and their favorite foods will not be available. I remember the time I spent trying to guess what I should do before I left. So here are my suggestions for AZ8 (the 8th group of volunteers coming to Azerbaijan).
1. Most things are available in Azerbaijan. If not, you will travel to Georgia or elsewhere and buy stuff or people will send you packages. So don’t panic.
2. Put aside some clothes in a separate box that you may need or want here and leave them at home. Make a list of what is in there and take it with you. When/if you want the stuff, your relative or friend can pull it out of the box and send it.
3. I have bought summer sandals, t-shirts and other things in the bazaar. I live in a larger town and there are awesome second-hand clothing stores here with gently worn things from Europe for men and women. There are at least 10 of these stores in my city and most volunteers can visit my town. I got a beautiful Italian wool coat for $10; also jeans, sweaters, etc.
4. If you are CED like me, you may be packing the wrong stuff. I packed like I was going to be hiking for 2 years, only to find out I needed business attire like I had worn in my bank job in America. I had the wrong clothes.
5. The PC suggestions on long skirts for women are okay, but Azerbaijani women have asked me why my skirts are so long and Azerbaijani women in my town don’t dress as conservatively as my first clothes. (Things are changing for women teachers. In my town, at some schools teachers wear jeans. Of course, PC volunteers don’t wear them.) I rarely wear skirts now.
6. Essential recommended clothes for women and men are a couple of pairs of black tailored pants and good walking shoes. Casual shoes for men and women are everywhere and are cheap. And if you are CED, I recommend a nice coat to put over your business clothes—a trench or wool coat. I walked around in business clothes under a ski parka until I found my second-hand wool coat. Not good.
7. People preparing for the Peace Corps spend a lot of time buying and choosing stuff. My recommendation is totally different. You won’t know what you need, so pack some of the things listed above, warm winter clothes, a few things for summer and don’t worry. You can buy it here or have it sent. Here is the top recommendation:
8. The Peace Corps has language training materials that are to be downloaded from the site for study before coming. Most people spend weeks choosing and packing their clothes, but come unfamiliar with the language materials. New volunteers come here not knowing how to say hello, goodbye, thank you or any of the basics. You will meet your host family soon after you get here. What will you say to them?
Your success depends in a large part on how well you know the language. This will affect your relationships, your experience, where you can travel and is very important.
You should know these 23 lessons by heart. Put them on your iPod and start studying them at least an hour a day. If you don’t have time, stop shopping and reading blogs.
Also, you won’t need a lot of reading material at first. This is because instead of reading English books and watching English movies, you should be studying Azerbaijani. Besides, the Peace Corps lounge has thousands of books that other volunteers have left behind. So if you don’t have a Kindle, don’t worry about bringing a lot of books. Some volunteers talk about all the movies they have watched and books they have read, but can’t speak Azerbaijani. Don’t be one of those people.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Happy Dog Story
I wrote this article for the Peace Corps Volunteers' Azerbaijan newsletter.
I sent a dog from Azerbaijan to America. She has a good home with my sister in Wisconsin, everyone who has met her loves her, she is happy and healthy running around in the country and swimming in Lake Michigan with her new golden retriever sister.
But I don’t recommend that you do this. It was a crazy idea from the start and it is a miracle that it worked out.
To tell you why, I will go back to last summer, when I moved in with a new host family. Living outside the door of our house was a small brown dog of about 20 pounds. She lived there because my family fed her scraps once a day. She greeted me daily for months and if I paused from my walking, she tried to put her front paws on my legs. I never fed her, touched her and tried not to look at her.
I am a dog lover, but I felt that this dog needed to adapt to being a dog in Azerbaijan. She needed to go hang with other dogs, avoid humans, find her own food in the garbage, scrap it out. I thought to myself that making friends with a dog is not sustainable in Azerbaijan and that spaying and neutering are.
This dog was persistent. All through the fall and into December she greeted me whenever I came and went, walked me to the marshrutka (mini-bus) every day and waited with me. She would walk down the street right behind me and bump her nose against my legs. I still didn’t touch or feed her.
But I became increasingly concerned when I saw that she would not budge from our doorway to find shelter at night. Rain fell on her, snow fell on her and she would spend days wet. As I slept in my room at night, I knew she was right outside my window in the open on nothing but frozen ground. She was afraid of the feral dogs in our neighborhood and knew that men did not live in our house or come to our door. She could avoid kicks of men and boys by staying outside our door.
