profuse apologies

I know what your thinking...how does Jill manage to go almost six months without posting a single entry and then posts 5 in one day? What can I say? I have no excuse other than that I live in Armenia and perhaps that I have grown a bit lazy. The four posts that you will find previous to this one were all written at various times and never finished. Thus, I never posted them. It dawned on me the other day that I probably never will finish them so i decided to just go ahead an stick them on the internet. I hope you enjoy. I will have some new (actually current) posts soon...I promise :)

sock salesman

The door to door sock salesman came again this afternoon. Yesterday a car drove through the neighborhood honking its horn and selling the cabbages piled floor to ceiling in the back seat. I have no use right now for socks or cabbages yet I want to help the poor people whose lives have been downgraded to this existence of just barely scraping by. The reality is that I can’t help them all, or even a majority of them. I have spent nearly the last two years in the Peace Corps in an attempt to “help them help themselves.” It has been successful, to a degree. But the process of rebuilding a country is a slow one. In the two years I have been here I have seen a modicum of improvement but it isn’t enough for the people who have spent the last 15 years waiting for things to get better again.

Prosperity is promised along with the word “democracy” but no prosperity can come of the level of corruption that abounds in this country at the current time. People have given up on prosperity and democracy along with it. They just want their old lives back. The longer I am here the more I start to think “who can blame them. Sure, they were living under the hard rule of the soviets and had no freedom of speech, nothing to buy, a crooked world view, but they were warm, their houses were intact, they didn’t need to cut down their own fruit trees to heat their homes.

I had a very interesting conversation with a progressive Yerevan family the other day. They talked about how the first few years were dark and difficult but that everyone helped everyone else, they got by in hopes of what was to come. Now it is every man fo himself. People are rude and distrusting. The family says this is because it has simply been too long. People have been in survival mode for so long that are just shutting down and looking out for themselves. I’d have to agree.

electricity (such novelties)

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I think “hey, I’m an adult,” and that surprises me. I am afraid that I am transforming into the helpless child that everyone seems to view me as. I am not sure how I will react when I can solve simple problems for myself again. This week has been an electronic nightmare. My water heater won’t stop breaking, the last of three times taking the entire fuse box with it. The old soviet rotating fuse contraption that looked as if would open some sort of trap door when turned finally gave up the ghost. The electrician replaced it with a modern fuse with twice as many amps! Of course, my whole apartment is still connected to this one fuse. The brilliance of the whole day was that they had to call my “electreek” (the guy who reads my electric meter, I guess) to turn off the power in the entire building so that they could work on my fuse box. I am sure I am very popular with my neighbors right now.

Of course a shiny modern fuse doesn’t solve all of my problems. I now need to call the guy who originally installed it and get him to move the water heater (which is mounted on the wall above my bathtub) and all of its associated hoses, pipes and even the faucets, several feet to the left. This is because the regulator inside isn’t working (or is set too high), effectively turning my water heater into a steam blaster. The panel that opens the water heater is against the wall prohibiting anyone from actually fixing it. Of course it is…

Oh yeah, and my lamp broke too. In trying to ascertain if it was simply the bulb that needed changing (it wasn’t) I replaced it with a working bulb that I somehow managed to cross-thread and now can’t remove. It seems I can’t even replace a light bulb. I need to get out before I cause serious damage!

The good news is that I am getting out. In less than two weeks I am off to London and Paris with Joe and I am very excited!

Vacuum cleaner!

I never thought vacuum cleaner could make me so happy. I mean, something that was once a chore is now a reminder of an easier life—a healthier, cleaner life for that matter. There is something therapeutic about aggressively sucking up 20 years (probably more) or cobwebs, dust and dirt. I breathe easier now…literally. But there is something bigger involved as well. I did something small—bought a piece of technology—to make my life easier and more comfortable. I took control over the situation and made it better. But what if I can’t afford to spend 40 dollars on a piece of technology like most of neighbors cannot? My landlord called me again the other day to ask for the rent money early. This time she was much nicer about it and explained that what she wanted to buy was flour, food, and gas for cooking. They were out of all three. As I sit here feeling sorry for myself because my water heater broke and I am heating up my bath water on the stove that puts things back in perspective. I still want my water heater fixed…

I have begun my winter preparations already. It is fall now, but winter is not far behind. Already the produce is changing, the nights are chilly and I have put away the tanktops in favor of the long underwear. That is actually the reson I bought the vacuum clearner—I bought a rug to help keep the room and my poor little feet warm in the winter and I thought I should be able to keep it clean. My neighbor came over the other night and in the midst of admiring my new rug she saw the vacuum and told me that is was a good “style” of cleaning. I’d have to agree.

