Back to the Future

When I first came to Armenia almost two years ago many thing seemed surprisingly familiar.   Having grown up in the Midwest in the 50’s, I felt a little like Michael J. Fox in  Back to the Future.  But it was also very clear this was not a Hollywood movie and my role would have very little impact on anyone's future.

My work site for the two years had many similarities to the city of my birth: tree-lined streets, hard-working neighbors and very traditional values.  And from my background reading before arrival, I knew I was about the experience my first winter in 30 years since moving to California.  My mind was not dancing with sugar plum fairies but more like six foot snowdrifts on frozen tundra with bone-chilling winds.  Fortunately my imagination was more intense than the weather which proved to be milder than my Midwest experience.  The only real challenges were the occasional times in winter when the pipes froze and you had to wait a day for water.

Probably the most difficult thing about my new country was the language with its own unique alphabet and sounds.  There are six letters that look like “n” in English and another half-dozen that are variations of our “u.”   And then there were the sounds of the words.  Six letter words that had five consonants are still difficult for me to pronounce.  I knew I was in trouble when I asked for an "onion" and he handed me a bottle of Fanta.   For many of the 20-something Volunteers recently out of college, it was just another challenge for their agile brains.  But for my 60-something year old brain, what I learned on Monday was not always there when I looked for it on Tuesday. The eleven weeks of PST (Pre-Service Training) are considered by many to be one of the real hurdles of our service, similar to boot camp in the Army.  When our four hours-a-day of language training was complete, I was greatly relieved and happy to be assigned to a work site.  My ability to speak the language was minimal but I also knew that communication between people is as much a matter of intention as it is vocabulary. 

            Fast-forwarding ahead to last weekend, I was assisting at a Youth Leadership Conference in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.  During one of the breaks, a young Armenian college student whom I had worked with before asked me a rather direct question:  “What don’t you like about Armenia?”  Obviously noticing the shock on my face, she clarified that this is a question she often asks visitors to get a different perspective on her homeland which she has never been outside of.  I was still feeling a little cautious.  It’s like when a female friend asks you: “Do these pants make my butt look fat?”  It’s at this moment you understand the old adage that “caution is the better part of valor.”

The next week I received an email from a young Armenian college student in California who had read my blog.  She posed hypothetical question: What would say to young college students in California who have never lived in Armenia?  So what follows is my attempt to answer both of these questions, based on the obvious limitations of my time in the country.

            When I thought about my response I realized that there were several different aspects of Armenia one could discuss.  One is the cultural legacy that goes back many centuries.  There are the medieval churches that I have seen throughout my region as well as the poets, composers and musicians that I only know through the statues populating the capital and the parks of major cities. And of course there is the proud legacy of military leaders who have given their lives in the cause of Armenian independence.  It is their photos that tend to populate the walls of the schools and government buildings rather than any notable Armenians from the 20th century.

Then there are the people of Armenia themselves.  Looking at the faces of the older members of society, you can easily see the difficulties they had to endure during the last 50 years.  One publication I read before coming to Armenia spoke of the widespread depression that affects the citizens.  After my first couple months in country, it seemed more accurate to describe it as a sense of resignation. In the 20^th century alone, there were many tragic events from the Genocide of 1915, to the earthquake of 1988, and finally the economic collapse that resulted from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. These were circumstances beyond their control, their fate that they have been asked to endure.  The one bright spot seems to be their children.  While all societies take delight in their young, it seemed especially important for Armenians to usher in the next generation. 

Which leads me to my major concern for Armenia: What is the future of the coming generation?   Having worked with the young people of the country for the past two years, my major concern is for their future.  What opportunities will they have?  On my trips to the capital, one cannot help but notice the thousands of students who attend college there.   The same question always crosses my mind: Where are all these graduates going to find jobs?  Will they be happy as taxi drivers and sales clerks?  Do they really need a degree in International Business to run their family convenience store?  The only companies of any presence in the country seem to be the cell phone providers.  I was told that Armentel had a monopoly on the phone business until Viva Cell arrived. And now recently the French based corporation Orange has made it a three way fight for their share of the very lucrative cell phone revenues.  But even this thriving sector of the economy, I don't see any career opportunities but only a few salaries for the sales clerks at the retail outlets.