I also noticed that she was eating rice, bread and little else. She would dig up dirt with her nose and eat it. I could find no one who wanted a dog or could offer it shelter through winter.
Around January 1, she gave birth to 5 puppies and dug under a fence across the street to make a nest for her puppies. Some of the neighbors felt sorry for her and provided a cardboard box and some straw. But it was January, windy and at night, bitter cold. The water in the street was constantly either frozen or very cold.
At this point, I decided I had to start helping her. I bought some dog food and began feeding her. I started talking with her and touching her when she took breaks from the pups. I pulled her pups out of the gutter when they started walking and fell in. Her fur was thin and so was she. When I bent down to get them out of the gutter, she would slip herself between my body and my outreached arm and press herself against me. She was a good mother, with fat puppies. I wanted to send a couple of the pups to America, but could not get through the red tape and eventually they grew up and disappeared.
When they left, I could see that she would go right back to living outside our door and become pregnant again soon. She did not seem to be in good health and continued to eat dirt. But she continued to greet me happily. I really admired her spirit of continuing to be optimistic in spite of the fact that this life did not suit her. I decided I had to make a commitment to help her as much as I could. But how much I could help her would depend on what she would be willing to do.
I knew a vet already who could do most procedures, except a spaying operation, and took her there for an exam. Beforehand, we practiced walking on a leash and I eventually coaxed her into a taxi to get her there. The neighbors stared.
I had no luck finding a vet who could spay dogs until a fellow volunteer found someone at the Agriculture University, which is located in my town. He agreed to do it, but I knew I couldn’t pluck her off the street, have her spayed and dump her back on the street again. So I had to find her a place to stay. I left my perfectly good host family and moved to another family, people I knew, who agreed to give the dog a chance to live in the garden of their home.
After I moved in, it turned out that living in the garden meant tied up in the garden, that they were afraid of her and sometimes she got off the chain. Not a good solution, but she stayed while she recovered from the operation. (The post-op instructions I received were to feed her tea and soup for two days. She refused both because she is a dog and after awhile I gave her water and eggs, which she wolfed down.) I had to find her another place to stay while I figured out how to get her out the country.
In the meantime, The Dog and I (I didn’t name her, thinking it was bad luck) took walks all over town, causing a stir wherever we went. And my sister visited Azerbaijan, met her and decided to either keep her for me or her, or find a home for her (she has a husband who was skeptical) in Wisconsin. But our plans were to travel through Georgia and Turkey, so she couldn’t take the dog back with her. Besides, the airlines have a lot of rules and paperwork, which we were not prepared for. I had a lot of travel plans for the summer, so having a dog was not in my future.
Just when I thought I’d have to put her back on the street in her old neighborhood while I figured out what to do, my vet friend found a relative she could stay with for a couple of months, if necessary. He convinced the wife easily, but the husband required quite a bit of vodka in order to agree.
So she moved into their garden (also tied up) and I went to their home every day to walk her and check on her, except for when I was in Baku, the capital city, (twice) for The Dog’s flight-related paperwork and my sitemates picked up the slack. No one felt like flying to America with the dog, so we found that Lufthansa Cargo ships show dogs, racehorses, all kinds of other animals and has a good record and a special animal building for layovers in Frankfurt.
The details and paperwork overwhelmed me. I met everyone involved in Baku from the cargo people to the passport people/vet office to Customs, the city veterinary office and the document translator. Then on the other end, I had a friend arrange to pick her up in Chicago and hold her until my sister came from Wisconsin.
Frankly, this took away from my Peace Corps duties. While I think that walking around town with her every day and making friends with little boys, who ended up liking her and petting her was good, it took away from my other projects. I was distracted.
The tension was thick as the day of the flight approached. I had all the documents I thought I needed, but who knows what I didn’t understand that I needed?--I was speaking to everyone in Azerbaijani. Azerbaijanis helped me quite a bit, but once I got in the taxi for Baku (171 miles away) with The Dog, we were on our own. Well, almost. Our PC country director had given permission for her to relax at the PC office before the flight. We hung out in the yard, she had a bath with the car-washing hose and she searched for fallen berries to eat.
