So Where To For The Next Two Years...

So on Wednesday the CED and Youth Development Trainees gathered for our site announcements at a local school. Of course, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to get us settled down after finding out our sites, we had some stuff to do first. We broke up into our program areas and talked about expectations and concerns. These will then be shared with our counterparts at the conference we have on Friday. At this conference we’ll be meeting our counterparts for the first time, learning more about the organization we’re partnered with, coordinating our site visits, etc.

The actual announcement: the program managers for CED and YD essentially listed off the cities one by one and who would be going where. Each person would go up front, mark their spot on the map of Azerbaijan and get their packet of information about their city/organization. And since they went by city you would also find out if another volunteer is going to be in the same city (except for TEFL volunteers – their site announcements aren’t until the end of next week because of how their schedule fell). And I had an idea of the city from my site placement interview, so as soon as that name was called I was ready. And it turned out to be correct – nothing was definite as of the interview.

I will be going to Ucar (pronounced Ujar), which is pretty much right in the center of the country. It’s about 230 kilometers west of Baku and the area has about 75,000 people. I will be working with “Akinchi – UA” which is an Agribusiness Service Center. It’s new (established in 2007) and their main objective is to help farmers increase productivity in all areas of agro-business and to support development of farming by providing chargeable advises and other services.

Here’s what my information sheet says my scope of work will be:
- Create connections and establish relationships with different international organizations.
- Inform local farmers about farming in other countries. Provide them with updated and modern information on international farming.
- Preparation of business plans.
- Support farmers and founders of the “Akinchi” in learning English language and computer.
- Support development and strengthening of the organization.
- Help with preparation and implementation of projects.
- Help to improve Finance, Advice Services, Management and other activities in the organization.
- Conduct marketing trainings.
- Help with design and implementation of micro-projects for the communities.

Exciting, right? There are already two volunteers in Ucar (TEFL, they arrived in 2007) and no other CED or YD volunteer will be sent to Ucar this year. As I mentioned, we’ll find out the TEFL sites at the end of next week, so there could be another volunteer or two headed the same way. We’ll see! It’s exciting to finally know where we’re ending up, how close we’re going to be to people that we’ve become friends with, have an idea of the industry that we’re in so we can learn job specific vocabulary, and on and on. I’ve already heard how wonderful the organization that I’m going to is from multiple PC staff members, current volunteers, trainees who went to Ucar on their site visit, etc. So it gets a little hot in the summer (over 100 degrees daily for a stretch). I’ll live through the heat and have an amazing experience in my new home – Ucar, Azerbaijan!

More Pictures...

At a local restaurant practicing our restaurant language skills, getting together one evening to make pancakes, french toast & potatoes for dinner, followed by game night!

The Busyness of PST...

Time has been flying by! Last weekend (the 25th) we had our time change so it's now pitch black by 6:30pm. This makes doing anything after our afternoon sessions almost impossible as we need to be home/in our small communities (all of the trainees are in small communities around Sumgayit) by dark. The weather has definitely cooled down during the past couple of weeks – to the point where it's warmer outside in the sun than it is in our school where we have language class. We've still been having language classes every morning from 9am – 1pm, but we've become much busier with CED sessions and projects, which usually take place in the afternoon. A few weeks ago we were divided into groups of two or three and last week we had to present Peer Seminars. This was both a chance for us to learn from each other and for our program manager to observe us (many volunteers will end up doing some sort of training at their permanent site assignment). So each group had to give a 45 minute presentation on topics such as Marketing, Customer Service, Writing a Business Plan, Motivation & Evaluation, etc. My group had been assigned Marketing and it was a pretty straightforward topic. We reviewed the 4 (well, my group made it 5) P's of Marketing and had lots of examples and case studies, so hopefully we made it fun while still trying to relate it to the potential assignments that we may face during our time here in Azerbaijan.

As I mentioned during my last post, we have started our CED Practicum. I, along with two others, am spending some time at a micro-credit organization located in Sumgayit. We've learned about the customers they have (IDP's (internally displaced persons) and those with low-income), how they process loans, how they work with their headquarters office in Baku (they are one of 11 regional offices throughout Azerbaijan), how their customers make payments and a lot more. It's been very interesting and educational as we'll all soon be going out to the regions and become a part of a local organization. So while very few of us will actually be working with a micro-finance/micro-credit organization, it's definitely beneficial to see an Azerbaijani work environment. We still need our translator (one of the LCF's goes with us each time) but as the days go by I'm beginning to understand more and more.

We also had a language test the week before last – okay, I guess it wasn't really a test; the Peace Corps calls it a Language Proficiency Interview. Someone came and interviewed each of us in Azerbaijani and essentially graded our speaking. I had to introduce myself, talk about my family(both here in Azerbaijan and at home in America), say how long I've been in Azerbaijan, what I like about it, what meals and fruits and vegetables I like, etc. I did just fine, although I did learn a few new words in the process. Then we have another one of these at the very end of our training.