I had a friends mother in town help with my canning for the winter months (I bought the produce, sugar, and gas for cooking and supplied the jars, she did all the work). I am now the proud new owner of a shelf full of canned tomatoes and peppers, peaches, and raspberry jam. I’ll buy the rest throughout the winter. Dry goods remain year round, as do canned goods such as corn, olives, mushrooms, peas and jams and juices. Most are unaffordable for the average Armenian so they do all their own canning when the produce is so cheap people are practically giving it away. I’ll certainly miss being able to buy a kilogram of tomatoes for less that 25 cents.

I am now working with my counterpart to try and write a grant for trashcans for the city streets. It already has it problems, but if we can accomplish it we will have done a major service to a community that has nowhere to put their trash other than on the ground. The trash service is so unreliable here that most trash gets dumped locally in rivers, etc., and the idea of putting trash in your pocket until you find a trash can is unheard of, probably because there are no trashcans.

We have figured out a system so that people won’t steal the trash cans (problem #1), now we have to figure out how the trashcans will be emptied (the trash trucks don’t work so everything has to be done by hand) and who will do it (the trash truck drivers don’t want to). We also have to figure out how many we need and where exactly to put them. There is also a fear that people will put the trash from their homes in the trashcans because pickup is so unreliable and that the trashcans will overflow onto the streets and stink and look bad. Not that vayk is free of that problem currently….

beans

I was walking through the crisp newly fallen leaves, bathed by the evening’s perfect moonlight. It dawned on me how at home I had become. Even in the darkest of shadows I knew every crack, bump and step in the sidewalk. The route was as familiar to me as the one I drove to work for years in Bloomington and yet more so because I knew what it felt like and smelled like. I had gone to visit with my host family. It seems that about once a week these days I am headed to their house for dinner, tea, fruit and conversation. I had not gone as a guest, but rather as a strange blue-eyed member of the family. My host mother and I shelled beans and engaged in small talk while my host brother hurried through his already unbearably cold bucket bathing routine.

getting sexual...

I have been a terrible writer lately, but don’t worry, I have plenty of excuses. For one, I think things just plain stopped being funny or surprising and I started to think that nothing worth writing about has happened to me lately. Not true….I mean just the other day I sat in on a sexual education seminar that some of my fellow volunteers had put on in Yeghegnadzor, where we were asked in complete seriousness if someone could get a disease from NOT having sex (of course, only if they had been having sex already because they were married and then their husband died or something). The seminar was given to room full of young women, aged 16-30, all very eager for information. We passed a condom around the room for demonstration purposes (wrapped, of course) and it went around like a hot potato as if holding it too long would take away ones virginity. We had asked if they wanted to see it prior to passing it around…the answer was a resounding yes. Virginity is very important in this culture and throughout the entire seminar and older women kept admonishing the younger to “remember that you are Armenian” which was all that needed to be said. Still, one young woman wanted to know if there was a way to have sex and still be a virgin. This led us into a very giggly conversation about the different types of sex and about one’s personal definition of sex. One might imagine how that went. In fact, our translator refused to translate part of the conversation. When talking about the birth control pills we were asked what the different colors meant. One of the volunteers explained that during the menstrual cycle the pills are sugar pills to mark the days. This was translated as “during the menstrual cycle the pills have a sweet taste.” Maybe that is to help the chocolate cravings….

In addition to sex education seminars, I have had my hands full in Vayk lately. Suddenly everyone has figured out all at once that I exist, and I am literally being chased down the street by people asking for help or for grants, etc. Even my counterpart seems more into working with me. Maybe she has figured out that I more than half done already. We are currently working on a grant for (much needed) trash cans on the streets and near parks, schools, etc. We still have a few more obstacles to tackle…i.e. can we actually get the trash truck guys to pick the garbage up? How do we make sure that they aren’t stolen? (we are cementing them to the ground) How do we ensure they are actually used? And so on. Still it is a start, and with some added education and city clean-ups we might actually make a small dent in the enormous trash problem in the city.