I was supposed to be at the airport at 10:00 p.m. About 6 p.m. is when they called to say I should come back in nine days because Customs is not open on Sunday. This was Sunday. I headed to the airport. At the cargo dock, I was quickly surrounded by huge, curious guys who looked like bouncers—they lug cargo around for a living. I told my Lufthansa contact that I had nowhere to go with her, they were the ones who scheduled the flight for Sunday knowing Customs was closed and she had to go or I would need to stay at the cargo building with her for nine days.
They figured it out. After awhile, they produced the crate, I said goodbye, kissed her while the giant loading dock guys watched us and left the rest to Fate.
My kind friends, the Harles, in Naperville, Illinois, picked her up at the airport and gave her excellent care for several days, including an oatmeal bath at a groomer. Afterward, my sister came to pick her up and they made the six-hour trip to her home in Wisconsin. My brother-in-law is no longer skeptical; he loves her and wants to keep her. She hustles around her rural neighborhood and goes to the state park on the weekends. She has gone to doggy class and even day-care for socialization with American dogs.
The real miracle of this story is not all of the people who helped me, although the support I received from everyone, including many Azerbaijanis, was tremendous. The real miracle is that this little dog is so unusual. She was not able to adapt to life in Azerbaijan, but was able to do everything I asked her to do to adapt to America—walk on a leash, ride in a taxi, accept physical exams and shots without objecting, walk confidently into an operating room when she had never been inside a building in her life, know not to urinate inside, not object to having me walk up to her on the street and shove worm medicine down her throat, and go from a crate in an airport to charming people in Naperville, Illinois within an hour. For awhile, her life changed radically and frequently and she kept accepting the changes.
So when I see a dog in my neighborhood scrounging his own food or lying in the sun enjoying the good weather, I toss him part of my candy bar and hope that he is finding some enjoyment in life. I don’t think I’ll ever meet another dog like The Dog.
I sent a dog from Azerbaijan to America. She has a good home with my sister in Wisconsin, everyone who has met her loves her, she is happy and healthy running around in the country and swimming in Lake Michigan with her new golden retriever sister.
But I don’t recommend that you do this. It was a crazy idea from the start and it is a miracle that it worked out.
To tell you why, I will go back to last summer, when I moved in with a new host family. Living outside the door of our house was a small brown dog of about 20 pounds. She lived there because my family fed her scraps once a day. She greeted me daily for months and if I paused from my walking, she tried to put her front paws on my legs. I never fed her, touched her and tried not to look at her.
I am a dog lover, but I felt that this dog needed to adapt to being a dog in Azerbaijan. She needed to go hang with other dogs, avoid humans, find her own food in the garbage, scrap it out. I thought to myself that making friends with a dog is not sustainable in Azerbaijan and that spaying and neutering are.
This dog was persistent. All through the fall and into December she greeted me whenever I came and went, walked me to the marshrutka (mini-bus) every day and waited with me. She would walk down the street right behind me and bump her nose against my legs. I still didn’t touch or feed her.
But I became increasingly concerned when I saw that she would not budge from our doorway to find shelter at night. Rain fell on her, snow fell on her and she would spend days wet. As I slept in my room at night, I knew she was right outside my window in the open on nothing but frozen ground. She was afraid of the feral dogs in our neighborhood and knew that men did not live in our house or come to our door. She could avoid kicks of men and boys by staying outside our door.
I also noticed that she was eating rice, bread and little else. She would dig up dirt with her nose and eat it. I could find no one who wanted a dog or could offer it shelter through winter.
Around January 1, she gave birth to 5 puppies and dug under a fence across the street to make a nest for her puppies. Some of the neighbors felt sorry for her and provided a cardboard box and some straw. But it was January, windy and at night, bitter cold. The water in the street was constantly either frozen or very cold.
At this point, I decided I had to start helping her. I bought some dog food and began feeding her. I started talking with her and touching her when she took breaks from the pups. I pulled her pups out of the gutter when they started walking and fell in. Her fur was thin and so was she. When I bent down to get them out of the gutter, she would slip herself between my body and my outreached arm and press herself against me. She was a good mother, with fat puppies. I wanted to send a couple of the pups to America, but could not get through the red tape and eventually they grew up and disappeared.
