The Other Side of Disappointment

Last weekend a new Peace Corps Volunteers from another village stayed at my apartment. His sense of discouragement after the first four months in his village was truly déjà vu.   He came to Armenia to make a difference but the apparent lack of planning and specific goals at his worksite was making him crazy. This can be very frustrating for Americans with our focus on achievement and results.  I should know.  I spent the first six months of my service trying to get two Tourism organizations in my village to work together.  I was not successful.  As I saw my own attitude starting to sour, I switched from business projects to community development.

This past spring I become involved with a youth development program.  And then my Armenian tutor introduced me to some other young adults wanting to improve their English skills in the hopes of finding a better job . . .   and maybe even a better life.  I also helped her tutor a couple  high school seniors preparing for their college entrance exam in English.  By the time summer ended, I was ready to find more full-time work at a local K-12 school.

 My hopes were high as the director of my Non-Profit agreed to introduce me to his buddy who was the Principal of the one of the four schools in town.  I was excited to "be doing something" again, a favorite American pastime.   And the students seemed enthused and excited to have a new face in the room, to do something besides rote memory.  My only concern was my fellow teacher.  She seemed to be pretty set in her ways.  I had been told that English teachers in Armenia made half their money outside the classroom with tutoring.  I had been warned not to speak better English than her which might threaten her image.

Well, after a couple days of working at the new school, my NGO Director stuck his head in my office and said in a dead-panned voice: "Your teaching assignment is now complete.  The kids were too noisy."  He then walked away.  I was stunned not just by the rather cryptic method of communication but the fact that the "problem" had never even been discussed.  I decided that I was now living in the Post-Soviet world.  Otherwise, I might have gotten an invitation to a train ride to a labor camp in Siberia, as I had read about in Soviet history.

 It was at this point that my “relationship network" so central to village life came to my rescue.  My Armenian tutor called the Principal of another K-12 and two days later I was team-teaching English again.  This time I was fortunate to be matched with three teachers who enjoyed having help with their lesson plans.  One even admitted that her English had gotten rusty during two years of maternity leave and was looking forward brushing up her skills.  I was excited, again.

But then the country’s fears around the Swine Flu stepped in. The Armenian Ministry of Health decided to close all the schools in the country for a month until mid-January. While there had been less than fifty cases in Armenia, they lacked the needed vaccinations to respond to a potential outbreak.  Disappointment again raised its ugly head and I was again back to Square One with just a couple tutoring classes.

So this morning seemed like a good time to regain my perspective for the holidays.  I had no place to go so I grabbed my camera and started off on a tour of my street. It was perfect that one of our two local busses would appear.  In my experience the bus drivers are the backbone of normal life for our village, especially in the coming weeks when the snow becomes an issue. In a country where “punctuality” is hard to find, one cannot but be impressed by their reliability.  Each of the drivers goes from one end of the village to the other all day long.  You "can set your watch" (if I still had one) by their arrival on the half-hour. And like two hands of a clock they tend to cross at the same place in the middle of town.  And then there is the community aspect of taking the bus.  The busses have seating for 20 passengers and yet every morning they arrive at my bus stop with 40 adults and students already packed in.   Even as an American, you can't help but feel like part of the community as they figure out how to make you the 41^st person wedged into the back of the bus. 

Once the bus had pulled away, I noticed a couple of my favorite people in the village: the ladies who sweep the curbs of the streets everyday with their traditional home-made brooms.  Somehow for me they represent the part of Armenia that just “keeps on keeping on.”   One was busy making little piles of dirt along the curb.  The other had stopped to chat with my barber in front of his shop.  It is not too hard to see the past two decades of struggle for independence in their faces. 

 

But this morning as I continued the walk along my street, I passed a handful of storefronts where residents sell a variety of fresh vegetables and fruits in front of their houses.  Some have even built a little room in front and added a window for transactions so they could include a small sampling of packaged goods and ever present convenience items like cigarettes and phone cards. Our daily interactions are limited (by my language skills) but sweet.  It takes just a simple greeting or a friendly word to bring a smile to their faces.   Sometimes we might even share a reflection on the snow that we both know is coming soon.  But today our butcher had his axe out so I kept moving.

It’s a simple life they live and one I share with them on some level.  Their joys and hopes are simple and tightly bound up with their families.  Not much will happen this week despite the fact that this Friday is the 25th.  This week is one of preparation for the New Year, Nor Tari. The New Years is not about champagne and Times Square.  Rather the first 10 days of January are for visiting family and friends.  Almost nobody “goes to work” during that time.  As my loved ones are 7,000 miles away, I will be spending time with my Peace Corps family.  And along the way I will surely enjoy some time with my local Bus Community.

