Getting Into My Groove

October 3, 2007

Today was one of the best days I’ve had here! The last two weeks have been pretty difficult meeting all these new people and trying to explain to them what it is that I’m here to do. It’s actually kind of comical if I take a step back and look at it. I mean even Peace Corps doesn’t know what it is that we (Youth Development) are doing here. We are the first group of youth development (YD) volunteers so we are tasked with the job of figuring out what YD volunteers will do in Azerbaijan. In our training we studied different methods to assess the youth and our communities in an attempt to figure out what it is that the people and youth of Azerbaijan want and need us to do. However these assessments take time and require us to have a relationship with the youth so PC has us teaching English conversation clubs as a way to create these relationships and to give us something to do while we figure this out.

There are a few problems to this. First, it’s never been defined what an English conversation club actually is. Second, every person in Azerbaijan wants to learn English. Where this has created problems for me is that my counterparts at the organization I work didn’t really know what a club was so they promised everyone that I (their American) would teach them English. Well a club isn’t a place to teach people who don’t have a base it’s a place to practice the skills you already have so you can apply the language practically and it works best in a group of about 8 – 10. So long story short my counterparts promised me to all sorts of people and then when I explained what it was that I was doing all sorts of people got mad.

Then the last problem with this is that because PC didn’t know what it was that we will be doing all they told (or all the counterparts had heard) was the we would be doing these clubs so they want to help us fill all our time with these, which will take all our time so that it will be more difficult to create real sustainable youth programs.

Well, so that was why my last two weeks have been difficult. The reason today was so great was that it seems like things are finally starting to iron themselves out and I had two really great club meetings today. One was with a very beginner club that was just down right fun. We played a few games that everyone enjoyed and I just felt good to finally be connecting in some way to the youth here. The second was a club that I will look forward to going to each time. It is what a club is really supposed to be with 9 girls that speak really well but are losing it when they don’t have an opportunity to speak. The reason I’m so excited is that while I’m here I want to focus my work on creating more opportunities for girls and these girls will be perfect to get into their minds to figure out what it is that Azerbaijan girls want.

Then to cap the day off I got a package from my mom with all sorts of fun stuff that just made my day, including a new battery for my computer which makes writing blog entries much easier as the power goes on and off.

If any of you have questions about life over here or ideas of blog entries you would like me to write about please email them to me.