When they left, I could see that she would go right back to living outside our door and become pregnant again soon. She did not seem to be in good health and continued to eat dirt. But she continued to greet me happily. I really admired her spirit of continuing to be optimistic in spite of the fact that this life did not suit her. I decided I had to make a commitment to help her as much as I could. But how much I could help her would depend on what she would be willing to do.
I knew a vet already who could do most procedures, except a spaying operation, and took her there for an exam. Beforehand, we practiced walking on a leash and I eventually coaxed her into a taxi to get her there. The neighbors stared.
I had no luck finding a vet who could spay dogs until a fellow volunteer found someone at the Agriculture University, which is located in my town. He agreed to do it, but I knew I couldn’t pluck her off the street, have her spayed and dump her back on the street again. So I had to find her a place to stay. I left my perfectly good host family and moved to another family, people I knew, who agreed to give the dog a chance to live in the garden of their home.
After I moved in, it turned out that living in the garden meant tied up in the garden, that they were afraid of her and sometimes she got off the chain. Not a good solution, but she stayed while she recovered from the operation. (The post-op instructions I received were to feed her tea and soup for two days. She refused both because she is a dog and after awhile I gave her water and eggs, which she wolfed down.) I had to find her another place to stay while I figured out how to get her out the country.
In the meantime, The Dog and I (I didn’t name her, thinking it was bad luck) took walks all over town, causing a stir wherever we went. And my sister visited Azerbaijan, met her and decided to either keep her for me or her, or find a home for her (she has a husband who was skeptical) in Wisconsin. But our plans were to travel through Georgia and Turkey, so she couldn’t take the dog back with her. Besides, the airlines have a lot of rules and paperwork, which we were not prepared for. I had a lot of travel plans for the summer, so having a dog was not in my future.
Just when I thought I’d have to put her back on the street in her old neighborhood while I figured out what to do, my vet friend found a relative she could stay with for a couple of months, if necessary. He convinced the wife easily, but the husband required quite a bit of vodka in order to agree.
So she moved into their garden (also tied up) and I went to their home every day to walk her and check on her, except for when I was in Baku, the capital city, (twice) for The Dog’s flight-related paperwork and my sitemates picked up the slack. No one felt like flying to America with the dog, so we found that Lufthansa Cargo ships show dogs, racehorses, all kinds of other animals and has a good record and a special animal building for layovers in Frankfurt.
The details and paperwork overwhelmed me. I met everyone involved in Baku from the cargo people to the passport people/vet office to Customs, the city veterinary office and the document translator. Then on the other end, I had a friend arrange to pick her up in Chicago and hold her until my sister came from Wisconsin.
Frankly, this took away from my Peace Corps duties. While I think that walking around town with her every day and making friends with little boys, who ended up liking her and petting her was good, it took away from my other projects. I was distracted.
The tension was thick as the day of the flight approached. I had all the documents I thought I needed, but who knows what I didn’t understand that I needed?--I was speaking to everyone in Azerbaijani. Azerbaijanis helped me quite a bit, but once I got in the taxi for Baku (171 miles away) with The Dog, we were on our own. Well, almost. Our PC country director had given permission for her to relax at the PC office before the flight. We hung out in the yard, she had a bath with the car-washing hose and she searched for fallen berries to eat.
I was supposed to be at the airport at 10:00 p.m. About 6 p.m. is when they called to say I should come back in nine days because Customs is not open on Sunday. This was Sunday. I headed to the airport. At the cargo dock, I was quickly surrounded by huge, curious guys who looked like bouncers—they lug cargo around for a living. I told my Lufthansa contact that I had nowhere to go with her, they were the ones who scheduled the flight for Sunday knowing Customs was closed and she had to go or I would need to stay at the cargo building with her for nine days.
They figured it out. After awhile, they produced the crate, I said goodbye, kissed her while the giant loading dock guys watched us and left the rest to Fate.
My kind friends, the Harles, in Naperville, Illinois, picked her up at the airport and gave her excellent care for several days, including an oatmeal bath at a groomer. Afterward, my sister came to pick her up and they made the six-hour trip to her home in Wisconsin. My brother-in-law is no longer skeptical; he loves her and wants to keep her. She hustles around her rural neighborhood and goes to the state park on the weekends. She has gone to doggy class and even day-care for socialization with American dogs.
