Thursday, August 28, 2008
It’s early in the morning here at my permanent site and I just can’t get to sleep tonight. I am excited about tomorrow and in general the time I have spent so far in Armenia and especially at my permanent site. I have been busy working on or preparing to work on so many projects that it is beginning to get difficult for me to fit everything in my schedule. I thought the opposite would happen once I got to my permanent site.
However I am very happy to have all of this work since it is definitely not the norm for most of the other Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) I’ve talked with here in Armenia. A majority of PCVs are located in very rural areas of Armenia, where the local populations live almost entirely off of subsistence farming or very small business. These towns/villages receive little in the way of aid, whether it is from NGOs, the government, or foreign aid assistance. The PCVs there must start from scratch and try to build something from nothing; much like the Armenian Diaspora community has down for about 100 years and longer if you count prior historical circumstances. Right now many of my PCV friends are bored, because they have not acquired a high enough proficiency in the language to get down to business with their Armenian counterparts and within their communities. My Armenian is not much better, but I am lucky in a way that there are many patient people here to listen to my broken Armenian.
My village has had several well-liked volunteers before me, because of this there is a very strong pro-American sentiment at my permanent site. Although I am still the new volunteer in town and I receive suspicious gazes every day, the people in the town are overall friendly to me and there is a large segment of the population who has worked with PCVs before and loved them. Another thing that is interesting to me is that I am regarded as a volunteer here at my permanent site. They have had so many PCVs here in the past that the local population is used to having a new volunteer every couple of years. Yet, I definitely don’t just want to be another volunteer, I want to do a lot for the people of my town and I feel like I am off to a good start even though it is just a start.
The projects that I am working on, in some fashion or another, right now are diverse in scope and nature. Even though I know these projects are partially a product of my environment, I have also tried to be very open and visible in the community. I am out and about in the community everyday, even if I’m having a bad day, and I put myself on the line quite frequently since currently my Armenian language skills is not that great.
My first project that I worked on and completed was writing around a 20 page grant for a local NGO who is trying to raise political awareness in my town and the surrounding villages. The NGO I have been working at is kind of a one-stop shop in terms of what types of projects it performs. Personally, I believe this is the future of grass-roots, based NGOs throughout the world for three primary reasons. For one thing it is very difficult to sustain multiple NGOs in small communities. Personnel, overhead, and traveling expenses add up, it is easier to have a fairly permanent staff and basic equipment that you can rely on project after project. Secondly, the NGOs in these local communities generally have members who are interested in a wide variety of development topics; not just women’s rights, or the environment, or health improvements. Generally, the people that I have met at the NGOs represent a small percentage of the local population that wants change and will try to improve most aspects of life in a specific community. Third, initially having just one NGO prevents initial start-up squabbling in the case of multiple NGOs in a community; it is hard to build coalitions within a small community when people are fighting over projects. The key in initial NGO start up within a ‘new’ community is consciences. Although some would argue that multiple NGO’s in a town is good and necessary for development, just as competition is a must within the free-market, but at this point I would have to disagree. Local NGOs like the one I work for already face fierce competition in the international market of grants and donations. If an NGO doesn’t perform well on a single project a donor organization will look elsewhere when donating later on. However, I do think if the NGO becomes too large or if it is located in a large enough town or city then multiple NGOs are preferable. I have only been at my permanent site for 2-weeks so I am sure more realities of the NGO business will soon become apparent.
Okay, now for the other projects I am currently working on. Another project I’m working on is with the same NGO is an environmental project, for which I have a meeting tomorrow at 3p.m. The entire ‘staff’ of our NGO, plus around 10 people from Yerevan will come in to discuss our future plans. In early September, I want to take some of the best English speaking students to a nearby town to be test for the FLEX program run out of the State Department. FLEX is a 10-month program; where high school aged students from all over the world have the opportunity to study in a high school in America. This project will be tough to organize with such short notice and since most, if not all, parents are too worried to let their kids leave home and go to America. The next project I will be working on is more of just a fun day, but fun days are good every once in awhile. In the middle of September I will be going to Yerevan to help out with a “Save the Nature” open air painting day, which will be organized by Sunchild NGO. It sounds like fun, but it will be quite the trip for me. The other project that has recently come to my attention is a forest beautification project. There are several little parks around in the nearby forests and all of them have trash scattered all around the park area, usually just out of sight of the horovats (barbecue) pit and the picnic tables. I want to clean up 5 different sites and install permanent trash cans, whose contents will be disposed of after every weekend. I also want to put up sign explaining local fines, environmental consequences, and the different decomposition rates of certain types of trash. The last project is kind of another fun one, but some local men, one of them being my host brother-in-law, are starting up a judo/karate dojo here in my town. They are interested in getting a tumbling a mat for their dojo. Getting grant money for this might be more difficult since at this point I don’t know exactly how this tumbling mat will help the community at large, but I ‘m sure we can think of some way it will positively impact the community. Armenians love judo and most large towns I have been to have a dojo for young boys to train. Maybe that will be the key to receiving grant money, advertise to girls in our village, Eureka! If we can have lessons for girls than maybe grant money will come about easily. We’ll see.
Okay now my paragraphs are just rambling on, I probably should go to bed. It is 2:50 in the morning here and I want to wake up kind of early and go running; that probably won’t happen, but there is always tomorrow.
I hope everything is going well back in America and all over the world. I heard there was flooding in Melbourne, Florida a couple weeks ago I hope nobody was hurt and that not too much property was destroyed, I don’t know if the insurance industry has fully recovered from Katrina and the storms of 2005. I also heard there was a threat of tornados and flooding in Georgia, because of the tropical storm that also caused the flooding in Florida. I hope everyone in Georgia is safe and that little Miss Charlotte was not scared by the storm. I hope the Bulldogs have a great weekend against Central Michigan and that Bud and Holly have a fun joint birthday party. I’ll talk to y’all later and I love everybody back home.
Love,
Mark
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
8.26.2008
My second weekend a my permanent site
Sunday, August 24, 2008
My day of rest was wonderful and much needed, but I didn’t really rest much per se. All week I have been helping an NGO prepare a grant proposal, which has to be sent into different donor organizations next week. I don’t know what the NGO would have done without me since I have been helping them for an average of 4 hours per day with translating their proposal from Armenian to English. Although there are people at the NGO who can speak English, most notably two English teachers from my town, their English skills are okay and it would have taken them weeks to type-up the information I have prepared for them this week. As noted in a previous blog I have created a line-item budget, a detailed description of that budget, a timeline of the projects duration, and various things to make the grant proposal look official.
In addition to my work load, last night I told my family that I would prepare dinner for them; this was not as a relaxing occurrence either. Even though I knew from previous experiences that cooking in Armenia is never quite as calming as it is in America, due to the constant supervision, language barrier, and uncertainty about how hot the oven really is; I still was not ready for how mentally taxing the meal would be to prepare.
First-off my host mother is a very sweet and adorable lady, but she is even more overprotective then… well let’s say a couple of my friend’s moms back home in America. Early in the morning on Saturday, before going to work I asked her to pick up some ingredients from the store and to pick a couple things from our garden for the pizza. I wanted two circular loafs of bread and Dutch cheese (Hollandicacan panir) from the store, this cheese is the closest thing you can get to mozzarella in most parts of Armenia. I should have realized because my family owns a cheese factory, which obviously doesn’t make Dutch cheese, this request was not going to happen. Upon asking for the cheese my host mom immediately became defensive asking what was wrong with the cheese they made and saying that their cheese would work just fine on the pizza. In addition, she asked me why I wanted loafs of bread when she could buy pre-made pizza crusts, which they sell at most stores here at my permanent site. I told her I liked the bread better because I knew it was freshly baked that day, whereas the pre-made pizza crusts could have been a couple of years old. Still she insisted and since she knows better in the kitchen, she won out on this ingredient. They already had tomato paste so that was one thing I didn’t have to worry about. Also, she kept questioning me about what kind of meat I wanted on the pizza I told I just wanted to make vegetarian pizza (ban-jan-aren-i pizza). Yet from her experience with other volunteers, I am assuming they always had meat on the pizzas they made, because she was absolutely convinced that all pizzas had meat on them, and that it wasn’t pizza unless it had meat on it.
After going over the two things I wanted from the ha-noot or store, it was on to things I needed from the garden. As I was telling her each ingredient I wanted on the pizza, if she liked that particular ingredient she would smile and agree, but if not she would tell me that that ingredient would not taste good on the pizza. Also, my host mom has diabetes and if she really didn’t like the ingredient she would tell me that she wouldn’t be able to eat the pizza, because that particular ingredient had too much sugar. Time after time I told her vegetables from the garden wouldn’t affect her sugar level, which she knows, but once again she was again trying to dictate exactly what ingredients to put on the pizza. I finally told I would not make the pizza if I didn’t have the ingredients I wanted and she finally agreed. To my amazement my host father also picked up some cheese from the store for, I don’t know exactly what kind of cheese it was, but it tasted pretty good. My host mom was also a great help collecting the ingredients for me, she didn’t have to go pick the ingredients, but she did nevertheless.
Now to the actual preparation of the pizza, it too was a rather exhausting affair. My host mom was trying to be super helpful in the kitchen, probably the same was true during the ingredient negotiation process, but this time she was a bit more lax on trying to push her methods of preparing the pizza. I don’t exactly know why this was, maybe because she doesn’t have too much experience making pizza, maybe because many of the men were around, or maybe she was just tired, since I didn’t start making the pizza until around 9 pm. Anyhow, if she suggested a certain way of doing something once and I disagreed then she wouldn’t push the issue any further. A lot of times she offers some really good suggestions, but every time I acquiesce to these suggestions the control I have over what I’m working on slowly erodes. I guess I was determined to make the pizza my way and I think eventually she realized that.
The pizza was similar to the one I made before for my LCFs (or Language and Culture Facilitators, my language teachers during Pre-Service Training). The two main differences were the frozen pizza crusts, which ended up tasting alright, but still not as good as the fresh bread crust and also I kind of made my own sauce this time. Although my host mom said we had tomato paste and I saw the jar of it earlier in the day, I didn’t realize how little was left in the jar. So I diced up a couple of tomatoes and manually pureed them into a bowl and added the tomato paste. Also I added garlic, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper to the sauce, I though it tasted fabulous. During the baking process another problem emerged , even though I knew my family didn’t have an oven, since my host mom only cooks on the stove-top, to my distress the oven I was going to use in the next apartment over wasn’t working. This meant I had to run up to my host sister’s apartment, on the fifth floor, every time I wanted to use the oven. Also, the machine I used was not really an oven, but a large toaster oven, which could only fit one pizza at a time. So first I brushed some olive oil on the crusts of the two pizzas and ran them upstairs to put in the oven, one at a time, so that they would be a bit crispy. Then I ran back downstairs to add the sauce, cheese, and the fresh ingredients from the garden which included: more garlic, onions, green peppers, eggplant, a hot pepper, and juicy tomatoes. After that I ran back upstairs to finally cook the pizzas, one at a time. My host family loved the pizza and I think the entire apartment loved the entertaining night of me running up and down the stair with the partially completed pizzas. Even though it was a pain in the rear-end to make the pizzas, after the fact I was glad I did it and would do it again anytime.
Even this morning, on Sunday, I worked a little bit more on the project’s timeline, but most of the day was spent having fun with my extended host family. About a week ago I was showing my host family some of the things I had brought with me from America, since they were a bit curious what were in the 8 bags I had when I moved in with them. Also, my host family has hosted several volunteers in the past, so they are always comparing me with them, what I brought with me compared to what other volunteers brought with them and so on. One thing they found very interesting was the telescopic fishing rod I had picked up from Bass Pro Shop before coming to Armenia (Thanks to a suggestion from my brother, thanks Andrew). They said they had only seen people fishing in movies, so they were excited to see a person go fishing live and in-person. Recently, I have also expressed an interest in going swimming. I haven’t been able to swim since I arrived in Armenia and that is one thing I enjoy doing in the summer time.
A couple of days ago my family said they were going to take me to a place where we could swim and fish; and also where we could have a big horovats (Barbecue). This morning I was unquestionably stoked about the prospects of my exciting day out in nature. After I finished my NGO work at home I was ready to go. However soon it started to get late, around noon to be exact as I watch the morning hours drift away. I began to worry that our supposed trip was just another thing lost in translation. Then, around 1 o’clock the motions that occur before a trip were set in action. My host family started to change clothing, but this time they weren’t wearing their Sunday best, which they usually wear when we have horovat’s/barbecue parties on Sunday afternoons. This time they had were wearing a more outdoorsy attire, which I didn’t notice until we were leaving. My host mom started packaging up the dishes, cups, and silverware, a necessity of every feast. My host father cut up the meat, brought the kebab skewers or shish, went to the dairy factory to get some tan for the horovats, and also to get the portable propane heater so that we could make coffee later on.
We loaded up 11 people and all of the equipment, including my fishing pole, into two small cars and headed off to our destination. It turned out to only be a couple of km outside of town, which was a relief to me since we are not supposed to leave our permanent sites right now, but I was pretty confident it wasn’t too far away. The park/campsite area was beautiful. The area was fenced in by beautiful iron work and the ground was covered by colored pebbles. There were 3 nicely built horovats/barbecue pits, 4 picnic table areas, and a gazebo that was completely surround by water and only accessible by a small foot bridge.
There was a river nearby that was more of a mountain stream with a couple of short waterfalls and fairly deep swimming holes, maybe deepest part was about 10 feet deep. At the river there were probably 20-30 boys all there to swim, but no girls were present. The boys ranged in age from 10 to about 19 years old and of course my 57 year old host father and his 31 or 32 year old son was there swimming with us. The boys there were from all over the Caucuses (well Armenia and Russia) and a bunch were also from Russia, the city of Kursk to be more exact. They were all extremely friendly and were asking me questions about what I was doing in Armenia, why I spoke Armenian, and why I wasn’t married, being the old 23 year old that I am.
Then I started to fish and they were very interested in what I was doing. The fish there were extremely small, only a couple inches in length, but I had a fun time trying to teach my host family and the random boys how to fish. Usually in the States fishing is another thing that I do to relax, not so much here. It was relaxing, but more importantly I had a fun time sharing with them something I like to do in America. Though most of the Russian kids had fished before, they had never seen a reel quite like mine and they were convinced my ultra-light rod was going to snap in half with any fish I caught. Another thing that is quite different from America is that none of the kids wore swimming trunks, they all wore their underwear. This is fairly common knowledge for those who travel to Europe or other parts of the world, but it still catches me kind of off guard when the kids just drop trou’ and jump in the river.
