So I realized, I'm writing these boring blog posts about what I'm DOING, but I'm not painting much of a picture of what its like here per-se. And it seems like food is one way to do that.
Its interesting. We're on the border of three of the great empires of the last couple of centuries, namely Iran (Persians), Turkey (Ottomans) and Russia (Tsarist Russians). SO, having been conquered a couple of times and occupied by all of these heavies, there is an interesting mixture of these cuisines.
My favorite place so far is the Lebanese restaurant we found downtown. The proprietor speaks good English and doesn't seem to hate Americans enough to let it show or not want our money, so I've been a few times at this point. The hummus is amazing, which is a treat because in the stores, much to my dismay, you can only find syrian hummus-in-a-can, which isn't the worst thing in the world if you add garlic and lemon and pepper, but its really not that impressive, either. So you gotta go to the Lebanese place for hummus. L gets a thin steak, smothered in cheese-sauce each time she goes, which she says is good. I've been trying the different kinds of middle eastern barbecue. Last time we went, me and a buddy split two plates. The first one that came out was lamb cooked in a yogurt kind of sauce, with dried pita chips in it. The second dish was meat (lamb?) cooked in a sour cherry sauce. Apparently, this is quite the delicacy, as these cherries are only found in Syria and Lebanon and he has to import them. For dessert, he brought out a candy dish full of colored, candied popcorn and a glass of special Lebanese brandy called Arak, which is similar to Ruka in Turkey and Ouzo in Greece. Most countries in that part of the Mediterranean have some kind of anise-flavored liquor. Anyways, it comes clear and very strong. You mix it 50/50 with ice water and some oil in the liquor comes out of solution (as I understand it), making the drink turn a milky white. Its quite strong and not on to top of my list, but I drink it out of respect and for digestion. The meal is always finished with a tiny cupful of Lebanese coffee, which he said, is brewed with a mixture of Arabic spices that are not known to us uninitiated yanks. Its really, really strong, black and tastes almost like a syrup with the spices augmenting the flavor of the coffee. Anyone who knows me is aware of my taste for caffeine and this stuff is dope.
What else? The national fast-food of Armenia is khorovats, which is basically like shwarma or gyros in Greece, except they use this flatbread thats somewhere in-between indian nan and a tortilla.
Supermarkets have huge tanks of live crayfish and trout, caught in lake Sevan a few house away. Bland-tasting canned goods. Freezers of Russian dumplings, chicken patties, hot dogs, sausage. Its a very meat-crazy country. I've had to be creative to feel like I'm getting enough veggies. Tofu is unknown. What I've been doing this past week is dicing up a much of onion, cucumber, pepper and tomato and tossing that with olive oil and vinegar. Pinch of pepper. Its simple and these are some of the only fresh vegetables that were readily available in most markets.
I found broccoli a few weeks ago and freaked out. Steamed the whole thing and gorged. It was awesome. I doubt that when I was 12, my mother ever would have guessed I would enjoy vegetables like this. My other go-to is Armenian V8. Basically, its just spicy tomato juice but it seems to replenish the molecules of vitamins and minerals.
Each week I'm seeing more and more in the markets as stuff starts growing again. It is by default a locally-grown economy here, as they just don't have access to diverse exports and people can't afford what is brought in from afar.
One thing you see are these green ropes. Took me a while to figure it out, but Armenians grow spinach in the fall and when they harvest it, they braid it into these ropes and then tie them together into a kind of spinach pretzel. They are all dried out, so you throw it in a pot with some garlic and butter and you've got wintertime spinach! I bought a bunch a week ago but I haven't gotten around to experimenting, yet.
Bread is the main staple here, although you see lots of rice, potato, beets and bughur/ buckwheat. But the bread. Bakeries in each neighborhood. You can get a fresh loaf of bread for about $0.50. I've been getting one a week. Have a slice in the morning with the vegetable spread. With no preservatives, it goes stale after about 4 days, so I make french toast on the weekends.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
red pens, digital beer and paperbacks
so this week, i got brought into a project at work. each office of UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) has to write the "Country Report" for the year, which is something like an annual report. The office reports on influential circumstances in the country (Economic, Security, Social) and then what the goals for the year were and how UNHCR- Armenia did on them. Now, being new and being an intern, there wasn't much that I could write, per se, not being an authority. But I told my boss early in the week "Look, I can't write it, but I was a Writing major in undergrad and I'm a native speaker, so if you want, I can kind of go through the report from an editor perspective and see if I can make it read more clearly"
What did I get myself into?!?