Another teacher in the community asked me help with a project that she is interested in getting started in Vayk. As it turns out, her boyfriend is the proud new owner of an empty room (old store), which he has renovated and is looking to put to use for the community. What I was able to deduce from our meeting is that she wants a center. I don’t think she really cares what kind of center, just a center, maybe a youth center, maybe an information center, maybe a fitness center, you know, whatever grants are out there, she’ll do that one. Normally I would run away screaming, but for some reason I have decided to try and help her. I think she has a genuine interest in doing something good, she just has no idea where to start or how to go about it. I can help her with that. Her boyfriend sold his father’s car, which he had inherited, to purchase and renovate the room, so that shows me he is dedicated and has already made a serious contribution. So, now we have to decide what kind of center and start the grant writing process. What fun!

My sitemate decided that Peace Corps wasn’t for her and early terminated her service last week, which has led to whole new slew of interesting interactions with community members. It took me about 30 minutes to perfect my speech about why she left, that it wasn’t anyone’s fault locally, that it was her decision, blah, blah, blah. The host family has taken it especially hard as this was their third volunteer and they don’t understand why this time should be any different. They are a little worried about having extra food now stored for winter. I told them not to worry…I would come and eat it. They seemed to accept that. If anything, I hope that this experience allows people to think a little more seriously about the potential difficulties of being a Peace Corps volunteer in their town. I have to travel a little farther to find American friends now, but I am no worse for the wear.

The person who is fast becoming my closest friend in Vayk is an Armenian named Zara who had been an LCF (Language and Cultural Faciliator) for Peace Corps before going to the Netherlands last year to study for a masters in TEFL. She is back now, more westernized than ever, with impeccable English. She has become my new Armenian tutor and we are having a lot of fun with lessons and with talking about cultures in Armenian and English. She asked me to find a movie for her the other day because there was a phrase that she wanted to remember. Turns out that the phrase was “I busted my butt,” to which Joe suggested that maybe we should be using different movies to introduce her to American culture. Hmmmm.

Vayk is quickly cooling down…I turned on my heater on for the first time last week. Winter approaching means a lot more time inside huddled around the heater, and maybe, just maybe, a few more blog entries. I’ll see what I can do.

camp recap...a little late

Wow. It dawns on me that the summer is over, September is nearly upon us, and I have hardly written a thing….in fact, I think the last camp I managed to write about was the first one. My apologies. Here is the catch up blog (sorry if it is boring…you can always skip).

The second camp was held in Gavar at the local special school (A special school is a boarding school for kids with various disabilities. Interestingly enough, the school was in no way accessible…but that is a tangent for a different day). The staff was kind, helpful and grateful to have a camp in their city. The kids were very well behaved and arrived with a multitude of talents that were displayed throughout the week. One boy was a very accomplished singer and would randomly start singing opera or the national anthem and everyone would stop to listen. Another brought his tin whistle and literally led the other children around like the pied piper, a third decided mid-week to bring his dudook (a double-reed Armenian instrument) and he and the tin-whistle boy started doing duets. Then, a violin showed up. By the end of the week kids were dancing and singing and playing instruments as if this were music camp instead of ecology camp. Not that it matters a whole lot—the kids get a lot out of the lessons and leave with new ideas of how to respect and care for the environment, but more importantly they get a summer camp experience and new friends and adults who care for them and attention from foreigners. That makes a little go a long way.

The next camp was in Martini, where the kids were equally as well-behaved, if not better, although perhaps not quite as musically talented. They were pretty good at belting out the camp song: boom chicka boom…most likely familiar to American camp-goers out there. Every week as I watch these Armenian kids sing the same American camp song twice a day, and beg for it even at the end of the week, I think about American children of the same age, most of whom are way too cool for boom chicka boom. These camps are difficult, cumbersome things to organize, especially in another language and a culture not used to what we are doing. And yet the kids as a whole are so grateful, so well-behaved, so interested in what we have to say and what we are going to do next that the camps become easy….or at least that much more worthwhile.