Well on that note I’m going to try to see if I can find the closing ceremonies of the Olympics on the TV, but I’ll write again soon. I hope everyone is doing okay back home. I can’t wait to see pictures of my niece Charlotte, just to see how much she has grown over the past couple of months. I am also happy to hear that a special someone had a good birthday party at Speakeasy and the Winery last Wednesday in Athens.
peace.shalom.salaam.
Mark
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
My day of rest was wonderful and much needed, but I didn’t really rest much per se. All week I have been helping an NGO prepare a grant proposal, which has to be sent into different donor organizations next week. I don’t know what the NGO would have done without me since I have been helping them for an average of 4 hours per day with translating their proposal from Armenian to English. Although there are people at the NGO who can speak English, most notably two English teachers from my town, their English skills are okay and it would have taken them weeks to type-up the information I have prepared for them this week. As noted in a previous blog I have created a line-item budget, a detailed description of that budget, a timeline of the projects duration, and various things to make the grant proposal look official.
In addition to my work load, last night I told my family that I would prepare dinner for them; this was not as a relaxing occurrence either. Even though I knew from previous experiences that cooking in Armenia is never quite as calming as it is in America, due to the constant supervision, language barrier, and uncertainty about how hot the oven really is; I still was not ready for how mentally taxing the meal would be to prepare.
First-off my host mother is a very sweet and adorable lady, but she is even more overprotective then… well let’s say a couple of my friend’s moms back home in America. Early in the morning on Saturday, before going to work I asked her to pick up some ingredients from the store and to pick a couple things from our garden for the pizza. I wanted two circular loafs of bread and Dutch cheese (Hollandicacan panir) from the store, this cheese is the closest thing you can get to mozzarella in most parts of Armenia. I should have realized because my family owns a cheese factory, which obviously doesn’t make Dutch cheese, this request was not going to happen. Upon asking for the cheese my host mom immediately became defensive asking what was wrong with the cheese they made and saying that their cheese would work just fine on the pizza. In addition, she asked me why I wanted loafs of bread when she could buy pre-made pizza crusts, which they sell at most stores here at my permanent site. I told her I liked the bread better because I knew it was freshly baked that day, whereas the pre-made pizza crusts could have been a couple of years old. Still she insisted and since she knows better in the kitchen, she won out on this ingredient. They already had tomato paste so that was one thing I didn’t have to worry about. Also, she kept questioning me about what kind of meat I wanted on the pizza I told I just wanted to make vegetarian pizza (ban-jan-aren-i pizza). Yet from her experience with other volunteers, I am assuming they always had meat on the pizzas they made, because she was absolutely convinced that all pizzas had meat on them, and that it wasn’t pizza unless it had meat on it.
After going over the two things I wanted from the ha-noot or store, it was on to things I needed from the garden. As I was telling her each ingredient I wanted on the pizza, if she liked that particular ingredient she would smile and agree, but if not she would tell me that that ingredient would not taste good on the pizza. Also, my host mom has diabetes and if she really didn’t like the ingredient she would tell me that she wouldn’t be able to eat the pizza, because that particular ingredient had too much sugar. Time after time I told her vegetables from the garden wouldn’t affect her sugar level, which she knows, but once again she was again trying to dictate exactly what ingredients to put on the pizza. I finally told I would not make the pizza if I didn’t have the ingredients I wanted and she finally agreed. To my amazement my host father also picked up some cheese from the store for, I don’t know exactly what kind of cheese it was, but it tasted pretty good. My host mom was also a great help collecting the ingredients for me, she didn’t have to go pick the ingredients, but she did nevertheless.
Now to the actual preparation of the pizza, it too was a rather exhausting affair. My host mom was trying to be super helpful in the kitchen, probably the same was true during the ingredient negotiation process, but this time she was a bit more lax on trying to push her methods of preparing the pizza. I don’t exactly know why this was, maybe because she doesn’t have too much experience making pizza, maybe because many of the men were around, or maybe she was just tired, since I didn’t start making the pizza until around 9 pm. Anyhow, if she suggested a certain way of doing something once and I disagreed then she wouldn’t push the issue any further. A lot of times she offers some really good suggestions, but every time I acquiesce to these suggestions the control I have over what I’m working on slowly erodes. I guess I was determined to make the pizza my way and I think eventually she realized that.
The pizza was similar to the one I made before for my LCFs (or Language and Culture Facilitators, my language teachers during Pre-Service Training). The two main differences were the frozen pizza crusts, which ended up tasting alright, but still not as good as the fresh bread crust and also I kind of made my own sauce this time. Although my host mom said we had tomato paste and I saw the jar of it earlier in the day, I didn’t realize how little was left in the jar. So I diced up a couple of tomatoes and manually pureed them into a bowl and added the tomato paste. Also I added garlic, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper to the sauce, I though it tasted fabulous. During the baking process another problem emerged , even though I knew my family didn’t have an oven, since my host mom only cooks on the stove-top, to my distress the oven I was going to use in the next apartment over wasn’t working. This meant I had to run up to my host sister’s apartment, on the fifth floor, every time I wanted to use the oven. Also, the machine I used was not really an oven, but a large toaster oven, which could only fit one pizza at a time. So first I brushed some olive oil on the crusts of the two pizzas and ran them upstairs to put in the oven, one at a time, so that they would be a bit crispy. Then I ran back downstairs to add the sauce, cheese, and the fresh ingredients from the garden which included: more garlic, onions, green peppers, eggplant, a hot pepper, and juicy tomatoes. After that I ran back upstairs to finally cook the pizzas, one at a time. My host family loved the pizza and I think the entire apartment loved the entertaining night of me running up and down the stair with the partially completed pizzas. Even though it was a pain in the rear-end to make the pizzas, after the fact I was glad I did it and would do it again anytime.
Even this morning, on Sunday, I worked a little bit more on the project’s timeline, but most of the day was spent having fun with my extended host family. About a week ago I was showing my host family some of the things I had brought with me from America, since they were a bit curious what were in the 8 bags I had when I moved in with them. Also, my host family has hosted several volunteers in the past, so they are always comparing me with them, what I brought with me compared to what other volunteers brought with them and so on. One thing they found very interesting was the telescopic fishing rod I had picked up from Bass Pro Shop before coming to Armenia (Thanks to a suggestion from my brother, thanks Andrew). They said they had only seen people fishing in movies, so they were excited to see a person go fishing live and in-person. Recently, I have also expressed an interest in going swimming. I haven’t been able to swim since I arrived in Armenia and that is one thing I enjoy doing in the summer time.
A couple of days ago my family said they were going to take me to a place where we could swim and fish; and also where we could have a big horovats (Barbecue). This morning I was unquestionably stoked about the prospects of my exciting day out in nature. After I finished my NGO work at home I was ready to go. However soon it started to get late, around noon to be exact as I watch the morning hours drift away. I began to worry that our supposed trip was just another thing lost in translation. Then, around 1 o’clock the motions that occur before a trip were set in action. My host family started to change clothing, but this time they weren’t wearing their Sunday best, which they usually wear when we have horovat’s/barbecue parties on Sunday afternoons. This time they had were wearing a more outdoorsy attire, which I didn’t notice until we were leaving. My host mom started packaging up the dishes, cups, and silverware, a necessity of every feast. My host father cut up the meat, brought the kebab skewers or shish, went to the dairy factory to get some tan for the horovats, and also to get the portable propane heater so that we could make coffee later on.
We loaded up 11 people and all of the equipment, including my fishing pole, into two small cars and headed off to our destination. It turned out to only be a couple of km outside of town, which was a relief to me since we are not supposed to leave our permanent sites right now, but I was pretty confident it wasn’t too far away. The park/campsite area was beautiful. The area was fenced in by beautiful iron work and the ground was covered by colored pebbles. There were 3 nicely built horovats/barbecue pits, 4 picnic table areas, and a gazebo that was completely surround by water and only accessible by a small foot bridge.
There was a river nearby that was more of a mountain stream with a couple of short waterfalls and fairly deep swimming holes, maybe deepest part was about 10 feet deep. At the river there were probably 20-30 boys all there to swim, but no girls were present. The boys ranged in age from 10 to about 19 years old and of course my 57 year old host father and his 31 or 32 year old son was there swimming with us. The boys there were from all over the Caucuses (well Armenia and Russia) and a bunch were also from Russia, the city of Kursk to be more exact. They were all extremely friendly and were asking me questions about what I was doing in Armenia, why I spoke Armenian, and why I wasn’t married, being the old 23 year old that I am.
Then I started to fish and they were very interested in what I was doing. The fish there were extremely small, only a couple inches in length, but I had a fun time trying to teach my host family and the random boys how to fish. Usually in the States fishing is another thing that I do to relax, not so much here. It was relaxing, but more importantly I had a fun time sharing with them something I like to do in America. Though most of the Russian kids had fished before, they had never seen a reel quite like mine and they were convinced my ultra-light rod was going to snap in half with any fish I caught. Another thing that is quite different from America is that none of the kids wore swimming trunks, they all wore their underwear. This is fairly common knowledge for those who travel to Europe or other parts of the world, but it still catches me kind of off guard when the kids just drop trou’ and jump in the river.
Well on that note I’m going to try to see if I can find the closing ceremonies of the Olympics on the TV, but I’ll write again soon. I hope everyone is doing okay back home. I can’t wait to see pictures of my niece Charlotte, just to see how much she has grown over the past couple of months. I am also happy to hear that a special someone had a good birthday party at Speakeasy and the Winery last Wednesday in Athens.
peace.shalom.salaam.
Mark
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
8.22.2008
Last couple days at my permanent site
Friday, August 22, 2008
Hey everybody,
Yesterday was a crazy, unexpected work which I was very grateful to have. I actually was one of the first teachers at school and I had to wait on my counterpart for a little while, but once she arrived we immediately started working. In somewhat of a comical way our work is slowed, because we both have a slight cold right now. The rest of the faculty enjoys teasing us, because on more than one occasion we have both sneezed or coughed at the same time.
I have been trying to translate the geography books enough so I can understand what is going on with each lesson. My counter-part is the only geography teacher in the school and she teaches students who range in grade level from the 5th form thru the 10th form (form is the Armenia way of saying grade level). For a perspective, 5th form students are 10 years old and 10th form students are 15. In the school that I work at there are students whose age’s ranges from 5 to 17 years old, but the school is massive in size and has 400 students and 39 teachers. So, my counterpart would like me to supplement a lot of her lessons with multimedia presentations slide shows, movies, and so on. Over the last few days I have been collecting material on the internet at my schools computer lab which is fairly nice, but only has 4 computers. However, in the school there are a good number of computers, but due to the slow internet connection they only have 4 currently connected to the internet.
While I was working in the computer lab one of the English teachers started talking to me about the school newspaper. I was floored that the school had a newspaper; and she continued explaining how a former PCV in the school helped obtain the funding for the newspaper’s equipment. The newspaper’s equipment includes: a new computer with Quark and Adobe Photoshop, a scanner, a laser printer big enough to print on 11 x 17 sheets of paper, and a digital camera. The paper so far has produced four issues and this year they hope to start turning out monthly issues. By definition it is not a school paper, because it prints the news for surrounding schools as well, but it is completely produced at the school I work at. One thing I want to work on is to have a training class for students to learn Quark and become proficient at using the other equipment the newspaper has at its disposal. The teacher who runs the newspaper now is severely overworked and for the paper to be truly beneficial and sustainable for the community the students of the school should learn how to produce the newspaper from start to finish.
After visiting the newspaper I hung out with my school director for about 30 minutes. He is a funny guy, who has a hard time ever being serious, which is generally fine with me. The difficult thing for me is that he uses a completely different set of vocabulary words than currently I know or am familiar with. This would usually be fine, since it would be an opportunity to increase my own vocabulary, but the words he uses are infrequently used in common conversation. So even if I learn the words he uses they will be of little use to me.
On the way back to the computer lab, through the dreary corridors of the school, which can also be fairly confusing, I ran into the other English teacher, named Lusina. Lusina wanted me to help her out at the NGO she works at after school hours. So I told her I would meet her there at 2 p.m. I went back to the computer lab and finished my work for my counterpart the Geography teacher.
I left school and started heading down to the NGO. The directions she gave me were completely confusing even thought they were in English. Lusina finally flagged me down and I went into a very nice office set-up that was her NGO. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I arrived, but I was ready to help. It turned out they wanted me to type up a grant proposal, a budget proposal, and a line item explanation for the entire budget. I was at Lusina’s NGO for 4.5 hours working on Excel and Word. I really have little experience using Excel; I think I remember learning how to use the program in 7th grade with Mr. Beard in an elective class. Anyways, I entered all of the data and typed the proposal and budget information in record speed. The whole time the other people at the NGO wanted me to eat food, drink coffee, or eat chocolates with them. It wasn’t the best work environment, but it worked.
I did receive a free meal out of all of the work. The NGO gave me hachapouri which is a Caucus dish with croissant like bread on the bottom, filled with grease and cheese. It is delicious even though it makes my stomach rumble every time I think of it or even look at it. Yet, when you bite into a freshly made hachapouri it is extremely scrumptious and you wonder how you could of ever doubted it’s tastiness. Sometimes we also have Georgian hachapouri which has two sunny side eggs cracked on top in addition to the grease and cheese. For lunch at the NGO, we also had fresh honey, bread, village cheese, and more coffee.
As I was leaving the NGO at 6:30 pm I heard that there was going to be a concert that night in the town center and the band was from America… seriously? Once again I was pleasantly surprised, but the concert started at 7 pm and I was completely worn out. As I was walking home I realized that I had to go to concert, when would be the next time I would have an opportunity like this. When I arrived at my house the men, my host brother and father, were preparing to go, but my host mom was going to stay home. I convinced some of the other ladies in the apartment block to come and eventually my host mother, Anaheet agreed to come as well.
Anaheet got all dressend up, put make-up on, and did-up her hair all nice and fine like she does on Sundays. Just kidding, nobody that I’ve met in Armenia goes to church, nevertheless they are extremely proud of their religious history. Finally we were off. Humorously, it was 4 older ladies from the apartments and me walking down the street together to see the band. I definitely felt a little out of place when we arrived. To my astonishment it was probably the biggest social event in my town’s history and I was escorting 4 fifty plus females to the event, call me what you may, but I was feeling pretty good about my entourage. There were hundreds of people in attendance and the band was actually a Mariachi band from Texas. The event was put on by the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan (the capital of Armenia) and there were a lot of personal from the Embassy in attendance. The Mariachi band also learned two songs in Armenian, which the crowds loved. This was probably one of the best uses of American tax dollars I had ever seen.