Enjoy your holidays.......... and your Families!

Armenian Soap Operas

Armenian Soap Operas

    I have recently started team-teaching high school English with a couple Armenian teachers. I enjoy the challenge of finding new ways to make the material somewhat interesting. Last week's lesson in their textbook was on the different types of television shows from news to nature shows to soap operas. So I offered a prize to whoever could find out why they were called soap operas. I had read somewhere in the past that the manufacturers of soaps and other products for the home were the primary advertisers in an effort to reach the heavily female audience. What I didn't realize until I Googled it last week was that "soap operas" started with radio shows back in the 30's.  And to this day their popularity continues world wide with Latin America now leading the way with over 2 billion viewers annually.

When I moved into my own apartment last year I never bothered to plug in my television as all the shows are either in Russian or Armenian. But from my first couple months living with a host family I did get a taste of the local soap operas popular in this country. We have those imported from Latin America that seem to have been made in the '90's or even the '80's. It is quite a cross-cultural experience for an American to watch a jealous rage between two hot-blooded Spaniards with the dialogue dubbed in Russian.   And of course there are the very popular Russian mafia soaps. These seem to be have been produced on a very limited budget judging from the limited number of sets used. You have the two mob rivals posturing on their cell phones with each other. The words escape me but their facial expressions say it all. Or there are the scenes where one of the mob bosses is giving an earful to one of his underlings who apparently misplaced a body or some money. I can usually figure out what was happening from the body language, especially when the boss slaps him in the face. These shows usually try to break up the boredom by occasionally throwing in a Jacuzzi scene with the rather corpulent head of the Mafiosa and his rather svelte girlfriend (in bathing suits, of course). But his enjoyment can be short-lived should his enemies offer her enough money to change sides. It is all rather mindless.

 After moving out from my host family to my own apartment about this time last year, I soon discovered some local "soap operas" that weren't so mindless. My initial business assignment at my site was to help expand tourism efforts at in my town of 12,000. With little besides one company that bottles water, Tourism could be a great boost to the local economy. And with our town's reputation (as mentioned in an earlier blog) as being The Little Switzerland of Armenia, our area has a history of being a popular tourist destination during the Soviet period. I soon go to know the two staff members at a newly-opened Tourism Information Center.  They were in their mid-twenties and lucky for me spoke pretty good English. When I had a "bad hair day" at my NGO, I found myself stopping by just to have someone to talk with on my walk home. Fortunately, my two new friends didn't seem to know how much psychiatrists are paid for such conversations in America.

But it wasn't long before I discovered their problems were more serious than mine. Their office was functioning as a "show piece" for the headquarters in the capitol. They were given almost no support. There were even periods when their Internet services didn't operate for lack of payment and they could do nothing to generate contact with other tourism agencies. And as the tourism season wound down, all they could do was to sit and wait for the occasional young hikers to stumble through looking for a map. Soon the situation became worse as their salaries started to come a couple weeks then a month late. Contacts with the main office were fruitless as their boss was usually away at trade shows in Paris, Brussels, and even the US.  While she was busy  collecting brochures,  her tourism branch office had come to a complete standstil from a lack of direction.

 Then this summer a "soap opera" showed up at my front door in the midst of a youth development project I was involved in. When we wrote a proposal to be one of the six Youth Bank sites in Armenia, I was attracted by two goals of the program. We would train some young adults in our town in leadership and teamwork and then they would manage a handful of local community improvement projects, each receiving a small grant of $500 each. I don't think many applied for this grant as it was for only $2.500 and all the money went into the community.   Since there would be no salaries for those managing the grant, very few bothered to apply.

At first the program seemed to progress according to plan. We interviewed a couple dozen young adults (16-22) who applied and selected the best six. We then spent 3 days in the capitol with the Youth Bank teams from the other regions where they received training in how to evaluate community projects. They were taught to evaluate the proposals based on the “SMART” guidelines: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. If nothing else, this was an opportunity for them to be gain some skills in logic and analytical thinking. Most of what passes for education in Armenia schools is  rote memorization, just like learning your multiplication tables.   I have a feeling this is a hold-over from the Soviet system. Good citizens did not question or analyze the information but just absorbed it as Truth. Last year I tutored a very bright high school senior as she prepared for her college entrance exam in English. We would read a page in English and then she would want to close the book and repeat it . . . from memory. But when we started to discuss the article, she had almost no idea what it meant.  That did not keep her score on the college English test from being the 2nd highest in our city. 

