Women & Girls Make News

Rape Laws in India.

The finger test?  In AZ rape and beatings are considered the fault of the woman and as such both violations happen frequently and are largely unreported. Laws will do little, I think, (on the ground level in poor communities) unless the laws benefit someone higher up who stands to profit from the enforcement.

Hmmm, disguised as boys?

If this was NY Fashion week it might be considered chic, but in this case it’s simply awful when women and girls must hide their humanity to be safe.

Next generation of ladies will be tough as hell if they can make it to adulthood.

New Adventure Awaits!

Usually, I don’t send out mass emails, or like making public personal declarations (unless its calling out someone’s dreadful fashion/or my misadventures pushing brats over on bikes) but decided to put in my year dues to mass communication by posting a tasty bit of news.

No I’m not getting married, or with child. (!!!)

But I do have a brand new, sparkly, fresh, job teaching art/English at Baku Oxford School in Baku (of course!) In fact I just inked my contract-which is rather generous, given my 3 years (38 1/2 months) of volunteering, or slumming it, depending on your perspective-as recently as yesterday, I pulled up my Izzy Town life and moved into a lovely flat in Baku-and today I finished the headache of paperwork which shows I’m finally, totally, completely, 100% done with Peace Corps. Yea, I’m quite pleased.

Lest you think I’ll never leave this glorious country, be assured once my contract ends, I have every intention of moving to an as of yet undetermined country that will likely not be America and pursuing something to satiate my adrenalin addiction.

Why, then, might you ask, is she doing something as predictable/normal/easy as teaching art/English? It is simple mater of economics, 3 years of not working does leave finances in a mess, there are cameras to be brought, wanderings to plot, clothing to purchase and savings to be pimped. Or perhaps for the first time in a very very long time (or at least since I was 6) I want consistency; consistency in received pay checks, working hours, and the general assurance that I wont be woken up at 7am/midnight by a crazed landlord/hag demanding I immediately vacate the property because I’m ‘not clean’. (Yes, that’s a euphemism for sexual purity; somehow the presence of a fiancé rendered me not clean enough and it took the landhag/lord 3 months to figure that part out and then arrive, in both cases at uncivilized hours.)

That’s not to say I don’t miss my family and friends from the states, in fact, the homesickness has crept up more frequently as of late, likely due to changes and moving and summer ending.

But this is a new adventure, so I am…Happy!

Kingpin: La Barbie

Wandering…

In the midst of moving, packing, writing final reports, I decided to read Japanese poetry, in hopes that the diversion would be a relief from trying to figure out what to say in my LPI, how best to communicate with my Russian landlord, and swooning over a washing machine with instructions in English.

I found this, a five line tanka written by Muso Soeski:

Sometimes, while wandering

When I cannot find which road

Leads back the way I came,

The road goes anywhere,

And anywhere at all is home.