Martuni was not easy. We earned our sense of satisfaction and every single movie-star moment at the end of the week. It was somewhat of a murphy’s law camp where if there was even the remotest possibility of it going wrong, it did. Some of this was due to miscommunication, some to people not doing their job or not showing up, some to people not taking things seriously, and some to just simple bad luck. I expect for things to go wrong, just not so many things and not all at once. I spent good deal of time actually yelling at people in Armenian who were trying to rip me off or wriggle out of some commitment or who were simply not doing their job and didn’t really seem to care. Unfortunately for me, my Armenian gets really bad when I get angry and I start using all the wrong tenses in all the wrong places. This does not help my case.

I was thinking I could enter this into my tutoring regimen. My tutor could give a topic to be angry about and I could practice yelling at her. Of course I would then have to hope for these annoyances to reoccur but the reality is that they probably will anyway. According to a neatly organized little graphic the Peace Corps handed out to us during training in our first or second month we are currently in a “negativity stage.” The actions of my colleagues and my feelings seem to corroborate this statement but I can’t help but wonder if there is more to it than just the fact that we have been here for a full year and are perhaps starting to get a little sick of it.

It has been an interesting month of what can perhaps be best described as getting too comfortable here and letting my guard down. A series of incidents (of the fairly non-threatening kind that can be mostly laughed about after the fact) have lead me to this realization, and also to the process of putting my guard back up…however one does that. I am still comfortable here, and happy in that fact, but in getting to know my community and learning the language and being known to many people where I live, I have perhaps forgotten that I look like an orange in a sea of apples. Now that tourist season is upon us, I look like any other unsuspecting foreigner, and unless the perpetrator is to strike up a conversation before, say, stealing my wallet, then he/she doesn’t know any difference. Not that said perpetrator would necessarily care if I were an unsuspecting peace corps volunteer instead of an unsuspecting tourist. Although, an unsuspecting tourist probably would have a bit more cash….

The last two camps went equally well, especially considering the level of burn out that was upon those of us who spent the whole summer in this rewarding yet exhausting pursuit. The good news is that the camps are now over!!!!! And were wildly successful in all senses of the word. We were fortunate enough to collaborate with the Birds of Armenia project in two of the camps and took the kids on bird watching excursions after experiencing an interactive bird identification course the day before. I have to say I was skeptical at first. I couldn’t imagine 40 5th and 6th graders getting into sitting quietly and watching birds for hours, but then again I was thinking about kids from the US. It works great in Armenia. The kids loved it and so did the adults. We saw water birds in Martuni and forest birds in Dilijan, and in both cases the kids were correctly identifying them by the end of the day.

Hrazdan and Dilijan (the last two camps) certainly were not immune to the bumps in the road of the other camps. In Hrazdan we had to kick out a boy on the first day after repeated bouts of not listening (blatantly ignoring, actually) his counselors. As was our luck (or misfortune) his grandmother worked for the school and was helping in our kitchen. We asked her to come talk to him and he told her to “shut up.” After a few more similar incidents it was decided that it was time to go. At this point nearly every Armenian adult was in an uproar over our decision. We had already told the boy “one more chance” enough times to render our words ineffective and yet all the adults were begging for “one more chance and then he’ll go home….but he’ll behave this time.” The only reason he had stayed as long as he did was the contradictory messages he was being sent. We were firm even as we were begged every day, by new people each time until the camp ended.

As it turned out, the boy came every day anyway with his grandmother and hung on the outskirts and watched and occasionally helped us run errands. In this capacity he was very helpful, getting the one on one attention he needed, and not having to participate in organized games with other kids, which was not his strongpoint. Unfortunately, these points were lost on many of the adults we were working with, partly I am sure due to the utter lack of discipline for boys in this country, and partly due to an unawareness of any type of behavior modification other than verbal and physical abuse. Since we don’t allow either at Green Camps, our resources were a bit more limited. Maybe he would have responded to being smacked upside the head, but I wasn’t willing to find out. I can hope that he walked away from the week thinking that consequences for actions may exist after all, but who can say.

Now I am back in Vayk catching a few minutes of rest before my parents arrive for a visit. I am swamped in paperwork but welcoming the opportunity to sit and breath…. Soon I get to start thinking about what my next project(s) will be, but for now I am looking forward to showing mom and dad around Armenia and to our upcoming trip to Prague. More later…peace!