Sadly it looks like the pictures don’t get exported along with the text.  This is good for a quick export but the pictures are the soul of the blog.   Mmm.  Quandary!  I took some photos of wintry suburban Baku yesterday as well.  Guess I could blog here and post photos on Facebook.

I’ve been off air again as the server says I have a nill balance.  Strange considering that I signed up last week for a month and 1.5Gb.  I did listen to the tennis yesterday for a while – about one set only.  The IT guy at school got me back online but I haven’t learnt what the issue was yet.  Tomorrow all will become clear.

I’m back treading the bitumen in the morning again.  It’s cold and dark but not icy.  My lungs are almost back to normal, apart from the odd bit of hacking every now and again.

A close coffee shop is having music Sat nights and I’m thinking of signing up with a secondary teacher from TISA.   She lives in this gigantic building so rehearsals should be easy.  It’s sometime in February – just a few weeks.

We’re now into our third week of school with seven weeks to go until the March break.  The plan is to meet up with Tanya in Phuket, Thailand, and have two weeks of doing not much but having my teeth repaired. The only thing that would be better would be if my whole family were there as well, especially little grand-daughter Keeley. In the mean time there’s a parent-teacher night or two to think about.

So commences an article from freelance journalist Michael J. Totten who is in Georgia reporting on the conflict.  This long article is worth reading.  It gives the sense of actually being there, of travelling to Tbilisi from Baku and then finding your way to Russian occupied Georgia and dealing with angry Soviet Russian troops.  He reports on stories of how Russian troops are lowly paid, how some are reported to be found begging on the streets, and of the soldier who lost parts of his body to gangrene after ritualized abuse by the comrades in his unit.

Empty highway on the road to Gori, Central Georgia (from the article).  Shortly after this photo it gets very scarey.

This is part travelogue, part war-diary, which I found engaging as it’s telling a story that I’m not reading anywhere else.  It’s the first time I’ve actually donated money to a freelance journalist.

And for your edification here is an analysis (a link in the comments after the above article) of the battle.  From the responses it’s not the definitive version of truth, but it’s written by someone with good knowledge.

For some reason these steps had hundreds more empty plastic drink bottles thrown on the ground when we returned after the July/August break.  It feels like a rubbish dump.  Chee Wan won’t walk that way anymore, choosing to go further and take another clean flight of steps.

I’ve taken it up as a personal project to collect all the bottles.  There’s plenty of other rubbish but I’m leaving that.

Each morning the streets of Baku are scoured by women (mostly) in orange waist coats sweeping the rubbish from the previous day. They are up before dawn sweeping into piles, filling bags, sometimes burning on the side of the road.  Even if people wanted to put their trash into bins they would have difficulty as there are not many around Baku.  The ones they have are usually very small, with a volume of about one cubic foot.

In Soviet days presumably there would have been someone allocated to sweep these steps but they have obviously fallen through the system.  With the refacing of the city hopefully these worn out dirty steps might also get the required facelift.

This bottom image is the beginning of the steps in the morning and the top image is the last few before the next road.

I get off the afternoon school bus and am about to start the trip down the steps.  Baku is not quite as green as this shot suggests.

leighs-baku-apt

I’m marking my kids’ writing on their first understanding of immigration.  They are doing very well so far.  The Unit of Inquiry is: “Humans, goods and ideas move from place to place and cause change.”

The majority of both Sunni and Shi’a Muslim jurists consider dogs to be ritually unclean, … Muhammad didn’t like dogs according to Sunni tradition, and most practicing Muslims do not have dogs as pets…However, outside their ritual uncleanness, Islamic fatwas, or rulings, enjoin that dogs be treated kindly or else be freed. Muslims generally cast dogs in a negative light because of their ritual impurity. …  It is said that angels do not enter a house which contains a dog. Though dogs are not allowed for pets, they are allowed to be kept if used for work, such as guarding your house or farm, or when used for hunting purposes.

One story in Istanbul is that many years ago they rounded up all the street dogs and put them on an island out in the Sea of Marmara to let them die. I guess actually wielding the knife would make them guilty of not treating dogs kindly. Now, in Istanbul, there are programs to innoculate the dogs before releasing them to the streets again.

On Thursday Michael found himself watching a dog die, presumably poisoned,  while he was outside the school gate getting some “fresh air”.  I noticed the body was still there Friday afternoon in the summer sun.