After the concert was over I met the band members all of whom had interesting life stories and ranged in age from 25 years old to the their mid-30s. The band had travelled to China last year and was part of a State Department initiative to display America’s cultural diversity abroad. Also, at the event was the Cultural Director from the Embassy and guess what... she’s from Iowa. She grew up in Iowa City and Muscatine and did her undergraduate work and the University of Iowa. We talked for awhile about Iowa and she said she was going to Moline in October so if I needed anything from the heartland to let her know. She is a Foreign Service officer and she was explaining all of the cool places and people she’d met throughout the world. Although I had thought about joining the Foreign Service before, she really gave it a good pitch and who knows it kind of sounds like an interesting and productive way to live out one’s life.
The night still was not over and by this point I was extremely tired. After the concert we walked to my host mom’s brother’s house which is pretty immaculate. He worked in Russia for a number of year laying tile and working in construction and is know through Moscow as one of the best in his field. When he returned he had saved up enough money to buy and remodel a house. The house has beautiful tile floors and walls in almost every room and not the drab colors that are prominent hold-overs from the Soviet era in Armenia. He used a variety of pastel colors for the bathrooms and the kitchen was done in bold primary colors that gave it a life that most Armenian kitchens are lacking.
We had ice cream, watermelon, and coffee there, a normal late night snack here at my permanent site, along with that we talked about a variety of things. I drifted in and out of attentiveness throughout the conversation, but I did manage to talk about a few things. I also got the numbers of some contacts in Yerevan that will definitely be useful. My host mother’s brother’s son lives in Yerevan and was the Junior Olympic karate or judo champion for all of Eastern Europe. He will definitely be a nice ally to have in the rough streets of Yerevan.
I hope everyone is doing well. I’ll talk to y’all later love you all. I hope everyone is ready for school. I heard that Ankur had a wonderful time in the Netherlands this summer and I hope Dane, Isaac, and Justin all have good starts to their next phase of life.
Peace Out.
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
Hey everybody,
Yesterday was a crazy, unexpected work which I was very grateful to have. I actually was one of the first teachers at school and I had to wait on my counterpart for a little while, but once she arrived we immediately started working. In somewhat of a comical way our work is slowed, because we both have a slight cold right now. The rest of the faculty enjoys teasing us, because on more than one occasion we have both sneezed or coughed at the same time.
I have been trying to translate the geography books enough so I can understand what is going on with each lesson. My counter-part is the only geography teacher in the school and she teaches students who range in grade level from the 5th form thru the 10th form (form is the Armenia way of saying grade level). For a perspective, 5th form students are 10 years old and 10th form students are 15. In the school that I work at there are students whose age’s ranges from 5 to 17 years old, but the school is massive in size and has 400 students and 39 teachers. So, my counterpart would like me to supplement a lot of her lessons with multimedia presentations slide shows, movies, and so on. Over the last few days I have been collecting material on the internet at my schools computer lab which is fairly nice, but only has 4 computers. However, in the school there are a good number of computers, but due to the slow internet connection they only have 4 currently connected to the internet.
While I was working in the computer lab one of the English teachers started talking to me about the school newspaper. I was floored that the school had a newspaper; and she continued explaining how a former PCV in the school helped obtain the funding for the newspaper’s equipment. The newspaper’s equipment includes: a new computer with Quark and Adobe Photoshop, a scanner, a laser printer big enough to print on 11 x 17 sheets of paper, and a digital camera. The paper so far has produced four issues and this year they hope to start turning out monthly issues. By definition it is not a school paper, because it prints the news for surrounding schools as well, but it is completely produced at the school I work at. One thing I want to work on is to have a training class for students to learn Quark and become proficient at using the other equipment the newspaper has at its disposal. The teacher who runs the newspaper now is severely overworked and for the paper to be truly beneficial and sustainable for the community the students of the school should learn how to produce the newspaper from start to finish.
After visiting the newspaper I hung out with my school director for about 30 minutes. He is a funny guy, who has a hard time ever being serious, which is generally fine with me. The difficult thing for me is that he uses a completely different set of vocabulary words than currently I know or am familiar with. This would usually be fine, since it would be an opportunity to increase my own vocabulary, but the words he uses are infrequently used in common conversation. So even if I learn the words he uses they will be of little use to me.
On the way back to the computer lab, through the dreary corridors of the school, which can also be fairly confusing, I ran into the other English teacher, named Lusina. Lusina wanted me to help her out at the NGO she works at after school hours. So I told her I would meet her there at 2 p.m. I went back to the computer lab and finished my work for my counterpart the Geography teacher.
I left school and started heading down to the NGO. The directions she gave me were completely confusing even thought they were in English. Lusina finally flagged me down and I went into a very nice office set-up that was her NGO. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I arrived, but I was ready to help. It turned out they wanted me to type up a grant proposal, a budget proposal, and a line item explanation for the entire budget. I was at Lusina’s NGO for 4.5 hours working on Excel and Word. I really have little experience using Excel; I think I remember learning how to use the program in 7th grade with Mr. Beard in an elective class. Anyways, I entered all of the data and typed the proposal and budget information in record speed. The whole time the other people at the NGO wanted me to eat food, drink coffee, or eat chocolates with them. It wasn’t the best work environment, but it worked.
I did receive a free meal out of all of the work. The NGO gave me hachapouri which is a Caucus dish with croissant like bread on the bottom, filled with grease and cheese. It is delicious even though it makes my stomach rumble every time I think of it or even look at it. Yet, when you bite into a freshly made hachapouri it is extremely scrumptious and you wonder how you could of ever doubted it’s tastiness. Sometimes we also have Georgian hachapouri which has two sunny side eggs cracked on top in addition to the grease and cheese. For lunch at the NGO, we also had fresh honey, bread, village cheese, and more coffee.
As I was leaving the NGO at 6:30 pm I heard that there was going to be a concert that night in the town center and the band was from America… seriously? Once again I was pleasantly surprised, but the concert started at 7 pm and I was completely worn out. As I was walking home I realized that I had to go to concert, when would be the next time I would have an opportunity like this. When I arrived at my house the men, my host brother and father, were preparing to go, but my host mom was going to stay home. I convinced some of the other ladies in the apartment block to come and eventually my host mother, Anaheet agreed to come as well.
Anaheet got all dressend up, put make-up on, and did-up her hair all nice and fine like she does on Sundays. Just kidding, nobody that I’ve met in Armenia goes to church, nevertheless they are extremely proud of their religious history. Finally we were off. Humorously, it was 4 older ladies from the apartments and me walking down the street together to see the band. I definitely felt a little out of place when we arrived. To my astonishment it was probably the biggest social event in my town’s history and I was escorting 4 fifty plus females to the event, call me what you may, but I was feeling pretty good about my entourage. There were hundreds of people in attendance and the band was actually a Mariachi band from Texas. The event was put on by the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan (the capital of Armenia) and there were a lot of personal from the Embassy in attendance. The Mariachi band also learned two songs in Armenian, which the crowds loved. This was probably one of the best uses of American tax dollars I had ever seen.
After the concert was over I met the band members all of whom had interesting life stories and ranged in age from 25 years old to the their mid-30s. The band had travelled to China last year and was part of a State Department initiative to display America’s cultural diversity abroad. Also, at the event was the Cultural Director from the Embassy and guess what... she’s from Iowa. She grew up in Iowa City and Muscatine and did her undergraduate work and the University of Iowa. We talked for awhile about Iowa and she said she was going to Moline in October so if I needed anything from the heartland to let her know. She is a Foreign Service officer and she was explaining all of the cool places and people she’d met throughout the world. Although I had thought about joining the Foreign Service before, she really gave it a good pitch and who knows it kind of sounds like an interesting and productive way to live out one’s life.
The night still was not over and by this point I was extremely tired. After the concert we walked to my host mom’s brother’s house which is pretty immaculate. He worked in Russia for a number of year laying tile and working in construction and is know through Moscow as one of the best in his field. When he returned he had saved up enough money to buy and remodel a house. The house has beautiful tile floors and walls in almost every room and not the drab colors that are prominent hold-overs from the Soviet era in Armenia. He used a variety of pastel colors for the bathrooms and the kitchen was done in bold primary colors that gave it a life that most Armenian kitchens are lacking.
We had ice cream, watermelon, and coffee there, a normal late night snack here at my permanent site, along with that we talked about a variety of things. I drifted in and out of attentiveness throughout the conversation, but I did manage to talk about a few things. I also got the numbers of some contacts in Yerevan that will definitely be useful. My host mother’s brother’s son lives in Yerevan and was the Junior Olympic karate or judo champion for all of Eastern Europe. He will definitely be a nice ally to have in the rough streets of Yerevan.
I hope everyone is doing well. I’ll talk to y’all later love you all. I hope everyone is ready for school. I heard that Ankur had a wonderful time in the Netherlands this summer and I hope Dane, Isaac, and Justin all have good starts to their next phase of life.
Peace Out.
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
8.21.2008
My first couple of days at my permanent site
Tuesday August 19, 2008 and Wednesday August 20, 2008
Hey y’all,
Its 2 o’clock here in Armenia and the summer weather at my new site is definitely more intense than the temperatures at my PST village. It is really not that hot just in the high 980s, but here at my new site there is little wind even though the environment is more reminiscent of an alpine village, plus there are few place in Armenia that have air conditioning.
The past few have been rather relaxing. Yesterday was a holiday, but not for anything in particular. I asked several people in Armenian what the holiday was for and everyone said it was for anything in particular. Being my inquisitive self I really wanted to find out. So I went to the 3 semi-proficient English speakers in town and ask them what the reasoning for the holiday was and they too, in English, just said it was a work-free day for anyone in government, but they had no clue why they actually had the day off.
This phenomenon of not knowing, but just doing is fairly common in Armenia. Many of the holidays or traditions are still performed, but the reasoning behind celebrating these things has been lost during 70 years of communism. One prime example of this is vathavar or water day. On this day Armenian children run around and dump large quantities of water on each other and just unlucky people passing by. I was in Yerevan on this day, which was sometime in the middle of June, but it was completely crazy. Gangs of kids were collecting water from the public fountains and soaking each other and random people. The kids mainly stuck to the streets, but many times they would drench people in taxis, marshutkas(buses), and in hyanoots (stores). Although I think roaming in place other than the streets broke vathavar norms and etiquette. Anyways vathavar falls on different days throughout the country, but it always falls on a Sunday between the last Sunday of June and the last Sunday of July. It was originally a plea to the gods for bountiful rains during the summer months. Now it is a celebration for the children of the country to have a fun day before the long work days of summer begin in the fields. Yet, the cosmopolitan kids of Yerevan were completely unaware of the significance of this event.
The day before yesterday on Sunday was also quite relaxing. I actually studied for about two hours and to my amazement I found some weights to work-out with only two floors up from my host family’s apartment. The weights actually belong to my host brother-in-law, if that makes sense. Anyways he has a 16 kilogram cow bell, a 12 kg dumb bell, a punching bag, and a bar to do pull-ups on. In the mornings I have been trying to run to a nearby by village which is about 10 kilometers away, but my knee has been hurting a little bit and I was a bit sick over the weekend. The run is extremely hilly, but it is also goes through one of the most beautiful mountain passes I have seen so far in Armenia.
The region that I live in now used to be considered part of the Armenian industrial heartland. Once Armenia became an independent state late in 1991 it lost the Soviet technical know-how as well as the logistical infrastructure for carrying out operations at factories. Many of the raw material, partially manufactured goods, and markets to sell these goods either no longer existed or were in complete disarray during the early 1990s. For the most part entirely new business arrangement needed to be set-up, yet still to this day they are lacking.
Interestingly, Armenia initially did not want to leave its dependence on Russia or at least to not completely distance themselves from the Soviet power. As the Soviet Union was collapsing in the early 1990’s, Soviet Premier Gorbachev repeatedly tried to resurrect the failing Union. Political force within Armenia ousted the Soviet Party leader of Armenia, Suren Harutiunian, in favor of the Armenian Nationalist Movement party or the HHSh under the leadership of Levon Ter-Petrosian. Even under a more nationalist government in Yerevan, Armenia on October 18, 1991 signed into an economic cooperative agreement with Gorbachev and the faltering Soviet Union. Then, on December 8th 1991 Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus- the three predominately Slavic republics of the former Soviet Union, announced they were forming a sort of Commonwealth which all satellite countries were invited to join. This commonwealth would have provided military inter-dependence, strong economic relations and a standardized monetary system.
Ter-Petrosian, the newly elected, strongly nationalistic Armenian leader, was fully supportive of this commonwealth initiative and he indicated Armenia’s intentions of joining the commonwealth. On December 25, 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed altogether along with Gorbachev’s dreams of preserving even a sliver of the old regime. Ever since the early 1990s Armenia has continuously fostered good relations with Russia and has generally supported Russian initiatives and proposals in the international community.
Although most Armenians are extremely proud of their county’s sovereignty and independent status now, I think Armenia’s reluctance to leave the mutually beneficial relationship with Russia has been forgotten by a majority of Armenian people. This reluctance to be more independent on the international scene is also something that I believe has stymied Armenia’s growth to a degree.
However, Ter-Petrosian’s calculations in wanting to keep extremely close ties with Moscow were logical, pragmatic, and foretelling. Armenia needed the Soviet Union much more than the Soviet Union needed Armenia. In 1991, Armenia only made up 1.1% of the Soviet population, it produced only .9% of the USSR’s GDP, Armenia exported 63.7% of its national material product (NMP) to other Soviet republics, while only exporting 1.4% of its NMP abroad or outside the Soviet Union. Even more statistically disturbing for the Armenian leadership of the early 1990’s was that 40% of all enterprises in Armenia during the Soviet period were dedicated to defense procurement. This would have been a benefit to the newly independent nation at war, yet most of the raw materials and engineering expertise had already left Armenia as the Russian’s began to re-allocate resources within Russia proper (whatever that is).*
As a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union new border wars started among old enemies. The period know as Pax Sovietica ended as lands with heterogeneous populations or at least regions with large minority contingencies began to fight in hopes of reclaiming land. The same thing that occurred in the Balkans between Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, and Kosovo’s citizens were occurring simultaneously in the Caucuses as Armenian, Georgians, Azeris, South Ossetians, and Abkhazians tried to settled centuries’ old territorial disputes. The situation in the Balkans has become relatively cold and non-confrontational in recent years, as seen by amicable diplomatic relations and the success of the UN Peace keeping force on the ground. Internationally, the Balkans’ conflict of the early 1990s seems to have cooled, even though the local population’s still hold strong resentment toward their former foe. This underlying bitterness can be seen in terroristic acts committed in the cities of Mostar, Belgrade and Sarajevo; and in the continued use of nationalistic symbols, especially by Croat ustache followers.
