Weight, Death & Kittens

So there are all sorts of cultural oddities that surround me. And no offense to the lovely and kind Azerbaijani people, it is some INTERESTING stuff and confusing to a foreigner like me. One of these inexplicable phenomena is the cultural fascination with weight. People are constantly weighing themselves. It is not clear to me why. But on all the big pedestrian walkways, in the large public park and fountain square - every big public place one goes - there are men with big height/weight scales (like those found in doctors' office) right there outside and for a small price they will weigh you. People love to be weighed. Many of the scales have hilariously loud (and to me, utterly incomprehensible) recorded and automated messages that these scales burst out at all passersby - trying to bully us in Russian to get our weight checked I think. It seems that this public weighing is more than just a concern for weight as I tend to think about it (overweight, underweight, etc.) It is more related to health in some way. Maybe people feel healthier when they know their weight.

I was in the huge main post office today, picking up a care package full of kitten necessities and chocolate (much appreciated!) and right there, as I am picking up my package a big older male postal worker climbs on to the huge scale that was clearly meant for weighing packages and checks his weight! Why...I don't know.

Which brings me to fun things that people seem to say once they learn English - little phrases that replay over and over during the course of a single conversation as if on a loop. One of my favorites is "Why? I will tell you..." over and over again....Its the asking of why and then answering it, instead of simply stating one simple word (that they do not always know) "because"...the word "because" could really simplify things....but instead over and over it is "Why? I will tell you..." seriously, by the 5th or 6th time in one conversation, it can lead to the giggles. Another fun one is "Can you imagine?" over and over again....that is a nice one actually.

A not so nice thing, but certainly interesting, is this creepy place that I visited this past weekend - the children's cemetery in an area called Sumqayit. This region was the site for most of the chemical factories in the 1980's and at one time it had the highest infant mortality rate in the world. So it is a strange industrial wasteland of old factories and dumps where people still live. The graveyard is huge - and the tombstones are large with portraits of the deceased on them. The detailed portraits on them are amazing, frequently life size - most are engraved portraits but some are old photographs. This is what makes the children's cemetery extra eerie - those who died over the age of 1 years old have portraits on their tombstones...the younger ones just have stones marking the hundreds of graves of the children who died in the early 1990's. Sadly, the children's cemetery is full... many many children in Sumqayit didn't live past the age of 4 in the 1990's.

Unfortanately I will be moving to a new apartment next week - it seems my landlord isn't as fond of these little sweethearts as I am....and its a deal breaker for me. I mean just look at them!

Two Is Better Than One

Gozel got a new playmate to keep her busy when I am at work, and to keep her from attacking my ankles and hands when I am home. As you can see, she is quite happy with the new addition to our home here.

The Lesson Is - Wash Your Hands After Touching Pepper Spray and Don't Be Afraid to Trust Just a Little

A few nights ago I came home a little late after another night out carousing (which in actuality was dinner out with coworkers and then a little quick grocery shopping) and found that the elevator in my apartment building is not working. Now there is a second nicer and larger elevator RIGHT NEXT to the other small broken one, but we are not allowed to use it. The story is that the second large elevator is just for our very very important tenant here (the current President's uncle, and previous President's brother). He lives in a multifloor apartment all around my apartment.