Trucks continue to remove many more tons of soil from the building site.  It’s been enough to raise the land by a couple of metres a 200x 30m section of land between the school and the valley.   We don’t know how long the work will continue, given that the Director has signalled that there isn’t sufficient money to complete the project at this stage.

More photos from my walk to school.

At this stage I’m about 13 mins from school. The bulding exteriors are sad but the homes are probably fine inside.

It’s nothing for people to light a little fire and throw plastic onto it which then fills the neighbourhood with acrid smoke.

Each apartment originally had a verandah but they’ve all been converted to extra rooms, hence the patchwork finish.

Now begins the 10 minute walk along the valley to school, which is the white buildings below the highrises top left, .  People throw their rubbish on the edge of the valley and every now and again someone puts a match to it.  Consequently on still mornings the valley fills with blue smoke and levels off at approximately 20m up.  It makes walking the last km a little more hazardous.

One of the residences along the valley.  The slabs up against the bus are lifted cow dung from a barn .

We are reassured that there is no threat to ex-pats living in Baku, but this doesn’t make you feel comfortable. There was a briefing that came from the BP office this afternoon.  I’ve learnt that the Abu Bakr mosque is not the big one close by, but one that was built with Kuwaiti money and with an imam that was trained in Saudi Arabia.

If you’re interested here are some local news reports on the matter.

18th August,    20th August,   20th August – Head of the Mountain Jews responds

20th August from AzerNews

An article on Islam in Azerbaijan that refers to the Abu Bakr mosque.

While we’re at it,  “PKK approaching Azerbaijan”.  (from February).  I’ve not heard anything about this since I’ve been back.  Can’t see why they’d be interested in Azerbaijan beyond sheltering from the Turks, given that they just want their homeland.

Now for the next few photos of my walk to school on Thursday.

This soccer court, on university grounds, looks like it hasn’t been touched since Soviet days and is typical of much of Baku.

There are piles of rubbish everywhere, which makes it similar to Turkey.  There are only small rubbish bins throughout the city in public places and people usually just drop whatever trash they have onto the ground. I think this may change in coming years as the government is starting a company to keep the city clean.  I wonder if that will include a public education program to change people’s habits.  While they’re at it perhaps they can bring up the habit of spitting on footpaths and in stairwells.

Quaint stairs as I’m getting close to school.  At this point I’m starting to perspire.  The blackened patch is where rubbish has been burnt off. Sadly, the smell of burning plastics is quite common in Baku…

… and then around the bend your path is blocked with this. It’s obviously a rubbish collection point (and burning off point) but it’s in the middle of the footpath, if you can call it that.

Kişi Salonu (pron: Kishi Salonu)  – Men’s hairdresser.  Such quarters are all over the place – tiny little rooms that people eek a living from. Bərbər is close to English’s barber.

One of the new teachers commented that Baku will look very different in two years.  I also think that the city is changing rapidly, but it will surely take generations for the new oil wealth to filter down to people on the streets so that they can afford a better quality of life.

I would love it if you left a comment. Any encouragement is good encouragement.

Just a view close to home on the way to school this morning.

Further up the road by 100m.

Does that name ring a bell?

Some language seems to be universal.

imperialismə yox – imperialism no

These last two were taken as I passed a university.

That’s enough of ordinary things.  I’ll impose the rest in days to come. In brief, it was good to catch up with many friends and start some dreaming for the year to come.  Nice to have meals provided for these first four days.  Morale is high at school, even amongst new staff who feel very welcome (they said so).  As expected, many of the ordered goods haven’t arrived.  Not even sure if library books will arrive by Christmas.

Newly renovated park.

I’ve shown other photos from this park close to my apartment.  It’s luxurious isn’t it?  Government buildings are to the left of the photo, which well may be the reason that this park was done up.  Other parks and buildings around Baku are also being renovated however.

Then up the hill to walk past the Azerbaijan Parliament.

Walking to the right of Parliament I came to the major cemetery of treasured national figures but can’t figure out its name.

I don’t know their names but the sculptures indicate that these were loved Azeri national figures.

And then there is the Heydar Aliyev (d. 2003) memorial at the back of the cemetery, but overlooking the rest of the cemetery. You can read something of his life here.

Then I passed the cemetery for less prominent people. It seems this section must have been Russian Orthodox.

That was my trip this afternoon.  I took a taxi home as there was too much to carry far.

I tried to contact Nazim, an IDP from Nagorno Karabak, for a taxi ride but I learnt that my mobile phone doesn’t connect as it’s been 3 months since I last put money on the card.