So, when our Youth Bank group returned from their training in Yerevan, they posted announcements for our region requesting applications for community projects. Then applying the "SMART" guidelines, they eliminated half of the 40 proposals.  They scheduled interview panels for the rest and finally selected the best 5 projects to receive funding. 

The funding was to take place in early summer so our Youth Bank team could monitor the implementation of the projects. Well, summer came and went. Then it was September and then October and we were still being given "reasons" instead of funds.  Since 5 projects of $500 each were not going to change the future of Armenia, I wasn't concerned about the project start dates but the "ripple effect" on our Youth Bank team.  The plan was to give this handful of talented young adults a practical experience to learn leadership and teamwork.  Now they had nothing to do but like my friends at the Vistor Center to sit and wait.   

This was when the "soap opera" started.  I tried to meet with partner in the project, who agreed to be the Youth Bank sponsor.  That didn't prove to be so easy as he was busy traveling to other countries for seminars on…………. "Youth Development Training."  It was truly deja vu. He was busy collecting brochures on leadership while our group floundered.  I wished my skills in Armenian were better so I could have created some team meetings. 

I began to see that our members were not just bored but discouraged.  Then one young lady who I felt had the most leadership potentional in our group dropped out.  This was truly a "red flag" that something was going on.  It turned out, our Youth Leader would return from his trips and call individual members and berate them for poor attendance and performance.  I did meet with a couple individual members and tried to reinforce my confidence in their abilities.

 
Eventually, our team members decided to call their own meeting.   As usual when I have conversations in Armenian, I add new words to my vocabulary.  When they told me about their meeting, they agreed that they had all "been offended" by the way they were talked to by the Youth Leader.  The group decision was to have a meeting in the capitol with the organization that funded our program.  I could hear their frustrations but I could also see their teamwork and leadership skills coming to the surface.   In some strange way the program was working.

This type of "CYA" leadership where blame is passed down is surely not new to any of us who have worked in business, government or schools. Most of us have probably been on the "receiving end" of such politics before. Yet I found this especially difficult to watch for a couple reasons. We recruited these young adults to develop them not to discourage them. Secondly, good leaders in Armenia are in very short supply. Many of those in leadership positions today are just those who have survived the posturing and intrigue of Soviet politics.  I think that will have to be a topic for a future blog: Soviet Ghosts in Armenia.

As I finish up this entry, the holiday celebration of Thanksgiving is just around the corner. But like December 25th, the 4th Thursday in November has no special meaning in Armenia. Peace Corps does create an opportunity for us to gather a week early for an "All-Vol Conference." It is billed as a training conference.  But what most of us remember from last year was the camaraderie of fellow Volunteers and traditional American cooking, something we see little of for our two years.

When I was growing up, I remember America being referred to as The Land of Opportunity. This vision easily gets buried under the constant news barrage of Middle East wars, Health Care reform, and financial crisis. But now living in an under-developed area of the world, I can see one reality very clearly: our children are truly blessed with opportunities unknown to many around the world. And for that I give thanks. I hope your holiday is also a celebration.

The Tea Boy Gave me Change

When I left for Istanbul I was reading this wonderful book (written by a former Peace Corps Volunteer in '76) called Bright Sun, Hot Tea. I chose my trip to Turkey partly because the $180 roundtrip fare on the bus fit my budget. But also I hoped to store up some warm memories in my body for the upcoming 6 months of Armenian winter. There were some doubts before our departure as the previous weekend 26 people drowned in Istanbul from a flash flood. But my wallet was already committed with fare paid for in advance. My Armenian tutor was concerned. Although half my age, she was acting like a good Armenian mother and asked me not to go. I showed her the 5 Day Forecast: it didn't say “torrential downpour” but just “rain-rain-rain-overcast-rain. So with some doubts tucked away in my back pack I climbed the steps for my 32 hour bus ride.

