Another day in Kazakhstan

Please note: this blog entry was originally posted on my other blog at: http://lulu-ahimsa.zaadz.com/blog

Well, the weather has been odd, the Tian Shan mountains cause crazy sun-rain-sun-rain-bow weather. Crazy how double rainbows can begin to be commonplace. oh, but still so magical! It is nice because it cleans the smog from the air, although I am sure it just pushes it someplace else…

I just read an extremely inspiring book about Paul Farmer called Mountains Beyond Mountains. it was about a doctor who basically started this crazy health center in the poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti. He is so inspiring and I learned so much from this book. I will probably read and reread it. It reminded me so much of how I want to live my life, and how far I am from that goal. But I don't feel discouraged, just inspired.

My job here in Kazakhstan continues to be a problem - wanting to be of some service and because of various obstacles not being able to do anything is very frustrating. I guess, since this is my first entry, i should probably say what it is that I am doing here. I am a Peace Corps volunteer, and I am assigned to the most cosmopolitan city in Central Asia, Almaty. This city is not exactly what I imagined when I thought about Peace Corps, but I have grown to love it - potholes, smog, roaming dogs and all. The frustration with my work is that the organization I am assigned to, the Union of Crisis Centers of Kazakhstan, has only two full time staff members and three volunteers, of which I am one. The other two are locals, a lawyer and a psychologist. Everyone is always so busy that there is never any time to work with me on the things i am here to do - NGO development stuff like Project Planning and development, etc. And in order for it to be sustainable, I have to do it WITH the workers in the organization. (Not the NGO development is my field, but it's what I am here to do …) I was writing grants for a while, to no success, sadly. I can blame me for that, because I have no experience doing it at all, and even though I did my best, no money will be coming in to my organization from my efforts. I have done so much writing and research though, on standards for Domestic violence centers, including monitoring and evaluation of programs, and trafficking, child labor, and developed trainings on using a Feminist Peer Empowerment model to counsel victims of domestic violence and alternatives to physical and humiliating punishment for children. Now all i have to do is find someone to translate it. (The one thing I never thought would be a difficulty has been my worst difficulty - language!! Russian is hard to study!)

My English club is going well, and I have recently started to help Accels with their applicants for exchange programs, which is tiring but interesting. In the near future, I hope to be volunteering at an orphanage. This will hopefull give me a bit of personal fulfillment. My director at Peace Corps picked an orphanage not in the center of town, because those always get the foreign volunteers. Right now we are waiting for the slowly grinding wheel of Soviet style bureaucracy to grind forward with the appropriately stamped forms to allow me to volunteer there.

Well, things must be done, and I must do them. Mahalo!