Postcards from Georgia (Updated)

Postcards from Georgia:
I arrive at the border in a Chevy minivan, a shared taxi carrying an Armenian doing business in Turkey, an Iranian doing business in Russia and three Armenians with no business but chainsmoking during the ride. There’s no line to leave Armenia, but the passport agent is busy with a long line of trucks from Georgia and Turkey headed into the country. They idle on the bridge over the small river that divides the nations. A fisherman stands in the middle of the stream in wading boots, casting for trout. On the Georgian side, a blonde border guard examines my passport. A woman in uniform is so incongruous here that I notice she’s cute, a serious-faced pixie with epaulets. She stamps my passport.
“Please look at camera.”
I look into a webcam and smile.
“Please do not cheese”
I break into a broad grin. “Aww, now you made it so I can’t stop doing it.”
She looks at my passport “You are smiling in this picture too.” She says, and points to my photo, taken 9000 miles ago at a New York City Post Office. “You are easygoing guy.”
“Usually am.” I say
“Welcome to Georgia. You can go straight through customs.” She says, and smiles.

The Marriott Courtyard and the Tourism office are across the street from each other in Freedom Square. The Marriott has better free maps of the city, but the tourism office has better free maps of the country.

For the first time in more months than I can count on one hand, I walk into a McDonalds, this one on Rostavelli street, occupying two floors of the corner of a historic building. I’m told it’s the classiest in the country. I realize for the first time that every McDonalds has the same distinct smell, hot grease and fries and plastic. It’s a smell I could recognize anywhere. I order a big mac, fries and a coke then take my meal upstairs to eat and watch Georgian women in miniskirts chase toddlers while their husbands flip through iPhones. I’d forgotten how soft McDonalds bread is. The preservatives, too, have their distinct flavor that I’d forgotten. After months of tough, freshly killed beef and chicken, I can’t even taste the meat. The fries are forgettable tools for carrying ketchup and grease. The coke is delicious.


My Couchsurfing host is an Indian medical student. I share the surf with Alex, a Chicago boy who came to Georgia to volunteer for four months in Teach and Learn in Georgia, a Georgian Government program that works like a mini-PC. Idealistic 20somethings from English-speaking countries are recruited to be placed in Georgian schools in Tbilisi and the regions (especially in the north, where the PC won't go because of the risks in the event of a war with Russia). They're given a week of orientation, no health-care and twice the salary of a Georgian teacher. It's this last point that has infuriated the opposition party, as has the rumors of one of the TLG'rs (or TnL, as I like to say) being gay. He's not, but that hasn't stopped the media from camping out in front of his house. Alex is friendly and soft spoken, and it’s his first time out of his little Georgian village in 4 months. We go out at night with three TnL girls, equally wide-eyed. “You mean you can just go into a bar without paying cover?” says one, from a farm near the Mississippi River, “Isn’t that stealing?” We make our way to an art gallery/bar. “I think this might be a private party.” She says, “We shouldn’t intrude.”
In the bar is a mix of expats and good music. An 8 year old gypsy girl with a teddy bear backpack dances with the customers. I meet an American journalist and her German friend, who has discovered Long Island Ice Tea has very little ice and no tea. Unfortunately, the German has been discovered by a short, squat 60-something Georgian man with eyes going in two different directions. He is holding her hand and telling her how beautiful she is in some sort of English, then naming bands he likes. I look at the American, then take the Georgian man's hands. “Your hands are so beautiful. And you have a very long life line. You must have lived for several hundred years.” The American gets the joke. “Oh, you have to read his right hand,” she says, “look at this love line. It’s very short. I think you’re not going to be lucky in love.” I pick the man’s hat off his head. “Look at this hat, I love this hat, it’s so beautiful. May I have it?” The German takes it out of my hands and put is backwards on her head and starts to dance. The Georgian is encouraged. He puts his hands on both of her cheeks and kisses her full on the mouth.
“That’s it buddy, you’re out of here.” I push the Georgian away, towards the bars entrance.
“Just one. Just one more.” He pleads. Out. push. Okay, okay, he leaves the bar.
“Well, I didn’t give him any tongue.” Says the German.