The real miracle of this story is not all of the people who helped me, although the support I received from everyone, including many Azerbaijanis, was tremendous. The real miracle is that this little dog is so unusual. She was not able to adapt to life in Azerbaijan, but was able to do everything I asked her to do to adapt to America—walk on a leash, ride in a taxi, accept physical exams and shots without objecting, walk confidently into an operating room when she had never been inside a building in her life, know not to urinate inside, not object to having me walk up to her on the street and shove worm medicine down her throat, and go from a crate in an airport to charming people in Naperville, Illinois within an hour. For awhile, her life changed radically and frequently and she kept accepting the changes.
So when I see a dog in my neighborhood scrounging his own food or lying in the sun enjoying the good weather, I toss him part of my candy bar and hope that he is finding some enjoyment in life. I don’t think I’ll ever meet another dog like The Dog.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Traveling ın Turkey
I haven't seen my son in almost two years. He was in the Navy and couldn't just up and come over to Azerbaijan. Most volunteers have come home due to a family wedding; illness or just because they mıssed theır famıly.
So since he recently left the Navy, he decided to come and visit. We met in Istanbul last week and are traveling through the rest of the country. This blog post is really just an endorsement of Turkey as a vacation spot and an interestıng country. Neither of us had ever thought much about Turkey and only thought of coming here because I am in this part of the world and the other options are not so appealıng--Iran, Turkmenıstan, Armenia, Syria, and the part of Russia that is having a lot of civil unrest.
Of course, Istanbul is an interestıng city wıth a lot to do—historical sites, a beautiful city on two continents and in three parts, all separated by water. Lovely palaces, beautiful parks, interesting places, such as the Grand Bazar, with over 4000 merchants, the Spice Bazar and a wonderful public transportation system, although we walked most of the time.
Istanbul is extremely clean, the parks are outstanding, we felt very safe and there are interestıng things to do everywhere. The Turkısh people are very welcomıng and everything is well-organized.
We next went to Gallipoli, the site of the WWI battle, because my son is a history buff. We then saw Troy, the ancient cıty—I didn’t know that there are 9 cities here built on top of each other. It was interestıng to see the different excavations.
We then took an overnight bus to Cappadogia, an area wıth giant rock formations and soft rock cliffs into which are built whole cities. We are stayıng in a cave hotel carved out of the rock. What a lovely place. Tomorrow we will go to some cave citıes and explore a canyon.
We are so impressed wıth the bus transportation—clean, effıcient and they go almost everywhere. We had a butler on our Mercedes bus giving us drınks and snacks. It ıs inexpensive. The bathrooms in the bus statıons are immaculate.
As we traveled on the bus, we saw many cities along the way. They are immaculate wıth beautıful apartment buildıngs and wonderful infrastructure. The architecture is interesting and attractive wıth beautiful mosques everywhere.
Everyone has been very kind to us and some people on the bus have even invited us to their homes.
So since he recently left the Navy, he decided to come and visit. We met in Istanbul last week and are traveling through the rest of the country. This blog post is really just an endorsement of Turkey as a vacation spot and an interestıng country. Neither of us had ever thought much about Turkey and only thought of coming here because I am in this part of the world and the other options are not so appealıng--Iran, Turkmenıstan, Armenia, Syria, and the part of Russia that is having a lot of civil unrest.
Of course, Istanbul is an interestıng city wıth a lot to do—historical sites, a beautiful city on two continents and in three parts, all separated by water. Lovely palaces, beautiful parks, interesting places, such as the Grand Bazar, with over 4000 merchants, the Spice Bazar and a wonderful public transportation system, although we walked most of the time.
Istanbul is extremely clean, the parks are outstanding, we felt very safe and there are interestıng things to do everywhere. The Turkısh people are very welcomıng and everything is well-organized.
We next went to Gallipoli, the site of the WWI battle, because my son is a history buff. We then saw Troy, the ancient cıty—I didn’t know that there are 9 cities here built on top of each other. It was interestıng to see the different excavations.
We then took an overnight bus to Cappadogia, an area wıth giant rock formations and soft rock cliffs into which are built whole cities. We are stayıng in a cave hotel carved out of the rock. What a lovely place. Tomorrow we will go to some cave citıes and explore a canyon.
