Wanderlustress

On My Way To Work…

After dodging an insistent Russian lady trying to collect money for the television cable subscription, which I don’t have. Nor do I have a television, but she didn’t care. She just kept insisting someone ought to give her money. I refused. She left…

…I ride shotgun in the crowded marachuka (which women rarely do), traditional lyrical Uzbek music blasts from staticky speakers, half butchered carcasses of sheep and cows hangs along the roadside, a speeding car careens towards me as I cross the street, two kids deftly tries to catch a butterfly, rats scurry as I pass the trash heap, the usual macho glares, the heat…I pinch myself and can’t believe I am in Uzbekistan. Of all the places on earth I have dreamed to wonder, I never thought it would be here…

…to this land of ancient conquests and modern legacy of a by-gone communist empire; to a landlocked geography that has poured its imprisoned nature into the hopeless social psyche of a dictatorship; to a multi-ethnic mix of traditional Uzbeks, nomadic Turkic tribes and 21st century Russians.

I haven’t been out of the house for more than an hour and the complexity of the world I’m living in comes down on me as I analyze how things can be better, how it needs to change, who can do it, and how long it will take. Do small steps like cross-boarder social programs really work to mitigate ethnic conflict? Are we creating a culture of dependence when we fund water and gas-line projects into communities that are entitled to get this from the government instead, but don’t, for whatever intransigent reason that exist in corrupt dictatorships? Is it enough to leave behind a little happiness and relief from their everyday lives by organizing sports programs and summer camps? If we teach people how to organize a community fund to help finance community needs and they drop the ball after our program is over, did we fail? How can things change for the better here?

This is how I start my days.

The weeks ahead…

Here is a glimpse of the projects I’m working on, thinking about, and devoting most of my energy to as an NGO development volunteer* in Uzbekistan…

Program Development:
I am trying to design a village community project that has an economic development component to it with my NGO. This would build on their work of the past three years in the rural villages along the Uzbek/Kyrgyz boarder. Most of their work has been establishing “community initiative groups” (CIGs) in villages that in turn organize and manage a variety of projects with funds from international donors – from inter-community sports programs and chess tournaments, to water pipeline and gas line technical projects. The next phase of our work in these communities is to try and introduce a program where seed money will help them build a local economy within their community that will eventually become a viable business and is sustainable. This would not be a micro-finance or lending program to small businesses or individuals, but rather a small seed grant to CIGs to create and manage a business whereby all proceeds from that business would go towards a community project. This helps them to become independent from grant projects that are externally funded by donors. There are some successful livestock and greenhouse projects, as well as handicraft industries taht serve as good examples, but first order is to learn what these particular communities actually want to do and are able to do. So a round-table meeting of community leaders, including CIG members, is in order in the coming weeks. In the mean time, I am gathering as much information as I can from colleagues at other organizations who have similar programs running, so that I can learn about the risks and failures I should mitigate and try to not repeat.

Fund Raising:
My NGO currently has a ready proposal for starting a youth leadership training program that I will try to modify for a couple of Peace Corps funding possibilities: Small Projects Assistance (SPA grants), and Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP grants). First, I have to get it translated into English from its current Russian.

I will also be putting in a bid for computers to be donated to my organization so that we can have a dedicated computer facility for training women and youth in our leadership programs, as well as for use by the NGO community we help support who are without any kind of technical capacity at all.

Capacity Building:
ACDI/VOCA, a USAID funded micro-lending NGO has asked for my assistance to help them train their loan officers in the fundamentals of market research, marketing, and monitoring/evaluation techniques. But since I am not an expert in any of those fields, I am at least bringing in appropriate talent from among my PCV colleagues to come conduct the trainings. We will have our first training, a one week marketing seminar, during the second week of September.

Program Development (2):
At the AVC (All Volunteer Conference) held a month ago, I became involved with the Gender and Development network in Uzbekistan – a Peace Corps network that seeks to bring awareness to gender issues, provide training and empowerment to girls, and to provide teaching tools for gender issues. Among their varied activities, I have volunteered to help design, find funding for, and organize a nationwide GAD conference. Currently in the cognitive stage, the main organizers are considering getting together to lay out concrete plans to making it happen.

Building the Friendship Bridge:
- Guiding two talented young women through the application process for examinations for United Nations jobs.
- Helping my host-sister research possible graduate programs in America.

