POSTING # 12

People, Places and Events: Renting a House in Baku; To Russia with Galoshes; Finding a Wife in Amman; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

People, Places and Events

Linda Gula , the Niagara-on-the-Lake Library’s Archivist, organizes periodic meetings of a local history group she calls, People, Places and Events.

Two weeks ago, Mike Tenszen, a journalist born in Welland, spoke about his “Forty Years of Fun” working for small and large Canadian newspapers (including the Niagara Falls Review, the St. Catharines Standard, the Toronto Star, the Toronto Sun and the Globe and Mail).

Mike had a fund of stories, including tales about train crashes, murder trials, royalty, and the Pope. I hope he will find time to put some of them on paper----although nominally retired, he is busy writing for a local magazine and authoring biographies of Niagara notables.

Mike is troubled about the effect on journalism of the disappearance of some newspapers and the severe staff cutbacks at others. Who will keep the politicians honest if there are no investigative journalists asking tough questions? Can TV and the Internet take the place of newspapers? Or will it be a case of a kind of Gresham’s Law in which bad journalism drives out good? There was much to think about.

Mike Tenszen’s presentation was just about perfect---it informed, stimulated and entertained.

Well done, Linda and Mike!


Renting a House in Baku

Talking about keeping politicians in line, reminds me of Azerbaijan. In 2002, I was manager of an aid project designed to try to reduce corruption in that nation’s public service (according to Transparency International’s respected index of perceived corruption, the nation with the worst score was Bangladesh at 102 while Azerbaijan’s was 95—Canada’s was 7 and the United States’ was 16).

I was looking for a house to rent in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, and had seen several. I went back for a second look at one of them and the owner took me through the various rooms once again. His English was pretty good (infinitely better than my Azeri!) but he sometimes had to stop and search for words.

As we toured the house, he pointed out the modern, Japanese, in-wall heater/air conditioners. He said they made the house comfortable in both winter and summer and added, “You can use as much electricity as you want. No problem”.

Thinking that he was just being polite, and knowing that electricity was expensive in Baku, I said that if we took the house my wife and I would be careful.

“No, no, use it, don’t worry”, he said.

I guess I looked skeptical and he said, “You an old man…” and he paused. Then he took a couple of minutes to explain that he didn’t mean ‘old’, ‘old’. He meant that I came from an older generation, and that I mightn’t understand how things worked today.

“Come with me’, he said and led me to a closet. As he opened the closet, I saw two electrical panels, side-by-side. He pointed to one panel and explained that its circuits didn’t consume much power, for example lights and TVs, and the electricity for this panel came THROUGH the meter. The circuits in the other panel were for the water heater, the heater/air conditioners and other units that consumed a lot of electricity, and the power for this panel BYPASSED the meter.

“So you see, you can use lots of electricity”, he said.

He also told us that if we took the house, we should not let the meter reader into the house. We should call him and he would come over and deal with the meter reader.

So, you go to a country on a mission to fight corruption and immediately run headfirst into someone cheating the system. Does one say ‘no’, or just go along with things? This was the first of many such ethical issues we had to face during our brief stay in Azerbaijan.

(As I mentioned in Posting # 5, December 21, 2008, I became ill before the project really got started and I had to leave Baku and the project.)

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The owner of the above house was well off by Baku standards and he had developed a relatively sophisticated way to keep his electricity costs low.

Poorer people had another solution. Power lines in most of the residential areas of Baku ran from house-to-house resting on short poles mounted on the flat roofs of homes. When there was a power interruption---a pretty frequent occurrence---some people would put ladders up the roof-top poles and tap into the line. There was always the risk, of course, that the power would come on while they were splicing the wires, but I was told that they worked quickly and there were few accidents.

To Russia with Galoshes

In the World Bank foreign aid contract with the Russian Government (1995-1997), the agreement stated that the Russians would give me, as the project manager, an office in the Federal Employment Service HQ in Moscow and would provide all the usual office equipment, including a fax machine. (See Posting # 8. February 22, 2009, for the story of how I ended up in Russia.)

A fax machine was delivered but it didn’t work. The Service’s repairman came, tested the machine and shook his head. He then said the word no Westerner working in Russia at the time wanted to hear, “Problema”.

He said he would try to fix it as soon as he could.

In that era before the transmission of documents via the Internet, a fax machine was really important for me to stay in touch with my base in Ottawa.

Two weeks went by and still no action. I told my office manager that I would have to complain to the head of the Employment Service, but the manager asked me to leave it to him.

He came back from a visit to the repair shop and said that the repairman had noticed my toe rubbers when he came to check the fax machine. He really liked them, there was nothing like them in Russia and he would love to have a pair.

The office manager suggested that if I promised to bring the repairman a pair of rubbers from Canada, he might be able to fix the fax machine.

The next day, the fax machine was fixed. I thanked the repairman, and looking at my rubbers, he said the words all Westerners in Russian wanted to hear, “Nyet problema”.

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I brought back rubbers from my next trip to Canada, and the office manager delivered them to the repairman.

When he came back, he told me, “The repairman is really pleased with the galoshes”.

I told him that they were rubbers, not galoshes but he said that the Russians called them galoshes. Case closed.