We are so impressed wıth the bus transportation—clean, effıcient and they go almost everywhere. We had a butler on our Mercedes bus giving us drınks and snacks. It ıs inexpensive. The bathrooms in the bus statıons are immaculate.
As we traveled on the bus, we saw many cities along the way. They are immaculate wıth beautıful apartment buildıngs and wonderful infrastructure. The architecture is interesting and attractive wıth beautiful mosques everywhere.
Everyone has been very kind to us and some people on the bus have even invited us to their homes.
Friday, July 9, 2010
It's Hot Outside
Diary of a Hot Day
I was working in a lovely mountain village last week at a camp for kids. Peace Corps volunteers there got the idea to create a camp for four weeks and organized it. We served 60 kids and it was a lot of fun. But despite the mountain setting, it was HOT.
Part of the week, there was no water in one of the volunteers' homes. It was difficult for them. We had water where I was staying, but it smelled really bad and came out of the tap sandy. Mountain or no mountain, the water there is bad.
I came home today on a 3 1/2 hour hot ride in a dilapidated van that serves as a bus between my community and the other one. I found that we had no water at our house either, but the rest of the neighborhood did. Despite this, yesterday my family had a circumcision ceremony at the house for a 14 year old relative and killed a lamb there too for good luck. I am glad I was not there.
The relatives are lovely (the boy is holed up in another room for 10 days), but I wish we had water. I have a lot of dirty clothes.
I left to go to the internet club and buy a watermelon (delicious and cheap, but hard to get home) and read these factoids from the Peace Corps monthly newsletter for Azerbaijan volunteers:
If you need to blow your nose, leave the room. It is acceptable to gently dab at your nose in front of others, but not to blow your nose. If you are in la ocation in which you cannot leave (say, for example, on a 6 hour bus ride), you may blow your nose but try to be as discreet as possible.
It is believed that for women and children, sitting on cement is bad for your health (bad for reproductive health).
Appearance is everything. Do not wear clothes with mud. Clean your shoes. Bring napkins/rag on a muddy day to clean your shoes before lessons. Iron your clothes. Men: Shave your face. Keep your hair cut clean.
Men inAzerbaijan commonly
I am going home to sit in front of the fan.
I was working in a lovely mountain village last week at a camp for kids. Peace Corps volunteers there got the idea to create a camp for four weeks and organized it. We served 60 kids and it was a lot of fun. But despite the mountain setting, it was HOT.
Part of the week, there was no water in one of the volunteers' homes. It was difficult for them. We had water where I was staying, but it smelled really bad and came out of the tap sandy. Mountain or no mountain, the water there is bad.
I came home today on a 3 1/2 hour hot ride in a dilapidated van that serves as a bus between my community and the other one. I found that we had no water at our house either, but the rest of the neighborhood did. Despite this, yesterday my family had a circumcision ceremony at the house for a 14 year old relative and killed a lamb there too for good luck. I am glad I was not there.
The relatives are lovely (the boy is holed up in another room for 10 days), but I wish we had water. I have a lot of dirty clothes.
I left to go to the internet club and buy a watermelon (delicious and cheap, but hard to get home) and read these factoids from the Peace Corps monthly newsletter for Azerbaijan volunteers:
If you need to blow your nose, leave the room. It is acceptable to gently dab at your nose in front of others, but not to blow your nose. If you are in la ocation in which you cannot leave (say, for example, on a 6 hour bus ride), you may blow your nose but try to be as discreet as possible.
It is believed that for women and children, sitting on cement is bad for your health (bad for reproductive health).
Appearance is everything. Do not wear clothes with mud. Clean your shoes. Bring napkins/rag on a muddy day to clean your shoes before lessons. Iron your clothes. Men: Shave your face. Keep your hair cut clean.
Men in
I am going home to sit in front of the fan.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Traveling and Twitter
Azerbaijan is physically separated into two parts. To get to the other part from where I live, you must take a bus through Iran or through Georgia. It takes many hours and I obviously can't go through Iran. So when I went last week, I flew. It took 40 minutes.
I went with a Peace Corps friend and her Azerbaijani husband, Ferid. An interesting thing happened. Before we left, a young woman told Ferid that her brother was in the army in the part of the country we were going to. She asked if he would bring her brother some home-cooked food. Ferid barely knew this girl. But he told her he would, got information about his location and when we got to the other part of the country, he told his mother about the situation.