Lastly, early last week I had my site placement interview with my program manager. All of the CED trainees had one and it was a chance for our program manager to get to know us a little bit more in a one on one setting – he saw our resumes before we even arrived in the country and has had some time to observe us but not much conversation time about our skills and experiences. So we talked briefly about what I have done and also about any preferences that I have about my work site. Honestly, I don't have any preferences. The only thing that I expressed is that I would like a strong organization who would like me there for the majority of my time – I would prefer that over an organization who only wants me 20 – 30% of my time. And if everything else is equal I would prefer to be in a colder environment, but really it doesn't matter. I'm flexible. I don't have anything specific in mind; he knows the country and organizations much better than me and can probably place me much better than I could myself. As I told one of my friends – I know what I've done successfully in the past, but I don't know what I could be successful at in the future. So I don't want to limit myself, for example, to just the banking industry because I've done that before. I think that by the end of our meeting he had a good idea of where to place me, but nothing's definite until later this week. I think because of my flexibility I'm more likely to be one of the later ones placed. This must be an extremely stressful and busy two weeks for him.

Commencing countdown to November 5th (the day site placements are announced)!

Other Parts of Azerbaijan...and Looking Forward...

Last weekend all of the Peace Corps Trainees went somewhere within the country to visit a current volunteer at their site. I went to Ismayilli with three other trainees, which is about 3 – 4 hours northwest of Baku. We traveled by marshrutka (think of a large mini-van serving as a bus system, it’s what we use around town as well) and arrived late in the afternoon on Saturday. Three of us accompanied two of our three hosts (there are three volunteers assigned to Ismayilli, two TEFL and one Youth Development) to a wedding that evening. It was our first wedding in country and as such was quite an experience. To start off with, we went to the wrong wedding! Our hosts had misplaced the invitation and we went to the wrong wedding palace. So we walked in, sat down, and then walked right back out again. That sounds very innocent and like we may have not even been noticed, but let me tell you, Americans are always noticed (video cameras are a staple at Azeri weddings). So after we experienced the correct wedding, we met back up with the other volunteer and trainee and hung out for the remainder of the evening. We got to hear about some of what they’re doing, what it’s like living in their town, housing stories, and much more. Sunday would’ve been a great day to do some hiking (Ismayilli is near the mountains) but it rained all day so instead we went to the market to pick up some food and then stayed inside the rest of the day – we made American food (stir fry, apple pie & homemade pizza)! I hadn’t really missed food that much until a different option was given to me. Monday the trainees split up and went with the volunteers to work for the day. I went with Colleen, a Youth Development volunteer, and we had tea with a few of the youth that she works with and attended a meeting of her photography club. We also had lunch at her counterpart’s. Every volunteer has a counterpart, and they are the representative of the requesting/sponsoring organization. Sometimes it’s the person you report to, sometimes not. For example, at schools they are usually teachers. For Youth Development it can be a teacher, someone at a resource center, etc. For CED (Community Economic Development, my program) it will be someone at the organization that I will be paired with – branch manager, director, etc. Then Tuesday we were headed back to our training site. It was a great visit and I think really motivated all of the trainees. It also may have made us a bit impatient – we want to get out there! And while it would have been nice to see a CED volunteer’s work, the purpose of the visit was to see the regions of Azerbaijan and see a volunteer in their site, even if they aren’t in the same program that we are. And everyone varies so much in what they do that it very likely would have been different than what I’ll end up doing anyways.



The rest of the week flew by! Since we arrived back from the site visits on Tuesday afternoon what felt like Monday was already Wednesday. And we had a cultural event on Saturday, so only three days of language lessons last week.

Saturday, as I just said, was reserved for a cultural event. All 61 of us (yes, everyone’s still here) met in Sumgayit at the Peace Corps office to travel together to Gobustan. Gobustan is located 60 km southwest of Baku on the Caspian Sea and is an area that contains thousands of rock engravings dating back to the 12th century BC. They were only discovered in the 1930’s and just last year were included in UNESCO’s World Heritage list. It was amazing to see – both the landscape and the actual engravings. I know we have some areas like this (dry, rocky, etc.) out west in the US, but I’ve never been there. It didn’t remind me of anywhere that I had traveled before. It was also interesting to see a tourist area in a developing country. There was a museum area and there were paths, but it was definitely not commercialized (not a ton of brochures, no photo stations, not handicapped accessible, nothing blocking access to the actual engravings, etc.), which could provide additional income for the area, but it also feels much more real as it is right now. After Gobustan we loaded back into our two busses (chartered for us, after all, there are 61 trainees, 12 LCFs and some of the country staff) and went to the mud volcanoes located near Gobustan. The busses couldn’t travel the entire way because of the roads so we had a short hike to get there. I’ve never seen a regular volcano, so I guess I was expecting something much larger, but it was pretty neat. With the exception of the water (it’s kind of a key ingredient to mud) it almost looked like some photos you’d see of the moon. Little mud volcanoes scattered all over, some smaller than me, some bigger than me, with openings varying in size from plate size to swimming pool size. It’s definitely hard to describe, so there are some pictures too. Every so often mud would bubble up, and it’d be flowing down the side of the volcano just like lava would in a traditional volcano. Interesting. I’m not sure where all mud volcanoes appear in the world. We arrived back in Sumgayit around dinner time and some of us grabbed kabobs for dinner at a little place on the sea. This was the second time I’ve had kabobs and they are absolutely fantastic here. It was a great day spent in Azerbaijan!


