Dumb ex-pat

The other day in a tiny little cluttered shop, I whacked something with my backpack and heard it crash to the floor, turned around, and saw I'd just destructed a statuette. I picked up the pieces, put them back on the shelf and snuck out. Then I felt horrible. Here I am a rich person in a poor country--I probably wiped out their profits for the week. So (raised Catholic) my conscience bothering me, I asked one of the admin. assistants at the school to translate a note: "I broke something on Friday. I would like to pay for it now." The translation was five times as long as the English--lots of polite terms and formal sentence structures in Azerbaijan.

Big smiles from the clerks when I handed over the note. The pieces were immediately retrieved and offered to me. Price: 60 manats, but no, not, 70% (shown on calculator). I'm sure I've been a topic of conversation for the past few days. I like this shop--now I'll be able to go back to it.

Another birthday somewhere else

I spent my 50th birthday in Kyiv, at my first overseas teaching job, and I'm so happy to spend my 54th here in Baku! I love my friends in the DC area and the traditional Dec. 4th gathering at the Four Provinces in Arlington, but it's a stimulating change to have a party (for the first time here) with people from London, Melbourne, Harare, New Mexico, Auckland, Manchester, Ottawa, Istanbul, Madrid. I love hearing their stories.

And now that I've hosted one party, I'll do it again (esp. if I hire a housecleaner, as everyone else seems to have done).

Sheep-slaughtering holiday

Today and tomorrow the school is closed for the Muslim holiday of Gurban. This school is closed for all Azerbaijan national holidays--I learn about them as they come up.

Last week I asked the eighth-graders exactly what Gurban commemorates. The local students explained that it's a day when you kill a sheep and give away pieces to your neighbors, particularly neighbors who are poorer than you. "And if you're poorer than your neighbors?" my co-teacher asked. "Then they give you pieces of their sheep," was the response.

So a day to trade around pieces of sheep; basically, a day of charity. (I looked up Gurban online, and it does have to do with Abraham and Isaac and the ram that Abraham killed instead of Isaac.)

I was wondering how I, age 13, would have explained the Feast of the Assumption to a Muslim. It would have sounded even more whacked out than Gurban.

Fall break in Deutschland

I just returned to Baku from Germany via Vienna. It was nice to be back in the west for a few days. Germany now feels almost as familiar as the US, compared to Azerbaijan. I had a good time supporting the German economy and buying stuff that's not available in Baku (peanut butter, dehydrated soup mixes, salad dressing packets..pretty much anything full of chemicals and preservatives).

Patty and Manfred and I watched parts of a documentary about two guys who go on a motorcycle trip from London to NYC via Ukraine and Kazakhstan and Mongolia and Russia--it's called "The Long Way Round" with Ewan McGregor (actor) and a friend--it's astonishingly entertaining! Get it on Netflix if you can!

The other day Patty (GOD BLESS HER) spent almost the entire day at a travel agency w/me helping to arrange flights from Baku to Frankfurt to Minneapolis for Christmas and New Year's. It involves four airlines and connections in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Chicago, and Moscow. I'm sure absolutely nothing will go wrong, no glitches, no lost luggage, no missed connections, nobody wondering if I'm a terrorist because I live in a Muslim country...

The two young women at the travel agency put a lot of work into it. We kept hearing one or the other on the phone saying something like "Baku. in Azerbaijan. I know, we never heard of it either!" (I don't speak German, but even I could understand THAT, esp. since there was a lot of laughter going on at both ends)

Kai and Mac had their school break this week as well, so it was great to spend some time with them. Kai is about ten feet tall, Mac not quite, but getting there...they're delightful nephews and I was so happy to be on the same continent w/them for a while.

Small world cliche, but fun

On int'l day I met the father of one of my German students, stilted conversation, but he warmed up on hearing I was off to Deutschland for the break, near Mannheim, where he grew up!

"My sister and her family live near Speyer."

"In Speyer?"

"No, a village near Speyer. Bohl-Iggleheim."

"Bohl-Iggelheim? My brother is in Iggelheim! a doctor! ear nose throat" (so jubilant that he forgot the words and pointed to his ears nose and throat) "It is a small world!" the dad said.

So in the next few days we'll be going for a walk along the street where this uncle lives. Manfred looked him up in the phone book and wants to knock on the door and say hello. With him, I won't look like a stalker.

International Day at school

International schools host an "international" event every year. Kids dress in their national costumes, play native games, perform dances and sing songs from their countries. Parents bring in regional foods to share. When I was in Ukraine, the school had an "International Night" so regional beverages were served as well as foods (that was fun!).

Here at my school in Azerbaijan, International Day was on Friday, during the school day, so no beverages. It was a wonderful day, with fantastic performances by both adults and kids: a Korean drumming dance, Indian bridal dance ritual, the singing of the Azerbaijan national anthem, Haka dance from N.Z., salsa and tango, "We Come from a Land Down Under, " on and on.

The ELS dept. ran a games workshop--the M3s/grade 8 kids played bingo in three languages and alphabets. It would have been four if Ling from China hadn't gone on vacation a day early.

