Sunday, April 30, 2006

Please Help!

I am in the throes of preparing for 5 separate ecology-based day camps for Peace Corps Armenia. The camps will begin in June and we have already completed the trainings and started purchasing supplies etc. Half of our funding comes from a Peace Corps Partnership Grant, which I wrote and was posted to the web earlier this Spring. We have still have approximately 1500 dollars left to raise and we need to do so in the next two weeks. I am starting to get a little worried... Any amount of money that you would feel comfortable donating would really help to ensure that these summer camps make it off the ground this year. As part of each camp, 40 children are provided with education about the environment in a novel setting (camps aren't very common here) and they are provided activity materials, nutritious meals and t-shirts (also not always so common).
Donation, is quick and easy, web-based and tax deductible. You decide how much to contribute and do it yourself via credit card.
Click in the lower left corner
Select
Select "Green Camps, Armenia"
Thank you in advance for your generosity. Please let me know if you have any questions. There is an additional write-up about the camps on the website, and I am happy to send more information your way.
The following is a copy of the Concept Sheet:
Green Camps
Peace Corps Armenia


The Green Camp program is an annual summer camp for Armenian children focusing on the exploration and study of the natural world. Camps are conducted in the Armenian Language and are located in traditionally underserved regions of the country. Through structured environmental education activities, Peace Corps Volunteers and local organizations provide children with:
· a safe and positive outdoor experience
· exposure to the local natural environment
· an introduction to basic ecological concepts
· new methods to explore the environment
· an opportunity to practice environmentally-conscious critical-thinking and decision- making skills
· team-building and leadership skills development
The program also serves as a training in which Peace Corps Volunteers teach local organizations how to design and implement a summer camp. These local organizations in turn commit to providing continuing environmental education in their communities. This year Green Camps will reach over 200 Armenian children, and over 40 adults.

Mission
To raise awareness of the diverse relationships between human beings and their natural environments, with the intent of increasing appreciation for and understanding of the flora, fauna and natural systems of Armenia, thereby creating a heightened sense of personal and community responsibility towards the protection of the natural environment.

Goals
1. To raise awareness about local environmental problems and inspire communities to find appropriate solutions.
2. To educate children about local ecology and increase their appreciation for the environment.
3. To provide local organizations and community members with skills and knowledge to conduct effective environmental education.
4. To encourage and show the benefits of volunteerism within local communities.
5. To reach out to traditionally underserved communities in rural regions of Armenia.
6. To develop friendships between Peace Corps Volunteers, local volunteers, and children.


Camp Specifics
Size: 40 children, 17 staff
Age Group: Campers 11-13 years old, Counselors 18 and up
Duration: 5 days, 6-8 hours per day
Number of camps: 5 per summer (including 1 training camp)

Short History:

Green Camps have been in existence in Armenia as a Peace Corps project since 2001, when the program was started under the moniker of Eco-camps. The first year there were three camps held in a 3-day/2-night overnight format. In 2002 the number of camps was increased to four, one of which was carried out as a day camp. In 2003, there were four fully-funded sites and one partially-funded site. Beginning in 2004, Peace Corps began working with a Yerevan-based environmental NGO called Women for a Green Way for Generations, and the name was changed to Eco-Adventure Camps. This partnership lasted 2 years, with five camp sites each summer. With this organization well-versed in the management of a summer camp, we have shifted our focus this year to locally-based environmental NGO’s, with the intent of providing training and guidance this year so that next year these organizations can carry out youth-focused environmental activities in their own communities. Once again, the change in structure has brought a change names--hence, 2006 Green Camps.

In an effort to reach as many young Armenians as possible, Green Camps have been located in towns and villages throughout Armenia. These locations have included: Martuni, Dilijan, Yegheghnadzor, Sevan, Tatev, Vanadzor, Voratan, Berd, Stepanavan, Urtzadzor, Gharusali, Goris, Akunk, Ijevan, Artik and Navor. This year, camps will take place in Martuni, Harzdan, Dilijan, Gavar, and Ijevan.

How you can help:
We need to raise $3,265 by May 10, 2006. This sum is in addition to $2,000 already pledged in support from the Center on Agriculture and Rural Development in Armenia (CARD), formerly USDA. Approximately $3,000 worth of support is also coming from the local communities themselves. The camp budget goes toward nutritionally balanced meals for the campers, activity and sports supplies, training materials for local organizations, including a comprehensive camp manual in English and Armenian, and t-shirts for each camper.