For Fun:
- Going to Nukus!!!…for some sand, sun and scorching heat.

* I should mention here that not all NGO volunteers in Uzbekistan have the luck of being in a more developed and well organized NGO. In fact, many volunteers are frustrated at the level of non-cooperation and lack of transparency they experience on a daily basis. There is a fair degree of roadblocks to balance the above flurry of activities.

Good News Update

Thought I’d focus on some positive things since it has been a while that I’ve posted any good news…

- 8 months in and 17 more to go!!!
- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has apparently agreed to extend all PCV visas until our COS (“Close of Service” ) date. So keep your fingers crossed until I get my passport back to confirm for sure.
- I have moved into my own apartment with water, gas, indoor plumbing, and there are no teaming bugs or rodents thus far.
- The scorching heat is transitioning into nice, cool, breezy relief - at least in the morning and evening.
- Baskin Robbins opened a store in Tashkent, with all 31 flavors…although I’m still baffled as to why mint chocolate chip wasn’t one of them.
- NAF NAF, a French boutique has opened up in Tashkent, too. And while it is prohibitive to buy anything on a Peace Corps budget, it is still fun to try on pretty clothes and get out of my stinky browning white t-shirt, even for ten minutes.
- My host-brother’s new keilin is two months along in her pregnancy!
- Yet another PCV is getting married – this one to an HCN (Host Country National = Uzbek).
- All my friends and family are thriving, healthy and happy.
- I am thriving, healthy and happy.

Optimism needs to win in the battle against the odds sometimes, too.

Take care everybody!

A Saturday In Uzbekistan

Its Saturday afternoon and in between half-awaken naps, I scrub anything that I haven’t already touched in my new apartment, or do laundry, or talk to a PCV who has temporarily moved in with me. There are kids playing outside, people coming by the building screaming up towards the windows to call on someone rather than going up the stairs to their apartments and knocking on the door. Looking out my back windows down into the garden below, a lady is cooking Osh in one of those traditional huge wood-burning “Osh-cozons” – its all boiling black and greasy with cotton seed oil. Adding to the cacophony is the remodeling of the upstairs apartment. The noise of the demolition sounds as if the whole building will collapse at any moment now, and the welding outside my front door creates a flurry of sparks and burning embers that rains down as I inspect the inferno through the peephole. (Hopefully, its not my door that is in the process of being welded shut.) Some random lady with a mean agitated high-pitched voice came by and banged on my door several times and ran up to the welders to inquire as to why there was no one at home. After they shrugged her off, she came back to try again as I watch her frenzy through the peephole and whisper to my house guest that I’m definitely not opening my door because she didn’t look nice. She definitely didn’t have a friendly let’s meet the new neighbor aura about her. Anyway, every Uzbek who cares about me here have told me to never answer the door to anyone I wasn’t expecting or already know. When the lady finally gave up she went down one flight and told a man that no one was answering. I’m a bit suspicious as to why he didn’t come up with her. Weird.

There is no trust in this country amongst Uzbeks themselves so I’m not going to let my guard down and be that ever friendly peace toting naïve American that makes the headlines for doing stupid things – like opening doors for crazy ladies and a dodgy man in a semi-militant dictatorship after recent suicide bombings outside the American Embassy. You can call it paranoid, but I call it caution with a capital C.

Safe And Sound...

After a meeting at the American Embassy on Saturday, the Country Director and EMA Region Head of Security, determined that the recent bombings do not constitute a direct threat to volunteers. Our "standfast" was lifted as of Sunday, and Peace Corps drove those of us who were in Tashkent home (except for those flying out West). So it was nice to once again get a lift in the Peace Corps SUV bearing diplomatic plates, which allowed us to cruise through all the militsia checkpoints.

I am now safe and sound in Andijon and starting the process of moving into my new apartment, in addition to getting started on a couple of new projects I picked up from last week's conference. I hope things will remain quiet politically. I would hate to get pulled out, especially now, having gained so much momentum over the past few months.

Thank you, everyone, for your well wishes and concerns. I do feel safe and not at all threatened by the past nor potential terrorist activities. While I realize that it is difficult to imagine such sanguine detatchment from your end, life here in Uzbekistan really does, and should, go on.