In the Caucuses the case is quite different and maybe this is due to the fact that the Caucuses are not directly on Western Europe’s back door step. Rather the Caucuses are situated between the giant bear to the east, Russia, and the Middle East, an already uncertain and tumultuous region. In general there are many enclaves within the Caucus region that are still disputed, mainly on historical grounds. Now, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are fighting for their independence from Georgian suzerainty, even though most members of the international community recognize both regions reside within Georgian borders. So there is still quite a bit of controversy in the northern part of the Caucuses. While Georgia, a pro-Western nation, has strong economic and thus diplomatic ties with Baku and Ankara. So in effect the Georgia-Sunni triangle (Azerbaijan and Turkey) geographically isolates Armenia from its historical friend and ally Russia and has forced Armenia to become more dependent on their Shiite friend to the south.
Currently Armenian has few friendly neighbors and those nations that Armenia has good relationships with, in the region, are not on the best of terms with the United States. Most Armenians I’ve met still have a very strong nostalgic yearning for the calmness and certainty that existed during the Soviet years and Armenia as an independent nation maintains friendly ties with Moscow. Calmness and certainty are probably two of the rarest conditions the Armenian people have lived under throughout their history. By de facto geographic arrangements Armenia has very good economic relations with their Persian friends to the south—Iran. While most Armenians still strongly dislike Turkey, who still has not taken any responsibility for the acts the Ottoman government committed against the Armenian civilians around the time of the 1st World War. Then during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s Armenia and Azerbaijan fought over several disputed territories, but mainly in Nagorno-Karabakh. Most Armenians classify both Azeris and Turkish people as Turks and there is a general dislike of both nationalities. Still today Armenia and Azerbaijan are officially at war and each country loses several men every year mainly due to sniper fire. Currently Armenia’s borders with both Azerbaijan and Turkey are closed, which has negatively affected Armenia’s transitional economic growth from a Soviet Republic to a member of the international free market.
Today I went for quite a long run in the morning, but went at a little bit of a slower pace from the previous run which I was completely excited about doing. Lately I have had a runny nose and a little bit of a cold and running in the morning I had that wonderful mucous build-up from the night before. When I got back to my host families apartment I wanted to take a shower, but like most things here it takes a bit longer to do everything. First, we had to move out the washing machine, redirect the water supply to make sure it was going to the bathroom, and assure my host mother that I knew how to take a shower. My ever-so-loving, but occasionally over protective host mother was convinced I didn’t know how to turn the hot water for the shower on, so she sent her 32 year old son in to help me when I was completely naked. I reassured him that I knew how to turn on a water faucet and informed that I first wanted to shave and that is why I didn’t have the shower on.
After having that lovely experience I sat down to eat my scrambled eggs and hot dogs in a big juice pile of grease. I think that why I haven’t recovered as quickly from my cold, since most of the stuff I eat here would not exactly be considered health foods and I don’t even know if a family from the Deep South could stomach the quantity of grease ingested with every meal.
After running, showering, and eating I finally made it to my place of employment, school number #1. I walked into the teachers’ lounge where the entire faculty of the school was present. At that point I was very happy that I had shaved, but also that I dressed up in nice clothes because you know what they say about first impressions.
The school director, who is named Rubeek, is a cool guy and he was the one who actually invited me to go to the Turkey versus Armenia soccer game on September 6th. The school director jokes around quite a bit and so it makes him a bit more difficult for me to understand, but overall we have a friendly relationship. My counterpart, the lady that I work with is named Susanna. She is the geography teacher at my school and is just as enthusiastic about learning English as I am about learning Armenian. She is probably in her late-40s and has a daughter and husband who are both very friendly and patient when we communicate.
My counterpart and I really didn’t do much work at school, but we did go over some vocabulary words both in Armenian and English that each of us want to learn. I suggested that we both start a dictionary of words that we use frequently and she was up for the idea, so I have started my dictionary, but let’s see how long this project lasts as the craziness of the school year is about to start.
When I got home or to my host family’s apartment, no one was home and it was quite hot so I decide to make a peanut butter sandwich, the peanut butter was a gift a former volunteer gave me, it was by far the most delicious thing I had tasted in my entire life. I sat down to watch some Olympics coverage but the only thing I could thing about was that peanut butter sandwich, so of course my disciplined self ate two more scrumptious peanut butter sandwiches. By that time my host mother had returned home and I was thinking about offering her some peanut butter, but my altruistic spirit faded when I thought of all the possible repercussions of parting with such a rare commodity in this part of the world.
As I was enjoying my peanut butter sandwiches I was also watching the Olympics. Armenian television stations rarely show any Olympics coverage so I am kind of lucky that my family has satellite t.v. Armenians love watching wrestling, judo, and weight lifting, but many team sports don’t seem very popular. Anyhow the only channel that I can pick up regular sports coverage is Abu Dhabi Sport. It is actually pretty cool. The set looks very similar to a Sports Center set, however the announcers are dressed in their traditional wardrobe, which I sadly forget the name for.
After studying for about an hour my family said they were going out to the field to work. My host mother’s daughter lives in a village a couple of kilometers away and there we worked for about 4 hours. The work was very relaxing and calming. I dug up, gathered, and bagged about 100 kilograms of potatoes. They told me if potato gathering was an Olympic sport I would surely win gold. I don’t know why, but I really enjoyed the work. I also received a nice perspective of what some of my ancestors probably went through in Ireland during the 19th century and the kind of work people across the planet do every day. When the truck came down to get us I was pretty confident that the axel was going to snap in half as the driver bounded in and out of pretty large ditches. It was also enjoyable loading up the 35 kilogram bags of potatoes into the back of the old Soviet era truck. After loading up the truck my host father and I jump in the bed with all of the bags of potatoes and headed back to the farm house. We constantly had to duck as we swiped the limbs a number of trees on the way home. The roads were iffy at best and the Armenians keep the quality of the roads sufficient enough to transverse only on the best of days.
Today August 20th has been a bit slower of a day. Surprisingly, my cold has not subsided and I still have a runny nose. I arrived at school early in the morning and to my surprised there were wine and cognac bottles spread throughout the teacher’s lounge. It was one of the teacher’s birthdays and I guess the style of celebration in Armenia is not dependent on the location of celebration. Or rather birthday celebrations at home are conducted in a similar way to birthday celebrations at the work places.
After celebrating for a little bit my counter-part, Susanna, and I went to the school’s library to see what text-books the school had this year for geography and in general what resources were available. The library, although looking very dreary and in disrepair, had a wide-range of books and resources and I was fairly impressed. There were books in Armenian, Russian, French, German, and English. The English selection at the school was comical at best, when considering that these books are available so that students can begin reading elementary English books. There was a book on how to remodel basements and attics, a text-book for advanced accounting, an anthropology text-book, and several scripts of bad American movies that never made it to theater.
After school I went into to town to get some pictures developed and use the internet. I was able to get the pictures developed they were from the one year olds’ birthday party I went to last weekend and her father liked some of the pictures that I took and he really wanted a couple of them. Yet the internet was definitely down and the computers were running extremely slowly in general. I have become convinced maintenance of property, equipment, and capital is not a priority in Armenia. The computer’s fans could no longer run probably due to the fact there was a good half inch of dust collected on every fan blade. I also began to de-frag the computer’s hard-drive, but I soon realized this would be a two day process. So I promptly cut my losses and left the computer lab after paying 100 dram or about .30 cents.
The rest of the day I have spent organizing resources that I received from Peace Corps and preparing them for presentation tomorrow. For lunch my host mother tried to feed me a range of hot dog looking things and I declined politely. I decided to only eat the fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, and bread which are delicious as always.
My new host mother has a variety of remedies that she claims will cure my runny nose and slight cold. Usually I accept her tea and fresh honey which always makes my throat feel better, but since it is so hot here I am usually sweating profusely after drinking the tea. She also wants me to eat straight butter which she continuously claims will help my cold, but I am a bit weary of that. I think she gave up trying to feed me straight butter and so now she tries to put it in my tea. Just seeing her trying to put a big chunk of butter in my tea makes me cringe in disgust.
Life has definitely changed completely over the last week. While, I was in Pre-Service Training every hour of everyday was planned out. Now, at my permanent site the days are completely free which I love. I have time to go running, work out, type blogs, read, study Armenian, and in general have more control over my life. This fact is very comforting especially in a country where your language skills are limited.
I hope everyone is doing well in the states. Overall things are still going well here in Armenia.
Mark Jensen
*Suny, Ronald Grigor. “Soviet Armenia”in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times.
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
Hey y’all,
Its 2 o’clock here in Armenia and the summer weather at my new site is definitely more intense than the temperatures at my PST village. It is really not that hot just in the high 980s, but here at my new site there is little wind even though the environment is more reminiscent of an alpine village, plus there are few place in Armenia that have air conditioning.
The past few have been rather relaxing. Yesterday was a holiday, but not for anything in particular. I asked several people in Armenian what the holiday was for and everyone said it was for anything in particular. Being my inquisitive self I really wanted to find out. So I went to the 3 semi-proficient English speakers in town and ask them what the reasoning for the holiday was and they too, in English, just said it was a work-free day for anyone in government, but they had no clue why they actually had the day off.
This phenomenon of not knowing, but just doing is fairly common in Armenia. Many of the holidays or traditions are still performed, but the reasoning behind celebrating these things has been lost during 70 years of communism. One prime example of this is vathavar or water day. On this day Armenian children run around and dump large quantities of water on each other and just unlucky people passing by. I was in Yerevan on this day, which was sometime in the middle of June, but it was completely crazy. Gangs of kids were collecting water from the public fountains and soaking each other and random people. The kids mainly stuck to the streets, but many times they would drench people in taxis, marshutkas(buses), and in hyanoots (stores). Although I think roaming in place other than the streets broke vathavar norms and etiquette. Anyways vathavar falls on different days throughout the country, but it always falls on a Sunday between the last Sunday of June and the last Sunday of July. It was originally a plea to the gods for bountiful rains during the summer months. Now it is a celebration for the children of the country to have a fun day before the long work days of summer begin in the fields. Yet, the cosmopolitan kids of Yerevan were completely unaware of the significance of this event.
The day before yesterday on Sunday was also quite relaxing. I actually studied for about two hours and to my amazement I found some weights to work-out with only two floors up from my host family’s apartment. The weights actually belong to my host brother-in-law, if that makes sense. Anyways he has a 16 kilogram cow bell, a 12 kg dumb bell, a punching bag, and a bar to do pull-ups on. In the mornings I have been trying to run to a nearby by village which is about 10 kilometers away, but my knee has been hurting a little bit and I was a bit sick over the weekend. The run is extremely hilly, but it is also goes through one of the most beautiful mountain passes I have seen so far in Armenia.
The region that I live in now used to be considered part of the Armenian industrial heartland. Once Armenia became an independent state late in 1991 it lost the Soviet technical know-how as well as the logistical infrastructure for carrying out operations at factories. Many of the raw material, partially manufactured goods, and markets to sell these goods either no longer existed or were in complete disarray during the early 1990s. For the most part entirely new business arrangement needed to be set-up, yet still to this day they are lacking.
Interestingly, Armenia initially did not want to leave its dependence on Russia or at least to not completely distance themselves from the Soviet power. As the Soviet Union was collapsing in the early 1990’s, Soviet Premier Gorbachev repeatedly tried to resurrect the failing Union. Political force within Armenia ousted the Soviet Party leader of Armenia, Suren Harutiunian, in favor of the Armenian Nationalist Movement party or the HHSh under the leadership of Levon Ter-Petrosian. Even under a more nationalist government in Yerevan, Armenia on October 18, 1991 signed into an economic cooperative agreement with Gorbachev and the faltering Soviet Union. Then, on December 8th 1991 Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus- the three predominately Slavic republics of the former Soviet Union, announced they were forming a sort of Commonwealth which all satellite countries were invited to join. This commonwealth would have provided military inter-dependence, strong economic relations and a standardized monetary system.
Ter-Petrosian, the newly elected, strongly nationalistic Armenian leader, was fully supportive of this commonwealth initiative and he indicated Armenia’s intentions of joining the commonwealth. On December 25, 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed altogether along with Gorbachev’s dreams of preserving even a sliver of the old regime. Ever since the early 1990s Armenia has continuously fostered good relations with Russia and has generally supported Russian initiatives and proposals in the international community.
Although most Armenians are extremely proud of their county’s sovereignty and independent status now, I think Armenia’s reluctance to leave the mutually beneficial relationship with Russia has been forgotten by a majority of Armenian people. This reluctance to be more independent on the international scene is also something that I believe has stymied Armenia’s growth to a degree.
However, Ter-Petrosian’s calculations in wanting to keep extremely close ties with Moscow were logical, pragmatic, and foretelling. Armenia needed the Soviet Union much more than the Soviet Union needed Armenia. In 1991, Armenia only made up 1.1% of the Soviet population, it produced only .9% of the USSR’s GDP, Armenia exported 63.7% of its national material product (NMP) to other Soviet republics, while only exporting 1.4% of its NMP abroad or outside the Soviet Union. Even more statistically disturbing for the Armenian leadership of the early 1990’s was that 40% of all enterprises in Armenia during the Soviet period were dedicated to defense procurement. This would have been a benefit to the newly independent nation at war, yet most of the raw materials and engineering expertise had already left Armenia as the Russian’s began to re-allocate resources within Russia proper (whatever that is).*
As a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union new border wars started among old enemies. The period know as Pax Sovietica ended as lands with heterogeneous populations or at least regions with large minority contingencies began to fight in hopes of reclaiming land. The same thing that occurred in the Balkans between Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, and Kosovo’s citizens were occurring simultaneously in the Caucuses as Armenian, Georgians, Azeris, South Ossetians, and Abkhazians tried to settled centuries’ old territorial disputes. The situation in the Balkans has become relatively cold and non-confrontational in recent years, as seen by amicable diplomatic relations and the success of the UN Peace keeping force on the ground. Internationally, the Balkans’ conflict of the early 1990s seems to have cooled, even though the local population’s still hold strong resentment toward their former foe. This underlying bitterness can be seen in terroristic acts committed in the cities of Mostar, Belgrade and Sarajevo; and in the continued use of nationalistic symbols, especially by Croat ustache followers.
In the Caucuses the case is quite different and maybe this is due to the fact that the Caucuses are not directly on Western Europe’s back door step. Rather the Caucuses are situated between the giant bear to the east, Russia, and the Middle East, an already uncertain and tumultuous region. In general there are many enclaves within the Caucus region that are still disputed, mainly on historical grounds. Now, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are fighting for their independence from Georgian suzerainty, even though most members of the international community recognize both regions reside within Georgian borders. So there is still quite a bit of controversy in the northern part of the Caucuses. While Georgia, a pro-Western nation, has strong economic and thus diplomatic ties with Baku and Ankara. So in effect the Georgia-Sunni triangle (Azerbaijan and Turkey) geographically isolates Armenia from its historical friend and ally Russia and has forced Armenia to become more dependent on their Shiite friend to the south.
