My First Work Day In Baku

The day started with a taxi ride careening through rush hour traffic, delivering me to the U.S. embassy. Talk about real life--they wouldn't let me take ANYTHING into my meeting there—not a pen, a notebook, camera, nothing. And no smiling allowed...this is some serious thing, fella.

Once inside, I spoke for over an hour with two state department attaches, amiable Texans (just a coincidence) who talked openly about the repressive side of the regime, the virgin-til-marriage cultural norm (apparently highly observed), the city’s unrestrained growth, and lack of a single smoke-free place to hear live music.

It’s exciting to bring my idiosyncratic concepts about sexuality and sex therapy to psychologists who have never been trained in the area.

They were simultaneously impressed at my ambitions here (to train people at various stages of professional development), and cautionary about pushing people too far. Apparently, no one here talks about sex, feelings, or anything else. Oh, good.

I asked them lots of political questions—are they playing Uncle Sam off against the Russians? How do they feel about the U.S. getting in bed with a dictator? How do they attempt to influence the Azerbaijani government? How cautious should I be about contacting human rights groups here? They were generous with their time, realistic about their mission, and very relaxed. We swapped Texas jokes and they bade me farewell. And no, I shouldn’t even THINK of photographing the outside of the building. Once outside this point was reinforced by some grim-looking soldiers when I merely pantomimed snapping a photo. I think anyone on earth would understand their scowling NYET.

I next went to a crumbling old Soviet-era building to meet with the ministry of health. Their admiration and caution was similar to the Embassy’s. On the other hand, they sincerely believe that "just having contact with outsiders" is a good thing for local professionals, so they’re genuinely glad I'm here.

We discussed some seminars I’m giving here next week to physicians, psychologists, and planners. They agreed to my outlines, saying everything would be great--"as long as you don't need 'measurable objectives' for your lectures," they laughed. They honestly seem to believe that just sniffing me will be good for the natives.

Tomorrow I speak to therapists at Khazar University, which will be translated into Russian. It’s exciting to bring my idiosyncratic concepts about sexuality and sex therapy to psychologists who have never been trained in the area. On the other hand, being translated for three hours can be wearisome. Constantly having to stop and wait, being limited in my use of humor, unable to make offhand remarks that tend to lubricate difficult passages—and most of all, losing all that valuable time—it’s been frustrating when I’ve done it in countries including Turkey, Morocco, Croatia, and the U.S.S.R.

If I wasn’t so monolingually stupid, I wouldn’t bring such a handicap to my work. I may not be an ugly American, but I’m certainly not a sophisticated one, either.