- Robert Louis Stevenson
Amazing! 2010! And I can still remember like it was yesterday that everyone was freaking over the new millenium. And in 2000 whoever thought I'd be living in Armenia? Certainly not me. I had no idea where on the map Armenia was or if it was. Like most US Americans I would constantly confuse Armenia with Albania. Though somewhere haunting my memory was something terrible regarding Armenia . . . .
I'm in the process of settling into my home for the next 20 months. I have a little garden level apartment, the lower floor of a large stone farmhouse.
The landlord and owners live upstairs: a woman, her son and daughter-in-law, and their two daughters, ages 10 and 6. This is a photo of Gohar (mother) with the oldest daughter and her cousin, who lives a few blocks away.
The whole family is being very helpful as I try to settle in. I think I've found a good situation for myself. I like it better than living in an apartment or someone's spare bedroom – which is what I've been doing for the past 7 months. I'm looking forward to some privacy and autonomy.
Armenians have a different sense of privacy than Americans. They are quite comfortable with walking into my house or private room without knocking. I really don't think they do this to each other, as they have heavy locks on all their exterior doors. Perhaps they feel a sense of proprietorship when it's their own property, occupied by a foreign renter. At any rate, it comes as a shock to find out that I'm uncomfortable with that. So in truth, I've had to amend my concept of a 'private' apartment. I must get used to the idea that my landlord stores her fruits and vegetables in the cold cellar off 'my' kitchen and also in 'my' back bedroom.
I feel like a boat without oars. I don't quite know what to do. I'm assigned to work at the Y and I like it there. But they do have a different idea of how to go about business and it's hard to get a handle. Is work getting done? I can't tell since I can't understand what anyone is saying. I have these ideas about building membership and raising funds locally but for now the focus is on obtaining outside grants. Am I the one best suited to be here? I'm currently working on a 'Project Design and Grant-writing Workshop' with Tatev, a bright young Armenian woman.
Seventy years of outside rule left the people without the ability to think. It's not just here in Armenia. It's regional. The Soviets managed everything, down to a nit and something's missing – there's an inability to plan, to think logically (or at least what we in the West call logically), to work together.
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I've closed down most of the house. I'm sleeping on the couch in the livingroom as it's cold in the bedroom and there's no good light in there to read by. It's just easier to sleep in the livingroom and not have to worry about dealing with the cold and dark. I can sit on the couch and read, write, knit, then just go on to sleep when I'm ready.
My living area is about 15' x 18'. One of the walls has a large carpet on it, the kind you would see in a Persian market. It's pretty, but darkens the room more than I like. Everything in the room is dark: the furniture is dark grey/black patterned, the rug on the floor is dark grey and is covered with a area carpet which is brown. Both couches are covered with dark Persian-style carpets, one browns the other reds. There's a large bureau with doors which I use to store art and school supplies and a bookshelf full of very old books. There are also a couple of other pieces of furniture along the wall, storage bureaus and some shelves with sliding glass doors. I have only one window which is partly obscured by a curtain. I keep the curtain open as much as possible. There's a large dining table in the center of the room where I work and eat.
I spend a lot of time on my laptop: studying Armenia, playing games, watching movies, writing and doing internet.I'm overwhelmed with my inability to learn the language and communicate with the people around me. It's painfully uncomfortable. My language training and study has been interrupted over and over again by my trips away from here. Many people want to speak English with me, they want me to come to their schools, but I don't even know how to do it or what to do.
So exactly what am I doing here? Good question. How am I helping by draining off the best and brightest students and contributing to the welfare state of mind? I am constantly on the verge of quitting. I don't know what to do or how to do it. The culture feels medieval, patriarchal and based on superstition. And I feel worse than useless.
It's all very interesting. It's fascinating to see the imprint of a culture and a government on a people. And it's even more interesting to turn the light back on oneself, to see in what ways I also blindly carry my cultural beliefs. We think we are free-thinking individuals - and yet we are very often just carbon copies of our countrymen with relatively minor variations.
I'm reading Colin Thubron's book, “Where Nights Are Longest.” A quote: “The very streets seemed uncrossably wide. Starting across their tarmac, you feel you may be run over by a car still below the horizon. You have no rights. Pedestrian crossings merely indicate where you may pass; they give you no precedence over cars, which behave as if you did not exist. These are the least democratic roads on earth.” Ahhh . . . . yes, uh-huh. . . :o)~
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