Happy birthday, Mr. President!

Apparently the laughs are not yet over today. Today is President Robert Kocharian's 51st birthday. Armenia Liberty gives us a taste of the praise the state-owned (and thus, of course, pro-government) newspaper Hayastani Hanrapetutyun bestows upon the President:

The government paper says Kocharian [...] has repeatedly proved that he is
guided by “realism” as opposed to “romanticism.” “Skipper Kocharian is steering
the ship at a time when the weather is defiant, passengers are impatiently
waiting to reach the coast and the ship, which has gone through many ordeals, is
in constant need of repairs along the way,” it explains. “Using his life
experience, the skipper is calmly holding the steering wheel in his hands. He is
not losing a sense of moment and is not used to avoiding shouldering the burden
of responsibility.”

Skipper Kocharian.... Now, where have we heard such comparisons before? Wasn't China's leader Mao Zedong called the Great Helmsman?

Or is this pushing things too much and am I just in a very cynical mood today?

Armenian Traffic Police

I read this article on Armenian Liberty while drinking my morning coffee today. Let's just say, I started my day with a big smile on my face thanks to Colonel Hayk Sargsian of the Armenian Traffic Police! Read for yourself what he has to say about the level of corruption of the Traffic Police. Oh, and then there is the part about traffic in Yerevan not being chaotic......

Random observation number 2

I just came back from downtown and I noticed the first Dutch supporters for Saturday's soccer match in and against Armenia have arrived. They were wearing their regular "costume", orange clothes, so this made them stand out on the street. And in case you are wondering: yes, I have tickets to the match as well. I guess I'll have the Dutch flag painted on one cheek, the Armenian on the other......;-)

An odd observation

I have never in my life seen so many young men in their teens and twenties with bandages around their wrists or with broken arms, hands or wrists in casts as I have seen in Yerevan in the past two months. The only logical explanation I have been able to come up with is: fights. If true, I find that pretty sad.

I recently came across a project by the Dutch organisation IKV. Through its projects this organisation tries to promote peace and understanding in conflict-areas in the Caucasus-region, the Balkans and Israel-Palestine, among others. They recently started a project in the Caucasus which involves four young Dutch professionals who will work for three months at human rights NGOs in Armenia (Helsinki Citizen's Assembly or HCA, Yerevan), Azerbaijan (HCA, Ganja and HCA, Baku) and Nagorno-Karabagh (Helsinki Initiative ’92, Stepanakert). After that young people from these NGOs will visit Holland. The aim of the project is to bring young people from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Karabagh in contact with each other to promote peace and understanding in the region.

The participants write about their experiences on IKV's own website, but the guy based in Stepanakert and the guy working in Baku write their own weblogs as well. Unfortunately, the blogs are only in Dutch. Also, the info about the project they are taking part in, is only in Dutch. I tried to open the English-language site of the IKV, but it didn't work. Even though the vast majority of the readers of this blog don't speak any Dutch, I decided to post about the sites anyway. For those few who do speak Dutch....;-)

"Portraits of Hope - The Armenians"

I mentioned this book a while ago in one of my previous logs as being a book I was looking forward to reading. Well, I just finished it and it was well worth the time. A very readable, well written and informative book. Unfortunately, as far as I know, it is only published in German titled "Portraet einer Hoffnung - Die Armenier" edited by Huberta von Voss and published this past spring by Verlag Hans Schiler. If you happen to read German, I recommend this book.

The first part of the book consists of introductory essays on Armenia and Armenians, the genocide and the Turkish denial and a very informative essay on the role of Germany and the German army in the genocide. The third part of the book contains essays on places that are linked to the genocide and its survivors, like Musa Dagh, Deir-es-Zor, Tsitsernakaberd, the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City and the Armenian quarter in Beirut, Bourj Hammoud.

