In the south

I think this Arto and I will be pretty great friends. The entire weekend there, I think he was always smiling, must have uttered the phrase “problem chka! (problems there are not!)” to me dozens of times, and more than once even moved in on me for a gigantic man hug/kiss that caught me totally off guard. This is my new host father I’m talking about by the way. His stature, even at 61 years old, is still pretty imposing. He’s just shy of 6 feet tall, with a heaving chest and gut and kind eyes. He greeted me as I exited my 8 hour taxi ride from Yerevan, ears still ringing with pressure from the repeated altitude changes, and bear hugged me with all his mass. To be greeted so warmly by someone you’ve never met before is something you don’t get used to, and it’s a great feeling.

We walked together from the village’s social epicenter with its two shops and the school where I’ll be working for the next two years, all eyes now fixed on the new American walking with Arto, and ambled up the village road to his home. The deep south is set upon two sides of a valley, the homes and each home’s accompanying garden rising up on either side, and the grade is steep enough that I should be in damn good shape during my service. At the moment Arto was panting pretty heavily, but mostly because I think he was trying to talk so fast that I don’t think he was giving himself proper time to breathe fully. He talked rapidly, waved his arms as he spoke, and chuckled and patted me on the back when he realized I wasn’t understanding more than 5% of what he said. At first I thought it might just be nervousness that made him speak so rapidly, but as my stay drew to a close I still had yet to see it subside.

He opened the green, slightly rusted gate to his home and ushered me in. Passing a garden with cherry trees, cucumbers, and tomatoes growing among other things, I stepped onto a large, long patio area with wooden rafters overhead. Seated at the dinner table was a welcoming party comprised of Arto’s wife, Carmen, his son-in-law Vahram, Dayna, the currently finishing up volunteer I will be replacing, and Varsik, the 51 year old Armenian English teacher who I’ll be working with side-by-side with during my service. Perhaps most anxiously awaiting my arrival were two of Arto’s grandchildren, Artur and Vahe. “Hello,” they greeted me with deeply inflected English. These were two of the three boys belonging to Arto’s daughter Armine, married to Vahram. Three more boys, belonging Arto’s other daughter Haikoor, live in the village as well, bringing the grand total to six male grandchildren for Ardo. It was plain to see that they were his pride and joy. Couple that with the fact that he had had only daughters himself, and that, particularly in Armenian culture, boys are so prized as future bread-winners and defenders of the country’s borders, and the man was stoked on them beyond all measure.

I was shown my shower, complete with wood-burning water heater, which was across the patio and to the left, through another small garden area of pomegranate trees and grape vines hanging overhead in the rafters. I’d now been here about 10 minutes, I hadn’t even gone inside yet, and this seemed to me like the most beautiful home I’d been to in Armenia so far.

We ate together, a formidable meal of dolma (grape leaves or cabbage usually stuffed with rice, greens and beef), tomato and cucumber salad, lavash, and other delightful stuff. Dinner was rounded off by tea and sweet bread with apricot jam and chocolate butter. Stuffed and feeling very, very lucky, I showered up and hit my bed.




Flies are pretty prevalent in my new village. And if you eat your meals outdoors, which my new family does, you are open to attacks. Fortunately, Arto has a time-tested method for dealing with this problem which I discovered during my first breakfast in the deep south. At each meal, the table is set also with a long, fresh branch from one of the garden’s grape vines. Throughout the meal, Arto continuously picks up the branch, and while talking in his usual animated, rapid manner, waves the branch with surprising grace above the food, generating small puffs of wind and scattering the flies asunder. He also will often use the branch to swat one or two his grandchildren on the head each time (very lightly). Not as any sort of reprimand really, but just because he for whatever reason seems to get a huge kick out of it.

After breakfast Arto and I got ready to take a walk to his larger garden that lay across the highway on the other side of the valley. Once there we rolled bales of hay over to let them dry in the sun, picked apricots off his trees and ate them on the spot, and picked some green beans for our lunch later on. On the way home, I figured I had now seen two things in his life that fill him with pride, his six healthy grandchildren and his garden. I felt much obliged.

Arriving back at his home, it appeared a bit of rain was coming in. Arto spoke with assuredness that rain was indeed coming later in the day and that it would be a very welcome shower. When I mentioned something about looking the weather up on the internet, he responded simply, “I am the internet.”

After a quick lunch with the new family I headed over to meet Danya, who had called a taxi for the two of us to get down to the nearest substantial town, which I’ll refer to as “the town,” with a population of over 5,000 people, a cell phone dealer, Marshutni service to Yerevan, and lots of other amenities one needs every now and then. It took us about 10 to 15 minutes to get there by taxi. A currently serving volunteer, was having me, Hannah, a few other currently serving volunteers from farther north and their Fulbright friend over for tacos. Basically, I think she had wanted to have a little get together for Hannah and I, seeing as we were the new American blood in the deep south of Armenia. And I gotta say it was great. We had some drinks, and the amazing tacos that she made for us. I inhaled the tacos as we listened to The Band and The Kinks playing off of another volunteer’s iPod and for a moment there I felt almost like I was back at home. That is until I went out onto her balcony, looked out, and saw what were unmistakably some of Iran’s mountains in the background. They weren’t too far away.

A final important item for the weekend was the visit to my school the following morning. The school where, once again, I’ll be working at for the next two years is almost brand new. I’m no connoisseur or anything, but the place is impressive. There is a computer lab with apparently working internet, a printer, an assembly hall with a piano, P.A. speaker and a snare and hi-hat in the far corner for what reason I cannot possibly imagine, soccer nets, basketball hoops, the works. For a village of around 600 people, such a nice learning environment hadn’t registered to me as a possibility. I’m stoked on it.

Before the school visit, I had been a bit apprehensive. I had woken up late, thrown on my best shirt and pants and told my host mother I’d be back for breakfast after the meeting. Right now there was no time. I walked down to the school with Varsik, the Armenian teacher I’ll be working with or my “counterpart” who also happens to live right next to my host family. When we shuffled into the director’s office (Jora is his name), he was waiting patiently. After showing me the school, they seemed surprised that I wanted to have a quick Q and A with them about what my responsibilities would be, but I insisted. We sat back down in his office, and all they had to say about their expectations of me was that I should always “work hard, be active” and that’s about it. Nothing more specific was said, and they seemed totally comfortable with that, so I guess I was too. This meeting, like everything else I had been anticipating during the weekend, ended up being far easier than I thought it might be. This place was laid back. Hangist.

The night before I left, I got a phone call from Vahram, Arto’s son in law who I had met the first night I arrived. We had exchanged numbers over dinner but I had not expected him to call me so soon, much less at 11:30 pm at night just as I’m hitting the sack. He said he just wanted to call to wish me safe travels back to Yerevan the next morning, he had been very happy to meet me, was excited for me to return for good in August, and also said something that I’m pretty sure translates roughly to “God will bless the work you do here.” What a nice guy. The deep south is alright.