So all of the staff in the agency speak English well, but the writing isn't so hot. Not bad. In fact, Armenia staff are writing alot better than some of the writing I've read by other offices in the UN. But that being said, there was alot of editing to do. So thats basically what I did all week. Didn't help that the report was 13 pages, single-spaced and needed to be cut down to 10. Also didn't help that three of the upper-level staff are away this week for various reasons so it wasn't always possible to defer to a higher-up. At any rate, I went through the report with a red pen and cleaned alot of it up. Cut out almost a page of extraneous facts, conjecture and opinion. In my opinion, I had it lookin pretty good.
Problem is, everyone kind of took it a little personal when I cut their stuff. In academia, you learn to take it as constructive criticism. The editor is trying to help you make your writing better. But it didn't really go down like that. So I found myself in the middle of a ballet of office-politics. The goal was to help as much as I could without drawing too much fire for butchering peoples' writing. People getting huffy about me deleting half of a run-on sentence or breaking it up into two separate thoughts. And I'm sitting there thinking "Look, I wanted to delete the whole fucking paragraph. I was being nice. This doesn't need to go into the report. Its extraneous." The interesting thing was, I feel like I really rose to the occasion. Its easy enough to slack as an intern. I don't think I have, per se, but this was definitely the most invested I've gotten in a project so far.
Not much to tell beyond that. I did my part. People fought to keep their poorly-worded sentences in the final document. And fine. I said my piece, now its an executive decision. Out of my hands.
What I thought was interesting was that doing that much editing (to be honest, I rarely EVER do more than one edit on my papers for school), i found myself calculatedly rewording my emails, choosing how I wanted to say things and I've become (temporarily) more conscious of my usage of the English language. Anyways.
Went to an interesting bar this week with my Aussie friend. I think the translated name is something like "Moscow Restaurant" and its traditional Russian/ Armenian fare. We got these fried Russian dumplings and two different kinds of shishkebab. But the cool part was the drinking experience. This restaurant had a beer tap at every table with the house beer. So you could pour yourself a beer right there at the table. No waiting. No waiter. Just lean over and get you some. Right next to the tap was a little digital reader. It measured how much volume of beer came out of the tap. When you ask for your bill, they just take a reading and you pay for the beer by the liter. Fucking genius. We were joking that you'd never be able to get away with this in Australia or the States without a mess because people would be laying out on the table, seeing how much they could chug, like a lying-down keg-stand. I guess the Armenians are just playin' it cool.
I finished reading the sci fi novel that I brought with me and I've been kind of sad to not have any reading. Its been strange to have a 9-5 job, one class (Capstone) and suddenly time on my hands in the evenings. Not having too many friends yet, I've been watching downloaded movies and shows on my laptop, but thats getting old, so I've been craving another book. I ordered 4 paperbacks on amazon, but I couldn't get them sent out here, so I mailed them to my Mom in MA, thinking she could get them in the mail for me. That proved to be too expensive, so she mailed 'em to Caity in Texas and she's gonna bring them out when we meet up for spring break. But I don't think I can wait, so I've been looking around. I stopped into the big bookstore on Republic Square yesterday and searched the racks, figuring there had to be a foreign language section. Finally I found one little shelf with a handful of classics. I was afraid it was going to be all John Grisham or Dean Koontz or something. I popped into another bookstore a few weekends ago and they had a section for english-language books, but it was bizarrely like the books section of a run-down Salvation Army thrift store. It was all old hardcover political-thriller novels about the Cold War, written in the 60s and 70s and then trashy romance novels. Like the ones with Fabio shirtless on the cover. That was it.
So I found my English-language section at this other bookstore and my choices were Old Man and the Sea, Gone With the Wind, Huckleberry Finn, The Count of Monte Cristo, Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I got Julius Ceasar and Frankenstein, figuring I'll come back next week for the Count and Huck Finn. I just can't see myself reading Gone With the Wind. Not yet.
