Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Over the hill and through the woods
On the opposite side of the Absheron Peninsula is a town called Sumqayit. The city was once the manufacturing heartland of Azerbaijan, but after the Soviets left the economy collapsed and dozens of factories were simply abandoned.
The town has a hard-done-by feel to it, and does not have the same Western influences as Baku. Without oil development there are no foreigners and the people are very poor. It was surprising at first because Baku is so wealthy that it is easy to forget that things aren't the same everywhere in Azerbaijan. There were no Mercedes with tinted windows, people were not wearing Dolce & Gabbana clothes.
Sumqayit is a much more accurate slice of Azeri life. Sadly, it is also the kind of place the government does not wish others to know about. When I went to visit some of the abandoned factories skirting the city, the police asked me to leave. They also warned me against taking any photos of the buildings - they said they were concerned about technology theft. Of course, there isn't much technology to 'steal' from a 30 year-old derelict factory, so it's not too much of a mental leap to realize just what they were trying to say.
On the beach of Sumqayit, a Russian ship ran aground 20 years ago during a storm. Officials can't even manage to clean paper off the sidewalk, so it is little surprise that the ship sat there, and rusted, and rusted...
Soon people built a causeway out of broken, left-over pieces of concrete so that they could fish off the deck of the boat. In a town where a paying job is hard to come by, a ready-made fishing pier is difficult to ignore.
The trip out to the boat is dangerous, and the path is very uneven. Young children were searching for small crabs along the way to use as bait for their father's hooks. The boat itself was rusted beyond belief. Some sections of the floor had collapsed and the rigging was a tangled mess of orange cables. The bow of the boat had sunken into the seabed and the waves, which were very rough and looked quite dangerous, washed right onto the deck.
A local colleague who lives in Sumqayit told me that although the pollution in the area is much reduced since the factories closed, it is still too dangerous to eat the fish caught in the bay. Even so, many people without the money to buy food have no choice but to eat what they catch. In a country with so much potential, it is sad to see such things.
The trip was good for me because it was the first time that I really got an unadulterated taste of Azerbaijan. As clichéd as it always sounds, I appreciate how truly fortunate I am to come from a place where I don't have to worry about my next meal. There are many people who don't have that luxury.
The town has a hard-done-by feel to it, and does not have the same Western influences as Baku. Without oil development there are no foreigners and the people are very poor. It was surprising at first because Baku is so wealthy that it is easy to forget that things aren't the same everywhere in Azerbaijan. There were no Mercedes with tinted windows, people were not wearing Dolce & Gabbana clothes.
Sumqayit is a much more accurate slice of Azeri life. Sadly, it is also the kind of place the government does not wish others to know about. When I went to visit some of the abandoned factories skirting the city, the police asked me to leave. They also warned me against taking any photos of the buildings - they said they were concerned about technology theft. Of course, there isn't much technology to 'steal' from a 30 year-old derelict factory, so it's not too much of a mental leap to realize just what they were trying to say.
On the beach of Sumqayit, a Russian ship ran aground 20 years ago during a storm. Officials can't even manage to clean paper off the sidewalk, so it is little surprise that the ship sat there, and rusted, and rusted...
Soon people built a causeway out of broken, left-over pieces of concrete so that they could fish off the deck of the boat. In a town where a paying job is hard to come by, a ready-made fishing pier is difficult to ignore.
The trip out to the boat is dangerous, and the path is very uneven. Young children were searching for small crabs along the way to use as bait for their father's hooks. The boat itself was rusted beyond belief. Some sections of the floor had collapsed and the rigging was a tangled mess of orange cables. The bow of the boat had sunken into the seabed and the waves, which were very rough and looked quite dangerous, washed right onto the deck.
A local colleague who lives in Sumqayit told me that although the pollution in the area is much reduced since the factories closed, it is still too dangerous to eat the fish caught in the bay. Even so, many people without the money to buy food have no choice but to eat what they catch. In a country with so much potential, it is sad to see such things.
The trip was good for me because it was the first time that I really got an unadulterated taste of Azerbaijan. As clichéd as it always sounds, I appreciate how truly fortunate I am to come from a place where I don't have to worry about my next meal. There are many people who don't have that luxury.
# posted by Trafton @ 3:35 AM 