The long trip was also more bearable as we were lucky enough to have some fun people on the bus. Their interactions made for good theater and the time passed more quickly. When asked by one man now living in Moscow what I was doing in the country, I gave him my card that explains in Armenian what are the goals of the Peace Corps. It usually satisfies the curiosity of the recipient. Instead it started a long debate about the role America played in his home country’s current financial crisis. He was convinced that all the problems in Armenia resulted when Russia went bankrupt form its Cold War with the US and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Empire. (Ronald Reagan would have smiled from his grave.) Fortunately a couple young Armenian men behind me, that had just completed their military service and were returning to Bulgaria, disagreed with his rather sweeping generalization. I am not sure what all was said as my command of the language is still rather basic. But I could appreciate his point of view for Armenia has lost more than it has gained since the USSR collapsed in 1992. The country's economy still has not recovered from the lost revenue and jobs when Russia's military factories closed. And the benefits of increased freedoms are “still a work in progress” as Democracy stumbles into the future. Hopefully in another 20 years the scales will balance out and folks will see what they gained in the process. But for now, some older Armenians can only see the current reality of more unemployment and fewer drams in their pockets. Less drams have a way of stirring up old dreams.... of the Communist Society, the New Society that never came.

By Sunday night we were pulling into Istanbul in a light drizzle. The city was still rather subdued as there was another two days left in the religious holiday of Ramadan. The next morning I awoke to a slight drizzle, a cup of hot tea, and my 64^th birthday. I was ready for a quiet relaxing day. My traveling companions were in a very different mood as one of them was flying back to America the next day. They had created a very aggressive tourist plan: See Everything in Istanbul in 1 Day! Not exactly what I wanted to do on my birthday. I still had 10 days to see the sights. I was going to take it slow. I declined their offer to go along and ordered another hot tea. As a result, my Istanbul vacation got off on the perfect note: doing nothing. This actually set the tone for the rest of my vacation, where I seldom left the table in front of the Old City Hostel until the afternoon. (Later in the trip, another tourist asked my friend why she never took me with her in the morning. Her response was: "Because he's worthless in the morning!" For me that was a compliment.)

My good fortune of having the right people around on this trip continued at The Old City Hostel where we stay in Istanbul for the whole time. Meeting two Brits that first day was wonderful and dispelled my fears that I would be Lost in Translation as I often am during my service in Armenia. Samantha, whose son worked at the hostel, was the very first person I met when I asked about the closest money exchange office. She was kind enough to walk me there and over the next 10 days became my “traveling angel”. Her ability to speak with the locals as well her sweet spirit was a wonderful birthday gift for my vacation in Turkey. The other Brit who also showed up at the hostel was Colin. He was a plant manager of a local factory and used the weekends at our hostel to de-compress. His company had a very nice hotel on the factory grounds but he wisely chose to leave the work environment over his weekends. Thanks to the long Ramadan weekend, Colin was around to show me his favorite bakery for breakfast. Afterwards I would sometimes return to “my table” and other times tagged along on his explorations of undiscovered streets and sites in Istanbul. His secret desire was to have lived in an earlier time when British sailors still explored the high seas and new lands.

Whatever I did in the morning was always relaxed and accompanied by hot tea and new friends. And so my morning routine slowly developed. I would just sit and read about the experiences of my fellow Volunteer who came here 40 years earlier. (The Peace Corps presence in Turkey was discontinued after a number of years when the political climate was deemed too turbulent for Volunteer safety. The author ironically stayed on in the tourism business and became one of the leading authorities on Turkey when Lonely Planet was just getting started.) On previous vacations when I was still working in Corporate America, I usually needed a swimming pool, a stack of detective novels and an occasional cold Mexican beer in order to sit still. This time all I needed was "my table" in front of the hostel and an occasional tea from Ali the Tea Boy who literally ran by all day juggling a full tray of tea, which cost 1 Lira (about 70 cents). One morning I did get adventurous and walked 5 minutes down the street to one of the historic Turkish Baths. At $35 it was my most extravagant purchase of the trip. But my slow walk back to the hostel two hours later confirmed it had been an excellent decision .

Sometime in the early afternoon, my Peace Corps companion would return from her morning excursions. We would grab a sandwich for 3 Liras from a sidewalk vendor and head out to some new site she’d read about in her travel book. Without her I am not sure if I ever would have made it to the Asia side of Istanbul. One day we took the very modern tram facing our street (Turkey does understand how to attract tourists) down to the port and then walked across one of the bridges spanning Bosphorus Straits. Another time she had read about this little very old village of Fener that was a mix Greek and Turkish residents. And it was only a 10 or 15 minute bus ride on the Asia side. We went there and I felt like I had gone back in time a 100 years as I walked amidst a very traditional way of life. It reminded me of an earlier trip to Crete with its winding hillside streets. Vehicle traffic was almost non-existent and the grade school kids ruled the streets. And when the call to prayer came, there was a sudden flow of men heading for the mosques with their religous hats in hand. I later learned that only Hajis could wear the hat, those that had completed the trip to Mecca required of all practicing Muslims.