       

At my work site the fathers with technical skills in engineering or construction are often required to work in Moscow or other cities in Russia to find decent salaries.  Their children that I have spoken with see their fathers only during the Christmas season and some less often than that.  And in the meantime where is the economic activity in Armenia?  The most visible sector of the economy is the construction of new high rise office buildings and apartments in the capital.  One would like to believe that such activity is an indicator of an economic resurgence in Armenia but the reality that many of these buildings stand vacant would suggest otherwise.  An actual developer would need a return on his financial investment that a vacant building does not provide.  Some have suggested that these projects are often a convenient place to launder money from less than reputable businesses in Russia.  For Armenia to recover economically, much more is needed than for Yerevan to become a showcase of new buildings.  Unfortunately this reflects the former Soviet system that was more concerned about the appearances of success than the actual quality of life for their citizens.

The United States has made a concerted effort during the past eighteen years of Armenia independence to stimulate the economy with aid. Almost $2 billion has been invested here during that time, the highest per capita amount given to any of the 12 former soviet states. Some programs have specific targets, like the Millennium Challenge that is seeking to strengthen the agricultural economy by improving the water delivery system throughout the country.  This program has worked hard to establish a new level of transparency in the use of the funds in a former soviet system where corruption was a way of life.

Other programs have attempted to improve the quality of life by funding a myriad of social programs.  These are always more difficult if the money has been well-spent.  In the United States, a welfare program was established during the Depression in the 30’s and then expanded during the 60’s. The goal of the program was to assist families in serious need to “get back on their feet.”   But finally during the mid 90’s it became necessary to re-evaluate if was actually working as a transition to future self-sufficiency.  For many it had actually become a way of life that encouraged greater dependency.  So it was re-designed around “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity” that required job-training and eventual self-sufficiency.   I see a similar pattern in Armenia where thousands of people created NGO's (called Non-Profits in the US) so they could tap into this large revenue stream coming into the country.  And unfortunately many of these organizations have become more skilled in writing the grants than in creating social programs that are self-sustaining.  And this problem is not unique to Armenia.  Many aid programs around the world today from Africa to South America are being criticized for their failure to foster self-sufficiency.

The final aspect of the Armenian society that concerns me is the educational system.  As a former high school teacher in the States, I am not naive as to the problems with our own educational system.  Yet the system that I have witnessed makes very little efforts made to develop the minds of the students.  As other volunteers in schools have noted, it is as if the information in the books is sacrosanct and the highest form of learning is memorization.  This must be a hold over from the Soviet days when loyal citizens were expected to adhere to the information provided by the State.  To solve the problems of the future, Armenia's future leaders will need to have the abilities to analyze and evaluate information and then develop creative solutions.  Today's educational system is not encouraging students to question and reflect on the material they are reading.  Instead their heads are being filled with information they have little interest in.  A Roman philosopher once said: “Education is not about filling a vessel but lighting a fire.”  The fire of interest and curiosity is surely not being lit.

And while today's youth puts in their time in today's classrooms, the Oligarchs tighten their grip on the Armenian economy that they took over when they purchased the State-run businesses eighteen years ago.  There is little that those of us who are volunteers can do about these harsh realities except provide today's youth with some new skills and experiences in Summer Camps and other trainings.  Armenians have demonstrated their ability to excel on the world stage in both sports and music as individuals.  But to create a society where opportunity and democracy are a reality, the country needs many more who have developed skills in the in the areas of leadership and teamwork.  One young man tried to explain to me that chess in Armenia was really a team sport because they rode together in a van.  For Armenians who have been fiercely independent for centuries, this might seem like teamwork.  But a much greater level of collaboration will be required to create a society where real opportunities are available for the next generation.

Walden Revisited

       I was sitting in front of my laptop, listening to some music given me by a new Volunteer, and wondering how to start this month’s blog.  The song came on, “Slow down everyone, you’re moving too fast/ Frames can’t get you if you’re moving like that.”  It is not exactly a new bit of advice for Americans but one that seems to keep showing up.  Before I left for the Peace Corps the self-help shelves had plenty of titles like, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life.  And of course we can go back another century to the writings of Thoreau.  As he declared in his memoir of the two years alone at Walden Pond: “I went into the woods for I wished to live, deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life! To put to rout all that was not life, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”    And yet these romantic views of the “simple life” seem to leave something important out of the discussion.