Donations can be made through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, located at www.peacecorps.gov
Choose the link for the Peace Corps Partnership Program, from there you can search by country (Armenia) and project name (Green Camps). The link should be active by mid-April, 2006.
Donations are accepted via credit card, are tax deductible, and a transmitted via a secure forum. Once our goal is reached, a check will be sent to the Peace Corps Volunteers managing the program.

Your help is greatly appreciated as we strive together toward a brighter future in Armenia!


Contact:
Jill Overholt, PC Volunteer, 2006 Green Camp Director
jroverho@yahoo.com

“Eco Adventure was one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had as a Peace Corps Volunteer. This was one of a few times during my service that I was sure we were making a difference; I know our campers learned so much about their environment and changed their attitudes about nature. I really hope the directors of Eco Adventure focus on capacity building at the local level so that these camps will become sustainable. With the experience they gained at Eco Adventure, my counterpart organization would love to conduct camps on its own. Peace Corps can participate in the creation of environmental camps all over Armenia. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity!”
Morgan Ruelle, A12 Peace Corps Volunteer

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Georgia, The Country

Georgia is different enough to be considered a vacation and yet similar enough to be familiar. The joys of being in a larger, more developed, more colorful, more modern city, mixed with the realities of increased petty crime and a decreased sense of security. I wavered between jealousy of the Georgian peace corps volunteers and an actual sense of appreciative longing for my home away from home.

I left for Georgia from Gyumri, after spending the weekend in Ashotsk. I had discussed my impending vacation with Artur, who managed to sufficiently scare me about the security situation in Tbilisi. With an immediate look of concern, he began interrogating me.
“Are you going alone?”
“No,”
“Who are you going with?”
“Another volunteer.”
“A boy?”
“Ummm…..yes,”
“Oh, good.”
That seemed to settle matters, but he still warned me to carry my backpack on my front because people will cut it open with razor blades and steal the contents as they fall out. I didn’t actually witness any crimes of this or any other nature, but I did meet a few Georgian volunteers who had been the victims of petty crime in the capital. It turned out to be no different from any other large city I have been to, only with the small exception that I couldn’t speak the language or read any of the signs… Still, basic city sense and some guidance from the PC Georgia office got us safely through the trip.

We traveled via marshurtnie—it took us about 5 and a half hours to get there from Gyumri, the return trip proved much longer. The scenery was enjoyable, and the trip itself was relatively painless. When we arrived at the border, we (the Americans) were told to get out and walk to a small white house located in the border no-mans land. The road was mostly deserted, and feeling like we should have some Deliverance music to accompany us, we slipped into the little white shack. Once inside we began speaking Armenian and simply became a point of interest…what are we doing in Armenia? Where do we live? Why are we going to Georgia? We got our stamps and were quickly across the border in Georgia.

The marshurtnie drivers, although Georgian, spoke Armenian, and were kind enough to find us an Armenian speaking taxi driver once we arrived in the city. This is where our language luck ended. We had made reservations at a guesthouse in advance, fortunately, but had banked on the taxi driver knowing where it was, or at least knowing the street. Bad assumption. After driving around the city in a few different wrong directions, James was able to direct him using the small, poorly-drawn map from our guidebook. We found the place, but it had no sign or any indication that it was a guesthouse. We knocked anyway, and a nice woman who spoke nothing but Russian ushered us inside. James had studied Russian for a few months in Vayk and managed to have a very basic conversation with our host, which reminded me quite a bit of conversing with my host family during PST.

Our next task of the day was to find the Peace Corps office, which we had planned to visit first except that the taxi driver didn’t know that street either. We knew that it was very close to our guest house and decided to ask. The directions we received involved hand gestures, grunting, and the word mountain, from which we ascertained that we needed to turn left, left, and then right, and something about a mountain… We thought maybe we should call the Peace Corps and have them give us directions, so we asked for a phone. The woman thought we were asking for the phone number and kept saying she didn’t have it. Eventually she called her nephew, who spoke just enough English to tell us that we needed to turn left, left, go up some stairs (this must be our mountain), and then turn right. We decided to try it. We had to ask for directions twice (enter James and minimal Russian skills), and we discovered that the next door neighbors of the Peace Corps didn’t even know that the building existed, but we found it successfully without too much more adventure.