The middle part, and by far the largest part of the book is taken up by portraits of Armenians from all over the world, from all walks of life, most of whom are descendents of genocide-survivors. Most of those portrayed are Diasporans, some are locals, most are still alive, a few are not. Many famous or prominent Armenians are portrayed, such as Atom Egoyan, Charles Aznavour, Vartan Oskanian, Catholicos Karekin II, Hrant Dink, Benon Sevan and the brothers Monte and Markar Melkonian. However, a large part of the book is also devoted to portraits of "ordinary" Armenians, such as Rosita Youssefian, a teacher of Armenian in Buenos Aires (who, if I am not mistaken, participated in this site's Diaspora-log for a while some time ago), Madame Anahit, a local celebrity in Istanbul where she earned her living by playing the accordeon in the many cafe's and restaurants there (I remember watching a short documentary about her on Dutch VPRO-television several years ago) and Kharabagh-veteran Levon Arutunyan. To name just a few. While reading the essays, you don't just read about these people, you read about different partsof history and different places as well (the Armenian colony in India, the Armenian Monastery on the island of San Lazarro in Venice).

My personal favorites include the portraits of the president of the Armenian chapter of PEN Organisation Anna Hakobyan, Hrant Dink, actress and author Nouritza Matossian, Alfred and Ophelia Mouradian (an Armenian couple who ended up living in Germany and who helped Armenian POWs in Germany during the Second World War) and Levon Arutunyan, the Kharabagh-veteran. I missed one big diaspora in the book, the Armenian diaspora in Russia, but this may be due to the fact that the Genocide is the red thread throughout the book and the Russian-Armenian diaspora is more recent and economy-driven instead of genocide-driven.

Three times around the Square

I am recovering from attending a friend's wedding yesterday. The wedding ceremony was at the small Katoghike church on the courtyard off Abovyan at the corner of Abovian and Sayat Nova. I had heard of the church, but I had never visited it. It is a wonderful tiny church tucked away in the corner of the courtyard. During the church service, almost all of the guests had to stay outside, which gave the ceremony a certain charm, but at the same time it made the event a bit unorderly with people chatting, walking away, talking on their mobile. After the ceremony we were packed in cars and off we went to Republic Square for the traditional three turns around the Square newlyweds and their wedding party make. The wedding reception was at the Congress Hotel where we dined and partied outside near the swimming-pool. The weather was the only disappointment: In the course of the evening it became rather windy and chilly. However, this didn't affect the party, the only disappointment being that it was too cold to swim. But then again, I guess most of us had had too much to drink anyway to be able to stay floating in the pool. ;-) Sevag and Arevik, I wish you the very best and a happy future together!!

Some thoughts about Myrthe in Armenia

I have some good friends in Yerevan, but by far most of my friends live in Spitak, because until now, whenever I was in Armenia I would spend most of my time in Spitak. All the people I know there are pretty much average Armenians, some able to get by, some struggling to get by, some downright poor, but none of them even come close to being rich. On the other hand there is Yerevan: the face of downtown Yerevan keeps on changing and all the new shops that open up are chique and sell overpriced luxury items. Also, over the past eight-nine months, I have met many expats and Diasporans, some of them living fancy lives in fancy homes, going out for dinner every evening. These two different sides of Armenia sometimes give me a very schizophrenic feeling, standing with one foot in one kind of live, with the other in the other kind.

Another thing I realized from my recent, increased interaction with expats and Diaspora-Armenians is, how confined the life of so many Diaspora-Armenians and expats is to (the center of) Yerevan, how little they actually know about life in the rest of the country and how little most of them interact with local Armenians (apart from taxi-drivers, waiters at restaurants and cafe's, shopkeepers etc). I am sure this doesn't hold for any and all of them, but I noticed it in probably most of the expats and Diasporans I have met.