The evenings were very relaxed as well. Sometimes Colin would take me to his favorite sisha bar which was populated not just by curious tourists but was a regular event for many locals as well. It was fun not just to be part of Istanbul's night life but also it was a venue well-suited to my meager entertainment funds for the trip. One evening a group of us spent an hour and a half there and the bill for the pipe, fruit-flavored tobacco and delicious hot tea came to only 5 Lira each, or $3 for the hour and a half. That would put most American bar owners out of business.

My other connection with Colin was in the area of business. Not only was he in charge of Business Development (my last position in the business world) but like my father he had started in his late teens as a pattern-maker. I remember most people thinking my dad made dress patterns when I mentioned his profession. Patterns, molds, castings are all part of the critical design phase for manufacturing any engines but are off the radar screen and seldom seen. One might compare it to Intel's plant in Folsom. We all rely on the quality and accuracy of those computer chips for our PC's and laptops but few of us have any idea how they are made.

My exposure to the pattern business came to a halt in the 70's when the American automobile makers suddenly had to deal with the more gas-efficient and less expensive competition from Japan. The Big Three started cutting costs and many union shops like my fathers soon found themselves out of business. It was great talking to Colin was and learning how the pattern business was now operating in the 21^st century.

We also had another common ground that was much more rooted in the present for as Westerners we both struggled to share our business knowledge with those from another culture. His struggles to increase productivity in his plant were echoes of my past year where I had hoped to create some collaboration in the Tourism Industry. In both cultures social relationships are given top billing to the extent that efficiency often goes out the window.

His business meetings with a dozen key personnel back in England were in sharp contrast to his current ones in Istanbul. Here the participants would all sit with at least one cell phone turned on in front of them. Nobody turned their phones off and thought nothing of taking personal calls during the meeting. The meetings could drag on for 3 to 4 hours and he was still not sure anything had been accomplished. If Colin had not already shaved his head, I just imagined that he would have pulled all his hair out by now in frustration.

But most of the time I just sat at the table in front of our hostel and enjoyed the camaraderie of the restaurant staff and the sun that showed up after a couple days. It wasn't until the 3^rd day that I realized it wasn't "my" table but "their" table as the hostel owner had given the restaurant the additional space in exchange for free meals. Such was the connection with the two business owners who were both Kurdish. It took me a couple Google searches to understand more about what the papers called "The Kurdish Question." Apparently there was a treaty after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 that gave the Kurds their own land. But the ruling powers reneged on the treaty and instead split up the land with adjacent countries. Apparently President of Turkey was rightly concerned about the fragile nature of his new Republic and feared ethnic divisiveness. He even forbad the teaching of their language and books written in Kurdish. His decision seemed a little harsh to me until I thought about the current chaos in Iraq where the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds continue to split the country.

In addition to the friendship of the restaurant staff, I was able to enjoy meeting many young visitors who came every couple days to our hostel. Since there were 10 beds to a dorm room, it attracted young people who found the $17 a night (that included breakfast) fit their slender budget as it did mine. I got to hear about life in Germany, Holland, Brazil, Portugal, and Sweden. I got to travel around the world without ever leaving the "comforts of home" and the hot tea from Ali. Toward the end of the first week, when I gave him the 1Lira, he gave me a half Lira back. I was confused and asked the hostel staff about it. I guess he had one price for tourists and another for those who lived there. The 35 cents really didn't mean much to my wallet but made me feel like I was now a member of The Old City Family.

For a fella who decided to spend his 64^th birthday in a strange country, I felt I had received a wonderful gift. And no doubt during the upcoming 6 months of Armenian winter, I will be returning to my photos and the warm memories of Istanbul. I was a little embarrassed when I left that I still hadn't gone inside the Blue Mosque or the Cisterns which many said were the most impressive sights there. So I guess I will just have to follow the example of my fellow Volunteer who saved almost $400 by flying home from there instead of Yerevan. Next time I doubt if I will See Everything in Istanbul in One Day. I had way too much fun being worthless.

PS If any of you ever pick Turkey as a travel destination, you will find much useful information at the website of the former Peace Corps Volunteer:

www.turkeytravelplanner.com