Cesar Weston volunteered as an English Teacher in Azerbaijan from 2006 to 2008. At present he is a freelance writer and the Program Director of AuthoringAction (A2), formerly known as the Winston-Salem Youth Arts Institute. In the future he is interested in living and working in Russia for a few years – not only to soak up the culture but to see its sights, and enjoy the natural beauty it has to offer. Cesar has just begun to study Russian recently. In this article he wrote about his experience in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. He didn't try to capture everything in one piece, but rather sought to unveil a small piece of it in detail. NC. Cesar can be contacted at Этот e-mail адрес защищен от спам-ботов, для его просмотра у Вас должен быть включен Javascript . 

The Absheron peninsula is visible in pieces from my hotel room. Shore line. Great mechanized peers and giant tankers. An offshore oil platform on the Caspian Sea horizon. The park and side streets below teem with the foot traffic of pedestrians from all around. The usual steady stream of American and European oil workers exit the high end apartment building next to the hotel into luxury vehicles or taxis. I feel fortunate to greet another day alive and well. It’s been a year since I arrived in Azerbaijan.

Me and my friends swim back to reality, still soused from last night’s duel with Azeri vodka, absinth laced mixed drinks and the dusty ruggedness of nighttime Baku. We pull on the most formal clothing we can stand and catch a taxi to the site of our mid-service conference. It’s our de jure giant group meeting to examine our service to this point, and plan out future projects. I work through that with glazed eyes, looking forward to our lunch break when I can get more fresh water and hit town again.

Lunch time comes, and our crew scatters in different directions to the places they’ll eat: some fancy a simple donar – chopped beef, seasoned with peppers, onions and cucumbers between flat folded bread – while others roll to our favored Lebanese joint, and others still flock to the McDonald’s down town for a burger or a milkshake. Today I grab a donar and fresh water from a donar stand among the high end shops and restaurants in Fountain Square. Just to be in the streets feels good, and the wry grins of curious Azeri’s (and Russians, Persians, and a number of other ethnicities) pry without malice. While leaving the Square I pass a staggering crew of Russian women, staring and smiling. I smile back and say, in Russian, Dobray den – good afternoon. They giggle.

 There’s a cadence to any city’s streets. It’s in the beat of its language, traffic, radio airplay and businesses in concert. The sensory bouquet to be found on Azerbaijani streets is a mixture of post-soviet frontier grittiness with the cosmopolitan flavor of an international city in the Islamic world. The main thoroughfares flow in exceptional chaotic order. Zhigulis, Volgas, and Land Rovers can all be seen roaming the dusty streets. Backstreets give rise to gothic, concrete private residences. Wandering conversations by passersby flow in and out of Azeri and Russian like a spoken word symphony of politics, love, and the activities of the next generation. The words are precious jewels still new to me, like Azeri script in gold on billboard signs.

To myself I acknowledge that I’ve never had to work harder to ensure my survival than I have here. The usual demands of life in the regions are not far from my thoughts though I’m on break in the capital city. The low level culture shock of returning to Baku after being in the regions for so long radiates in me. My clothes are old but clean from their first machine washing in months. I recall the muddy tap water I’ll need to filter when I go back home and the clothes I’ll need to wash in it, but banish those thoughts for bar and club choices this evening.

Apartments and townhouses remain hidden from over exposure to the streets in elevated concrete warrens while the ground floor windows have thick metal bars. Residences tend to be flanked by small businesses of all kinds: eateries, tea houses, technology houses and an endless stream of language schools, marked and unmarked, are most common. An internet café is my destination. I buy time to write an e-mail home to friends and loved ones, describing it all and knowing that most of them will never really understand – and I laugh. Hindsight offers a clearer view of the experience, though the memories don’t really sing without a bit of vodka.

From 2006 to 2008 I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Azerbaijan. Stepping off of my flight into Heydar Aliyev Airport in Baku was the culmination of a lot of years spent spinning globes in grade school, searching for the last bits of mystery in the world. I sought to serve in Eastern Europe because the experiences to be had there would be singular even among citizens of the world and because the need for aid had been demonstrated, but I had no idea that I would end up in Azerbaijan. My Peace Corps assignment could just as easily have been Ukraine, Georgia, or a number of other Eastern European countries. After going through the application process I received an offer to serve as an English teacher there and accepted soon after.

The people of Azerbaijan were the best part of my travels there. As a whole I’ve never met more friendly or welcoming people. With an open heart, and with the consumption of a bit of tea or vodka, you never know who you may befriend from moment to moment. That attitude helped me make many friends there, a few of whom I do keep in regular contact with. Returning would be a treat – if only to remember some of my Azerbaijani, walk the Baku streets again, and visit close friends again.

Despite the hospitality of its people and the region of Sheki notwithstanding, Azerbaijan is home to much inhospitable territory, which I grew to know intimately. From the ferocity of the desert dust storms to the mosquito orchestras that played in my ears on summer nights, every day held struggles with clean water, food, maddening Turkish toilet outhouses and teaching the English language, all in the context of a culture that was alien to me. Turkish toilets especially gave me hell! I didn’t like them. But given the choice between using another Turkish toilet and eating sheep’s tongue again, I’d take the Turkish toilet….

It would be an understatement to say that my time there was difficult. But that experience compelled me to improve almost every aspect of myself. Today, I’m better for it.

For instance I’m more guarded in public than in previous times. In the same breath, I’m more open in private, or more intimate settings – and this I attribute most to the hospitality of my Azeri friends, as well as how austere life in the regions can be. It’s too difficult to get bent out of shape over insignificant things. Anyone’s life can change in an instant anywhere, but it’s impossible to escape that fact there, and that made me cognizant of the difference between the important and the less or un-important. Before leaving I might’ve gotten angry over missing a train, or not getting a household task done on time. That still happens. But my perspective on those issues, compared to what’s really important to me in life, is changed forever.