Rumors and visas

Azerbaijan doesn't have a free press (the country is #97 on a scale of 100, according to a map I saw at the Newseum this summer). In a country without a free press, people rely on rumors. It's the same way at my school, unfortunately--we hear rumors about things going on in the larger community that affect us personally, but we hear nothing officially.

Azerbaijan has been issuing 30-day tourist visas to visitors at the airport. A rumor went around that the 30 days had been decreased to 7, but the school wouldn't confirm or deny. "It's a rumor," was all we were told.

Well, it's true. And it affected a lot of teachers who were expecting family and friends to visit during fall break. My friend Eileen's parents were coming from Ireland for 9 days. They were forced to leave within a week or pay $600 each to stay the extra two days. It was cheaper for them to pay to change their flights and leave sooner. (and while Eileen may be READY for them to leave after 7 days, it's still a disappointment!) Some friends and family cancelled altogether.

The latest rumor is that Azerbaijan will no longer allow visas to be obtained upon arrival at the airport, no exceptions. No one can come in as a visitor/tourist without an official letter of invitation. This is allegedly because of upcoming elections--the government wants to prevent outside observers from monitoring the elections in November. (In Ukraine, observers regularly come from other countries to monitor elections, and a good thing, after what happened to Yushchenko in 2004.) But...that's another rumor.

Oh, these wacky ex-Soviet countries! Fall break begins on Saturday and I have a flight to Germany at 7 a.m. Because I came in on a now-expired tourist visa and still hadn't received a resident visa, I might not be able to get back to Azerbaijan from Germany after the break. Frankly, I wasn't that worried about getting back IN, it was the getting OUT that concerned me. (I just read an amazing book "The Forsaken", about Americans who believed Soviet propaganda during the depression and emigrated to the USSR, some to work in Henry Ford's plant. They all ended up in the gulag.)

On Monday, the business office took my passport (or "confiscated" it, as I'm now thinking), claiming it was needed to obtain my resident visa. And I would have my passport back, along with the resident visa, by Friday. Friday afternoon at latest. Maybe Friday evening. But before flight Saturday morning. Yes, will have it. Driver will bring to flat. Stay in flat, don't leave.

Okay, whatever you say. The woman in the business office is a lovely person and she's not the one causing the problems--it's systemic.

It was an enormous relief today to receive my passport along with my resident card. I'm now here legally! and I can prove it if a cop stops and questions me! although that's not likely because of my skin color!

So I'm off to Germany on Saturday, should be able to get out and in. No updates on what's really happening with visitors and visas, just rumors.

Cult of Personality

When my electricity failed a few weeks ago, two employees from the school came over and poked around the wiring. A socket had "melted" probably because I'd had the ac on ALL THE TIME (dumb entitled American, I could see them thinking).

At least I know that the circuit breakers are functional. The workers later drove me to school. I had a nice conversation with Rashid, who speaks English and is learning German and is trained as accountant but school has better pay than accounting and is necessary to know someone to get accounting job. "It is necessary to network?" I asked. "Yes, network!" he said, happy to learn a new idiom.

I asked about Heydar Aliyev. Rashid told me Aliyev had been the head of the KGB in Soviet-era Azerbaijan, "worse than Stalin," he said, and even today old people "shudder" when his name is brought up.

That must be hard for them, because his name is everywhere. The Azerbaijan airport is called Heydar Aliyev. Libraries, parks,and boulevards are named after Aliyev. Billboards of Aliyev are all over the place. He died in 2003, now his son is president, and he's allegedly grooming his own son to be the next president (a pre-teen who owns 6 palaces in Dubai).

I team-teach in M1/grade 6 Humanities. A recent assignment was to research and write a speech about a famous person, ie Gandhi, Elvis, Napoleon, Vaso de Gama, Genghis Khan, Helen Keller. The 6th-graders had to include positive and negative points about their subjects.

One of the local students chose Heydar Aliyev, but she couldn't find anything negative about him. She's not allowed to.

Carry your papers

Everyone at school was in a tizzy this week, esp. new teachers. Alvin, the music teacher, and his wife were picked out of a crowd by police when they were walking downtown on Saturday, asked for their papers, and since they didn't have them, they spent SEVEN HOURS IN JAIL.

So we're all being warned to carry our BP badges, copies of our passports, and letters stating that we're employees of the school and here legally because--here's the catch--we're NOT here legally. We came in on 30 day-tourist visas which have expired, and our long-term visas haven't arrived yet. So without all this documentation, any one of us could be picked up and thrown into the slammer.

We all know, however, that it most likely happened to Alvin and Tina because they're from India. The first thing the police officer asked was "Pakistati? Hindustani?" Alvin said "Hindustani." The officer wanted documents, they weren't carrying them, the officer told them to get into the car, Alvin refused, and the officer forced him into it. These were plain-clothes policemen in an unmarked car. Apparently Tina was relieved when they were driven to the police station; they could have been taken anywhere.

Alvin and Nina are gentle, kind people. It's a shame that this happened to them, but overt racism is common here (as it was in Ukraine).

And now we're all even more illegal because Azerbaijan just reduced its 30-tourist visa to 7 days. So we've been here without proper documentation for 49 days instead of 26.