Chase and I hit the bathhouse, sharing a private room with a shower and a hot tub. Drinking Georgian beers in the steaming sulfur water, then cooling off by lying on the marble slab is the most relaxing thing I’ve done since my last spring motorcycle ride along the West Side Highway. We get a massage from a Georgian man who wears swim trunks in deference to our Americanness. I later find out that if I wanted a massage from a woman, I had to go up the hill to the older baths where drunken men stumble out and women check their makeup in mirrors in the alcove outside.

I take the train home, sharing a compartment with two ethnic Armenian women born and living in Georgia. I bring out bread, cheese, sausage and lemonade. They bring out chicken, vegetables and vodka. We make a few toasts, then I call folks at home for a Sunday-night catchup session. I’m on the phone with Sandra when people start running the hall “Durs Gna! Durs Gna! Passport Brne!” yell my compartment mates. “I have to go,” I tell Sandra, “they’re telling me to go outside and bring my passport. I also haul out my backpack and sleeping back. Never want to leave behind your towel and all that. “Djur! Djur! Brne Djur!” men are yelling. Bring water? Where? I’ve got a bottle of drinking water in my bag. I hop off the train. Flames and smoke are coming from the front. I run forward. The rear of the locomotive is on fire. Used fire extinguishers are piled around. Men are running up with buckets labeled ТУЛИТ -Toilet“Djur! Djur! Djur ka!” there is water here! There is no light. I pull my headlamp from my backpack then drop the pack on the ground. There is a small pond, little more than a puddle of water. Beside it is an Armenian man, trying to avoid getting mud from the pond on his shiny pointy black shoes. He’s smoking a cigarette with one hand, dipping buckets into the shallow water with the other. There’s a long line of men waiting for their buckets to be filled. I step into the mud and join him, but the water isn’t deep enough to fill a bucket. “Oh really.” I say, and step into the water up to my ankles, then pass up filled buckets of water.
The fire is soon put out and we stand around watching the locomotive and waiting for someone to say what to do.
“Thank you for helping save the train. You’re a real hero.” Says a distinguished looking man. “Would you like some dry socks? You shouldn't catch a cold.”
“No, I’ve got plenty in my bag, but thanks. I’m sure this only happens on the Georgian side.”
“Of course. They were going much too fast.”
We get back on the train. I change out of my mud spattered pants. Women come to my compartment to thank me and worry about my catching cold. The train limps back towards Tbilisi, the locomotive is changed and we start our journey again. I unpack my sleeping bag and get in my bunk, the rocking motion of the train sending me right to sleep. At the border, I wake enough just enough to hand the guards my passport from my pocket.
-Don’t bother him, let him sleep, I hear the other people on the train saying, he helped save the train, he’s a good boy.
I wake up in Yerevan.

Update:
Returning home, my host family quizzes me on the prices of food in Georgia. How much was bread? How much was this cheese? I bring them two kilos of mandarins, the fruit specialty of Georgia, sold by old ladies on the side of the road and in metro stations. I get good at doing 3-way conversions. 1 Lari for a kilo of mandarins is about 50 cents is about 150 dram.
-Which is more beautiful? the teachers at my school ask, Yerevan or Tbilisi
-They're both nice, I say.
-Say Yerevan, they say.
-Yerevan.
-Good boy, apres.
I return to school to find half the students out sick. My school director has placed crushed garlic in the classrooms to ward off disease and cancels my English clubs.
My host family tells me that the radio has announced that Saakashvili blamed the fire on an attack by a 13-year old Abkazhian terrorist. The radio also mentioned that an American passenger helped put out the fire. C'est la vie.

Video Post!

This is how we do it.