Without making a value judgement about any of the expats or Diasporans I have met, realizing this about their lives in Armenia, made me think about my own visits here and why I decided to come live here. Ever since I first visited Armenia, I have never really been a tourist here. In many ways an outsider, yes, because I have a different background, was born and raised in different circumstances. But by living in Spitak (I lived in a domik there several times for several months - including winter, brrrr!), by getting to know Armenians in Yerevan and in the country who let me into their lives and shared their good times and their hardships with me, at the same time I never have felt entirely like an outsider here. In many ways Armenia will never be 'mine', my home, and there are lots of things here I don't like or that I disapprove of. But at the same time, because of all the good and bad experiences I have had here and because of the many wonderful and the few crappy people that I met here, because of the things I have learned here about people, about life, because of all these reasons and many more, this country in many ways does feel like home, and will always be special to me.

The girl with the million-dollar-smile

Yesterday I set out to visit Elada and her family together with C., my boyfriend and B., the Icelandic girl volunteering inYerevan. They live in a village between Massis and Echmiadzin. Elada's mom Rada had explained to us that the direct bus from Yerevan to their village leaves from somewhere near Tashir / GUM. Even after following her directions and asking around (which didn't help us much as everone gave us different directions), we were still unable to find the busstop. So we went over to the marshrutka-stop for Massis where we asked again. At the stop, a woman waiting for the marshrutka asked us where we were going. It turned out she was going to the same village and knew the people we were going to visit (well, after all we are talking about a village here where most likely everyone knows each other...;-) ). She explained that we should take the marshrutka to Massis and change there to the bus to Echmiadzin, which would be faster than the direct bus to the village anyway. So we followed her and about 45 minutes later we were at the village. The woman pointed us in the right direction and after asking around a bit more, two girls (who were sent out by Rada to meet us, as she told us later) brought us to Rada's house, on the edge of the village. Rada later told us, this house was not their own. They were borrowing it, so as not to have to live in their own tiny quarters in the dormitory (obshchezhitie in Russian) with the other refugees living in the village. As I wrote in my earlier post about this family, they are refugees from Baku. The house they now live in, is a big three room house, with hardly anything in it, apart from beds, a table and some chairs. No gas, no running water. The family has their own big garden in which they grow everything.

It turned out to be the birthday of Rada's eldest daughter, something Rada hadn't told us when she invited us last week. We had a wonderful time with Rada, Elada, Rada's other daughter and her son, Rada's youngest sister and mom. All day we were laughing, talking, dancing, eating, drinking, having fun. Elada was her usual optimistic, laughing, witty, intelligent self. When Elada laughs, the whole rooms lights up, she has such a wonderful, captivating smile. My boyfriend dubbed her the girl with the million-dollar-smile. The way this girls accepts her accident, the operation afterwards, the fact that she has to learn to walk again, wow! I know I wouldn't be able to take things the way she does. When we were talking about her accident (she slipped and fell down a hill during a school excursion), she said, with her wonderful laugh: "Oh you know, I just found a very fast way to go down the hill." With her optimism and strong will, I am convinced this girl will make something of her life. Elada really is something special.

Saying goodbye in the evening was very hard, especially for C. He is returning to Holland on Friday, but will spend the remaining days in Spitak so he won't see the family again. However, I am sure B., my boyfriend and I will be visiting them more often. Before we left, Rada insisted on giving us fruit and vegetables from her garden. We kept protesting, but it seemed the more we protested, the more Rada wanted to give us. So we left with two big bags filled with apples, pears, peaches, corn, parsley, tomatoes, cucumbers and green peppers fresh from the garden.

I just realized that, while writing this, all the time I had a big smile on my face.

The price of a marshrutka ride is back to 100 drams. Apparently the huge amount of protests after the sudden increase on Wednesday is the reason for overturning the decision. People simply refused to pay 130 drams and paid 100 instead. I don't know if the protests are the real reason for returning to the old fare, though, because Armenian authorities usually don't care too much about public opinion.

C. and I took Vardan and his cousin to the Yerevan Zoo yesterday. Vardan is the kid from Spitak with the kidney disease I posted about a couple of months ago. He is currently in Yerevan for treatment. We all had so much fun. But I couldn't help feeling sad about the situation the animals live in: empty cages with only concrete and sometimes a treestump in it, cages or living areas surrounded by moats with dirty water and lots of plastic bottles and other garbage thrown in by the public. Many of the animals didn't look too well (fluffy hair etc.) either. But on the other hand, as C. remarked, he had actually expected the situation to be worse.