And I think I found that missing piece this month in Armenia:  boredom.   It’s the ghost that chases many Americans to invest in their plasma televisions and other state-of-the-art entertainment devices.  And that art keeps changing so quickly.   I remember back in the 90’s that I had barely figured out what a Walkman was when it was already passé to own one.  And from what I read in the business news, the improvements in the iPads and iPhones just keep on coming.  Maybe before I pass, I will actually get to see a consumer version of Dick Tracy’s watch-phone.  But for right now, I am feeling more like Fearless Fosdick with some holes in my psyche.  

I know part of my discomfort comes from the loss of my primary hobby in the States: gardening.   No matter how difficult my week had been as a teacher or a consultant, there wasn’t anything so bad that a weekend of “playing in the dirt” couldn’t fix.   I would disappear in my backyard Saturday morning and re-appear renewed sometime Sunday evening.  In fact, I can still hear my dog, Angel, barking to remind me that the sun was setting.  She was real clear when my gardening time was over and her walk was to start.  I tended to become involved in renovating some area of the backyard and just lose all track of time.  Life’s major problems disappeared as I searched for the best location for my little handful of seeds. 

My first year in Armenia, I did find myself collecting flower seeds out of habit during my afternoon walks.  The problem was I had no garden to plant them.  When I arrived in my current village last August, I did discover two sections by the fountain downtown that had nothing but foot high weeds.   It was my first introduction to the socialist system.   Government jobs here seemed to be more about titles, salaries, and status in the community but not necessarily responsibilities.  After a couple of weeks I was able to find out who was responsible for the garden that nobody was tending.  The assistant was supposed to be assuming the title since the boss left for a better job in Moscow.   After a week I was advised to wait a little bit since one of the judges in town was lobbying to have his nephew be given the position instead.   Unfortunately, all this makes perfect sense in a village where jobs are very scarce.  If you are not a taxi-driver, a teacher or own a mini-market, you better hope to have a relative with connections.

After a couple weeks the “dust settled” and I was able to arrange a meeting with the person who had inherited the title.  Our conversation was a little bit like a scene from a Woody Allen movie that humorously illustrates miscommunication.  Apparently the idea of a “volunteer” is still a strange concept in Armenia.  I kept offering my services to weed and cultivate a flower garden near the fountain and he kept asking how much salary I needed.  After three attempts to communicate that Peace Corps Volunteers get no salary, “voch pogh,” he finally seemed relieved and was happy to have me do his work.   I am sure Tom Sawyer would have been proud of me.

            And so this past summer I enjoyed a couple nostalgic weekends of playing in the dirt.  Of course I did draw some strange looks from passer-bys, wondering why someone was working over the weekend.  But in the end, they probably just figured it had something to do with the fact that I was an American.  It would have been too hard to explain that I was having fun.  This May I will find out whether I planted the right type of seeds for the area or whether they even survived the Armenian winter.   However it turns out, it was a wonderful physical outlet and a place to direct some creative energy.

By this time the cooler weather had moved in and I returned to what has become my primary form of relaxation: reading.  Our Country Director here once commented that she never read more books during any two years of her life that when she was a Volunteer.  I know that is true for me.  I was surprised how much I started to enjoy reading books about history.  When you don’t have to memorize a bunch of dates (when was the Battle of Hastings, again?) and can work from your interests and experience, the whole thing seemed to change.  Seeing all the churches in Armenia from the 9^th and 10^th centuries, I started reading about the construction of cathedrals in the medieval ages.  This led me to biographies about Michelangelo and Galileo who both had their hands full dealing with the popes of their times.  Next thing I know I am wandering through the Dark Ages and all the wars fought over religion.  (Spending a little time with The Crusades can make the events of 9/11 and today’s terrorism a lot more understandable.)  By the time I got to the 20^th century, I decided to check out the Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker saga of my childhood: Communism vs. Catholicism.  I had been plowing through this rather large book on the fall of the Soviet Empire when the book arrived on Pope John XXIII, one of my heroes from the 60’s.  Reading them both at the same time added an interesting perspective.  When I finished I wasn’t sure who had a more difficult job trying to change their particular organization.   Gorbachev had an impossible job trying to wrestle control away from the KGB and the old guard of the Communist Party.  But then again Pope John had to deal with the Cardinals and the Curia.  It was kind of a toss-up.  And what will future history books say about Obama's struggles to improve the healthcare of our country?  He surely has his work cut out for him, haven taken on the Titans of Profit in the Health Industry:  the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical manufacturers, and the AMA.   I guess that’s where a large plasma screen comes in handy, as a good diversion from those painful growing pains on in our society. 