What did I get myself into?!?
So all of the staff in the agency speak English well, but the writing isn't so hot. Not bad. In fact, Armenia staff are writing alot better than some of the writing I've read by other offices in the UN. But that being said, there was alot of editing to do. So thats basically what I did all week. Didn't help that the report was 13 pages, single-spaced and needed to be cut down to 10. Also didn't help that three of the upper-level staff are away this week for various reasons so it wasn't always possible to defer to a higher-up. At any rate, I went through the report with a red pen and cleaned alot of it up. Cut out almost a page of extraneous facts, conjecture and opinion. In my opinion, I had it lookin pretty good.
Problem is, everyone kind of took it a little personal when I cut their stuff. In academia, you learn to take it as constructive criticism. The editor is trying to help you make your writing better. But it didn't really go down like that. So I found myself in the middle of a ballet of office-politics. The goal was to help as much as I could without drawing too much fire for butchering peoples' writing. People getting huffy about me deleting half of a run-on sentence or breaking it up into two separate thoughts. And I'm sitting there thinking "Look, I wanted to delete the whole fucking paragraph. I was being nice. This doesn't need to go into the report. Its extraneous." The interesting thing was, I feel like I really rose to the occasion. Its easy enough to slack as an intern. I don't think I have, per se, but this was definitely the most invested I've gotten in a project so far.
Not much to tell beyond that. I did my part. People fought to keep their poorly-worded sentences in the final document. And fine. I said my piece, now its an executive decision. Out of my hands.
What I thought was interesting was that doing that much editing (to be honest, I rarely EVER do more than one edit on my papers for school), i found myself calculatedly rewording my emails, choosing how I wanted to say things and I've become (temporarily) more conscious of my usage of the English language. Anyways.
Went to an interesting bar this week with my Aussie friend. I think the translated name is something like "Moscow Restaurant" and its traditional Russian/ Armenian fare. We got these fried Russian dumplings and two different kinds of shishkebab. But the cool part was the drinking experience. This restaurant had a beer tap at every table with the house beer. So you could pour yourself a beer right there at the table. No waiting. No waiter. Just lean over and get you some. Right next to the tap was a little digital reader. It measured how much volume of beer came out of the tap. When you ask for your bill, they just take a reading and you pay for the beer by the liter. Fucking genius. We were joking that you'd never be able to get away with this in Australia or the States without a mess because people would be laying out on the table, seeing how much they could chug, like a lying-down keg-stand. I guess the Armenians are just playin' it cool.
I finished reading the sci fi novel that I brought with me and I've been kind of sad to not have any reading. Its been strange to have a 9-5 job, one class (Capstone) and suddenly time on my hands in the evenings. Not having too many friends yet, I've been watching downloaded movies and shows on my laptop, but thats getting old, so I've been craving another book. I ordered 4 paperbacks on amazon, but I couldn't get them sent out here, so I mailed them to my Mom in MA, thinking she could get them in the mail for me. That proved to be too expensive, so she mailed 'em to Caity in Texas and she's gonna bring them out when we meet up for spring break. But I don't think I can wait, so I've been looking around. I stopped into the big bookstore on Republic Square yesterday and searched the racks, figuring there had to be a foreign language section. Finally I found one little shelf with a handful of classics. I was afraid it was going to be all John Grisham or Dean Koontz or something. I popped into another bookstore a few weekends ago and they had a section for english-language books, but it was bizarrely like the books section of a run-down Salvation Army thrift store. It was all old hardcover political-thriller novels about the Cold War, written in the 60s and 70s and then trashy romance novels. Like the ones with Fabio shirtless on the cover. That was it.
So I found my English-language section at this other bookstore and my choices were Old Man and the Sea, Gone With the Wind, Huckleberry Finn, The Count of Monte Cristo, Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I got Julius Ceasar and Frankenstein, figuring I'll come back next week for the Count and Huck Finn. I just can't see myself reading Gone With the Wind. Not yet.