Sunday was another great day. We have a variety of people in our training group and some people had expressed an interest in doing a Bible study, so I joined that group. While the stereotype of the typical Peace Corps volunteer is probably a hippie liberal (or maybe that’s antiquated, you tell me), there really is a broad range of people – liberal, conservative, religious, non-religious, well traveled, first time travelers, fresh college graduates, mid career professionals, retirees, etc. So it was great to find a group who wants to get together during our time here to have some sort of fellowship as Protestant churches are not plentiful here. Who knows what will happen when we get to our permanent sites, but hopefully it’s something that will last the entire time we’re here – maybe it will just be smaller groups or less often (even though the country is only the size of Maine, it can be quite time intensive to travel from one region to another). So that’s definitely been a blessing for something that weighed heavily on my mind before I arrived in Azerbaijan as I left a very supportive church environment. And the day itself was just beautiful – the wind of the Caspian made it chilly, but that’s okay. We found a great little restaurant for lunch, there was a chance to use the internet, and I even saw a new part of Sumgayit. Granted, the last part was a little unexpected after leaving a friend’s and not knowing where/what part of town the marshrutka dropped us off in, but Katie and I recovered and made it back in one piece – it just took a little extra time and an extra marshrutka ride. It’s all a part of the adventure.

This week is incredibly busy. Today we started our CED Practicum, which is essentially an internship. We are there two afternoons this week and next, and then one afternoon after that. It’s pretty much our first chance to see an Azerbaijani organization at work. I’ve been placed at a micro-credit organization which provides small business and consumer loans from $200 – $10,000 USD. Should be interesting to see how lending compares, especially since I spent some of my time in the US in banking. We also have our mid-PST (Pre-Service Training) language assessment coming up and language classes every day. Lastly, yesterday we saw the list of cities that CED volunteers are being placed – so who knows where I’ll end up, but at least now I can say that it’s one of fourteen different Azerbaijani cities! We have interviews later this week with Elmir, our program director, to help him get to know us and our experience better so he can match our skills with the organization’s requests. We find out during the first week of November what our permanent sites are…

The Beginning of a Routine...

So I’ve been with my host family for almost two weeks now (it’ll be two weeks tomorrow). It’s odd to say, but there’s already a “normal” routine. Last week there wasn’t much of a routine – being in a new place, the Ramadan holiday, etc. But now I’ve settled in. I’m beginning to know my way around the town I’m in, and even the next town over (where we have to go to use the internet). The food, for the most part, has been wonderful. Most of you know what a picky eater I am, but I’ve only turned away one or two things because of not liking it (and I am trying it first, I promise). And I feel like I’m given enough to feed 6 of me at each meal, so I feel bad that I can’t finish everything. But at least now I know how to say I like it, but I’m full in Azerbaijani. Hopefully soon I’ll actually be able to help in the kitchen.

The language is going well. I think I’m always going to feel like I could know it better, but it’s amazing to think that just three weeks ago I didn’t know any Azerbaijani, and now I’m learning all sorts of vocabulary and how to make small sentences.

As you know, right now I am considered a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT). This weekend everyone in my training group (AZ6, the 6th group of volunteers to come to Azerbaijan) is taking trips to visit various Peace Corps Volunteers (they arrived in June 2007) around the country that have volunteered to host 1 – 3 of us. Right now, in training, we’re fairly sheltered. We’ll have help getting to the bus station, we have our LCF to go to if we have communication problems with our host families, etc., but these volunteers are out on their own, so we’re seeing what it’ll be like 3, 6, 9 months down the road. It’s exciting to meet the current volunteers and hear some of their stories – right now everything is so up in the air for us as far as not knowing what city we’ll end up in or what job we’ll be doing – so we’re living vicariously through their experiences.

Well, that’s about it, hopefully I’ll get on next week to let you know how my site visit went. I’m going to what is supposed to be a very scenic part of Azerbaijan!