After jealously oogling their nice, big office, with showers for the volunteers, we headed out to dinner with a few Georgian PC volunteers. They took us to Korean barbecue (a Georgian specialty…right). We get enough Georgian food in Armenia that we didn’t mind too much to be missing out on Georgian food in Georgia. For the sake of principle, we did eat Georgian on our very last night at the Hingali House. The rest of the time was everything else that we can’t get in Armenia—McDonalds, good beer, Korean food, etc. After all, we were on vacation. I never thought I would be that excited about McDonalds, but we want what we can’t have, therefore, I wanted McDonalds. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that we actually ate there twice in three days. Just pretend you didn’t read that part—two visits to McDonalds in 10 months isn’t so bad…right? They just happened to be two days in a row.

Three days was just enough time to see the sights of the city, do a few walking tours, and see a lot of churches—Georgia and Armenian both have more churches than most normal people can stand to visit. I think we went inside 9 churches on the first day before we decided to just look at them from the outside and move onto other things. Ironically, one of my favorite churches to visit was the Armenian church (like I don’t get enough of that). As much of a sight as we were to begin with, simply being American tourists in Georgia, we were even more of a sight as Armenian-speaking American tourists in Georgia. Needless to say, the woman at the little candle booth was just thrilled with us when we began to speak to her. Possibly, we were just as thrilled to finally be able to speak to someone with relative ease. When speaking in Armenian becomes the thing I do with relative ease, I know I am outside of my league…. We also visited the Turkish sulfur baths, which are not Turkish, they are Georgian. Regardless of their nationality, it was an enjoyable, relaxing experience. We opted for the private room over public nudity, but maybe next time I will be braver.

On our last full day we decided to go to the train/marshurtnie station to try and find our marshurtnie. We were told the Yerevan marshrutnie leave every morning, from 8-1 when they fill up. We wanted to make sure we could find it so that in the morning we weren’t frantically running around the city trying to explain in broken Russian that we wanted to go to Armenia. It was a good thing we went early. The station was huge. We wondered around for almost an hour looking for a marshrutnie with a Yerevan sign (in Russian, of course) until we decided to ask someone for help. We picked out an older woman shopkeeper, because she looked friendly, and James began to prep his Russian. He explained that we wanted to go to Yerevan. Somehow, in the midst of their stilted Russian conversation I picked up that the woman spoke Armenian! I am still not sure exactly how I figured that out, but I began to speak in Armenian and she began to get very excited, and she told us exactly where our marshurtnie was located and to come find her if we had any more problems. Then the questions…why are you here? Why do you speak Armenian? What do you do there? I have never been so relieved or happy to be answering those questions.

The next morning we arrived bright and early at 9am ready to head back to Yerevan. We were promptly informed that that marshrutnie would not be leaving until 1pm. Great. Four more hours to sit in the marshrutnie without it even moving. We were also informed that the ride was more expensive than we had been told. Since we had wanted to leave without exchanging money, we spent everything except the exact marshutnie fare. At least a trip to the ATM would help pass the time. While withdrawing money we found ourselves surrounded by a group of women who had obviously never seen such a profound thing as a machine that gives you money (this makes me wonder if they have been walking around Tblisi with their eyes closed, but that is a different story). I have accepted the fact that ATM etiquette is not what it is in the US on this side of the world (i.e. if you give the person using the machine any space at all other people will assume you are not waiting and will cut in front of you) but I have never had an actual audience of people all craning their necks to see what will happen next. A funny thing happened...I entered my pin code, and money came out. Just like magic.

The remainder of the ride home (once we got started) was slow, but not too painful. That is, with the exception of a random hour long stop for the drivers to eat dinner, without informing anyone in the marshutnie that they were doing so. Border crossing was actually more difficult going back into Armenia than leaving, possibly because we were at a bigger border crossing than the small village station on a dirt road where we entered. While waiting in various lines to give people my passport repeatedly, I entertained myself by watching the bird flu “precautions.” By precautions, I mean a man in a white haz-mat suit with no gloves or head protection, spraying some sort of substance on the outsides of each tire. Thorough, I know. Its okay though, Armenia has people stationed at the borders shooting the birds as they fly in—there’s no bird flu here.

Monday, April 10, 2006

thirsty?

We were sitting in the living room, relaxing after a hard morning of skiing. The television was tuned, as usual, to some European sports channel, and we had just been served coffee and fruit. Artur brought out a number of wines and liqueurs he had made, the most recent sample including a bouquet of fruits, herbs, nettles and garlic. It was good, really. Suddenly, out of the discussion of these interesting blends of home brews, came the question:

"Would you like to drink some blood?"

