robo cop

My whole town is being robo-coped, as it has been adequately named. EVERYTHNING is being fronted in this hideous silver and rarely gold, metallic looking paneling – every store business and building – it is not optional and I am told the stor owners have to pay for – that is not optional either – We are having an entire town “beautification” projects right now – all front streets are being renovated – new side walks, painting, lots of new monuments, ect. And then the robo coping of course – however, none of it extends off the main roads at all – For example – the preschool that I rant about –missing windows, holes in the floor, leaking roof, IDPs living in it, smells like piss ecause the plumbing does not work – is DIRECTLY behind the main renovation area on main street – It is just hidden by a line of trees and one of the fron buildings that did get renovated. And I hear, but am not certain that our main road – Nizaim street named after the famous poet from this region is being remained into Heydar Aliyeve St. – but I think they might be right because his statue just got taken down and is being moved to the outskirts of town. It is all aesthetic – I mean come on who needs real infrastructure - As I was sitting in the dark last night I started wondering – about the people and the mentality – here we are with no electricity because it is windy – No one does anything about it – yet the entire town is being renovated – Why do the people not see this as a serious issue, a failure of their government? – Denial, fear of speaking out, acceptance, lack of understand of the issues, lack of ability to think independently, cultural, (appearances are more important than anything else) – what? Why do they not look around like me and feel outraged? I have heard very intelligent people here state proudly that their president is a great one who cares about the people – But then you do talk to people who will say there is something wrong – and others who – in absolute privacy of course, will outright say the government and president are horrible and don’t care.

my poor soul

I get to take a trip to Turkey so I just read the lonely planet book for it – now I am reading the one for Azerbaijan looking for finding hiking places – and in the north there are some really good ones and in the south is nice and tropical –They are nothing close to as complimentarily about Azerbaijan as they are about Turkey, which is understandable and justified, but what I would like to quote is what they wrote about the middle part of the country, which includes where I live – and about a drive that I have taken many times – they call it, and I quote – “A soul-destroying trip across the desolate central steppes from Baki” And here I though it was desolately beautiful.

Whenever a storm comes along – wind rain thunder and lightning – a strange thing happens – all order breaks down in my house – in a matter of minuets my family is replaced with a tribe of apes – they scream and jump and run through the house, its crazy - my brother starts a screaming chants at the top of his lungs, rain rain rain as he runs back and forth – my sister is hopping in the air - It is like they all go mad and then slowly, very slowly they calm down – remarkable – sometimes I wonder if is is a lack of stimulus – This storm is a nice one – the winds starts it all– at first just making twirling - speeding - stinging dust storms then when the rain arrived it brought with is the lightning and the thunder, the best part - No claps of thunder - it rumbles in this deep base voice– literally shaking the house – I counted as one sounded for a full minute.

I wrote a while back about the Jehovah’s Witness who was being hassled and given a hard time – I friend of mine who know here well said she was still preaching – when asked if she did not get a hard time from people she said no because they really did not know very much about it – well have know fear – that has been taken care of – the just ran a commercial on state television with her picture blasting her for being a Jehovah’s witness. Now that is love of the people, right?

the inards of what was a movie theater during soviet times - it now houses IDP's like most building but they evidently never cleaned it out

Ahhhh, the river /junk yard / landfill - how nice

These men are fishing - with two car batteries and a net - if we had thought to catch the ducks a little earlier or these geese a little later you would have seen come mad/freaked out poultry hauling ass.

random

The little girls here are very shy with me – though fascinated -they watch me from a safe distance, whispering then will turn toward me with round bright eye – scoping out whatever the just discussed - Our house is full of little girls, cousin and daughters of whoever – most 5 or 6 yrs old – so far only savinj will talk to me – probably because she sees me everyday-She is also the one who like to carefully study my eating habits. In general I don’t pay them much mind – they get cuddle, kisses and cooed over more than enough – the usually have a slightly disgusted look on their face threw it - sometimes I joke with them – in English because it is funny to me – Well well the other say a group of them got together – they must have been feeling bold – I was sitting outside in the grass reading – they came up – got much closer than usual – giggled a lot – I ignored them - they got closer – creeping up - soon they were squatting Azeri stile two feet form me staring – granted no one sits in the yard and barefoot – then they started talking – random English words they knew – Before long I was farley surrounded by a troop of monkeys all yelling Azeri or English words and me supposed to give the translation for it or me trying to ask them words – which they for the most part ignored and forged on – then we made a stick house. After a while of this I felt the need to flee, they pursued me as far at the front door – still yelling everything that came to mind or sight– One definite goodbye (sag ol) and I dashed in the house – safe – for then – a few days later I was laying in my room – I guess after figuring out I would not eat them they were eager to talk – they had found my window, lucky enough its too high for them to see in – high pitched little voices echoed my name – I am not ashamed to say I hid – froze, not making a sound till they gave up the hunt – Oddly enough I have been running into more friendly girls of all ages – They boys are always yelling at you but not the girls – but maybe they have seen me a couple times or maybe I have a friendly look lately – I have been listening to mitch hedberg as I walk – there is one little girl I love –She is probably 5 or so, her family runs a small fruit and veg hut attached to the outside of their gate – She is always watching me when I walk by – Like with all the girls I make an effort to smile and say hey to her – one day she got he courage to give a tentative salam – the next time she saw me coming she ran out into the sidewalk Thrust her little out and waited for me to come shake it – Well today I walked by - I happened to be on the opposite side of the street – No worries, she yelled laughed and jumped salams while multitudes of braids flying – it may draw more attention to me but its worth it.

I running into internal battles on the best methods helping – how do you help without making people dependent –or in this case making them more dependent - Just because they really need something should I get some money and fix it just bc I can or is it more beneficial to wait for them to do it even if it take 100 times at long and might never get done – how do you encourage them to to do it – how do you open peoples eyes to other possibilities and options– where is the line when It comes to doing what I think is important, am interested and want and what they think is important and want – because I cant really accomplish anything worthwhile with out their full support - what am I comfortable with – I know we all have to find our own internal balance follow our owe internal compasses – Im working on it but there must be a magnet close by

Women face bias worldwide - UN
Women are discriminated against in almost every country around the world, a UN-commissioned report says.
It says that this is despite the fact that 185 UN member states pledged to outlaw laws favouring men by 2005.
It adds that 70% of the world's poor are women and they own just 1% of the world's titled land.
The report, which was prepared for UN Human Right Commissioner Louise Arbour, says rape within marriage has still not been made a crime in 53 nations.
'Life-long violation'
The report was compiled by Fareda Banda, a law professor at London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
At a news conference in Geneva, Prof Banda said that other laws discriminating women included statutes on divorce, maternity benefits and pensions.

EVERY woman I know has experienced discrimination or abuse
J K Holtz , Chicago

She said that even basic laws like the legal ages for marriage could have a huge impact on women's lives:
"Many states still have different ages of marriage for young women than they have for young men, and the age for girls is always lower then the age for boys.
"This leads to violations, for example of a girls' right education, if she has to leave school at 14 to get married, and this impacts upon her life chances.
"It ends up being a life-long violation of her rights in terms of forfeiting education, having children too early, possibly being damaged herself."
The report recommends the introduction of a new, separate mechanism to fight discrimination because existing UN and international human rights laws are not being upheld.

It also calls for a new UN expert to focus specifically on laws which damage women's chances in life.

Is it not surprising to anyone else that Armenia is in the samebracket as America, China and most of Europe, with Georgia closebehind, while Azerbaijan accompanies Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia, Venezuelaand Afghanistan in the highest bracket?