My Arrival

I am here. The overnight flight, Frankfort layover and evening arrival in Baku left me a little disoriented and crazed. Lucky for me I got through passport control uneventfully, collected my 5 massive bags and made it through customs and was greeted by the lovely office driver named Javonshire and our coutnry director here, Lynn. I am staying at a temporary apartment that is larger than my Brooklyn place with Ben, and lovely with big windows overlooking Fountain Square (and of course within visibility of the local McDonald's - evil).

My first useful piece of advice given to me by Lynn on the drive from the airport was this - don't even brush your teeth with the water. It'll make your gums bleed. The water is dangerous....full of metal and toxins. So we use bottled water for everything and its likely I'll actually have water coolers delivered to my when I settle into an apartment.

I don't have internet at the temporary apartment, so I have to rely on sneaking in office time for now. But the digs are great here and the office is nice, and full of friendly and kind people ready to help out. I had lunch with a group from the office (6 of us) today and we went to Ocean's Warf where I had a surprisingly good plate of vegetarian nachos! And then at 4:30 today the office had a cake and champagne celebration for the old Kristine and the new Kristine - so apparently I won't starve here.

We already have a lot of work planned for me in the next couple weeks - including a 2 day seminar on coalition and network building for NGO's working on anti-trafficking. The trafficking of women and children here is a huge problem and one that needs a lot of support and services and training. Training is key here- even the women's NGO's look at trafficking victims as prostitutes who deserve what they got....so we have a lot of work to do. I am so excited to be jumping right in with both feet.

I've also been warned -on this, my first day- that at some point my apartment will be "visited" by government officials....they usually visit when you are not home and they go through all your thigns and turn on your computer and look at your files and leave you signals that they have been there (like an ashtray with a cigarette in it next to your turned on computer with files open, so you know they were there). Kind of scary. And they only really do this to the single women here, but they are never in your apartment when you get home....they just leave you little messages that say they are watching. These are the things they don't tell you when you interview for the job.

Tonight I am going out to dinner with Lynn and Kristine to meet more friendly folks from the ex-pat community in Baku - people outside the ABA CEELI office. The city is interesting, and while one mostly sees all men on the streets, I feel right at home because in this city everyone wears all black!