Friday, February 19, 2010
micro loans
This is how I know I’m becoming a social worker:
I get a little tipsy in the evening. Might be watching a movie on my laptop. I start thinking about ways in which I can do better at my internship. Start thinking about creative approaches to what I’ve been trying to start. You see, the 8 hours of fluorescent lights can kill anyone’s creativity. I am starting to make this my life. It fills my spare time, or seeps in at least, not because I feel obligated or stressed or worry that I’m not doing enough. Maybe I worry I’m not doing enough a bit. But it really seeps in because I like this. Not the CV-filling trainings and powerpoints and conference attendance. What I like is coming at something from new angles. And not reinventing the wheel, either. Just coming at this with strategy and the freedom of free thinking.
I’ve been working on developing microenterprise in Armenia for refugees. Like I said, not reinventing the wheel. And nothing too big. But there are already active banks in Armenia that have a program to make small loans to the poorest of the poor. See: grameenbank.com So this is already a part of the situation. The banks are there. But refugees are not accessing this resource in this country. Now, as you can imagine, banks don’t necessarily actively pursue loans to the most ineligible members of a society. Refugees that have just come to country X with nothing. (Read: no collateral for a loan). That’s my job. Bring them in. So! I’ve been looking at finding a curriculum to hold workshops in Armenia to expose these communities to the possibility that they might get a loan from a bank for a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, to launch a small business. One example is a ethnic-Armenian Iraqi war refugee that resettled here and got a loan. Started a potato chip-making shop in his garage. Now he’s got an income to feed his family (not just potato chips, hopefully). But so, yeah. Find a training to educate refugees that this is even an option. What is a micro loan. What banks are doing it in Armenia. How do I apply. What will I have to do to pay it back. Like I said, dollars to donuts, someone has already developed a workshop for this. Some kind of training. But I have to find it (research) and then start doing it.
I’m operating on the assumption that I will find someone else’s powerpoint/ PDFs/ word doc and its ready for me to administer. An assumption, yes. Wouldn’t be the worst thing to have to do it myself, but like I said: why reinvent the wheel. But so now we are at the second part. Doing the trainings and disseminating this information. Planting the seeds. Not as easy. The first hurdle is that I don’t speak Armenian or Arabic or Azeri or even Russian. These are the languages used by refugees here, for the most part. I can do it in English. But I will need a translator. I can get files translated here, but I will need someone translating my dialogue, would I hold a workshop. I had been stalled out. Thinking about getting another UNHCR staff to come along. And that works ok, but honestly, everyone has their own workweek to attend to. I wont be able to go out to this village one day, and that town the next, with some full-time, paid UNHCR staff in tow to translate for me. Not going to happen. So what do I do?
I was just thinking about this and I realized, I’m going about this wrong. Thinking of myself as the guy to do it. Not so. The banks don’t seem to want to. Fine. Not a dead end, but not a safe bet. So: build a pyramid. Get the training translated, and then train the trainers. That’s much more sustainable. I hold a few workshops for local staff of NGOs who are working with the refugees. Train them on the processes and get them the information so that they can spread it out, too. Now, I’d rather go straight to the source. But I had been thinking it was one or the other. A,B.
From another angle, I recently discovered Kiva. www.kiva.org Kiva is an online community that partners with local small banks in the 3rd world. The bank says “We have villager X who wants to sell fruit at the market and wants a loan. Villager Y needs a few more livestock for his farm and wants a loan, etc” These villagers get their picture taken, get a profile written and then its posted on the kiva website. Here’s where you and I come in. The profile is posted and then my Mom or your uncle can surf prospective borrowers off the site. Villager X needs $500 USD. My Mom donates $50 and your uncle donates $100. After a couple of days, the money has been pooled all over the world. My mom and your uncle can pay with PayPal. Super easy. The money goes from their accounts to kiva (a non-profit), who disburses the money to the small bank in Cambodia or Armenia. And then the bank gets the money to the villager. My mom and your uncle will be repaid into their kiva accound if and when Villager X makes payment on the loan (a risk). But the kiva folks don’t receive interest on their amounts they pony up. So here, you have an organic, grassroots bank, going (largely) from the developed world to the third world. Interest rates are kept a little lower, because the small bank doesn’t have to pay the interest back to kiva, so your uncle keeps operational costs down for this struggling, small, third-world bank. Awesome. I highly recommend checking out the site. Its pretty cool.
