Hello! My name is Danny Burns and I graduated from the International Studies program at BGSU. While finishing college, I realized I did not quite want to start in the workforce.  I began looking into the Peace Corps and after anxiously waiting for news was assigned to work with the youth in Azerbaijan. I flew to Azerbaijan in September of last year and am truly enjoying my time and experiences here.  I love the food, the people are extremely welcoming, and working with my students is usually very rewarding.

I wanted to share some of my Peace Corps experiences you, so this is the first of several blogs I will write. I have been in Azerbaijan for five months volunteering with the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps has a rigorous and intense training program that usually lasts about three months. You learn about the language and the culture and about your specific program area, mine is Youth Development. After training I moved to my permanent site in early December. Since then I have been working at a school that they refer to as a mixed population boarding school, which means that some of the kid have no place else to go and stay in dormitories at the school. In this case it is 100 of the 717 students who go to school here that stay in the dormitories. Out of all the students 400 are boys and 317 are girls, there are 90 teachers mostly female. The school requested an English teacher but I was trained as a “Youth Development Facilitator” so I am trying to do a little bit of everything so I can make the biggest impact possible. I have been working with the five English teachers during classes and having English conversation clubs after classes. Outside of English, to help with youth development I have been teaching computers and sports with the kids after classes as well. There are several other volunteers around the country doing large projects and I help with those when I can.

My biggest impact has been with the computers so far. When I arrived at the school they had 18 computers and only two of them were functional but the computer room had not been used in about a year. So I began to fix as many as I could with my one semesters of computer classes. I fixed seven of the computer mice (or is it computer mouses?) by physically taking them apart and either rewiring them or replacing broken parts. When it came to fixing the computers themselves it was a little trickier. Most of the computers here are in Russian because Azerbaijan is a Post Soviet State and much of the older population still speaks Russian. Luckily for me I minored in Russian at Bowling Green State University. That being said it was still very difficult to work with the computers before I changed most of them into English. Among other things I had to reinstall windows, replace broken memory cards on the motherboards, and change hard-drive settings. Eventually I got 10 computers working in English and five working in Russian with Windows XP, Microsoft or Open Office, and a program called “Mavis teaches typing”. I also worked out a curriculum for a six-week computer course. When all that was finished my director decided that 20 bucks isn’t too much for four new computer mice.

I have started four formal classes, of eight students each class, teaching them the bare basics of computers and introducing them to the possibilities of Excel and PowerPoint. My classes started off pretty slow because many of the kids couldn’t use the mouse to begin with. The kids are very excited about the computer classes but it is difficult for me to teach a class on computers in Azerbaijani. I prepare for classes by studying Azerbaijani vocabulary and figuring out ways to explain the programs to them, but I can’t prepare for all the questions they ask, so too many of their questions go unanswered. I am looking for more “counterparts” to train how to teach computers and for material to help them teach after I leave. So eventually teaching a more advanced class for teachers is another goal not only at my school but other teachers in the area.

The culture around computers here is very different from that in the USA, in that it is, mostly, a boys only club from what I have seen. Most places have an Internet club or two but it is usually not the kind of place a girl would feel comfortable nor would their parents want them there. One of my goals is to eventually have an internet club at my school that would be geared towards women and girls. For me to do that I need to teach more people in the community how to work with computers and that they are for so much more than playing games. Currently most of the computers are working with what is probably illegal (ignorance is bliss) and definitely unreliable software. I am currently trying to get reliable copies of at least Windows and Microsoft Office and am accepting any advice on programs and software I should be teaching the kids once I get past the basics. I have been trying to get better software but seeing as the school gym’s windows are all broken most of the school’s funds are going to heating and food for the kids. Most of the buildings are pretty run-down and the school in whole was built in 1966 Soviet style. That is Soviet style for a rural area too, which is much less glamorous than the average Soviet city. The condition of the buildings is much less problematic in the summer but it will still cause the kids to skip school when it is cold in winter. I will be working with these kids for the next two years and will be much more productive with legal working software to teach the kids. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

In Leadership, Friendship, and Service

Danny Burns PCV Azerbaijan 2011-2013