I turned to Morgan with his superior language skills. "Did she just say what I think she said?" Morgan was asking the same question.

Yup, we were just asked if we would like to drink some blood. Before we could protest Alla had disappeared into the cellar and returned with a glass bottle of a very dark red liquid. I had been warned about this….

"It’s good, it’s sweet," she said, grabbing a few glasses.

"No, no, that’s okay," Morgan and I stammered in near unison, choking back nervous laughter and exchanging meaningful glances that only two Americans who have just been offered blood as a refreshment can appreciate. Our protests worked, and somewhat disappointedly I am afraid, Alla gave a small drink of the blood/fruit mixture to her five-year-old and returned the bottle to the cellar.

Alla is very knowledgeable about home remedies and has a lot of different teas and concoctions on hands for various ailments. Some probably work better than others. The remedy in question was one for women, especially, who have "thin blood" (low iron, I am assuming). I am sure it probably works, but a bit relieved not to know first hand.

In addition to home remedies, and cross-country skiing, which was probably the last of the skiing for the season due to warm, slushy snow, we were treated to a tour of Ashotsk by Artur. This was partly due to a lack of other options as skiing was only possible in the mornings, and partly due to Artur wanting to show us around and maybe show us off (just a little). We had spent the first morning repeatedly falling through the snow, so a walk was a welcome change. We visited Artur’s mother, and enjoyed the traditional Armenian spread, complete with Sea Buckthorn jam—a new one to add to the list of fruits I didn’t know the name of in English before I knew them in Armenian. We walked the streets and looked at some of the sights in the earthquake shattered town, with a current population of probably less than 1,000. Artur estimated it between 6 and 7,000 before the earthquake. The majority of residents are still living in the small "domeeks" that were provided by European nations over 15 years ago as temporary housing. Some have been added onto, reinforced, or remodeled—this is the case with Artur and Alla’s home—others are merely small dilapidated looking wooden shacks.

As it was April fools day, we entertained ourselves by telling the locals that we were from china (none of us were) and that our eyes had become round from eating too much dolma. As expected, this drew some confused looks, with lots of people pulling at the corners of their eyes to make them squinty. This was the manner in which they informed us that we did NOT look like "chinamen." Okay, so cultural sensitivity is perhaps a bit lacking… This was entertaining in its own rite, but the highlight of the day was visiting the nesting storks—there are five pairs in Ashotsk, with giant nests perched atop telephone poles. We were able to get very close to photograph them, and even saw one pair mating.

Ironically, not even including the magnificent storks, I think I saw more wildlife in the snow around Ashotsk than I have in most of the rest of the country combined. Animals and flowers alike were just beginning to poke out of the melting snow, and we were witness firsthand to a mouse, a dragon fly, a number of birds and some insects. We were also able to track a wolf kill—the footprints first led us to the fur outline of what we determined to be a small goat perhaps, and then on to the horns, and later the jaw. Artur is very knowledgeable about the local wildlife, and even more excited about sharing his knowledge. This, of course, was a stretch of my language skills, but a welcome relief from the simple ignorance and fear that prevails among most Armenian citizens, especially where wolves are concerned.

Once again, the trip to Ashotsk was wonderful and wonderfully relaxing. I certainly never thought that staying with another Armenian family for a weekend, and speaking nothing but Armenian would seem like a vacation, but I leave feeling refreshed, relaxed and healthy—three things that aren’t so common in Vayk. The new apartment helps, but I am still constantly tackling new challenges as I try to do new things. For example, today I flooded my bathroom. Turns out, the drain in the floor is decorative. On the bright side, the electronic agitator works, one of the few things in the apartment that has worked on the first try. After learning how to use it and doing some of my laundry, I decided that I could empty the water out of the machine into the floor drain. After waiting about thirty minutes, I started bailing with buckets. Lucky for me, my bathroom floor is half caved in and holds a good deal of water easily. My new six dollar mop finished the job. That investment pays more dividends every time I use it.

I was treated to another visit from my landlord yesterday. She brought me chocolate and retrieved some old clothes from a suitcase in my spare bedroom. Then came the meat of the visit. She told me, with great seriousness, that I am not to open the door for the water man, who comes every month to collect the water bill. Every apartment in Vayk is now required to have a water meter and she can’t afford to put one in, so the solution is to look through my peephole and if I see the waterman, not to let him in. It seems a little wrong, but she says that she will bring a water meter and install it. Of course, she didn’t say when….