Metro

This morning I took the metro to go to church (Mom, are you reading this?) Baku has a system similar to DC's Smartcard; you get a plastic card, swipe it as you enter, and top it up when it runs low.

It's been a couple of weeks since I added money. This morning I wasn't in a rush to get to work, so decided to take a few minutes and top it up. The machine wouldn't accept my crumpled 5 manat bill. An employee came to help me out (well, I was holding up other passengers, you know how irritating THAT is). He pointed out that there are 21 rides on my card. Did I really want to add another 25? Well, no, thanks very much, I guess I don't.

This was done without either of us speaking the other's language but it was all very clear.

1 metro ride anywhere on the Baku metro is 20 qopeks. (100 q = 1 manat) I have the DC system in my head, where it costs $2.65 or whatever to go from Ballston to Federal Triangle, and more during rush hour, and more if you're going farther....it's easy here.

And this farecard will last me until fall break!

Haircut

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2010


Yesterday I headed out with my English-Azerbaijan phrasebook, determined to deal with my shaggy hair. Baku is full of "kisi salonu" or men's salons, but I had a hard time finding a "qadin salonu." I walked into the first one I saw, a little place full of chattering women.

Much merriment resulted when I pulled out my scrap of paper with the Az. words for "haircut" and "a little bit." An older woman in the salon came over and carefully said "I can speak English. I can help you." She asked where I was from (I've learned to say "America" instead of "the United States" which people don't seem to understand), then told me that the husband of the daughter of her sister is chief of embassy in Washington D.C.

Her nephew-in-law is head of the Azerbaijan Embassy! "So HE'S the one who wouldn't return my calls when I was trying to get a visa," I did not say.


WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

BACK TO SCHOOL IN BAKU


Even though I feel as if I've been teaching in Baku for months, today is the first day of school for local kids. So the metro was more crowded than usual (and this will be the usual from now on) and as I walked through the village, little groups of children headed up to the main road with their mothers.

Both boys and girls were looking very spiffy, unrecognizable from the grubby kids who've been playing in the village streets every afternoon. Boys wore dark suits, white shirts without ties, and girls wore fancy dresses or plaid skirts with white blouses and ties, some with giant white bows in their hair. Uniforms? or just dressed up for the first day? I'll find out tomorrow.

Discovery Channel

Before I came to Baku, I read guidebooks which advised against riding the metro because it's so dangerous, but no specific reasons as to why--robberies? crashes like the DC metro? One of my students (from the U.S.) told me that he's "not allowed" to ride the metro because "the embassy won't let us. It's the most dangerous subway in the world!"

Then I got to Baku, started riding the metro, no problems, easy! easier than DC! The other day I went online to read up on the specifics.

The most dangerous subway in the world got its title due to an accident in October 1995. An electrical spark in the rails started a small fire, but because the seats in the cars were made of highly flammable toxic materials, the smoke spread quickly and 300+ people died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

I was riding the subway this morning, thinking about the worst subway disaster in history. Then I thought about all the people riding with me looking at the American sitting there. They were probably thinking about that dangerous country, America, where everyone carries a gun and shoots it off whenever they're pissed.

My apartment

My apartment is wonderful, in the center of downtown, more room than I need (a separate dining room, which I'm using as an office), two bedrooms, a 2-room kitchen, living room, balcony, lots of storage. The entryway and stairs (up 60 steps) are dingy and dismal, which is typical of the entryways in these ex-Soviet countries, but at least no one uses my stairwell as a toilet, as they do in the building where I went to a party the other day. The apt. even has AC, which is great, because it's been suffocatingly hot and humid--it was a relief when it cooled off a little last week.

I lost electricity today but, again, a maintenance man from the school came out immediately and fixed it. The same guy who came to turn on the H2O a few weeks ago. We're getting to be buddies, with his fractured English and my fractured Russian.

More about water

After a week or so of buying small bottles of water, I finally "sorted out" the potable water situation. When I first arrived, I boiled tap water and drank it, but was warned that boiling removes bacteria, but not the heavy metals (here in petroleum city, plenty of those have leached into the groundwater).

So I took the short walk to Citimart, found the English-speaking manager, and bought a couple of big vats. A clerk trundled them down to my apartment and then up the 60 steps. I don't have to stint myself on drinking water anymore!

Fountains

Every square in Baku has a fountain, so it was a little confusing at the beginning to figure out which one is the official "Fountain Square."

What I've learned about water in Baku

When you're all lathered up in the shower at 7 in the morning and the water suddenly cuts off completely, it helps to have just filled a couple of ice cube trays. That's enough to rinse off with, believe it or not! This happened to me on day 3 in Baku. That was the day the new teachers went on a shopping trip to the Azerbaijan equivalent of Wal-Mart. We all bought big buckets.

After walking to school from the subway via the dusty village and through the trash dump, don't head to the restroom and squirt soap on your hands until you're sure the building has water that morning. This has happened to me several times, but I think NOW I've learned.

A worker from the school came right away and got the water running in my apartment, and the school's water does eventually come on...but, as in Ukraine, I can't take utilities for granted!