Currently Armenian has few friendly neighbors and those nations that Armenia has good relationships with, in the region, are not on the best of terms with the United States. Most Armenians I’ve met still have a very strong nostalgic yearning for the calmness and certainty that existed during the Soviet years and Armenia as an independent nation maintains friendly ties with Moscow. Calmness and certainty are probably two of the rarest conditions the Armenian people have lived under throughout their history. By de facto geographic arrangements Armenia has very good economic relations with their Persian friends to the south—Iran. While most Armenians still strongly dislike Turkey, who still has not taken any responsibility for the acts the Ottoman government committed against the Armenian civilians around the time of the 1st World War. Then during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s Armenia and Azerbaijan fought over several disputed territories, but mainly in Nagorno-Karabakh. Most Armenians classify both Azeris and Turkish people as Turks and there is a general dislike of both nationalities. Still today Armenia and Azerbaijan are officially at war and each country loses several men every year mainly due to sniper fire. Currently Armenia’s borders with both Azerbaijan and Turkey are closed, which has negatively affected Armenia’s transitional economic growth from a Soviet Republic to a member of the international free market.
Today I went for quite a long run in the morning, but went at a little bit of a slower pace from the previous run which I was completely excited about doing. Lately I have had a runny nose and a little bit of a cold and running in the morning I had that wonderful mucous build-up from the night before. When I got back to my host families apartment I wanted to take a shower, but like most things here it takes a bit longer to do everything. First, we had to move out the washing machine, redirect the water supply to make sure it was going to the bathroom, and assure my host mother that I knew how to take a shower. My ever-so-loving, but occasionally over protective host mother was convinced I didn’t know how to turn the hot water for the shower on, so she sent her 32 year old son in to help me when I was completely naked. I reassured him that I knew how to turn on a water faucet and informed that I first wanted to shave and that is why I didn’t have the shower on.
After having that lovely experience I sat down to eat my scrambled eggs and hot dogs in a big juice pile of grease. I think that why I haven’t recovered as quickly from my cold, since most of the stuff I eat here would not exactly be considered health foods and I don’t even know if a family from the Deep South could stomach the quantity of grease ingested with every meal.
After running, showering, and eating I finally made it to my place of employment, school number #1. I walked into the teachers’ lounge where the entire faculty of the school was present. At that point I was very happy that I had shaved, but also that I dressed up in nice clothes because you know what they say about first impressions.
The school director, who is named Rubeek, is a cool guy and he was the one who actually invited me to go to the Turkey versus Armenia soccer game on September 6th. The school director jokes around quite a bit and so it makes him a bit more difficult for me to understand, but overall we have a friendly relationship. My counterpart, the lady that I work with is named Susanna. She is the geography teacher at my school and is just as enthusiastic about learning English as I am about learning Armenian. She is probably in her late-40s and has a daughter and husband who are both very friendly and patient when we communicate.
My counterpart and I really didn’t do much work at school, but we did go over some vocabulary words both in Armenian and English that each of us want to learn. I suggested that we both start a dictionary of words that we use frequently and she was up for the idea, so I have started my dictionary, but let’s see how long this project lasts as the craziness of the school year is about to start.
When I got home or to my host family’s apartment, no one was home and it was quite hot so I decide to make a peanut butter sandwich, the peanut butter was a gift a former volunteer gave me, it was by far the most delicious thing I had tasted in my entire life. I sat down to watch some Olympics coverage but the only thing I could thing about was that peanut butter sandwich, so of course my disciplined self ate two more scrumptious peanut butter sandwiches. By that time my host mother had returned home and I was thinking about offering her some peanut butter, but my altruistic spirit faded when I thought of all the possible repercussions of parting with such a rare commodity in this part of the world.
As I was enjoying my peanut butter sandwiches I was also watching the Olympics. Armenian television stations rarely show any Olympics coverage so I am kind of lucky that my family has satellite t.v. Armenians love watching wrestling, judo, and weight lifting, but many team sports don’t seem very popular. Anyhow the only channel that I can pick up regular sports coverage is Abu Dhabi Sport. It is actually pretty cool. The set looks very similar to a Sports Center set, however the announcers are dressed in their traditional wardrobe, which I sadly forget the name for.
After studying for about an hour my family said they were going out to the field to work. My host mother’s daughter lives in a village a couple of kilometers away and there we worked for about 4 hours. The work was very relaxing and calming. I dug up, gathered, and bagged about 100 kilograms of potatoes. They told me if potato gathering was an Olympic sport I would surely win gold. I don’t know why, but I really enjoyed the work. I also received a nice perspective of what some of my ancestors probably went through in Ireland during the 19th century and the kind of work people across the planet do every day. When the truck came down to get us I was pretty confident that the axel was going to snap in half as the driver bounded in and out of pretty large ditches. It was also enjoyable loading up the 35 kilogram bags of potatoes into the back of the old Soviet era truck. After loading up the truck my host father and I jump in the bed with all of the bags of potatoes and headed back to the farm house. We constantly had to duck as we swiped the limbs a number of trees on the way home. The roads were iffy at best and the Armenians keep the quality of the roads sufficient enough to transverse only on the best of days.
Today August 20th has been a bit slower of a day. Surprisingly, my cold has not subsided and I still have a runny nose. I arrived at school early in the morning and to my surprised there were wine and cognac bottles spread throughout the teacher’s lounge. It was one of the teacher’s birthdays and I guess the style of celebration in Armenia is not dependent on the location of celebration. Or rather birthday celebrations at home are conducted in a similar way to birthday celebrations at the work places.
After celebrating for a little bit my counter-part, Susanna, and I went to the school’s library to see what text-books the school had this year for geography and in general what resources were available. The library, although looking very dreary and in disrepair, had a wide-range of books and resources and I was fairly impressed. There were books in Armenian, Russian, French, German, and English. The English selection at the school was comical at best, when considering that these books are available so that students can begin reading elementary English books. There was a book on how to remodel basements and attics, a text-book for advanced accounting, an anthropology text-book, and several scripts of bad American movies that never made it to theater.
After school I went into to town to get some pictures developed and use the internet. I was able to get the pictures developed they were from the one year olds’ birthday party I went to last weekend and her father liked some of the pictures that I took and he really wanted a couple of them. Yet the internet was definitely down and the computers were running extremely slowly in general. I have become convinced maintenance of property, equipment, and capital is not a priority in Armenia. The computer’s fans could no longer run probably due to the fact there was a good half inch of dust collected on every fan blade. I also began to de-frag the computer’s hard-drive, but I soon realized this would be a two day process. So I promptly cut my losses and left the computer lab after paying 100 dram or about .30 cents.
The rest of the day I have spent organizing resources that I received from Peace Corps and preparing them for presentation tomorrow. For lunch my host mother tried to feed me a range of hot dog looking things and I declined politely. I decided to only eat the fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, and bread which are delicious as always.
My new host mother has a variety of remedies that she claims will cure my runny nose and slight cold. Usually I accept her tea and fresh honey which always makes my throat feel better, but since it is so hot here I am usually sweating profusely after drinking the tea. She also wants me to eat straight butter which she continuously claims will help my cold, but I am a bit weary of that. I think she gave up trying to feed me straight butter and so now she tries to put it in my tea. Just seeing her trying to put a big chunk of butter in my tea makes me cringe in disgust.
Life has definitely changed completely over the last week. While, I was in Pre-Service Training every hour of everyday was planned out. Now, at my permanent site the days are completely free which I love. I have time to go running, work out, type blogs, read, study Armenian, and in general have more control over my life. This fact is very comforting especially in a country where your language skills are limited.
I hope everyone is doing well in the states. Overall things are still going well here in Armenia.
Mark Jensen
*Suny, Ronald Grigor. “Soviet Armenia”in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times.
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
8.17.2008
The End of PST and moving to my Permanent Site
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The last couple days have been a whirlwind of memories and I definitely don’t remember them all. Last Tuesday on the 12th of August we had our LPI or Language Proficiency Interview. I thought the test went well and magically it did. I received an intermediate-low ranking, which is definitely considered good for only three months of language training. I can probably understand about ½ of the things that are said to me by random people and strangers, whereas I can understand about 80% of things said to me from people who are familiar to me. The problem is I probably can only effectively respond to about 20% of things said to me. Soon I’ll be getting a personal tutor and I will hopefully be approving on my score quickly. We have language tests every year to check on our progress, so I have quite a bit of time to improve my score.
Last Wednesday we had our trainee auction; this is where we were able to bid on things that were left by previous volunteers as well as a couple of prizes the Peace Corps staff threw in for good measure. The money we used was not real, but a fake Peace Corps’ Armenia currency called Lee cash. Lee Lacy is the name of our Country Director, or the head of Peace Corps in Armenia. So instead of having pictures of former presidents on our money we have a picture of our country director. Throughout PST, or Pre-Service Training, we received Lee cash if we went above and beyond what was required of us and at other times the Lee cash was rather arbitrarily handed out. Nevertheless the auction provided a fun atmosphere after the stress of preparing for the LPI.
At the auction I won a trip to Yerevan with two of my friends (we actually pooled are money together so the prize is all of ours) to watch an NCAA football game at a Peace Corps’ staff’s house. My friend and I, who also went to the University of Georgia, we outbid all other competitors. We had to win the prize and represent for the Bulldawg nation here in Armenia. We think we want to watch the October 25th game which is at LSU. It should be a big game and a big test for the Bulldogs. The LSU game is in the middle of the toughest stretch of our schedule which includes: Tennessee ( October 11th), Vanderbilt (October 18th), LSU(October 25th), Florida (November 1st), Kentucky (November 8th), Auburn(November 15th), and Georgia Tech (November 22nd). [Check later for local times and availability in your viewing area.]
Be able to my Bulldogs wasn’t something I really thought about too much before I left the states, but it will be very difficult for me to watch my Bulldogs every weekend. Although my site has wireless internet it is fairly expensive and I don’t know if I’ll spend the little money I earn on Georgia football. Even though that sounds extremely sacrilegious, even here in a country where few people if any even know what American football is and how it’s played.
Oh, yeah also at the auction I won a dinner with our country director and members of the development community throughout Yerevan. That prize is probably more important to my service here in Armenia, but right now I’m more excited about watching the Dawgs play… between the hedges or not.
Later on, on Wednesday night we prepared dinner for our LCFs (Language and Culture Facilitators) just to show them a token of appreciation for all the hard work and long hours they put in to help us prepare for our service in Armenia. We made a variety of food all of which was very delicious. Two of the volunteers in our village, Sierra and Emily, made Spaghetti, with both vegetarian and ground beef marinara. Jay and Sean made beef taquitos with Mexican spices from the states, Joe made an extremely tasty salsa for the taquitos and fried lavash chips, and I made a delicious vegetarian pizza with the freshest ingredients from my family’s garden.
Thursday was probably our biggest day in country so far, it was our swearing-in day as official Peace Corps volunteers. Currently the United States has no Ambassador in Armenia so the temporary Ambassador or attaché came to deliver our Oath of Service. We had to swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. It might sound a bit cheesy, but I definitely got goose bumps and all of the hairs on my back stood on end. As new volunteers our group also delivered two speeches in Armenian. One speech related the story of Moses on Mount Ararat (by the way Mount Ararat is national symbol of the Armenian people, even though currently the mountain resides across the border in Turkey) to us volunteers being stuck here in Armenia, like Moses we are in a way starting are lifes anew, we have a lot of work to be done, but also like Moses we have a tremendous support staff that can help us when times get rough and things seem hopeless.
The other speech was an extended metaphor comparing us new volunteers to lavash, the national bread of Armenia. The speech pretty much followed along the lines that we volunteers are all lavash. We come to Armenia as balls of dough. During PST (Pre-Service Training) we are all shaped, molded and formed as we are being prepared to be thrown into the fire and become useful during our actually volunteer service in Armenia, just as lavash is useful as well.
During the swearing in ceremony there was also three musical performances all sung in Armenian, by our group of volunteers. One was an operatic number that was absolutely beautiful; there was one group performance, and another song that was also well done. Lastly there was a hilarious play put on by the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) volunteers. The Armenians in attendance loved every minute of the performances and the local news station also recorded the whole event, so that night on the news we were all celebrities, well at least in one small Armenian city.
After the event we had a group picture taken of all the A-16s (my group of Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia, since we are the 16th group of volunteers to serve her in Armenia, thus we are called A-16s), Lee Lacy the country director of Peace Corps, and the United States’ attaché to Armenia Mr. Pennington. After the group shot, we hung out with many of the other volunteers here in Armenia who came to see our swearing in ceremony. We decided to go to a local watering hole where we talked about our service, funny stories that had happened to them and to us here in Armenia, and future plans for helping out the people of Armenia.
That night, Thursday night, my family threw me a going away party, which was a lot of fun, and ended late in the morning. First, I had to pack up all of my stuff so I would be ready to ship off early the next morning, and then we had the party. We had chicken horovats(barbecue), blin-chee (a pancake like pastry rolled with meat and spices and then deep fried), kartushka (half of a fried potato filled with meat and spices), along with the usually vegetables and fruits. The night was filled with singing, dancing, and toasts wishing me good luck traveling the day (bari janapar , literally good road).Overall it was a fun night with my family, even though it ended much later than need be.
Friday morning we shipped off for our permanent sites. My host family and I packed all eight of my bags into my host father’s old Muscavitch and headed toward the center of our village. To my embarrassment the bags barely fit inside my host father’s car and we weren’t able to close the trunk. So as we rumbled down the dusty, uneven, gravel roads of my PST village, the old car kicked up so much dust that by the time we arrived at our meeting point my bags were soiled with grey dust. In defense of the number of bags I have with me, much of the stuff I have is for teaching at school and gifts for kids at my permanent site.
Finally, our village arrived at the central consolidation point for all trainees. This time I had my own taxi, which drove me up North to my permanent site. The taxi driver really didn’t know where we were going, since he was a local driver from the city where we had PST, but I helped him find his way to my permanent site. As y’all know my permanent site is very close to the Georgian border, (Georgia is called Ver-i-stan in Armenian), but nothing had visibly changed from the previous time I was at my permanent site.
We have been warned by Peace Corps that the price of many of our living essentials will probably increase dramatically, especially this winter. Trade through Georgia is crucial for the Armenian economy and currently the trade routes are disrupted, but not completely shut down. Also most of Armenia’s foreign energy supply came in the form of natural gas and oil from Russia. Although Armenia does have pretty stable trade relations with its neighbor to the south, Iran, most of this trade consists of consumer goods.
Currently Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia have no way out of Armenia by land, since originally Georgia was our only option. To the east is Azerbaijan whose border is closed with Armenia due to continued hostilities between the two nations, the disputed territory of Karabagh, and close Turkish-Azeri Relations. To the south is Iran, which we of course cannot travel to, even though I wouldn’t mind visiting Iran after my service is completed.