I bet a lot of y’all already knew this. So don’t worry, you won’t burst my bubble. I’m late for the party. But I want to help this grow and spread as I can. So here’s to becoming more of a social work-y nerd. I love this shit.
And the self-awareness:
I attended a conference today by myself, representing UNHCR. "Human Rights Protection in Armenia through Capacity Building of Selected NGOs". God, it was boring. But i got to thinking. I've got my strengths. I think I do alright in small groups. Decent conversationalist. I listen ok. Ask decent quetions. I make eye-contact. I can even be charming. But I am no good at working a room. Coffee-break at noon. Lunch at 1:30. I was by myself. Recognized a few people. The lawyer from the states from the law school of American University of Armenia. A couple of people from United Nations Development Program in the UN building I see at lunch sometimes. But you put me in a room of 80 mingling peoiple. Forget it. I scurry to the corner and hole up like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, to quote Rogue from the X-Men. I did no networking, which was part of the deal. Schmooze. Get some business cards. Talk up UNHCR and let people know 'we' were there. No good. I sucked down a coffee and went back into the empty room to text someone. Schmoose: FAIL. Something to work on. We've all got strengths. You gotta see your weaknesses to grow. I totally have a mild case of room-full-of-people Social Anxiety Disorder. Can't do it. Such is life.
I get a little tipsy in the evening. Might be watching a movie on my laptop. I start thinking about ways in which I can do better at my internship. Start thinking about creative approaches to what I’ve been trying to start. You see, the 8 hours of fluorescent lights can kill anyone’s creativity. I am starting to make this my life. It fills my spare time, or seeps in at least, not because I feel obligated or stressed or worry that I’m not doing enough. Maybe I worry I’m not doing enough a bit. But it really seeps in because I like this. Not the CV-filling trainings and powerpoints and conference attendance. What I like is coming at something from new angles. And not reinventing the wheel, either. Just coming at this with strategy and the freedom of free thinking.
I’ve been working on developing microenterprise in Armenia for refugees. Like I said, not reinventing the wheel. And nothing too big. But there are already active banks in Armenia that have a program to make small loans to the poorest of the poor. See: grameenbank.com So this is already a part of the situation. The banks are there. But refugees are not accessing this resource in this country. Now, as you can imagine, banks don’t necessarily actively pursue loans to the most ineligible members of a society. Refugees that have just come to country X with nothing. (Read: no collateral for a loan). That’s my job. Bring them in. So! I’ve been looking at finding a curriculum to hold workshops in Armenia to expose these communities to the possibility that they might get a loan from a bank for a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, to launch a small business. One example is a ethnic-Armenian Iraqi war refugee that resettled here and got a loan. Started a potato chip-making shop in his garage. Now he’s got an income to feed his family (not just potato chips, hopefully). But so, yeah. Find a training to educate refugees that this is even an option. What is a micro loan. What banks are doing it in Armenia. How do I apply. What will I have to do to pay it back. Like I said, dollars to donuts, someone has already developed a workshop for this. Some kind of training. But I have to find it (research) and then start doing it.
I’m operating on the assumption that I will find someone else’s powerpoint/ PDFs/ word doc and its ready for me to administer. An assumption, yes. Wouldn’t be the worst thing to have to do it myself, but like I said: why reinvent the wheel. But so now we are at the second part. Doing the trainings and disseminating this information. Planting the seeds. Not as easy. The first hurdle is that I don’t speak Armenian or Arabic or Azeri or even Russian. These are the languages used by refugees here, for the most part. I can do it in English. But I will need a translator. I can get files translated here, but I will need someone translating my dialogue, would I hold a workshop. I had been stalled out. Thinking about getting another UNHCR staff to come along. And that works ok, but honestly, everyone has their own workweek to attend to. I wont be able to go out to this village one day, and that town the next, with some full-time, paid UNHCR staff in tow to translate for me. Not going to happen. So what do I do?
I was just thinking about this and I realized, I’m going about this wrong. Thinking of myself as the guy to do it. Not so. The banks don’t seem to want to. Fine. Not a dead end, but not a safe bet. So: build a pyramid. Get the training translated, and then train the trainers. That’s much more sustainable. I hold a few workshops for local staff of NGOs who are working with the refugees. Train them on the processes and get them the information so that they can spread it out, too. Now, I’d rather go straight to the source. But I had been thinking it was one or the other. A,B.
