New Group of Volunteers Arrive

Dear New Volunteers to Armenia:

In February of last year I was waiting for Amazon to deliver several books written by former Peace Corps volunteers who served in Africa. This was to the site of my two years of service according to the letter I received in mid-January. The books arrived and I devoured them quickly, anxious to discover what my new life would be like. Then in the middle of April I received another letter from the Peace Corps informing me that I was really going to Armenia. I think the Universe was hinting that this was not to be a journey of the head but one of the heart.

Yet I still spend the first couple months in Armenia trying to figure it all out. My brain was working overtime sort it all out. First there was this new language with the very strange alphabet. Then this was this confusing culture that was a strange mix of medieval culture and modern technology. There were satellite dishes everywhere you looked and yet you couldn’t find a clean public toilet. During the day one could witness the high unemployment rate as men stood around cars with their friends smoking. And yet in the evening, one might be invited to a lavish banquet where heaping plates of food and lengthy vodka toasts continued until late in the evening. During the weekends I enjoyed taking long walks to enjoy the lush natural surroundings and would always come upon piles of garbage strewn along the roadside. There were cows walking amidst the roads with cars and yet I saw more grade school children using cell phones than in California.

Of course, I figured this would all sort itself out after our Pre-Service Training was completed in mid-August and we were finally be assigned to the cities where we would work for the next two years. I was still hopeful that my years of experience in business would guide me in assisting their efforts in tourism. Instead it was the Al-Anon Serenity Prayer that proved to be my guide: God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can’t and the Wisdom to know the difference. As we approached the Christmas holidays, I began to doubt if I was my efforts at my NGO (or “Non-Profits” as they say in the States) were of any value.

Over the holidays I approached last year’s group of Volunteers seeking some insight into my confusion. Some seemed oblivious to the problem and many others voiced frustrations similar to mine. While all the Volunteers worked in one of four programs, many felt were just “putting band-aids” on very serious problems. Some like me worked in Community/ Business Development and others worked in Teaching English, Health or Environmental Education. The Health Volunteers I met seemed frustrated just to find a time slot in their assigned schools which had no real health curriculum. But wasn’t this a country whose smoking population had the highest percentage in all of Europe? If the Armenian government would implement a non-smoking program for teenagers, we could serve as trainers and educators throughout the country. I saw the same lack of effectiveness with the Environmental Volunteers. We organized village “Clean-up Days” or “Green Camps” but the mindset of the citizens in general seemed the same. Nobody seemed to think twice about tossing plastic bottles or vodka bottles in the rivers and their empty cigarette packages in the streets. The situation wasn’t too different than I saw in India during my trip there in 2007, where the country couldn’t keep up with the growth of disposable consumer products.

The Community / Business Development sector where I worked had its own issues. Most of us were assigned to NGO’s where the primary focus was to obtain grant funding. The drawback here was that the focus was on the outside with little consideration of how poorly the organization functioned. I couldn’t help but think of the oft-quoted definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It seemed easier just to write another proposal than develop a more effective organization. Amidst all this I clung desperately to my basic mantra: “It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” But I could feel I was getting very low on candles.

Fortunately a shift occurred during one of our conferences. Our packet of information included some articles written “pro”: and “con” regarding the effectiveness of today’s Peace Corps. One writer said that most of the criticism of the Peace Corps is the result of evaluating our efforts in terms of being a “Development” program. He went on to say that the Peace Corps’ original mission was to function as a people-to-people program with a development component. At first this distinction just seemed liked semantics.

Then I began to reflect on those folks in my life who had made a significant contribution to me. In truth, they didn’t really change the circumstances of my life. And many probably never knew the impact they made. But they all gave me something I needed at the time: encouragement, friendship, hope or just some new skill. I now realize that when I complete my service in August of 2010, Armenia’s problems with unemployment, the environment and health won’t be any different. Yet all I can hope is that a handful of young people will be stronger and more confident to meet the challenges of their lives. And I do know I will take back to the States with me the many gifts of their friendship I have received.

Another Historical Adventure

Although The Pyramids are one of the 7 Wonders of the World, I honestly can't see myself flying 7,000 miles from California to see them.  But one of the perks of the Peace Corps I am discovering is proximity to places you normally would not visit.  So after 6 months of winter in Armenia, the warm weather in Egypt sounded pretty good.  Sunshine, historical sites and a round trip airfare of 450 euros made an attractive package.  (Our fare did require a 4 hour layover in Moscow but since we have more time than money in the Peace Corps, that was not a problem.)    So the first weekend in April my friend and I boarded a plane in Yerevan for Cairo.

 Before we left, I tried to recall any first-hand experience with the Egyptian culture but could only remember one classmate from years ago.  We were both in graduate school in anthropology but surprisingly enough I don't remember any conversations about the culture in her country. What I did know was that it was going to be very different from Armenia.  I am currently living in a very rural area of a Christian country whose entire population is under 3 million people.  And Cairowas not only in a Muslim country but had a population of more than 19 million people.  Kind of like going from Rio Vista to New York City.

C

To expand my appreciation for upcoming sights in Egypt, I spent some time reading up on their culture and history.  I tried to imagine what it would be like for the current residents in Cairo whose country was now a tourist destination after having been dominant political power 3000 years ago.  It's kind of like imagining tourists from China coming to the United States in the year 5000.  Will we still be a World Power or a tourist destination for those wanting to visit the Grand Canyon and the Mississippi River?  Time will tell. 