So I come home a few nights ago and the guards motion to me that my elevator is broken...and it becomes clear that I cannot use the second elevator, and instead I am shown to a stairwell. A deep dark cement stairwell that is scary. I proceed up the 6 flights of stairs with not ONE SINGLE LIGHT to guide me. It was dark and creepy - so in addition to carrying my bag and groceries and massive gallons of water, I also had my pepper spray out and my finger on the trigger, safety off. As per my usual routine, I spent the next two hours on the computer, and then my right eye started to itch. And itch. And I rubbed it. And it itched. And then it started to hurt. A lot. And so I went in the bathroom to find out if something was in my eye and what I saw in the mirror scared me! I started to cry and called my boss, then called a coworker (it was midnight at this point) and discussed going to the emergency clinic. My top and bottom eyelids of my right eye had puffed up, swollen as if sting by bees! The swelling was so severe that my right eye was barely visible between the lids and it hurt to blink and tears were flowing. So I did what any 33 year old alone in Azerbaijan after midnight would do - I called my mom. I got on the webcam and she put me on speakerphone and had a nurse come to her computer workstation while I held the webcam up to my swollen face. The nurse did as good of an assessment as she could under the circumstances, and advised me to take allergy medicine, advised me to go to the clinic (which I didn't want to do at that hour unless absolutely necessary), and we ran through the options. If my lips started to swell then I was in bad shape and needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. But after talking to some loved ones and starting to calm down, the allergy medicine started to feel like it was working, my boss kept checking in to make sure I was okay, and I called Ben on the webcam to show him my puffy face and tell him of my scare. My mom then got back on to tell me the nurse had another theory of what it was (instead of a terrible allergic reaction) - she said that the symptoms and the look of my face were consistent with exposure to tear gas or pepper spray. PEPPER SPRAY. While the true reason for my temporary facial attack that left me puffy for a day (and gave me a triple chin directly beneath my right eye when I smiled) may never be known.....it does seem like the likely cause was my own damn pepper spray.

That was 2 days ago.

Last night I got home again late (I go out a lot) and I approached my building and it was the same deal - broken elevator and dark scary stairwell. This time I asked the guard through my expert pantomime skills and the ever-useful Russian word for "Please" if he would walk me up the 6 flights to my apartment in the dark. He was a different guard than the night before and very sweet, and although we couldn't really communicate he got the big industrial flashlight for us and walked me up the whole way. At the top of the stairs he put the number to the security desk in my phone in case I needed help or if I wanted to go out of the building at any time but was too afraid to go downstairs in the dark.

That was last night.

Tonight I got home again after 9 p.m. (cause, well I go out a lot) and again the elevator wasn't working. I asked a third guard if he would walk me up the stairs, and this one brought me onto the forbidden big second elevator! Very exciting. There was just one catch - that elevator only stops at certain floors....so we went to the 9th floor and had to walk DOWN 3 flights to the 6th floor. These 3 floors were the scariest flights of uneven cement steps in complete and total darkness- and this guard had no flashlight with him. But he bravely went ahead of me and took my hand and he literally GUIDED me slowly down these uneven stairs while holding my hand. He also only speaks Russian and Azeri so the whole production was an exercise in trust for me really. Though in the darkest moments of our climb together I was very thankful to have him there, though I had the pepper spray in my hand just in case.

And tonight, I washed my hands afterwards.

Gobustan, Azerbaijan

Crazy cool mud volcanoes in the middle of nowhere. Gurgling and bubbling away a cold wet mud out of small walkable volcanoes.

Meet my new girlfriend Gozel (which I am told means "beautiful" in Azeri). She keeps me company and shares my apartment with me - basically she's the boss of me now.

Dead Seals, Frisbee & Justin Timberlake

On a beach, just north of Baku...where the sand isn't soft, the birds aren't alive, and the water isn't safe for swimming.



My latest adventures in Azerbaijan have led me to spending a Sunday at a beach an hour outside of Baku. The scenery - both en route and once arrived - was a little Thunderdome. And my hopes of avoiding any contact with dead birds while in bird flu territory quickly went out the window when the dog that was with us (belongs to another expat) spent the day with dead duck after dead swan after dead seagull in it's mouth....this is how diseases get out of control. I stopped french kissing the dog after that. There was also the unfortunate sight of the two dead seals near our truck....just dead right there far on shore in differing stages of decomposition.

But here is another expat factoid- these folks are crazy for their Ultimate Frisbee. There is a whole Ultimate Frisbee subculture, with tournaments and regular Frisbee sessions and one might say that there are some expats who are never far from a Frisbee. It should be noted that, like my lack of love for the billiards, I am no Frisbee player.

I am, however, very much a lover of Justin Timberlake - especially when sitting in the backseat of a car barreling through the mean streets of Baku, being driven by a lovely Azerbaijani man who ALSO knows all the words...so together we belted out "Cry Me A River" at about 60 mph as we swerved through the city. It was a bonding moment.