To the west is Turkey, a country despised by the collective memory of the Armenian people. Armenians have never forgiven Turkey for the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire, especially during and after World War I. Not only were many Armenians slaughter during this time, but also the Armenian people lost a culturally and historically important part of Armenian, Western Armenia. This was a bastion of Armenian culture for millennia with beautiful monasteries at Ani and Konya and the fertile Igdir plain currently in eastern Turkey. Most importantly for Armenia, as it relates to the Armenian national ethos, was the loss of Mount Ararat. When the borders of the Caucuses were officially redrawn by Turkey and Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Moscow in March 1921 the Armenian people were the true losers as regional powers decided the fates of smaller minority populations in the region. Although it must be noted that the Treaty of Kars, in October of 1921, between Turkey and the Transcaucasian Soviet Republics, was the more historically significant treaty, yet it was almost identical in substance to the Treaty of Moscow signed more than a half a year earlier. The European Powers later agreed with the new boundaries as they renegotiated the Treaty of Sevres in 1923. Ironically for the Armenians, Turkey was the only Central Power during World War I to increase its territorial possessions beyond its prewar claims, even though it lost the war.
Although this literal gifting of land to the Turks by the Soviets in 1921 might seem counterintuitive to Soviet ideological aims, the Soviet’s had a logical reason to deal with Turkish claims in a quick, pragmatic manner. Lenin and the new Bolshevik government still needed to consolidate its power throughout the old empire of Czar Nicolas II and losing territories in the southern Caucuses was clearly seen as a cost cutting measure. The new Soviet government wished to normalize relations with Ankara and its hawkish, nationalistic leader Mustafa Kemal. Lenin wanted to make peace quickly in a region of the Soviet Union that had proved nuisance and unwilling to adapt to the ‘advance’ intellectual theories of communism. Lenin, now a nostalgic leader for many Armenians, even chided the Armenian people when he recommended a “slower, more careful, and more systematic transition to socialism” for the peoples of the Caucus region.
Sorry for my historical antidote now more on the current situation. All of the Peace Corps volunteers who were in Georgia are safe and sound and are now waiting in Armenian to hear word if they’ll return to Georgia. Most likely operations of Peace Corps in Georgia will be suspended for the time being while the military situation is resolved. So that means all of the volunteers will be sent home or have the possibility to be reassigned in another part of the world. For me the situation hasn’t changed much, but I’ll probably have less and less money to live on as prices of commodities continues to rise and the value of the dollar continues to plummet. When I arrived here in Armenia the 1 dollar was worth about 320 dram and now it is worth less than 300 dram. Also, since I live in the extreme northern regions of Armenia, most of our goods come not from Iran, but from Georgia and Russia. This means comparably, the prices in my region will increase more than in most other regions where volunteers in Armenia are located.
This Tuesday the 19th of August I’ll start planning sessions with my counterpart at the school I’ll be working at in my permanent site. The school is rather larger with 400 students and already has several extra-curricular activities for children after school. The school director already wants me to start a basketball team, coach the soccer team, and to start an environmental/Geography club. It definitely will be a lot of work, but I am ready for it. I am also planning on doing research for USAID in a village close to mine. USAID wants to help build a landfill and they need to do research on what kind of trash is being thrown away in the town. That should occupy my time on many Saturdays and I am excited about having more work to do and being able to see other volunteers who currently live in that town.
The weather here at my permanent site is quite a bit warmer than in my PST site, it’s more like Atlanta…. without air conditioning. Although I live in an alpine climate the weather in the summers can reach the mid-90’s. During the days the people spend most of their time inside or at parks located in the nearby forest. The forest provides enough shade to offset the heat of the day so that we can have parties and other social events despite the hot weather.
Yesterday we celebrated a one year old baby girl’s birthday party in the forest with about 30 people. The baby girl was so cute and they had a Barbie birthday cake for her. The Armenians were extremely friendly to me, having me sit in the center of the table with all the important men of the party. While the women sat on either end of the massive table; where their meals are always interrupted by the needs of their husbands. Whether the men need more meat, another beer, or just a clean plate the women are always ready to serve them at a moment’s notice. The people where I’m at now also look more Russian than is Yerevan or at my PST training village. Many people have a lighter complexion and are a bit taller, even though they are still a bit shorter than I am. I still have not met a single Armenian taller than me, but in Yerevan I saw some big Russian-looking guys that were a bit taller than me. The further south I have been in Armenia the people seem to get a bit darker in skin tone, but for the most part the field hands and the peasant class are darker than the bourgeois and upper class people. Although all of these observations concerning the population of Armenia are broad, broad generalizations and I still haven’t been to the extreme southern marzes/regions.
I hope everything is going well at home, soon I will post more about my first impressions of Armenia and how fortunate I feel to be serving here.
Good luck to all the people who are about to return to school, whether they are student, teachers, and especially those first year teachers including: my mom, Dane and Lisa, Anna, Sarah, and everyone else I’m forgetting and I know there is a lot.
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
The last couple days have been a whirlwind of memories and I definitely don’t remember them all. Last Tuesday on the 12th of August we had our LPI or Language Proficiency Interview. I thought the test went well and magically it did. I received an intermediate-low ranking, which is definitely considered good for only three months of language training. I can probably understand about ½ of the things that are said to me by random people and strangers, whereas I can understand about 80% of things said to me from people who are familiar to me. The problem is I probably can only effectively respond to about 20% of things said to me. Soon I’ll be getting a personal tutor and I will hopefully be approving on my score quickly. We have language tests every year to check on our progress, so I have quite a bit of time to improve my score.
Last Wednesday we had our trainee auction; this is where we were able to bid on things that were left by previous volunteers as well as a couple of prizes the Peace Corps staff threw in for good measure. The money we used was not real, but a fake Peace Corps’ Armenia currency called Lee cash. Lee Lacy is the name of our Country Director, or the head of Peace Corps in Armenia. So instead of having pictures of former presidents on our money we have a picture of our country director. Throughout PST, or Pre-Service Training, we received Lee cash if we went above and beyond what was required of us and at other times the Lee cash was rather arbitrarily handed out. Nevertheless the auction provided a fun atmosphere after the stress of preparing for the LPI.
At the auction I won a trip to Yerevan with two of my friends (we actually pooled are money together so the prize is all of ours) to watch an NCAA football game at a Peace Corps’ staff’s house. My friend and I, who also went to the University of Georgia, we outbid all other competitors. We had to win the prize and represent for the Bulldawg nation here in Armenia. We think we want to watch the October 25th game which is at LSU. It should be a big game and a big test for the Bulldogs. The LSU game is in the middle of the toughest stretch of our schedule which includes: Tennessee ( October 11th), Vanderbilt (October 18th), LSU(October 25th), Florida (November 1st), Kentucky (November 8th), Auburn(November 15th), and Georgia Tech (November 22nd). [Check later for local times and availability in your viewing area.]
Be able to my Bulldogs wasn’t something I really thought about too much before I left the states, but it will be very difficult for me to watch my Bulldogs every weekend. Although my site has wireless internet it is fairly expensive and I don’t know if I’ll spend the little money I earn on Georgia football. Even though that sounds extremely sacrilegious, even here in a country where few people if any even know what American football is and how it’s played.
Oh, yeah also at the auction I won a dinner with our country director and members of the development community throughout Yerevan. That prize is probably more important to my service here in Armenia, but right now I’m more excited about watching the Dawgs play… between the hedges or not.
Later on, on Wednesday night we prepared dinner for our LCFs (Language and Culture Facilitators) just to show them a token of appreciation for all the hard work and long hours they put in to help us prepare for our service in Armenia. We made a variety of food all of which was very delicious. Two of the volunteers in our village, Sierra and Emily, made Spaghetti, with both vegetarian and ground beef marinara. Jay and Sean made beef taquitos with Mexican spices from the states, Joe made an extremely tasty salsa for the taquitos and fried lavash chips, and I made a delicious vegetarian pizza with the freshest ingredients from my family’s garden.
Thursday was probably our biggest day in country so far, it was our swearing-in day as official Peace Corps volunteers. Currently the United States has no Ambassador in Armenia so the temporary Ambassador or attaché came to deliver our Oath of Service. We had to swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. It might sound a bit cheesy, but I definitely got goose bumps and all of the hairs on my back stood on end. As new volunteers our group also delivered two speeches in Armenian. One speech related the story of Moses on Mount Ararat (by the way Mount Ararat is national symbol of the Armenian people, even though currently the mountain resides across the border in Turkey) to us volunteers being stuck here in Armenia, like Moses we are in a way starting are lifes anew, we have a lot of work to be done, but also like Moses we have a tremendous support staff that can help us when times get rough and things seem hopeless.
The other speech was an extended metaphor comparing us new volunteers to lavash, the national bread of Armenia. The speech pretty much followed along the lines that we volunteers are all lavash. We come to Armenia as balls of dough. During PST (Pre-Service Training) we are all shaped, molded and formed as we are being prepared to be thrown into the fire and become useful during our actually volunteer service in Armenia, just as lavash is useful as well.
During the swearing in ceremony there was also three musical performances all sung in Armenian, by our group of volunteers. One was an operatic number that was absolutely beautiful; there was one group performance, and another song that was also well done. Lastly there was a hilarious play put on by the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) volunteers. The Armenians in attendance loved every minute of the performances and the local news station also recorded the whole event, so that night on the news we were all celebrities, well at least in one small Armenian city.
After the event we had a group picture taken of all the A-16s (my group of Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia, since we are the 16th group of volunteers to serve her in Armenia, thus we are called A-16s), Lee Lacy the country director of Peace Corps, and the United States’ attaché to Armenia Mr. Pennington. After the group shot, we hung out with many of the other volunteers here in Armenia who came to see our swearing in ceremony. We decided to go to a local watering hole where we talked about our service, funny stories that had happened to them and to us here in Armenia, and future plans for helping out the people of Armenia.
That night, Thursday night, my family threw me a going away party, which was a lot of fun, and ended late in the morning. First, I had to pack up all of my stuff so I would be ready to ship off early the next morning, and then we had the party. We had chicken horovats(barbecue), blin-chee (a pancake like pastry rolled with meat and spices and then deep fried), kartushka (half of a fried potato filled with meat and spices), along with the usually vegetables and fruits. The night was filled with singing, dancing, and toasts wishing me good luck traveling the day (bari janapar , literally good road).Overall it was a fun night with my family, even though it ended much later than need be.
Friday morning we shipped off for our permanent sites. My host family and I packed all eight of my bags into my host father’s old Muscavitch and headed toward the center of our village. To my embarrassment the bags barely fit inside my host father’s car and we weren’t able to close the trunk. So as we rumbled down the dusty, uneven, gravel roads of my PST village, the old car kicked up so much dust that by the time we arrived at our meeting point my bags were soiled with grey dust. In defense of the number of bags I have with me, much of the stuff I have is for teaching at school and gifts for kids at my permanent site.
Finally, our village arrived at the central consolidation point for all trainees. This time I had my own taxi, which drove me up North to my permanent site. The taxi driver really didn’t know where we were going, since he was a local driver from the city where we had PST, but I helped him find his way to my permanent site. As y’all know my permanent site is very close to the Georgian border, (Georgia is called Ver-i-stan in Armenian), but nothing had visibly changed from the previous time I was at my permanent site.
We have been warned by Peace Corps that the price of many of our living essentials will probably increase dramatically, especially this winter. Trade through Georgia is crucial for the Armenian economy and currently the trade routes are disrupted, but not completely shut down. Also most of Armenia’s foreign energy supply came in the form of natural gas and oil from Russia. Although Armenia does have pretty stable trade relations with its neighbor to the south, Iran, most of this trade consists of consumer goods.
Currently Peace Corps volunteers in Armenia have no way out of Armenia by land, since originally Georgia was our only option. To the east is Azerbaijan whose border is closed with Armenia due to continued hostilities between the two nations, the disputed territory of Karabagh, and close Turkish-Azeri Relations. To the south is Iran, which we of course cannot travel to, even though I wouldn’t mind visiting Iran after my service is completed.
To the west is Turkey, a country despised by the collective memory of the Armenian people. Armenians have never forgiven Turkey for the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire, especially during and after World War I. Not only were many Armenians slaughter during this time, but also the Armenian people lost a culturally and historically important part of Armenian, Western Armenia. This was a bastion of Armenian culture for millennia with beautiful monasteries at Ani and Konya and the fertile Igdir plain currently in eastern Turkey. Most importantly for Armenia, as it relates to the Armenian national ethos, was the loss of Mount Ararat. When the borders of the Caucuses were officially redrawn by Turkey and Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Moscow in March 1921 the Armenian people were the true losers as regional powers decided the fates of smaller minority populations in the region. Although it must be noted that the Treaty of Kars, in October of 1921, between Turkey and the Transcaucasian Soviet Republics, was the more historically significant treaty, yet it was almost identical in substance to the Treaty of Moscow signed more than a half a year earlier. The European Powers later agreed with the new boundaries as they renegotiated the Treaty of Sevres in 1923. Ironically for the Armenians, Turkey was the only Central Power during World War I to increase its territorial possessions beyond its prewar claims, even though it lost the war.
Although this literal gifting of land to the Turks by the Soviets in 1921 might seem counterintuitive to Soviet ideological aims, the Soviet’s had a logical reason to deal with Turkish claims in a quick, pragmatic manner. Lenin and the new Bolshevik government still needed to consolidate its power throughout the old empire of Czar Nicolas II and losing territories in the southern Caucuses was clearly seen as a cost cutting measure. The new Soviet government wished to normalize relations with Ankara and its hawkish, nationalistic leader Mustafa Kemal. Lenin wanted to make peace quickly in a region of the Soviet Union that had proved nuisance and unwilling to adapt to the ‘advance’ intellectual theories of communism. Lenin, now a nostalgic leader for many Armenians, even chided the Armenian people when he recommended a “slower, more careful, and more systematic transition to socialism” for the peoples of the Caucus region.
Sorry for my historical antidote now more on the current situation. All of the Peace Corps volunteers who were in Georgia are safe and sound and are now waiting in Armenian to hear word if they’ll return to Georgia. Most likely operations of Peace Corps in Georgia will be suspended for the time being while the military situation is resolved. So that means all of the volunteers will be sent home or have the possibility to be reassigned in another part of the world. For me the situation hasn’t changed much, but I’ll probably have less and less money to live on as prices of commodities continues to rise and the value of the dollar continues to plummet. When I arrived here in Armenia the 1 dollar was worth about 320 dram and now it is worth less than 300 dram. Also, since I live in the extreme northern regions of Armenia, most of our goods come not from Iran, but from Georgia and Russia. This means comparably, the prices in my region will increase more than in most other regions where volunteers in Armenia are located.
