I’ve met more officials over the past week in Andijon than ever anticipated. First, I met with the head of the Women’s and Children’s Committee Chairwoman of the Andijon Khokimyat (district). After introducing myself as a Peace Corps volunteer, she quickly rattled off names of other volunteers in the region whom she has met. Unfortunately, because the other volunteers are English teachers, her only idea for an NGO development volunteer like myself, is to teach English to women in the Kishlocks (rural villages). Sounds good, but I so badly wanted to explain that unless there is a viable economy in the rural areas that demand the use of English, all it will achieve is migration to urban areas, where there are no jobs at all, never mind English speaking jobs. Of course, I kept my thoughts to myself and politely asked for her support for all of our initiatives.
Then we met with the Chairman of the Andijon Department of Justice, who at first refused to meet with us. He is in charge of registering all local NGO’s and had some confounded notion that Peace Corps must first be registered with him prior to any kind of introduction. Little did he know that Peace Corps is registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the federal level - way above any official status he may have in Andijon. Anyway, after some prodding by the local Khokimyat, he agreed to meet with us. He was cordial enough and offered an open door policy to us afterwards…fingers crossed.
That was it for local officials. On Friday, I went with the director of FIDO to scout out villages along the northern boarder with Kyrgyztan for a new cross-boarder project. We visited the chairperson of several KAFE’s (districts of villages) to gain their support for our project and to help us identify appropriate villages for our future work. It was interesting to collect information about the population of each district, their ethnic mix (about which I will write a separate post), and problems they are currently facing. Next week, we should know which district we will work with on both the Uzbek and the Kyrgyz side. It will be a pilot project that will, hopefully, launch a larger, region-wide initiative.
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