In the evening C. and I had drinks with a friend of his, an Icelandic girl who is working as a volunteer at the Children's Rehabilitation Center in Yerevan for eight months. This girl and I found out we have at least one acquaintance in common (we didn't compare our social circles any further;-) ). Later her boyfriend joined us and still later my boyfriend showed up. Turned out the boyfriends have known each other for about four years...... This is such a small town!!!

Apparently, today the price of a marshrutka-ride has been raised from 100 to 130 drams. As far as I can see, the ambush-tactic was used to introduce this price-hike: no announcements until today, when I saw several marshrutka's with a paper stuck to the door saying a ride now costs 130 drams. I guess we have to start collecting 10 and 20 dram pieces now as well...

Yesterday I spent a good part of the day with C. at Yerevan's Children's Rehabilitation Center situated between Lake Yerevan and the district of Noragjugh (behind the American Embassy). In July, he had worked there as a volunteer and he had promised one of the patients to come back and visit her. He invited me to join him, both because he knew I'd be interested and for translation purposes. It turned out to be a very impressive and moving visit.

Some of the children staying at the Rehabilitation Center had an accident and now have to learn to walk and use their legs again. Other children were born with muscle diseases, still other children at the center are physically handicapped (sometimes mentally handicapped as well). One way or another they all need treatment to help them learn to use their muscles, arms, legs (again) or to keep their limbs from "dying off" due to lack of exercise (sorry if this sounds a bit morbid, but I guess you all know what I mean). As is usual in such circumstances in Armenia, the children's mothers are staying with their children, to take care of them, cook their meals, bathe them, etc. The mothers and children live in a house on the grounds of the Center with ten to fifteen other children. I noticed the children at the Center all had good supportive material, shoes and leg-supports clearly made to fit them. Also, the exercise rooms that we saw seemed to be fairly well equipped. C. told me that the Center had been supported (still is?) by a Swiss group, which had sent equipment and also staff to work with the Armenian staff.

At the Center I met Elada and her mother Rada, two normal-but-not-so-normal Armenians, like others I have written about in previous logs. Rada is a mother of four who fled Baku, Azerbaijan with her family at the end of the eighties. Her husband either died or left her, I wasn't able to get a clear answer to that. They now live in a small domik in a village near Massis. Because they are refugees and don't have Armenian citizenship, they are not entitled to a house from the state (at least, this is what I understood from Rada). Of course, they don't have money to buy a place. Rada can't find paid work, but she is working as a volunteer at an organisation supporting refugees, obviously dedicated to try to improve the situation of refugees in Armenia.

Elada is Rada's youngest child, she is sixteen. Elada had an accident three years ago, which damaged her spine. She was operated on two months ago and is now learning to walk again, which is why she is staying in the Rehabilitation Center. She told me she wants to be able to walk again by May of next year, so she will be able to walk (and dance!) during her "Last Bell"-ceremony when she graduates from high school. After high school, she wants to study medicine to become a doctor. Elada's leg was obviously hurting her while we were sitting and talking in their room and C. asked if he could treat her so the pain would go (he is a Reiki-master), but Elada refused saying she wanted to feel the pain, because she hadn't had any feeling in her leg for eight or nine months and it was just now coming back. Later, we joined Elada at her daily excercises in the training room and darn, this girl was working so hard! Not just she, but the other children in the training room as well. There was one boy, barely five years old, who was learning to walk and boy, was he working! Taking a few careful steps and doing the exercises obviously took so much energy from him, but he kept on going, he would not give up.

Despite all the hardships both Rada and Elada are so incredibly upbeat and positive, believing that everything will get better some day. I am glad I got to know these two very brave and strong women.