This Tuesday the 19th of August I’ll start planning sessions with my counterpart at the school I’ll be working at in my permanent site. The school is rather larger with 400 students and already has several extra-curricular activities for children after school. The school director already wants me to start a basketball team, coach the soccer team, and to start an environmental/Geography club. It definitely will be a lot of work, but I am ready for it. I am also planning on doing research for USAID in a village close to mine. USAID wants to help build a landfill and they need to do research on what kind of trash is being thrown away in the town. That should occupy my time on many Saturdays and I am excited about having more work to do and being able to see other volunteers who currently live in that town.
The weather here at my permanent site is quite a bit warmer than in my PST site, it’s more like Atlanta…. without air conditioning. Although I live in an alpine climate the weather in the summers can reach the mid-90’s. During the days the people spend most of their time inside or at parks located in the nearby forest. The forest provides enough shade to offset the heat of the day so that we can have parties and other social events despite the hot weather.
Yesterday we celebrated a one year old baby girl’s birthday party in the forest with about 30 people. The baby girl was so cute and they had a Barbie birthday cake for her. The Armenians were extremely friendly to me, having me sit in the center of the table with all the important men of the party. While the women sat on either end of the massive table; where their meals are always interrupted by the needs of their husbands. Whether the men need more meat, another beer, or just a clean plate the women are always ready to serve them at a moment’s notice. The people where I’m at now also look more Russian than is Yerevan or at my PST training village. Many people have a lighter complexion and are a bit taller, even though they are still a bit shorter than I am. I still have not met a single Armenian taller than me, but in Yerevan I saw some big Russian-looking guys that were a bit taller than me. The further south I have been in Armenia the people seem to get a bit darker in skin tone, but for the most part the field hands and the peasant class are darker than the bourgeois and upper class people. Although all of these observations concerning the population of Armenia are broad, broad generalizations and I still haven’t been to the extreme southern marzes/regions.
I hope everything is going well at home, soon I will post more about my first impressions of Armenia and how fortunate I feel to be serving here.
Good luck to all the people who are about to return to school, whether they are student, teachers, and especially those first year teachers including: my mom, Dane and Lisa, Anna, Sarah, and everyone else I’m forgetting and I know there is a lot.
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
The Final Weeks of PST
August 12, 2008
Hey everyone,
The past week has been a crazy time for us soon to be volunteers as we prepared for our LPI or Language Proficiency Interview. I thought the test went well, but we’ll have to see how well the test actually went when I get my score in a couple of days. Although studying has continued, our pace has slowed considerably. We have all hit the proverbial wall and our brains are crammed to their respective limits with Armenian conjugations, declensions, and a wide arrange of vocabulary words. PST (Pre-Service Training) has been a true test of learning and endurance. Even if you’re not having the best of days you still have to go to language lessons, teach, and go to all of the Peace Corps sessions that are mandatory, not to mention we all live and interact in a culture and language that is completely foreign to all of us. I feel that this must be one of the hardest things one can voluntarily go through.
When joining the Armed Services, servicemen and women are usually not, if ever, completely engulfed in the culture and language of the theatre they are operating in. Obviously there is a more existential threat or reality that our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan live with everyday, but in Peace Corps the support mechanisms that help soldiers deal with life away from home are simply not there (here). For many volunteers internet access might occur only once a month or for even longer periods of time, whereas in the armed forces servicemen usually have the most modern telecommunications equipment available.
Truthfully, I’m not trying to compare the Armed Services to the Peace Corps. Scanning the annals of history one can clearly see the need for a strong military, and I too would definitely agree with this assessment. But at some point we need to try to put a price tag on peace, I know it wouldn’t be good for the military industrial complex, but if we would listen to our honest leaders of the past, mainly Eisenhower, I think we would quickly see how many problems we are creating at home by perpetuating the need for new weapons that clearly outclass any our enemies or the rest of the world has to offer. Only to sell and/or give away the former generation of fighter planes, air defense systems, and infantry support technologies. By continuing this cycle of expensive R&D and cumbersome implementation followed by a fickle way of selling, trading, and gifting arms, the United States has positioned itself on the losing end in battle of arms procurement.
Throughout the world this procurement battle has become a battle of attrition, well to a certain degree. For instance currently the U.S. is fighting a two theatre war, none of which the United States’ can fiscally afford to fight. Even though I see the need to be fighting, especially such a threat as global terrorism, the means by which we (America) must do that must be reassessed. Sooner or later we’ll have to drastically cut back not only on social and domestic programs, but also on defense spending and our overseas infrastructure. By that point we will have already armed half the planet with weaponry comparable to ours, but a little less effective. Yet at that point we as a nation will be less able to keep those people who have our weapons from fighting each other.
In some ways we are seeing it now in Georgia. Although Georgia as a nation could never withstand the full strength of the Russian armed services, or even a partially mobilized Russian army; its ability to defend itself was somewhat amazing, but predictable. If you count the number of planes shot down, the Georgian air defense shot down more Russian planes than the Iraqis shot down American planes during the two Gulf Wars. At first glance this comparison seems illogical. Iraq is a larger country with more natural resources and had a larger GDP than Georgia in 1991 and in 2003. However, with US weaponry and know how the Georgians were able to down as many as 10 Russian planes (actual number remains uncertain). Although it is true that as soon as Russia genuinely wanted to take South Ossetia and Abkhazia it was fairly simple for them, but the fact remains that many of our high tech weapons are out there. I hope when push comes to shove, the people we’ve been giving these weapons to so generously will still our allies.
Back to the volunteers in Armenia and how we deal with stress. Our group of volunteers is dealing with the stress in a variety of ways. In my village many of us go running late in the evening when the temperature drops. There are meditation and yoga groups that meet every Saturday. Of course many of us write, read, and phone home on a somewhat regular basis as well. Yet these calls come out of our pocket. We also have many dinners, parties, weddings and a variety of celebratory occasions to attend as well. Sometimes these events are a great way to think about things other than learning Armenia, but sometimes these events can be quite stressful as well. It’s very difficult to always be extremely happy to everyone, especially when scores of people are continuously trying to vie for your attention. Overall at every party we have a very good time. Armenian people love to dance and as my friends know, I share this love for dancing.
Last Friday night, the 8th of August we had a huge dance party. Initially this party was planned just for the girls and women of our village. However, at the last minute they decided to invite the boys and we definitely brought out some crazy dance moves. I think the girls were surprised by some of our moves; one of my friends, pulled out the walking handstand, another had the running man perfected, and I provided my patented Mark dance, with my crazy arms and sleeve pulls.
Both of our LCF (Language and Culture Facilitators) or language teachers were there too. One of our teachers, Zhasmina, is in her mid-50’s and she brought her daughter and husband from Yerevan. Her daughter was 31 years old and works for Human Rights Watch. Her husband was a very nice and knowledgeable man. Her husband has also travelled to Atlanta, where he met with professor friends at Emory University. My other language teacher/LCF is the youngest of all of the language teachers. She is a 24 year old who just finished her English language training in Yerevan and she specifically studied political translation. Not only are both teachers dedicated and extremely smart, but they are also great dancers.
Now for the fun geopolitical issue happening in the Caucuses. Right now I am watching Dmitri Medvedev (President of Russia) and Nicolas Sarkozy (Leader of the E.U. and France). They are officially announcing a tentative cease-fire between the Russian and Georgian armies. Right now South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two regions formerly part of Georgian territory are in Russian hands. It’s very difficult to tell who started the fighting and who exactly is to blame.
From what I can tell most Armenians are very pro-Russian, partly due to their nostalgia of Soviet times and partly due to their geographic proximity to Russia. Because of this geographic proximity, most Armenians speak Russian and many Armenians seasonally work in Russia.
Here in Armenia we pick up Russia’s main television stations. Russian news stations are vehemently anti-Georgia and also strongly anti-American. Most Armenians I’ve talked to about the issue are pro-Russian and they think Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakhashvelli has made many mistakes since his election a couple years ago. Recently, Georgia has been pontified by the EU and the United States, as a prime example of successful democratization in the Caucuses and among other post-Communist republics. However, Saakhashvelli has been very close with Western nations and companies. Recently, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceylon(Baku, Azerbaijan. Tbilisi, Georgia. Ceylon, Turkey) oil pipeline opened which was an oil deal that spat in the face of Russian hegemonic dominance in the region. Russia clearly doesn’t like the path Georgia has been taking in recent years.
Earlier, the US Ambassador to the UN Amir Khalilzad delivered a tongue lashing to the Russian foreign minister to the UN, but his Russian counterpart retorted with an even more vehement statement while using a paternal accusatory tone. Later on however, it seems like Medvedev and Sarkozy have come to some sort of compromise. They’re calling it a 6-point plan to end the fight, which includes: re-positioning of troops, beginning of peace talks between Georgia and Russia, and one of the most important points is to end the fighting without an emphasis on preserving the territorial integrity of Georgia. I don’t know if the plan will work at this point I’m rather doubtful and I only know what is broadcast on CNN International, BBC World News, and Russian News Channel 1.
Hope every one is doing well back home, even though the summer is coming to an end.
Love,
Mark
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
Hey everyone,
The past week has been a crazy time for us soon to be volunteers as we prepared for our LPI or Language Proficiency Interview. I thought the test went well, but we’ll have to see how well the test actually went when I get my score in a couple of days. Although studying has continued, our pace has slowed considerably. We have all hit the proverbial wall and our brains are crammed to their respective limits with Armenian conjugations, declensions, and a wide arrange of vocabulary words. PST (Pre-Service Training) has been a true test of learning and endurance. Even if you’re not having the best of days you still have to go to language lessons, teach, and go to all of the Peace Corps sessions that are mandatory, not to mention we all live and interact in a culture and language that is completely foreign to all of us. I feel that this must be one of the hardest things one can voluntarily go through.
When joining the Armed Services, servicemen and women are usually not, if ever, completely engulfed in the culture and language of the theatre they are operating in. Obviously there is a more existential threat or reality that our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan live with everyday, but in Peace Corps the support mechanisms that help soldiers deal with life away from home are simply not there (here). For many volunteers internet access might occur only once a month or for even longer periods of time, whereas in the armed forces servicemen usually have the most modern telecommunications equipment available.
Truthfully, I’m not trying to compare the Armed Services to the Peace Corps. Scanning the annals of history one can clearly see the need for a strong military, and I too would definitely agree with this assessment. But at some point we need to try to put a price tag on peace, I know it wouldn’t be good for the military industrial complex, but if we would listen to our honest leaders of the past, mainly Eisenhower, I think we would quickly see how many problems we are creating at home by perpetuating the need for new weapons that clearly outclass any our enemies or the rest of the world has to offer. Only to sell and/or give away the former generation of fighter planes, air defense systems, and infantry support technologies. By continuing this cycle of expensive R&D and cumbersome implementation followed by a fickle way of selling, trading, and gifting arms, the United States has positioned itself on the losing end in battle of arms procurement.
Throughout the world this procurement battle has become a battle of attrition, well to a certain degree. For instance currently the U.S. is fighting a two theatre war, none of which the United States’ can fiscally afford to fight. Even though I see the need to be fighting, especially such a threat as global terrorism, the means by which we (America) must do that must be reassessed. Sooner or later we’ll have to drastically cut back not only on social and domestic programs, but also on defense spending and our overseas infrastructure. By that point we will have already armed half the planet with weaponry comparable to ours, but a little less effective. Yet at that point we as a nation will be less able to keep those people who have our weapons from fighting each other.
In some ways we are seeing it now in Georgia. Although Georgia as a nation could never withstand the full strength of the Russian armed services, or even a partially mobilized Russian army; its ability to defend itself was somewhat amazing, but predictable. If you count the number of planes shot down, the Georgian air defense shot down more Russian planes than the Iraqis shot down American planes during the two Gulf Wars. At first glance this comparison seems illogical. Iraq is a larger country with more natural resources and had a larger GDP than Georgia in 1991 and in 2003. However, with US weaponry and know how the Georgians were able to down as many as 10 Russian planes (actual number remains uncertain). Although it is true that as soon as Russia genuinely wanted to take South Ossetia and Abkhazia it was fairly simple for them, but the fact remains that many of our high tech weapons are out there. I hope when push comes to shove, the people we’ve been giving these weapons to so generously will still our allies.
Back to the volunteers in Armenia and how we deal with stress. Our group of volunteers is dealing with the stress in a variety of ways. In my village many of us go running late in the evening when the temperature drops. There are meditation and yoga groups that meet every Saturday. Of course many of us write, read, and phone home on a somewhat regular basis as well. Yet these calls come out of our pocket. We also have many dinners, parties, weddings and a variety of celebratory occasions to attend as well. Sometimes these events are a great way to think about things other than learning Armenia, but sometimes these events can be quite stressful as well. It’s very difficult to always be extremely happy to everyone, especially when scores of people are continuously trying to vie for your attention. Overall at every party we have a very good time. Armenian people love to dance and as my friends know, I share this love for dancing.
Last Friday night, the 8th of August we had a huge dance party. Initially this party was planned just for the girls and women of our village. However, at the last minute they decided to invite the boys and we definitely brought out some crazy dance moves. I think the girls were surprised by some of our moves; one of my friends, pulled out the walking handstand, another had the running man perfected, and I provided my patented Mark dance, with my crazy arms and sleeve pulls.
Both of our LCF (Language and Culture Facilitators) or language teachers were there too. One of our teachers, Zhasmina, is in her mid-50’s and she brought her daughter and husband from Yerevan. Her daughter was 31 years old and works for Human Rights Watch. Her husband was a very nice and knowledgeable man. Her husband has also travelled to Atlanta, where he met with professor friends at Emory University. My other language teacher/LCF is the youngest of all of the language teachers. She is a 24 year old who just finished her English language training in Yerevan and she specifically studied political translation. Not only are both teachers dedicated and extremely smart, but they are also great dancers.
Now for the fun geopolitical issue happening in the Caucuses. Right now I am watching Dmitri Medvedev (President of Russia) and Nicolas Sarkozy (Leader of the E.U. and France). They are officially announcing a tentative cease-fire between the Russian and Georgian armies. Right now South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two regions formerly part of Georgian territory are in Russian hands. It’s very difficult to tell who started the fighting and who exactly is to blame.
From what I can tell most Armenians are very pro-Russian, partly due to their nostalgia of Soviet times and partly due to their geographic proximity to Russia. Because of this geographic proximity, most Armenians speak Russian and many Armenians seasonally work in Russia.