Res Ipsa Loquitor

Blog design update

I just figured out how to replace my background picture on my blog.  That's the sun setting over Turkey as I take the train back to my site.  We're pretty close to the border here.  Wander too far, and border guards from Russia will take you aside for a little talk.  Since I don't speak Russian, and they don't speak Armenian, that's probably a bad idea.  Go the other way far enough, and you'll meet up with the Azeri border guards.  They'll probably speak Russian too, but they're not really interested in talking.  Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, and here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

Here's that picture, BTW

Crash

6:06 PM 

I’m lying on the floor of a flat on the 4^th story of a Soviet apartment block on S. street in Yerevan.  The flat is owned by my friends Claire and Imogen, Fulbright Scholars, teaching English at Yerevan Universities.  Claire has a bruise streaked with tiny cuts on her right cheek.  Imogen’s head is wrapped in gauze slowly being soaked through with her blood.  I’ve taken a tranquilizer and we’re looking at a laptop.  On the laptop’s screen is a picture of a truck that has run off the road and crushed a small Iranian-made taxi.  Three quarters of the taxi are mostly intact, but the area around front passenger’s seat has been crumpled.  This morning, we were riding in that taxi.  Claire and Imogen were in the back.  I was in the front.

6:08 PM

“Am I alive?” 

“Sam’s having his moment.” Says Claire

“I mean it.  How can you prove to me I’m alive?  Look at that picture.  I should be dead.  I could just be hallucinating this or be in heaven.”

“We’re alive, we know we’re alive and you’re on tranqs, so you can trust us.” Says Imogen.

“You were in the car with me.  You can’t be trusted.  We could all be dead together.  Haven’t you seen Beetlejuice?”

They haven’t.

“The couple get home from the car crash, and they wonder how they survived, but it turns out they’re really ghosts and can never leave their house.  But don’t worry, I’ll call Michael.  He’s studied philosophy and is very smart, he can prove to me that I’m alive.  Plus he gave me this carabineer.”

I dial Michael.  He’s riding in a Marshutney.  I tell him that he’s smart, that he’s studied philosophy, that I like the carabineer he gave me, and could he prove I’m alive.

“I can’t do that, Sam.” He says.

“I have no way of knowing whether or not I’m alive!”

12:25 PM

“You don’t have any metal in your head, do you?” Asks Dr. Anna, the Peace Corps’ doctor

“Actually, I’ve got three earrings.” Says Imogen.  She takes out two easily, but the third is new.  She goes to a mirror.  Claire helps her unscrew the little ball.  It falls into the sink and goes down the drain.  I take the earrings in my hand.  Imogen lies down on the CT scanner.  We’re at the Nairi Medical Center, the best hospital in Armenia. 

Dr. Anna and I retreat to the technician’s room.  The bed that Imogen is lying on rises, then passes her head through the hole of a giant white plastic donut.  I watch Imogen’s brain appear on the screen in two dimensional snapshots.  Dr. Anna and the technicians speak in worried Russian.  I can’t understand what they’re saying.  I shouldn’t even be in the technician’s room, so I don’t speak, don’t ask questions, try not to show emotion, not to disturb the doctors.  Imogen comes off the bed and is wheeled to Dr. Anna.  I wait to hear if there is brain damage, cerebral hemmorage, skull fractures.

“Did you know you have a chronic sinus infection?”

9:34 AM

L. from the embassy is dressed for a fall powerwalk in a nice New England suburb.  She’s wearing sneakers, a purple fleece and has a water bottle with the logo of her school.  She was going to head out hiking when she got the call that there was an American having her head stitched together in the A. district hospital. 

“The Doctor says it cost --,000 drams.  Do you have the money with you.”

Last night at the ATM in Yerevan, I’d taken out my monthly paycheck, most of which goes to my host family for food.  I pull four --,000 dram notes out of my wallet.

“Can I get a receipt?”

“They say that you’d have to wait for them to fill out all the forms.”

“Okay, I understand.”

I go to the doctor.  I thank him profusely for saving my friend’s life.  I shake his hand with my left hand.  With my bruised right hand I slip him the bills.  He doesn’t look at them.  I ask him his name.  I congratulate him on the recent wedding of one of the young residents at the hospital.  He wishes me the best of luck and health.

We take Imogen down to the waiting SUV from the embassy.  It’s pouring rain.  The SUV quickly fills with Imogen and embassy people.  Claire shows up with Fantas and Twix from the nearest store.  We get into the car of Armen, the Armenian translator at the US Embassy who has been with us from almost the beginning.  We beg him to drive slowly and carefully.  We eat the Twix and drink the Fantas.  It’s the first time we’ve been able to sit still since the crash.

