A chance bus ride.

Here's the scene:

I'm traveling back to my village on a crowded mid-size bus after a long day of visiting Hacikend with some of the people I work with in Ganja. Our mountain trip lasted a bit longer than I thought it would, so it's just beginning to get dark as I wait for a bus. I barely squeezed onto a crowded, mid-sized "sprinter" as it's one of the last ones heading out west before they stop for the evening. The passengers were kind enough to make room for me so I could sit on a make-shift wooden plank seat next to one of the two other women on the bus. I quickly realized the driver was being obnoxious. He was cracking loud jokes with the passengers, giving everyone a hard time for how much money they gave him as they got off and huffing and puffing at the other cars on the road. He turned what should have been normal stops for a passenger to get off into smoke breaks, time for manly fraternization. Hamming it up with some of the other people on the bus, I suppose it was his gregariousness that prevented a protest from the passengers anxiously anticipating getting home that evening.

Action:

After about forty five minutes on the bus, we were getting closer to my village, and the driver called me up to take the seat next to the door. Knowing I was losing my sense of female solidarity, I shuffled by the men to try and maneuver myself into the seat and attract as little attention as possible. As we're all rearranging ourselves, trying to maintain some level of dignity, the driver abruptly asks, "You're going to A.Ayibli? What business do you have there?" If that wasn't enough to make head turns towards the fumbling foreign girl, he adds with a smirk, "Are you going to visit a friend?" With a slight tilt of my chin and a furrowing of the eyebrows (an expression I've mastered in responding to rude questions), I asked him to repeat himself so I could confirm his impertinence and conjure an appropriate response. Before he had time to finish his sentence, a guy in the row behind me spoke up and said,

"No, it's not like that. She's an American. She works for a peace organization."

"Peace? What kind of peace organization?" the driver asked.

"People from her organization are volunteers. They stay for two years and work in the regions of Azerbaijan. They have assignments, but the most interesting thing is that they share information about America and they learn about Azerbaijan." (Peace Corps' overall goals 1 and 2; something you hear a million times at PC trainings and events, but when you hear it repeated by a host country national, particularly in such a textbook fashion, you have to pick your jaw up of the ground).

The driver turned back to me and much more politely asked me if I worked at a school. I responded, and we were able to speak like normal humans--impressive only because 60 seconds before, that would have been impossible. At the next stop, I turned around to see if I recognized the guy who had stood up to the driver. I didn't, so I asked him how he knew about Peace Corps. It turns out that this guy is a history teacher at a training school for new Peace Corps trainees before they swear in as volunteers. He said he had an American teacher who for three months (the exact length of pre-service training), taught him just a little bit of English before he moved to his official site. I got goosebumps listening to him talk because as much gratitude as I felt towards him for defending me in a time where it would have been really difficult for me to defend myself, I could see the same appreciation in his expression for the kind trainee who went out of his way to help this teacher (who's not an English teacher--any time spent with this guy would have been 100% voluntary on the part of the trainee) learn some basic English phrases.

In that moment, I felt something come full circle. As jaded as many volunteers feel in the later part of their services, I had some faith in PC work restored as a result of witnessing this unlikely cause and effect. Patience and that work you do when no one's watching are immeasurable.

Epilogue:

As I was getting off the bus, I reached to hand the driver my fare. A man standing in the place next to my seat told me not to pay. I looked at the driver, and he was looking at the guy who told me not to pay. The guy insisted I put my money away with a smile as if to say, this driver gave you an unreasonably hard time for no reason, especially as a guest in our country. It happens often on short public transportation rides, Azerbaijanis will exhibit their hospitality by picking up your fare. The ride from Ganja is 2 manat though, a little farther than what's considered normal for a stranger to cover. The driver's face wasn't too convincing, so I waited for him to nod at me to make sure I wasn't shorting him. After I was finally off the bus with my bags, I got the begrudging nod from the driver I was waiting for. I smiled, thanked him, and right before the door closed, I heard the driver say, "No really, are you going to pay her two manat!?" The whole bus was laughing as it pulled away.

