Feeling at home - Տանը զգալով

I’ve come to feel very at home lately in this country. It’s a feeling that stems from things like being able to walk into various neighbors’ houses in the village without asking in advance, and wind up having coffee or a meal with them. It’s a feeling that stems from things like knowing how to split a piece of knotted would cleanly without getting the axe stuck (or if I still do have trouble, being able to call a neighbor or one of my students over to fix the problem right away). It’s a feeling that comes from not really worrying about my reputation in this small, tight-knit community anymore, but instead being at ease knowing that the people here know who I am and what I do here and that that’s just fine with the majority of them.

A big part of what makes it easier to live here as a foreigner is how open hearted many Armenians are. Armenians have over and over again amazed with their hospitable nature and genuine desire to treat even the most distant stranger as an honorable guest. What follows is a few accounts of times where I think this point is really exemplified. Instances of random hospitality have happened to me many, many times in this country, but here are a few of the more memorable ones to me.

#1 – The Marshutni Driver – Մարշուտնի Վարորդը

In a Marshutni from Yerevan to Lusakert last winter, on my way to my friend Ben’s house, who lives and teaches in the village of Karashamb, I made quick friends with the very friendly driver of the minibus. Or rather, he made friends with me. I don’t know if I ever had much say in the matter. Over the course of the trip, the middle aged, white-haired driver periodically peered at me from the rear view mirror and, despite the fact that I was seated near the back of the min-bus, seemed to be taking a great deal of notice of me. He started joking with me and asking me about where I was from and what I was doing in his country. Then realizing that I could speak some Armenian, he began getting more and more excited as the hour-long trip went on. Finally as all the passengers were getting off at the last stop in Lusakert, he forbid me to get off with them and instead drove the two of us straight to his house, insisting that I would come to meet his family as a guest and get well fed before I could continue on my way. Some of the most gratifying experiences in this country have stemmed from being open to these chance meetings, when your schedule and whatever plans you may have had are essentially hijacked by strangers who want to get to know you and treat you to their hospitality. In Lusakert, at this man’s house (Suren was his name), we shared some glasses of beer and ate fruit, walnuts, meat, potatoes, and finally coffee while he introduced me to his daughters and wife. He insisted that if I ever came back to Lusakert, I’d have a place to stay and rest whenever I needed. Once I began telling him where I was headed, Suren exclaimed that he was a friend of my friend Ben’s landlord (stuff like this starts to become not surprising here), and called him to find out the exact whereabouts of the place I was going. He then called another friend of his to drive me there. After arriving, Ben’s landlord, who was now in on the orchestration taking place, gave Ben a call to confirm that I had arrived safely. Ben tried to confirm in some broken Armenian, responding “ha, ayo, anpayman,” (yeah, yes, of course), which apparently didn’t satisfy the landlord enough, because he then called me directly (having apparently gotten my number from Suren) to confirm that I had arrived and was safe and warm at Ben’s place. “I wasn’t sure if Ben understood what I was saying,” he said to me. “Did you make it to the house alright?” I said I had. Both phone calls happened within a minute of each other, with Ben and I facing each grinning the whole time.

