Author Archive
When Kiva Comes to Town
by Nina Nelan, KF12 Azerbaijan
One of the benefits of a Kiva Fellowship is the opportunity to peek behind the Kiva curtain. Like Oz, Kiva is not always as it seems, but it’s also not smoke and mirrors.
(Continue reading for pictures of real live Kiva staff)
It pays to be a teacher in Azerbaijan
by Nina Nelan, KF12 Azerbaijan
As Kiva wraps up back-to-school month, I feel compelled to provide this perspective on a country that should, and could, do better in the education of its youth. It’s not hard to imagine that Azerbaijan, so resplendent with and dependent on its rich petrodollar economy, is setting itself up for failure when it pays so little attention to the quality and effectiveness of its educational programs. I hear stories of students who skip the majority of their classes, but secure passing grades with payments to their professors. These are Azerbaijan’s future doctors and lawyers and scientists and economists. The future looks very bleak indeed.
People do smile in Central Asia (and they dance, too)
by Nina Nelan, KF12 Azerbaijan
At first, I believed the myth that Central Asians do not smile because I couldn’t coax one out of a single pedestrian as I walked to work last week. But peoples’ street personas have nothing in common with who they are in offices and stores and restaurants and homes. Azerbaijanis are as warm and welcoming and smiley as anyone else in the world, and many have gone out of their way to help me adjust to life in Baku.