Spring Softball.

This past Spring, Chris, a nearby PCV and I decided to start a softball team in my village. There were several factors that went into starting this project. The first and probably most important was the success of frisbee. My village breeds great kids who like to play sports. There are so many kids who want to be part of an organized sport. I have no trouble getting to kids to show up. For example, if I say I'll bring frisbees to school at 6:00, I'll have kids knocking on my door at 5:30 asking if I need help carrying the discs to school. The second factor is that anyone who knows me knows that I don't know much about softball/baseball, but Chris is a former college baseball player. He played most of his life, and he even coached little league before joining Peace Corps. We decided we'd make a pretty good coaching team. 

In the beginning, we knew it would take a while to teach kids how to play. Catching with a glove and throwing with your whole body, not just your wrist, would take several practices to sink in. We also knew hitting would take some time. What we didn't really take into account is how unfamiliar kids in Azerbaijan are with the fundamental principles of baseball. It's something I think most of us wouldn't realize as Americans. All the variations of baseball and kickball, the "diamond" shape field, the concept of touching each point before scoring a point when you return to the spot you started. It seems second nature to us. Even after explaining the rules and the concept of how players hit and move around the bases, it took a lot of learn-by-practice for most kids to start to get the hang of it.

Some things that seemed very simple, but took a laughably long time to teach:
1) Only one player on a base at a time
2) Your foot actually has to touch the base when you run by it.
3) If an outfielder catches your ball in the air, you're automatically out. Don't get mad when this happens.
4) Don't run when someone else hits a ball in the air and the outfield can catch it easily.
5) If you're on first and the next batter hits a grounder towards second base, you still have to run there.
6) The catcher is part of the game. You still have to participate.
7) So is the pitcher.
8) Don't swing the bat like a golf club.
9) You can NOT change the batting order. It doesn't matter if the person you're switching with agrees or not.

Explaining tagging out is in a category by itself..

That being said, my students LOVE this new game. I've reached out to a lot of kids who weren't that great at frisbee but want to participate in sports. I have a tall, lanky left handed kid who couldn't change directions to catch a frisbee if he had to, but can swing a baseball bat like a pro. I have identical twins who drive me crazy in English class for their lack of attention but are the first kids to offer to carry equipment and pack it up after practice. I still can't tell them apart, but one of them excels at third base and the other is a great hitter.

Here are some pictures from our early practices:

Chris demonstrating proper hitting technique.

Check out the pitcher. Only slightly intimidated when Chris is up to bat.

This season, we were able to participate in three tournaments. At the first, we played two games. We lost the first game 11-2 to a team with two years experience. It was a significant learning opportunity for us. It was the first time our team saw other kids playing who know the rules of the game and had even developed strategy. The next game we won 7-5 to another team who also just started this year. Despite our eyeopening first game, we left the tournament smiling.

On the bus, on the way to the first tournament.

Our awesome gear thanks to Katie Crocker's volleyball team's service project. We LOVE them! 

Setting up.

PCV coaches.

All smiles after the tournament.

At the second tournament, with a little bit of experience under our belt, to Chris's and my great pleasure, we actually looked like a softball team. We played better defense, and we had two kids hit homeruns. The lanky lefty had a grand slam. We went 2-0 at this tournament. 

Our boys.

Team chant.

Coming home after the grand slam.

Lining up to shake hands.

We went into the third tournament lined up to play the team we played first, when we lost 11-2, and another team with two years experience. We knew we had our work cut out for us. We played the team we hadn't played yet first. They were a lot bigger than us and had some good hitters, but we kept it tight defensively. We led by one point the whole game and came out on top. The next team was better, but we quickly realized our team had developed significantly since our first game with them. They led us by a few points the whole game until the last inning. Our defense was solid in the last inning, and we were up to bat last. We needed 3 runs to win, and we did it! 