From another angle, I recently discovered Kiva. www.kiva.org Kiva is an online community that partners with local small banks in the 3rd world. The bank says “We have villager X who wants to sell fruit at the market and wants a loan. Villager Y needs a few more livestock for his farm and wants a loan, etc” These villagers get their picture taken, get a profile written and then its posted on the kiva website. Here’s where you and I come in. The profile is posted and then my Mom or your uncle can surf prospective borrowers off the site. Villager X needs $500 USD. My Mom donates $50 and your uncle donates $100. After a couple of days, the money has been pooled all over the world. My mom and your uncle can pay with PayPal. Super easy. The money goes from their accounts to kiva (a non-profit), who disburses the money to the small bank in Cambodia or Armenia. And then the bank gets the money to the villager. My mom and your uncle will be repaid into their kiva accound if and when Villager X makes payment on the loan (a risk). But the kiva folks don’t receive interest on their amounts they pony up. So here, you have an organic, grassroots bank, going (largely) from the developed world to the third world. Interest rates are kept a little lower, because the small bank doesn’t have to pay the interest back to kiva, so your uncle keeps operational costs down for this struggling, small, third-world bank. Awesome. I highly recommend checking out the site. Its pretty cool.
I bet a lot of y’all already knew this. So don’t worry, you won’t burst my bubble. I’m late for the party. But I want to help this grow and spread as I can. So here’s to becoming more of a social work-y nerd. I love this shit.
And the self-awareness:
I attended a conference today by myself, representing UNHCR. "Human Rights Protection in Armenia through Capacity Building of Selected NGOs". God, it was boring. But i got to thinking. I've got my strengths. I think I do alright in small groups. Decent conversationalist. I listen ok. Ask decent quetions. I make eye-contact. I can even be charming. But I am no good at working a room. Coffee-break at noon. Lunch at 1:30. I was by myself. Recognized a few people. The lawyer from the states from the law school of American University of Armenia. A couple of people from United Nations Development Program in the UN building I see at lunch sometimes. But you put me in a room of 80 mingling peoiple. Forget it. I scurry to the corner and hole up like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, to quote Rogue from the X-Men. I did no networking, which was part of the deal. Schmooze. Get some business cards. Talk up UNHCR and let people know 'we' were there. No good. I sucked down a coffee and went back into the empty room to text someone. Schmoose: FAIL. Something to work on. We've all got strengths. You gotta see your weaknesses to grow. I totally have a mild case of room-full-of-people Social Anxiety Disorder. Can't do it. Such is life.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
direction!!
so, I haven't posted in a while. To be honest, its because, well, I've been gone so long. I just don't love you guys anymore. I no longer feel the need to keep you updated. So...good luck with that. Have a nice life and all!
J/K. J/K. lolsies.
No, but, forserious. Just been busy and lazy and not too much has really changed. And I just can't put down my freaking book in the evening, which is super sad, because once its done...sigh. No more books. Not here, anyways. Not sci fi. (whimper).
Sorry guys. I'm in a silly mood today. All that Armenian coffee (pronounced 'koo-feh').
Alright, alright. So really. What have I been up to? Well, for starters, we went for khash with the UNHCR crew this weekend. Khash is a meal eaten in the winter and its very singularly Armenian. It was fun. To fully explain, out of laziness and due to the boredom that comes from repeating myself, I'm going to cut and paste from the email I send to Caity regarding the khash experience:
khash is basically a VERY fatty broth of beef parts. whatever isn't used in everything else. it comes with a couple of bones in it. pull out the bones, add salt and lots of garlic, to taste. and then you start crushing up these big slices of dried flatbreat, into the soup, until its almost gel-like in consistency. its supposed to taste extremely garlic-y. you eat this with a big soup spoon, even though its almost a solid once you break up enough lavash (armenian flatbread) into it. you have to eat it quick, while its still hot. and it basically tastes like a liquid form of garlic bread, which isn't too bad. but its extremely heavy. so you wash it down with numerous toasts of vodka. if you are with a group of armenians (probably the only way to consume khash), you will find that the toasts are very emotional, reverential and long-winded. the first shot of vodka is rough (at 11am!!!), but the second one goes down easier and the third, with a half-belly-full of khash, is smooth as the dickens. we sat and drank and toasted and smoked and ate and drank some more for a few hours. it was fun. we toasted to UNHCR staff of days gone by, people who had more recently moved on, toasted to the international staff who come and give their time and effort to helping Armenia become a better country. we toasted to good friends. and culture. friends all over the world. i made a toast at one point, a little drunk and none-too-articulate, to the pleasure of having been welcomed into this wonderful culture, to new experiences and new friends.