The next morning she got up early and cooked for several hours, making him a large packet of food. Ferid then went to the base, met with the young man and gave him the food. He was gone about 5 hours.
This is perfectly normal in Azerbaijan--spend hours making food for a stranger and delivering it.
--------------------------------------------
Some of the things that are part of everyday life in America didn’t exist when I left the country in 2008. So this time I will ask questions about these things.
For example, Twitter—I have heard of it, but we don’t have it here. It seems like if it did, I could get tweeted (I think that is the term) by Ashton Kutcher or Britney Spears about what they are doing or thinking. Why do people want that? It seems like a lot of people use it. What useful things can a person do with Twitter?
Lady Gaga—I haven’t heard her sing—it is not possible to download from Itunes here. Is she any good? Her outfits are interesting.
The Tea Party---I don’t get them. They seem like a contradiction. They don’t want much Federal government, but they are angry at Obama about not doing something about BP. But according to them, isn’t the government supposed to stay out of regulating stuff?
Most of the Tea Party people seem to be from conservative states like Mississippi, Alabama and Arizona. Maybe they don't know that when Mississippi sends $1.00 to the Federal government in taxes, they get $2.02 back. The balance comes from the liberal states they make fun of, like Massachusetts, which gets 82 cents back for every dollar it sends.
And on the personal responsibility part of the Tea Party—Arkansas, where the Tea Party is strong, has a divorce rate almost twice the rate of Massachusetts. The same for SAT scores, teen pregnancy, school drop-out rates and incarceration rates—the Tea Party states seem to have a problem with personal responsibility as well as for paying their own way. So why don’t they like the Federal government?
The Real Housewives—who are they? Are they really "real"? Are they actresses? Is this a reality show or a drama?
Apple Tablet—I want one, I think. How does the virtual keyboard work? Can I get away without a real computer if I have one of these? Will I miss the optical drive? Is it better to read books on it Kindle-like or is it better to tote the book around?
I went with a Peace Corps friend and her Azerbaijani husband, Ferid. An interesting thing happened. Before we left, a young woman told Ferid that her brother was in the army in the part of the country we were going to. She asked if he would bring her brother some home-cooked food. Ferid barely knew this girl. But he told her he would, got information about his location and when we got to the other part of the country, he told his mother about the situation.
The next morning she got up early and cooked for several hours, making him a large packet of food. Ferid then went to the base, met with the young man and gave him the food. He was gone about 5 hours.
This is perfectly normal in Azerbaijan--spend hours making food for a stranger and delivering it.
--------------------------------------------
Some of the things that are part of everyday life in America didn’t exist when I left the country in 2008. So this time I will ask questions about these things.
For example, Twitter—I have heard of it, but we don’t have it here. It seems like if it did, I could get tweeted (I think that is the term) by Ashton Kutcher or Britney Spears about what they are doing or thinking. Why do people want that? It seems like a lot of people use it. What useful things can a person do with Twitter?
Lady Gaga—I haven’t heard her sing—it is not possible to download from Itunes here. Is she any good? Her outfits are interesting.
The Tea Party---I don’t get them. They seem like a contradiction. They don’t want much Federal government, but they are angry at Obama about not doing something about BP. But according to them, isn’t the government supposed to stay out of regulating stuff?
Most of the Tea Party people seem to be from conservative states like Mississippi, Alabama and Arizona. Maybe they don't know that when Mississippi sends $1.00 to the Federal government in taxes, they get $2.02 back. The balance comes from the liberal states they make fun of, like Massachusetts, which gets 82 cents back for every dollar it sends.
And on the personal responsibility part of the Tea Party—Arkansas, where the Tea Party is strong, has a divorce rate almost twice the rate of Massachusetts. The same for SAT scores, teen pregnancy, school drop-out rates and incarceration rates—the Tea Party states seem to have a problem with personal responsibility as well as for paying their own way. So why don’t they like the Federal government?
The Real Housewives—who are they? Are they really "real"? Are they actresses? Is this a reality show or a drama?
Apple Tablet—I want one, I think. How does the virtual keyboard work? Can I get away without a real computer if I have one of these? Will I miss the optical drive? Is it better to read books on it Kindle-like or is it better to tote the book around?
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