Encouragement.

Cheering on their teammates.

Victory snap bumps.

Happy.

Shaking hands after the first game.

Proud coaches.

Despite all the talk about each tournament, as any real sportsperson will tell you, it's not about the wins and losses. That's just one way to measure athletic progress, but you're belittling sport as a means of self development if that's the only thing you look at. In just a few months, I've seen these kids go from not knowing the first thing about softball to being able to throw doubles, tag runners out, hit grand slams, and still be able to shake hands with their opponent after they lose. Maybe it's because I grew up playing sports, and it's just a part of my make-up now, but what better way can you prepare young people for what the world has in store for them than teaching how to be part of a team, taking personal responsibility for making mistakes, being rewarded for accomplishments, learning to accept defeat, and perhaps most importantly, learning to win humbly? It doesn't all happened at once, but as in our case, it's a work in progress. 

At our last tournament,  although there were four teams there, for time and weather reasons, we played two games. The fourth team was Xatinli, my sitemate Andrew's team. Xatinli, another village in Tovuz, is our biggest frisbee rival, and there are many kids that play on both teams from mine and Andrew's villages. We both have strong frisbee teams, and our teams (not us, of course) have a history of hard competition. Half-way through our second game, Xatinli, watching us play from the sidelines, started chanting Ey-yu-blu, Ey-yu-blu...they were cheering for us. My kids loved that, and thanked them with thumbs up and hand shakes. After the game, I looked over and saw two kids play wrestling. I could tell they weren't being serious, but they were from two different teams, and I didn't want it to escalate, so I told them to knock it off. Once they stood up I realized it was one kid from my team and one kid from Xatinli, but I was confused because they'd switched hats. If that wasn't a sign of solidarity already, a couple minutes before I took this picture they switched jerseys entirely. 

As a side note, our team was able to participate in tournaments in different regions of Azerbaijan thanks to the Azerbaijan Interregional Softball League. It's a Peace Corps project several years in the works. The website will be updated in a few months as the Spring season is preparatory for the Fall season. I've also had a lot of support from friends and family at home. We wouldn't have been able to do what we did this Spring without your loving support. I am so blessed, thankful, and most of all inspired. 

A grass-root development project that you can help

I have a Peace Corps project, featured on the Peace Corps website, and I need help filling the grant!

The English teachers at my school, a handful of select students and I have committed to transforming the English cabinet at our school to an English teaching room--equipped with interactive teaching materials such as visual aids, storybooks, whiteboards and flashcards. We've raised half of the amount of money needed for the project in our community through school contacts and in-kind donations from local community members. However, we need about $1,000 dollars more to set the project into motion. This is what the English cabinet looks like now:

With the implementation of this project, we'll re-paint the walls and ceiling, level and re-surface the floor, purchase English learning posters, two bookshelves, Az-English dictionaries, and a standing white board. I'll also be able to move the 100+ English story books I've collected through generous donations from America to the English room at school and organize a check-out system. Upon completing the renovation and equipping the room with new materials, the English teachers at my school will undergo a five class training series where we will practice using the new resources. To promote the sustainability of this project, after school starts in September, in addition to my own classes, I'll be sitting in on the English lessons of other teachers and provide feedback based on their use of the cabinet's resources during their lesson.

You can donate to this project though the Peace Corps' small projects website. The link to my project is here: https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-314-005. Thank you for your ongoing interest and support in my Peace Corps service. Donation or not, I am so thankful!

This project will begin as soon as this grant is filled. I'll be sure to post pictures of our progress along the way.