The manager said with a smile that the word ‘galoshes’ was also slang for condoms.

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The office manager also told me that I had just had a practical lesson in the old Russian custom of ‘blat’. He said that a rough translation for blat is, ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours’.

After that, whenever there was a ‘problema’ I asked for advice on an appropriate ‘blat’.


Finding a Wife in Amman

It is spring, and our thoughts are supposed to turn to love and marriage.

In February 2001, I was having my hair cut in a hotel barbershop in Amman--- I was working on an aid project, in the Kingdom of Jordan at the time,

The barber wanted to know what I thought of Jordan and I told him I was enjoying the people, the food and the historic sites very much. He replied that Jordan was OK but it was hard for men to get married. And then his story tumbled out.

He was 36 and had been saving his money for years but still didn’t have enough to get married. He said that a man needed between US $15,000-20,000 to get married. This was an astonishingly large amount, given the relatively low wages in Amman at that time.

He went on to break down the cost of getting married. First, he would have to give the young woman’s father $3,000 in gold. Then he would have to buy some expensive jewelry for his bride, and rent and furnish an apartment. He would also need a car. And then there was the cost of the wedding reception.

Even if his wife was working before the wedding, she would expect to stop work and get ready for children. His parents would help but there were many children and their help would have to be modest.

I thought at first that his story was a way of softening me up for a big tip but the friend who had recommended him confirmed the story.

I left him a good tip, anyway.

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Prices of rental accommodation, cars and everything have risen greatly in Jordan since 2001.When I was back in 2006, there were signs that compromises were being worked out that allowed more people to get married. For example, some couples were living with one of the sets of parents in sub-divided space and some women were continuing to work after marriage.


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After my friend and I discussed the barber and his plight, my friend told me how he got married, some twenty-five years earlier.

He and his father were running a successful small business and he had been able to save enough money to get married.

His family passed word around that he was now interested in finding a bride. Families with daughters contacted my friend’s family and discussions were held. His father would make sure that the young woman’s dad was solvent and of good character while my friend’s mother would have a look at the prospective bride and see whether she was good enough for her son.

When the two families had agreed that a match seemed to make sense, it was time for the young people to meet. This was at a dinner with the two families. The young woman would wear a headscarf, a veil over her face with only her eyes showing, and a floor-length dress. As she ate, she would pull her veil out a little so she could transfer the food under the veil to her mouth.

After watching and listening to each other, the young people had to decide whether they liked each other enough to move to the next stage.

My friend said that it took several dinners like this for him to find someone whom he liked and who liked him.

Then there was another dinner with the two families and at the end, the young couple was allowed to go into a room by themselves. The girl removed the veil and my friend was able to see her face for the first time. Looking back at that moment he said, “It is good when it works up here,” pointing to his head, “But it is even better when it also works here,” thumping his chest.

He said that after twenty-five years he was still in love with his wife, and proud of the three daughters and the son they had produced.


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On a side note, my friend said that he was determined that his daughters should be happy in their marriages.

He wanted them to have husbands who could look after them, would treat them with respect, and would be good fathers. He didn’t want potentially good husbands to be deterred by the need to give him a large amount of gold. So he made it known to families of suitable young men that the only gold he expected would be in a small piece of jewelry that the young man would present to his daughter on their wedding day.

He said that the three daughters are now happily married and raising grandchildren.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

A Red-Headed Arab

Jordan is full of dazzling tourist sites from Petra, the city carved from stone, the Dead Sea, Mount Nebo, from which Moses looked down at the Promised Land, Aqaba on the Red Sea---the list goes on and on.

Unfortunately, the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq War and continuing problems in Lebanon and Palestine have persuaded many Western tourists to give Jordan a pass. I always try to persuade people that Jordan is safe and that if they are at all apprehensive they should take an organized tour.

In the spring of 2001, Pat and I were lucky to visit many of Jordan’s attractions, thanks to the help of some good friends.

During a trip to Jerash, which is often called Jordan’s Roman City, we were touring the amazing ruins (including a spectacular amphitheatre) when we saw a Jordanian mother with four children and an older woman, perhaps her mother, coming toward us. Three of the children looked Jordanian with dark hair and eyes. The fourth child, a boy of about 5, had freckles, bright red hair and blue eyes.

He looked exactly like our son David at that age and we started to laugh with delight.

The mother thought we were making fun of her son and, became visibly annoyed. (I understood, perhaps, a little of her reaction having been teased about how a person with my dark hair--- at that time---produced a redheaded child. You know the usual---milkman, postman etc. This was despite the fact that my wife, Pat, has red hair, as had my father.).

With the help of our guide we explained that we had a son who had looked exactly like her son, that rather than mocking him, we adored him and would, if we could, take him home with us.

Calming down, the mother explained that she had an aunt with red hair and she assumed that somewhere in the past, perhaps during the Crusades, red hair had entered her family’s genetic make-up. Perhaps a lusty Irish or Spanish knight!

We parted on very good terms.

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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #13 will include stories from the time Pat and I rented a boat to cruise the Thames from London to Oxford, in an attempt to reprise Jerome K. Jerome’s journey in “Three Men in a Boat, Not to Mention a Dog”.