#2 – Qnarik and Robert – Քնարիկ եվ Ռոբերտ

This last summer, on a hot June afternoon, I was on my way back to Lehvaz after doing a test hike for Border 2 Border. I had camped out in Lichk the night before, the mountain village which was to be one of the first stopping points on the journey. I had made it up there with my heavy pack on, discovered a nice, open, mostly flat clearing by a stream and decided to call it camp for the night. In the gathering dark I made a fire as fast as could with some dead branches, put my tent up, and then relaxed, just me and the fire, for how long I’m not sure. I don’t know at what point exactly I realized it, but it suddenly dawned on me that I had never camped out—in the wilderness of America or Armenia— completely by myself. I got tired, started to neglect my friend the fire, and decided to call it a night. I fell asleep as soon as a brief paranoia about bears or wolves or some other beast native only to Armenia passed over me, and slept soundly until waking up suddenly and having to go to the bathroom sometime around midnight. As I unzipped my tent, I was stunned to find the clearing I was camping in fully lit up as if by a massive street light. The clearing I was camping in was drenched in bright white light from a full moon that had risen while I was asleep. I could see the clearing around me and its surrounding trees with amazing clarity. I stood and admired, and eventually remembered why I had gotten up in the first place. The next time I woke up, it was early morning and the sun was just starting to rise. I ate cheese and sausage and bread and maybe an apple for breakfast and got on my way. I’ve never been a fan of hiking downward in general, always preferring to go upward when you can see your goal and you have adrenaline going than downward when there’s not really much of a goal except getting back home. Plus your legs are already tired from having gone up. The hike back from my campsite to my village was tiresome, and somewhere near the village of Vartanidzor, just as the day’s peak sunlight was starting to blaze down on me, I decided to sleep under a giant walnut tree not far from the road, but far enough away that I wouldn’t be bothered by passing cars. There wasn’t much thought that went into the decision. I was simply exhausted and it was hot and the tree provided superb shade, so down I plopped and was out in minutes. I woke up in the middle of the afternoon heat, knew that I had to get moving, and started back on my way. Not long after I was back on the road though, I ran into a big-haired Armenian woman with a husky voice who asked if I was the “American boy who teaches English in Lehvaz.” I said “Yeah!” very enthusiastically I’m sure, and she seemed delighted and told me that I had to come over to her house” right now.” Knowing Armenians well, I knew that it would be hard to refuse her even if I decided to put up a fight, so I gave in easily and followed her down to a secluded, fenced in home just of the road.  Turns out she was Qnarik, the school director in the village of Vartanidzor. Her husband Robert, a veterinarian who loved to drink and loved to talk about the greatness of soviet times in Armenia, was seated on the couch when I came in and was also excited to meet me. I was treated to potatoes, meat, matsun (Armenian yogurt), tons of fruit, tea, coffee, homemade vodka, and cucumbers with honey spread on them, which I had never tried before but which Robert was very, very adamant about me trying. They were delicious. I ended up finishing my trek home hours later completely re-energized. I’ve since been invited to their home multiple times for meals, and have visited the school in Vartanidzor and helped Qnarik fill out an application to have a TEFL Peace Corps Volunteer at her school next year. I consider both Qnarik and Robert to be some of my best friends here.  It’s not often that people invite a sweaty backpacker who just took a nap under a walnut tree off the highway and into their home, and then wind up becoming friends with that backpacker and inviting him over again and again, but that type of thing is starting to not seem so strange here anymore. S

#3—Chris’s Neighbors – Քրիսի Հարէվաննէրը

At night, in the dead of winter, just after New Year’s, in Yerevan. My girlfriend and I were on our way to a friend’s apartment who was not in town but had given us a spare key and was letting use the place for the night. It must have been well below freezing outside. On the cold walk to our destination, we were feeling grateful to have the warm apartment to stay in for the night. However, as we finally reached the place and my girlfriend fumbled for the key to the apartment in her purse, she couldn't find it. This, compounded with the frigid cold outside, was sort of a numbing blow to our moods. We wandered for an hour or so in the streets near the apartment, backtracking our steps along the sidewalks and re-entering the shops we had just been in to ask if they had seen the key. They hadn’t, and it didn’t pop up shining under a streetlight on any of the sidewalks either. The realization that the key was gone for good sank in deeper, and eventually we headed back to the apartment just to double check if it hadn’t fallen out somewhere near the door, before calling it quits and finding other accommodations for the night. We didn’t find the key, of course, but as we searched around, the neighbors who lived next door and rented the place to our friend came out and asked what the trouble was. After hearing the story, they invited us in with persistence (we did at least try to say no a couple of times) and soon we caved in and got warm in their house. Before we could fully thaw out, Nor Tari (Armenian New Year) food started coming at faster than our appetites could keep up with. We were treated to blinchik, fruit, cake, layered vegetable and bean bars, lamb, sausages, and cheese along with tea and coffee. I ate pretty shamelessly, because it was delicious and I was hungry, thanking them profusely. They then offered to let us stay at their place for the night, and once again persisted aggressively, but we felt that we’d be overstepping a little too much if we obliged, and eventually headed back out into the cold an hour or so later to go stay at a hostel. The two ladies had warmed us up and put a bright spot on a night that would have otherwise been quite a bleak one.