Earth Week

I've thought about the environment a lot since I've been in Peace Corps. Not that I wasn't conscious of environmental issues in my pre-PC life, but living in the village makes separating the elements and everyday life impossible. Without air conditioning, central heating, insulated buildings, washing machines, clean tap water (or even Brita water filters for the non-believers), FDA-approved meat, dairy and produce or microwaves, the everyday first world conveniences that one by one put another layer of cushion between people and the natural world, village life has brought me closer to the elements and forced me to acknowledge their role. For me, this has been enlightening albeit frustrating and downright annoying at times. For example, when it rains, I know that almost nothing will happen. By nothing, I mean that no matter what the schedule was supposed to be that day, my classes will be mostly empty, most teachers won't come to school, the roads will be muddy, there will be far fewer cars on the road, and doing anything or getting anywhere is really difficult. If there's a string of nice days and all of a sudden one very cold day, again, almost nothing will happen. Azerbaijanis believe that sickness comes from cold so exposing yourself to the cold is not only uncomfortable but also irresponsible in the sense that you're risking you're health. Married women spend their time maintaing their households: doing laundry, cleaning, cooking--all without the conveniences most of us are accustomed to. Further, hot water is dependent upon the availability of gas, and electricity is often inconsistent. In a different strain, I know the milk I drink and yogurt I eat come from my neighbor's cow. The eggs I cook for breakfast come from a chicken coop around the corner. These animals live off the land as well as the food scraps and seldom animal feed their given by their owners. In the winter, I feel cold to my most inner bones, and in the summer, I dream about smoothies and fountain sodas with tons of ice. I'm digressing as I begin to think about food.. The point is that I've come to a better understand overall of how life is connected to the environment. Not just in the village, but everywhere. In some places it's just more tangible. 

As Earth Week rolled around this year, I decided to engage my students with environment activities. As a whole, Azerbaijan has some serious environmental issues related air pollution, polluted water, inadequate waste management, a lack of recycling, and onshore and offshore oil pollution. However, on a day to day basis in my village, the most noticeable environmental issue is litter. I wanted to raise environmental awareness of my students in a way that could connect with and see how every individual plays a role in the environment. Below are some pictures I took of my village's trash site. While there is no official waste management system, the pictures below show the un-official "dump": on the outer edge of my village, near the bridge over the river that separates my region from our neighboring region. Some people dump their trash here, but getting here for most people requires a car. The more common way of disposing of trash is either burning it or throwing it on the street. 

We started our Earth Week activities with one where students had to guess the decomposition times for an assortment of items: how long these things would sit on the ground if they're put there and no one ever picked them up again.  

A plastic bag, a cardboard box, a banana peel, a plastic bottle, an aluminum lid, a leather shoe & a glass jar.

Next we did a nature scavenger hunt. Students had to find a number of items in nature with certain parameters. To conclude, they had to choose one of these items and write down where it came from, what it needs for life and what needs it for life. 

For the next activity, I brought all the empty bottles, boxes and glass containers I'd been saving to school. I taught a recycling-themed conversation club. At the end of the lesson, students got to pick one recyclable, and their assignment was to bring it back as something else. The results were pretty cool--mostly piggy banks and pencil holders. The last one is my favorite.

To bring the whole week to a conclusion, I invited a guest speaker from Ganja to come speak to my students about an environment-related topic of her choice. I met this girl through another volunteer who worked with her as the leader of Ganja's environmental club. She's a fourth year university student studying energy engineering. She's also attended GLOW (a girl's leadership camp) as both a camper and twice as a counselor. It was impressive having someone so passionate about both her field and community outreach come and speak to my students in a way they could understand and bring some of these messages I'd been trying to convey all week to life. We finished with a trash pick-up around the school! I wish I could have captured the janitor's face when the kids came running out of the school, gloved, trash bags in hand, with more enthusiasm than you'd EVER expect from a group of people about to pick up trash. As the kids were running around like ants on an ant hill, shuttling pieces of trash back to their trash bags, she looked at me and asked, "What did you do to them??"

Speaking on waste management.

Different types of trash.

Showing a picture of trash cans in Germany that say "thank you" when someone throws something away.

The janitor is the woman on the left. How happy does she look?

The trash pick-up crew making a difference!