Here in Armenia we pick up Russia’s main television stations. Russian news stations are vehemently anti-Georgia and also strongly anti-American. Most Armenians I’ve talked to about the issue are pro-Russian and they think Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakhashvelli has made many mistakes since his election a couple years ago. Recently, Georgia has been pontified by the EU and the United States, as a prime example of successful democratization in the Caucuses and among other post-Communist republics. However, Saakhashvelli has been very close with Western nations and companies. Recently, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceylon(Baku, Azerbaijan. Tbilisi, Georgia. Ceylon, Turkey) oil pipeline opened which was an oil deal that spat in the face of Russian hegemonic dominance in the region. Russia clearly doesn’t like the path Georgia has been taking in recent years.
Earlier, the US Ambassador to the UN Amir Khalilzad delivered a tongue lashing to the Russian foreign minister to the UN, but his Russian counterpart retorted with an even more vehement statement while using a paternal accusatory tone. Later on however, it seems like Medvedev and Sarkozy have come to some sort of compromise. They’re calling it a 6-point plan to end the fight, which includes: re-positioning of troops, beginning of peace talks between Georgia and Russia, and one of the most important points is to end the fighting without an emphasis on preserving the territorial integrity of Georgia. I don’t know if the plan will work at this point I’m rather doubtful and I only know what is broadcast on CNN International, BBC World News, and Russian News Channel 1.
Hope every one is doing well back home, even though the summer is coming to an end.
Love,
Mark
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
8.03.2008
The past couple weeks and a few funny stories
Sunday July 27, 2008
Today we worked on and nearly completed our community project for our village. This was a mandatory project in which volunteers from every village had to work together with villagers in assessing the needs of our communities and then completing a project based on those needs. After surveying about fifty people in our community we discovered that most villagers wanted a public place where the children of our village could congregate and hang-out. After scouting out the village for potential spots to build this youth center we went to the mayor to ask for his advice and hopefully get permission to use one of the sites.
All three of the sites seemed abandoned and all were in severe disrepair. The first site was the abandoned town center which previously functioned as the bus station for the village and small store. However, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, our village has not had public transportation. So, now this building no longer has a roof, most of its windows are completely smashed out or only have dangerous shards remaining in the window pane, and its main use is as a trash can for beer and vodka bottles. This site was quickly rejected by the mayor, who said soon renovation would start on this building.
The next potential site was next to the USAID building in our community that is now used as a kindergarten. I’m sure the building cost taxpayers at least $100,000. The building is 3 stories, of which only one story can be used since the rest of the building has been vandalized and is also in horrible disrepair. This site was also rejected; apparently the mayor said there will be a parking lot built there soon even though hardly any cars or people frequent the location.
The last site was near the school and it was a small abandoned building that also lacked a roof. The ground of the building was uneven, covered with weeds and broken glass. The mayor begrudgingly agreed with this spot, since he enthusiastically wanted the site to be closer to the main road heading into town. This would’ve been a place where people passing by our village could see the accomplishment, but the location would have been out of the way and definitely not convenient for most villagers.
A couple of days before we were suppose to begin work on the project; we met with the mayor again. This time we found out we really didn’t have permission to use the building, and it turned out to be owned by and on some guy‘s property. At first the guy was okay with us using his building; he said he probably would convert it into a place for people to get their haircut when his daughter finished cosmetology school. Yet the next day, when we advertised our community work day, he decided to no longer let us use his store.
So now just a few days before we were supposed to do our project, the entire script had been flipped on us; all of the hours of surveying the community, meeting with the mayor, and coordinating the activities for the day were thrown out the window. So instead we decided to paint an environmentally themed mural at the school, clean up the school yard which was severely overgrown with weeds, have a fun lesson on the environment, and play outdoor games with the children of the community.
Overall the day was great. Around 20 kids showed up to help paint the mural and pull weeds in the school yard. Now the yard is clear enough to play games in and there is a beautiful mural of the wildlife found in our village. For the most part the children were extremely well behaved and most of them thought it was kind of fun to pull weeds and paint. One problem we had was that all of the kids wore their best clothes the stuff they would normally wear to school. Most of the girls were pretty good about staying clean, but of course some of the boys were nasty by the time the days was over. I’m sure their parents were happy with us volunteers when their kids came home for the day.
Yesterday on Saturday July 26th many of us took an optional trip to Yerevan. Out of the 45 volunteers still in our group I think about 35 to 40 of us went. Right now all of us live in small villages about 50 kilometer from Yerevan and our villages are at a much higher elevation than Yerevan. This means the temperature in our village can be 5-15 degrees cooler than in Yerevan and we usually have a nice breeze that blows through the open windows of our houses. Having said this you might have figured out that it was hot in Yerevan, nearly 40 degrees Celsius or over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Although I am fairly used to similar temperatures in Atlanta, there are very few place in Armenia that have air conditioning and our 15 passenger van was definitely not one of them.
Besides the heat I was actually very glad I went on the optional trip to Yerevan. First we walked around the central district of Yerevan, visiting the opera house and looking at various statues in the surrounding areas. We also visited a beautiful art market called the ver-nee-sag, where many artists from throughout Armenia come to display and sell their artwork. The quality and professionalism of the art was astounding.
After meandering for awhile through the artistic district of Yerevan we all hopped back into our vans and headed to the National History Museum. This was of course a highlight for me, but we only had about 2 hours to wander the halls of the museum with our tour guide. My favorite era in the museum was from the Bronze Age, where you could see the creativity and uniqueness of the Armenian culture truly come to life. Although the weaponry from this era was a highlight, the statuettes, jewelry, and pre-Christian religious artifacts were some of the most detailed and intricate pieces of work I had ever seen.
At that point we broke into two groups. One group went to the National Art Gallery and my group went to what the Armenians call the Genocide Memorial Museum. I say this because as a representative of the U.S. government I am not allowed to use the word genocide when referring to the events that took place between 1915 and 1923. Currently the US government does not recognize that an actual genocide occurred and there are many geopolitical reasons for that, but all I can say is that the museum was very touching indeed and the City of Atlanta, as well as the State of Georgia, both recognizes what happened to the Armenian people as genocide.
Although I have only lived in Armenia for a couple months the topic of the events that took place under Ottoman Rule in 1915 still harbor deep resentment among all Armenians. During this time Armenia lost about half of its cultural homeland to the Ottomans, including historic capitals, hundreds of monasteries, and a large percentage of its population. However, today there is hope for change, as both countries try to mend relations for primarily economic reasons. Early in September the Turkish national soccer team is suppose to come and play a friendly-match in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Supposedly, the Turkish foreign minister might come to the game which could turn out to be a step in the right direction or disastrous. I definitely would like to talk more about this topic, but the constraints of my work do not allow me to.
Some fun notes that have taken place over the last couple months:
My host father’s car is an old Soviet-era car called the Muskovaitch, because the automotive plant that produced these cars was in Moscow. It would be like calling a Ford a “Detroitavitch”, the Soviet’s were extremely creative in their product branding process. Anyways the car has had many problems. The first of which the car is incapable of a cold start, or starting from rest. So we coined the term “Hayastani sport-e”, this is the process of pushing the old lug of a car back and forth in the unpaved driveway until it starts (note Hayastan is the Armenian name for Armenia. Also, the Armenian language is called Hayeren, whereas English is called Angleren).
Second, the car’s fuel injector frequently doesn’t work either. Once when it was imperative for my host family to drive some guest back home after a night of partying the car would’t start. So my host father intuitively siphoned the gas( well they use benzene for most cars in Armenia and many other cars run on natural gas) from the gas tank, located in the trunk, into two 2-liter plastic bottles. Spitting out the benzene he had in his mouth. Then he poured some of the benzene directly into the engine under the hood. Next he handed his son, Arsan who was sitting in the front seat, the full bottle of benzene. My host father connected the benzene in the bottles with the engine by means of a small hose. Effectively creating a new gas tank, with no cap in the front seat of the car. Next, 6 people piled into the Muskovaitch and drove off with the equivalent of the benzene Molitov-cocktail in the front passenger’s seat.
I have had little time to write with the continuation of Pre Service Training, it is considered the boot camp of Peace Corps and we have had very little free time. Soon, I hope to be posting a more professional-looking blog, but I hope I have been able to provide the general gist of what has been going on.
Mark G. Jensen
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
Today we worked on and nearly completed our community project for our village. This was a mandatory project in which volunteers from every village had to work together with villagers in assessing the needs of our communities and then completing a project based on those needs. After surveying about fifty people in our community we discovered that most villagers wanted a public place where the children of our village could congregate and hang-out. After scouting out the village for potential spots to build this youth center we went to the mayor to ask for his advice and hopefully get permission to use one of the sites.
All three of the sites seemed abandoned and all were in severe disrepair. The first site was the abandoned town center which previously functioned as the bus station for the village and small store. However, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, our village has not had public transportation. So, now this building no longer has a roof, most of its windows are completely smashed out or only have dangerous shards remaining in the window pane, and its main use is as a trash can for beer and vodka bottles. This site was quickly rejected by the mayor, who said soon renovation would start on this building.
The next potential site was next to the USAID building in our community that is now used as a kindergarten. I’m sure the building cost taxpayers at least $100,000. The building is 3 stories, of which only one story can be used since the rest of the building has been vandalized and is also in horrible disrepair. This site was also rejected; apparently the mayor said there will be a parking lot built there soon even though hardly any cars or people frequent the location.
The last site was near the school and it was a small abandoned building that also lacked a roof. The ground of the building was uneven, covered with weeds and broken glass. The mayor begrudgingly agreed with this spot, since he enthusiastically wanted the site to be closer to the main road heading into town. This would’ve been a place where people passing by our village could see the accomplishment, but the location would have been out of the way and definitely not convenient for most villagers.
A couple of days before we were suppose to begin work on the project; we met with the mayor again. This time we found out we really didn’t have permission to use the building, and it turned out to be owned by and on some guy‘s property. At first the guy was okay with us using his building; he said he probably would convert it into a place for people to get their haircut when his daughter finished cosmetology school. Yet the next day, when we advertised our community work day, he decided to no longer let us use his store.
So now just a few days before we were supposed to do our project, the entire script had been flipped on us; all of the hours of surveying the community, meeting with the mayor, and coordinating the activities for the day were thrown out the window. So instead we decided to paint an environmentally themed mural at the school, clean up the school yard which was severely overgrown with weeds, have a fun lesson on the environment, and play outdoor games with the children of the community.
Overall the day was great. Around 20 kids showed up to help paint the mural and pull weeds in the school yard. Now the yard is clear enough to play games in and there is a beautiful mural of the wildlife found in our village. For the most part the children were extremely well behaved and most of them thought it was kind of fun to pull weeds and paint. One problem we had was that all of the kids wore their best clothes the stuff they would normally wear to school. Most of the girls were pretty good about staying clean, but of course some of the boys were nasty by the time the days was over. I’m sure their parents were happy with us volunteers when their kids came home for the day.
Yesterday on Saturday July 26th many of us took an optional trip to Yerevan. Out of the 45 volunteers still in our group I think about 35 to 40 of us went. Right now all of us live in small villages about 50 kilometer from Yerevan and our villages are at a much higher elevation than Yerevan. This means the temperature in our village can be 5-15 degrees cooler than in Yerevan and we usually have a nice breeze that blows through the open windows of our houses. Having said this you might have figured out that it was hot in Yerevan, nearly 40 degrees Celsius or over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Although I am fairly used to similar temperatures in Atlanta, there are very few place in Armenia that have air conditioning and our 15 passenger van was definitely not one of them.
Besides the heat I was actually very glad I went on the optional trip to Yerevan. First we walked around the central district of Yerevan, visiting the opera house and looking at various statues in the surrounding areas. We also visited a beautiful art market called the ver-nee-sag, where many artists from throughout Armenia come to display and sell their artwork. The quality and professionalism of the art was astounding.
After meandering for awhile through the artistic district of Yerevan we all hopped back into our vans and headed to the National History Museum. This was of course a highlight for me, but we only had about 2 hours to wander the halls of the museum with our tour guide. My favorite era in the museum was from the Bronze Age, where you could see the creativity and uniqueness of the Armenian culture truly come to life. Although the weaponry from this era was a highlight, the statuettes, jewelry, and pre-Christian religious artifacts were some of the most detailed and intricate pieces of work I had ever seen.
At that point we broke into two groups. One group went to the National Art Gallery and my group went to what the Armenians call the Genocide Memorial Museum. I say this because as a representative of the U.S. government I am not allowed to use the word genocide when referring to the events that took place between 1915 and 1923. Currently the US government does not recognize that an actual genocide occurred and there are many geopolitical reasons for that, but all I can say is that the museum was very touching indeed and the City of Atlanta, as well as the State of Georgia, both recognizes what happened to the Armenian people as genocide.
Although I have only lived in Armenia for a couple months the topic of the events that took place under Ottoman Rule in 1915 still harbor deep resentment among all Armenians. During this time Armenia lost about half of its cultural homeland to the Ottomans, including historic capitals, hundreds of monasteries, and a large percentage of its population. However, today there is hope for change, as both countries try to mend relations for primarily economic reasons. Early in September the Turkish national soccer team is suppose to come and play a friendly-match in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Supposedly, the Turkish foreign minister might come to the game which could turn out to be a step in the right direction or disastrous. I definitely would like to talk more about this topic, but the constraints of my work do not allow me to.
Some fun notes that have taken place over the last couple months:
My host father’s car is an old Soviet-era car called the Muskovaitch, because the automotive plant that produced these cars was in Moscow. It would be like calling a Ford a “Detroitavitch”, the Soviet’s were extremely creative in their product branding process. Anyways the car has had many problems. The first of which the car is incapable of a cold start, or starting from rest. So we coined the term “Hayastani sport-e”, this is the process of pushing the old lug of a car back and forth in the unpaved driveway until it starts (note Hayastan is the Armenian name for Armenia. Also, the Armenian language is called Hayeren, whereas English is called Angleren).
Second, the car’s fuel injector frequently doesn’t work either. Once when it was imperative for my host family to drive some guest back home after a night of partying the car would’t start. So my host father intuitively siphoned the gas( well they use benzene for most cars in Armenia and many other cars run on natural gas) from the gas tank, located in the trunk, into two 2-liter plastic bottles. Spitting out the benzene he had in his mouth. Then he poured some of the benzene directly into the engine under the hood. Next he handed his son, Arsan who was sitting in the front seat, the full bottle of benzene. My host father connected the benzene in the bottles with the engine by means of a small hose. Effectively creating a new gas tank, with no cap in the front seat of the car. Next, 6 people piled into the Muskovaitch and drove off with the equivalent of the benzene Molitov-cocktail in the front passenger’s seat.
I have had little time to write with the continuation of Pre Service Training, it is considered the boot camp of Peace Corps and we have had very little free time. Soon, I hope to be posting a more professional-looking blog, but I hope I have been able to provide the general gist of what has been going on.
Mark G. Jensen
Remember this blog is a reflection of my own personal thoughts and reflections and in no way represents the views of the Peace Corps or the United States' government.
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