I live in a Baku neighborhood called Ahmedli, once infamous for its lack of decent water supply. Not that water is abundant at the moment, but the residents have adapted to its absence. Some have put water tanks in their bathrooms, some over their toilets and some on the roofs of Soviet era apartment complexes.
Electricity outages were also frequent until a Turkish company called Barmek took over the services and brought some order into them. But now, after Barmek has been crashed by the government that once favored it, the outages are frequent again.
Oh, have I mentioned that we don’t have any central heating since early 1990s? And in winters, gas is like a candle?
That is why many Ahmedli residents still long for Soviet times – they used to have both cold and hot water, central heating, continuous electricity and gas supply and used to live in neat, clean apartment complexes in a multicultural neighborhood. With the coming of independence, there came rats, big rats and all those problems outlined above.
Don’t look for Ahmedli somewhere in west or east ends of Absheron peninsula – it is in 15 minutes from the city center if you take a metro; and it is in front of your eyes, in the left, if you look from Baku Boulevard.
Living in Ahmedli you can also feel that you live not in a democracy. For, together with adjacent neighborhoods that have the same problems, Ahmedli makes three electoral districts. In theory, we have three MPs in the parliament. My MP is a writer obsessed with creating a perfect image of Heydar Aliyev in Azeri literature. And I’d put a disclaimer here – I voted for another candidate.
Needless to say, I don’t watch Azeri TV, for I can’t stand all those hypocrites and fake faces talking about Azerbaijan’s miraculous economic development while a huge Baku district within 15 minutes from the city center lacks ordinary services.
No democracy could tolerate such a hell in THREE electoral districts. And I don’t talk about other Baku districts further from city center. And I don’t talk about provincial districts.
3 comments:
Hi Ali,
I understand your frustration. I lived in Ahmedli many years and those problems still ring true to me, even though now I'm far from Baku.
I hope one day that country will be normal as any modern, democratic country and we all will feel it first in our communal services.
Hi there! You are following me on Twitter now, cool. Well, I can tell you when I was living in Azerbaijan (2 months ago) I lived in Heydar Aliyev District and well... water supply was the ordinary "one hour in the morning, one hour in the night" and to not mention the month we lived with electricity in the bathroom because of some neighbour that didn't feel like paying. You get used to it but when you walk the 30dark metres away from your house and comes out to the lightened avenue it comes as a surprise how things can be that bad and still there is money to keep that avenue lightened day and night... I will follow you!
electricity in the bathroom WATER I mean of course.
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