 You can't read about Egypt's history without noticing the cycles of history larger than  the 300 years of American History.  When Egypt's power began to dwindle some 1100 years before the birth of Christ, there began a rotation of conquering nations beginning with Persia.  These seemed to continue in roughly 300 year cycles where Alexander the Great, the Romans, the Ottoman Empire and finally even Napoleon for a brief period at the end of the 18^th Century conquered Egypt.  By middle of the 19^th century it was less Egypt's fertile soil but more the newly constructed Suez Canal that attracted the attention of France and England.  It wasn't until the middle of the 20^th century that Egypt like India was able to gain their independence from Britain's control.

 During our 5 days in Cairo, we did the usual tourist things like visiting the pyramids in nearby Giza and taking a brief evening sail on the Nile.  But other than these two outings, I enjoyed having my two feet be my "travel guides."  We just wandered around parts of the city and seeing what we could discover.  Sometimes what we would discover is that we were lost.   But after 8 months in Armenia, I was kind of immune to that experience.  We stayed in a small hotel ( $19 for a double room with a nice breakfast) that was oddly enough located in an area of town that seemed to specialize in industrial products.  So whenever we got lost we'd just follow the trail of   storefronts with pumps, generators and electrical items and we would soon find our bearings.  The shopping in Cairo was obviously set up to accommodate foot traffic and not cars.  You'd seen stores with wallets, and then briefcases and pretty soon it was luggage.  The same was true with ladies' clothes where as you can see in the photos, the store selling contemporary fashions were adjacent to those with the traditional burquas.

But there were plenty of cars, many of them taxis with the identical black and yellow colors hand-painted on their doors and side panels.  Crossing the street with four lanes of one way traffic did take a little getting used to.  But after a couple days you found yourself like the rest of the pedestrians in Cairo, walking across the street one lane at a time, letting the cars whiz by on both sides of you, like an amateur matador. Fortunately, there seemed to be a symbiotic relationship with the pedestrians and drivers I have never seen anywhere else. I wouldn't try it in New York City for sure.

 But like NYC, the compact urban setting with all its high energy activity just added charm to the small places where the locals ate.  Around the corner from our hotel was a small cafe selling fresh-squeezed orange juice in tall mugs for 50 cents. You could find a father and son cooking up a storm at the end of the alley, with fresh beef and chicken smoking on the grill for your falafels.  And of course, every block seemed to feature at least one café where the locals smoked their water pipes for hours at a time while they drank tea and discussed politics.

Then at night the whole scene changed as the lights in the storefronts turned on and the sidewalks filled up with shoppers, many of them women checking out the latest fashions.  Living in an Armenian city where they "roll up the sidewalks after 6pm" it was fun to walk around in the midst of all the activity.  The Egyptian people as a whole were very congenial and most of the men seemed to have been given the same script: Welcome to Egypt was said to us innumerable times with a very gracious smile.  When they find out I lived in California, a surprising number of men felt "Hi-Ho Silver" was the appropriate response.  I can't imagine they watched the same Lone Ranger TV shows I did in the 50's but oh, well.  Somehow the people all realized the importance of tourism in the Egyptian economy and acted as good-will ambassadors.  At $6 Billion a year, tourism even surpasses oil and gas as the leading contributor to the national GNP.

 

The one thing I was most curious about was how it would be living in an Islamic culture.  The Lonely Planet book on Egypt even talked about not staying at certain hotels in Old Cairo unless you wanted to wake up at the break of dawn to the sound of the loudspeaker calling you to face Mecca.  As it turned out there was the whole range of responses to the 5 daily announcements for prayer.  If you were near a mosque you would see and hear groups bowing down for prayer.   There were even times in a store or the airport where I witnessed people kneeling and praying.  And then there were those who never missed a puff on their water pipe or whatever else they were doing.  The only thing that was surprising was the number of men whose foreheads had a black spot in the center.  Having been raised in a Christian culture, it first reminded me of Ash Wednesday.  Then I realized that these were permanent marks from years of putting their foreheads down on their prayer rugs.  I don't know if this was true of the women as well for you seldom saw their foreheads.  Some women wore the traditional black burquas as you see in movies with a small slit for their eyes.  While many of the younger women covered the tops of their heads with scarves of many colors that also served as a fashion accessory.

Overall, I had only one bad experience inEgypt and could have avoided it had I been more cautious.  I had heard before our trip that "it's cheap to get on the camels but expensive to get off."  And sure enough I crossed paths with a couple of hustlers on camels at the pyraminds in Giza and wound up spending $30 I hadn't planned on. When they approached us to have our photos taken on their camels, my Peace Corps friend took off as he found all the vendors and dealers a little overwhelming. Having spent a couple years in sales myself, I assumed I could dance around the problem and suggested they take my photo "in front of the camel."  While I was standing there, one they came up behind me and lifted me on the camel.  And of course, their well-trained animal stood up immediately.  You can normally negotiate a reasonable price for a camel ride but not when you're stranded 8 feet in the air.   Chalk another up to experience.   (And yes, he is checking his cell phone on the camel.)

 For the last 3 days we journeyed a couple hours north to the City of Alexandriawhich was a wonderful change of pace from Cairo.  In addition to the usual number of taxis, there were several dozen horse carts for visitors who wanted a leisurely stroll down the crescent shaped boardwalk facing the harbor.  It was great just to sit in front of a large body of water again and watch the waves.  It may have been the Medditeranean Sea instead of the Pacific Ocean but it had the same calming effect on my spirit.

The 24 hours of Planes, Trains and Automobiles going back to Armenia was a little tiring but overall our trip to Egypt was an excellent break from 6 months of winter.