There is a new newssite in Armenia at armenia.indymedia.org. According to the website, Indymedia is a "network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues" with many different sites dedicated to bringing news from many different places in the world. The Armenian site just started and at the time of writing there are only three articles posted (one of them about something that happened a year ago) and not all the links are working yet, so we'll have to see how it will develop.

On another note, I am working on several different small projects with different people now, both in Yerevan and in Spitak. One way or another all the projects are connected to health care. I don't have a health care related education and it was never really a special interest of mine, but somehow health care seems to be a red thread running through my life since I came to Armenia. I am enthousiastic about all the projects, though, and will hopefully be able to tell you more about them in the future.

Last night we ran into my good friends A. & T. and their three kids. My boyfriend and I were in town, having a drink with a couple of friends. I called A., because it was his birthday. Usually they celebrate all the birthdays at home with friends and family, but when I called the whole family turned out to be near the Opera, where there was some concert going on. As we were nearby, we went over to the Opera to meet them. It was so nice to see them again. They live way out in the 9th Massiv and only have a cellphone, so due to Armentel's great service over the last month or so, I hadn't been able to get through to them whenever I tried. I wanted to congratulate their daughter on her 11th birthday in July, but couldn't. I wanted to call them to hear about their oldest son returning from the army - he served in Kharabagh, so I hadn't seen him in several years. But again, I couldn't get through..... It turned out they hadn't been able to call me either, because they lost my phone number.

The reason they were not at home celebrating A.'s birthday, is because it was his fortieth and apparently there is an Armenian tradition that a man doesn't celebrate his 40th (a woman can, though). I had never heard of this tradition before. If any of you readers out there knows more about this tradition, please enlighten me, as I am curious to know more (yes, I am turning to you once more ;-) I asked my friends, but they didn't really know anything more about this tradition). Is there any link between this and the forty day mourning period after someone died? I mean, is forty in general considered a bad or unlucky number?

I met this family four years ago through a mutual acquaintance who has since disappeared both from their lives and from my life, but we have stayed good friends. At one time I lived with them for several weeks. Even though we don't get to see each other as much as I would like, we are good friends. They are a family that I feel really at home with, they are so warm and generous. A. works as a remontchik (renovating apartments and houses), T. is a fulltime mother by choice - she chose to stay home and raise the children and not work, though A. would have been fine with his wife working out of the house. They have been married for about 21 years (T. was only 16 when they married), but they still love and respect each other very much. Their youngest daughter has just turned 11, their oldest son has just returned from the army and their middle son graduated from school last year and is now working to try to save money to pay for his studies at the conservatory (he is a talented clarinet player, who used to play in the Yerevan Youth Orchestra).

I have a lot of respect for T. and A. and the way they raise their kids. They take parenting seriously and make an effort to install certain values in their children. This may seem the obvious thing to do when you are a parent, but in reality it isn't. T. and A. not only teach their children the importance of family ties but also respect for honest, hard work and the value of money, that money is something you have to work for and does not come flying your way. When A. has work and there is money, they make sure to put part of it aside for times when A. is out of work, they don't spend everything at once, another thing they teach their kids - the value of saving money. This family is one of the very few families I know in Armenia that makes a point of having dinner together every night. They wait for A. to come home from work before they have dinner, which is usually around nine or ten in the evening. They do this out of respect for A., because he is the provider of the family, because of his work they have food on the table. All of this may seem old-fashioned, but it is in a way refreshing to see this attitude in a country where status is measured by things and spending money (the nicest car, the latest model cell phone, etc.) and where it is sometimes easier and more tempting to make a living through illegal (or semi-legal) activities than through honest work. Over the years I have seen this family slowly, step by step improve their situation, though they are in many ways still getting by. Due to rising costs of living, most of their money still goes to necessary things, food, clothing for their children. The one thing they are unable to do, is set aside enough money to be able to buy an apartment. This has been their one big wish for a long time. For many years now, they have been living in the apartment of one of their relatives who is living in Moscow. Before that the five of them plus T.'s mother used to live in a one-room apartment. So they have never had their own place. I hope this family will be able to realize this dream some day. They deserve that.