Khash extravaganza, 2010 with the UNHCR staff!
That's the PG13 version of the story. We had a good time, though.
On another note, I was starting to get kind of antsy in my placement, feeling like I didn't have alot of direction. The director has been out on leave since before we got here (we haven't been told why, exactly) and our supervisor left 2 weeks ago for maternity leave. So my intern-ness got kind of dumped on another staff, who already has shit-tons on his plate. That translated to me kind of drifting for a week or so, kind of reading up, looking at different reports, kind of getting a sense on what is going on in the country in general but not really getting into the specifics of my work plan.
Well that changed yesterday. In looking at reports, it seemed that there were 2 core quality of life issues to be addressed in the refugee community here. One is quality of housing and the second is employment and livelihood. I met with A. yesterday and we talked about my plan and potential projects. I told him I wanted to work somewhere in the realm of income production/ livelihoods and employment. Told him there seem to be two core aspects of this, employment trainings/ vocational classes and then micro-finance loans for entrepreneurs. We talked a while. He couldn't really tell me what was already out there and I was talking about trying to build new collaborations with new institutions, etc. and then a light kind of went off over A.'s head and he was like "I know what we need! UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization), the Republic of Armenia State Employment Services, The Center for Migration Services, various Banks, the IOM (International Organization for Migration)...all these organizations and offices have done different things, yeah? They all know about some of the things going on in Armenia. But no one knows all of it. There's no one place to go to". And with that, we laid a plan for me to map out all the potential services available to a refugee in Armenia looking for an income. That's job-placement services. Micro-lending banks. Training programs. Schools. Armenian-language classes. All of it. I'm going to figure out all of this stuff, organize it and produce some kind of a deliverable, a handout or leaflet or booklet of all of this information, to give to refugees, to help them help themselves find a sustainable livelihood here in Armenia! Now that I say it like that, it almost sounds overwhelming, but it feels so good to have direction, to know what I gotta do. This week and beyond.
I still have some bigger ideas I want to play with. I would really like to get some more non-profit-oriented micro-finance lending going on here. There are micro-loans to be had, but the interest rates seem to be high. Micro loans are small loans to self-employed individuals, to start a business or take it to the next level. For example, one Iraqi-Armenian refugee got a loan for like $500 and used it to start a potato chip making business in his garage. No kiddin. Farmers can get loans to buy more livestock. Stuff like that. And there needs to be more of it. With fair interest rates, this is like a grassroots stimulation of an economy and thats the way it needs to happen here. There is no Borders or Walmart yet, thank God and there isn't any McDonalds, praise Jebus. But there are a hell of a lot of family-run, small businesses. And that is what micro-lending does. Go to kiva.org if you want to learn more.
On a side note, I found a blog by this American guy who came to Armenia a few months ago and is doing field work with an MFI (Micro-finance Institution). Basically, he sounds like he's kind of a case worker for small loans, where he goes out to whatever village and checkes up on farmer Brown, who borrowed a couple of hundred bucks. Makes sure everything is going ok. I really want to get in tough with this guy. He sounds like he can teach me alot and maybe help me fill out this map of mine. Problem is, I can't find his email anywhere, so I have to post on his blog, I guess, which feels kind of stalker-y. Ironic that I post this on my blog, for my stalkers to read. Heh heh.
Thats about it for now. We got a couple of inches of snow twice in the past week and a half. Its so nice to come out and see this sheet of fresh snow covering everything and coming down silently. The whole city goes quiet. You don't even hear snowplows in the distance because they don't plow their streets.
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