Flying Carpet Wonders! This fantastic Old City carpet shop is a great place to spend an afternoon.

The Carpet Guy - hours and hours of fun. He will roll out beautiful carpets for hours and give you a great deal! Who knew carpets could be addictive? It's a small but powerful shop in the Old City.

Flying Carpets and a Belly Dancer

In the past week, a lot of interesting but disjointed things happened (which is so Azerbaijan, really). I had the wonder of DSL come my way after much adventure - first the IT guy and I went to the DSL office with a million documents, and were turned away because we lacked one bureaucratic detail...A few days later our IT guy went back without me and paid the fee and provided all the documentation, and we were told that I would receive a call the next day about DSL installation. And then, that night, I lost my phone (it slipped out of my pocket in a taxi and we fruitlessly called it repeatedly as the taxi driver drove away with it, never to be seen again). So the DSL company couldn't call me. SO the IT guy called them and all of a sudden there was a tall blonde Russian guy at our office to go to my apartment and install the DSL. In a moment of wisdom I asked our IT guy to accompany us, which was a good idea because as the DSL was ATTEMPTED to be installed, the Russian Internet guy proceeded to engage me in all manner of debate. He covered everything, including Race issues (he believes Azerbaijan is paradise partly because there are no black people here, and here I had to give him a lesson on offensive language), then he moved on to Gender issues - where we discussed perhaps why Azerbaijan is not paradise for all women, and then we moved onto the sexual harassment simulation part of our discussion - where he made multiple advances toward me, some of which he had my office IT guy translate for him when he didn't know the words. In the end, he offered to be my "private Russian tutor" and said that he sure would like to have a boss like me if you know what I mean. All that and my DSL didn't even work! Turns out something was wrong with my computer's Ethernet port - it was a hardware problem. SO not I had the equipment, paid for the service, but my computer needed repair. Thanks so come advice from back home I cam to the office this morning armed with information about an external Ethernet card that slips into my computer. So our IT guy called around, a shop said they had them in stock and I was sent to buy it - address and information in hand, as our IT guy had just hung up with the store and everything was all confirmed..Or so I thought. I arrive at the store and there is a sign on the door saying it had moved somewhere down the block...I go down the block and get confirmation that the store is on the 3rd floor of this large building - which I enter and, among the stray cats in the stairwell, all of floor two smells like a disgusting slaughterhouse! I get to floor three and find the right room and enter it and there are NO products there for sale...Every shelf is empty and two guys are sitting at a desk. They don't really speak English so I repeat what our IT guys tells me, and I know the cost and name of what I need. They ask me if I have a car outside..I try to get them to tell me why they ask but it was futile, so I say yes I have a car (the office car and driver were outside waiting for me). He says he goes with me to another store to get what I need. Its all very fishy, but that is the way its done here - fishy and making no sense. In the end, at this final store, I did end up buying what I need and I am now currently a happy DSL user in my apartment. But everything is a production here.

My weekend consisted of exploring more dance club options, which were fun and interesting. And while there was a rumor floating around that Sting, Sade and Enya were all in town this weekend to attend the President's daughter's wedding, I didn't run into any of them! But it does make one question Sting's politics if he's hanging out with the President here. Other miscellany to mention include the fact that gold teeth are THE THING here...For men and woman...And not just gangsta's either....lawyers, NGO leaders, they are all into the gold teeth. It's hilarious. And one totally giggle worthy thing to mention is that in Azeri there apparently isn't any distinguishing between he, she, they or we....the only word used is the equivalent to "it." So in all discussions all the time with absolutely everyone, you can count on men being referred to as "she" and women as "he," and you just have to try hard to keep it straight in your mind.

The photo is from my night out Friday for Lebanese food with a small group of internationals. The real fun of the evening (besides the 30 small dishes that graced our table, the passing on quails' eggs and sheep balls) was when the bellydancer showed up and proceeded to "entertain" us all. She truly loved to smash her breasts into the noses of any of the men who tried not to pay her any attention. It was a sight and we were howling with laughter. The weekend was a full one, from bellydancers to clubgoing russian kids, Baku can provide loads of entertainment.