            For the next couple months, I think my wide-screen TV is going to be the sidewalks and paths of my village where I can check out the Mother Nature Channel.  And as you can see from the photos, she’s put on a pretty good show lately.

Holiday Reflections

 Last year I was like a tourist at the station with the train schedule in his hand.  I had been told that the Christmas Train arrived a little late in Armenia.  The Orthodox Church had settled on January 6^th instead of December 25^th. "Problem chica," no problem, as they say here.  I just needed to be a little patient and this special holiday would  arrive a little late.  As I waited during the two weeks prior to the Armenian Christmas, I did notice that the street decorations were a little sparse and the stores were missing that festive spirit.  I wrote it off to the financial crisis Armenia was still recovering from. But then January 6^th arrived and nothing happened.  Christmas as I knew it never arrived.  And like most confused tourists, I walked away from the train station shaking my head.

 As I later discovered the date is not the only thing that makes Christmas in Armenia different.  I was looking in the wrong place. The celebration here doesn't really show up in the stores, the streets, or even under a Christmas tree.   The Armenian Christmas takes place around the family table.  This year I was more prepared and had a wonderful time.

 In fact, I even got a couple "warm-up" events as two of the young ladies I tutor had birthdays in December.  And birthdays are like a mini-Christmas where the mothers get to practice their skills at stacking plates of food.  It's not time to sit down to eat until the second tier of plates has been stacked on top of the first.  For like Christmas, it is the sharing of a wonderful meal and not the giving of presents that is central to the celebration. And when the eating has slowed down, someone usually turns the music system up as loud as possible and the dancing starts.  There is a real art to the hand movements for dancing in Armenia and one I don't expect to master anytime soon.   But there are plenty of home-made fruit juice, wine, bottled water and Coke to keep the dancers refreshed.  (For male celebrations you can also expect to find plenty of cognac and vodka.)

In America the holiday season gets started with Thanksgiving and is pretty much completed by New Years. Here, the season doesn't begin until January 1^st, Nor Tari, and continues until January 11^th.  Their world of work stops and everything is set aside for visiting friends and relatives.   This is not possible for some families that have been forced to relocate to Russia or Ukraine to find work. (One teen I visited hadn't seen his father for almost a year and a half.)  For others, it means driving to a nearby town or just to the other side of their village. 

This is also the time when your neighbors "drop in" at all hours.  What might drive an American hostess to distraction is considered an expected part of Armenian hospitality.  While we often prepare a rather large meal for Christmas Day, the Armenian families keep a banquet table ready with food for the whole week.  No visit would be complete without toasting your guests with at least one shot of vodka.  On New Year's Day one father "made the rounds" to his neighbors' homes and returned about an hour and a half later.  It would a fair assessment to say he was "rather toasted" when he returned!

Having lived in Armenia for over a year now, I felt very much a part of the local network of relationships. I used part of the time to re-connect with some of the teens I worked with at camps last summer.  I was also invited to spend a couple days living with various families.  Remembering how much some of the children last year enjoyed the strange man with the white hair and beard, I chose not to shave for a couple months.  Although I wasn't wearing a red suit or riding in a sleigh, many kids still thought I might be "Dzmare Papek" or Winter Grandfather as they refer to Santa here. 

One family had these two little girls who decided it would be fun to comb out my beard.  Their mother was a little embarrassed by their behavior but I found it a small price to pay for my ride this year on the Christmas Train. Being 7,000 miles from home, it was pretty sweet to be taken care of by a couple of Angels. 

 

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.