“It’s funny,” says Armen, “I was just here for the wedding of the young doctor.”

8:24 AM

I help lift Imogen off of the litter and onto the hospital gurney, in the process recovering my precious Marmot 0 degree down sleeping bag which I’d been using to keep her warm.  We wheel her into the A. district hospital, ride the elevator to the second floor.  The Doctor is slipping on his coat.  He removes the wrappings that the medic put on Imogen’s head at the gas station by the side of the road where we crashed.  For the first time, I see the size of her wound.  I involuntarily gasp.  “Oh god.”  The doctor orders me out.

I won’t talk, I tell him in Armenian, using vocabulary I usually apply to my students.

A gash has opened running from Imogen’s right eyebrow to the center of her head.  The skin is peeled back, exposing her skull.  It looks firm and solid, like blood-stained marble.  The doctor swabs the inside of the wound with gauze.  There’s surprisingly little blood flow.  Later I’ll realize that’s because most of it has gone into her hair to clot and mat.  The doctor takes a razor and shaves her hair around the wound, then he begins sewing.  I watch for awhile, take pictures.  Armen stands by, translates.  The doctor says he’ll do a good job, she won’t have a scar, will be able to find a good husband.  There was just a wedding here you know, one of the young doctors got married.  A wonderful wedding, very pretty bride. 

I check myself in the mirror over the OR sink.  There’s clotted blood on my face and hands.  It’s probably mine, but who knows. My arms are covered in blood and scratches from the glass.  My right temple is bruised and my jaw aches.  I crack it with a loud pop.  Everything seems fine.  No serious damage.  I turn on the tap to wash the blood off.  Nothing comes out.  There’s no water today.  One of the nurses comes over and pours water over my hands from a basin.  I thank her.

8:00 am

Armen arrived at the same time as the Ambulance.  “I’m from the Embassy,” he said.  I wasn’t sure what to say.  He spoke great English, but why would a guy in a track suit in a 90’s Lada be from the Embassy and randomly at a gas station on the way to Aragats at 8am on a Sunday?  Can I trust him?  Later I learned that he was on the Embassy’s emergency response team, that Claire had called them and that he had come directly from his home. 

The doctor and his assistant coming out of the ambulance were central casting for reassuring doctors.  He was thin, with steel gray hair and a dignified erect walk.  She was young and pretty, but not overly so, with a shawl over her white nurse’s coat.  Their ambulance was an olive green van with a blue flashing light, no heat, benches for seats, and a litter made of two poles and canvas fabric for a stretcher.    The doctor removed Imogen’s t-shirt from around her head, examined her wound, injected her arm with morphine from his green metal medical kit.  We bundle Imogen onto the litter and cover her with my sleeping bag.  Armen helps lift her into the ambulance, then gets in with us.  I decide to trust him. 

We must go to Yerevan. I say.

We’re going to Ashtarak.  It’s closer.  We have to.

We must go to Yerevan, I say, and offer the young nurse --,000 drams.  She looks away.

Later, I learn they are right, that Ashtarak is five minutes and Yerevan half an hour.  She needs stitches right away and her bleeding controlled.  Everything else can wait.  My demand might have killed her.  There is much I don’t know

7:35 AM

I’m doing everything at once.  I call the Peace Corps Duty officer.  “I’ve been in a car crash and I’m almost out of phone credit call me back.” I hang up.  WHERE’S IMOGEN?  I run across the highway into the gas station.  Imogen is sitting on a bench against the stone wall.  Her head is wrapped with her blue T-Shirt.  “What happened?”

“Hit in the head” she mumbles.

“I want you to lie down.” I move her to a longer bench.  She’s very heavy against me.  I lie her down, give her my fleece jacket to keep her warm.  “I want you to talk to me.  Tell me about your pets at home.”

“My cat just died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, I…” The phone rings.  “keep talking” I pick it up.   “I’ve been in a car crash on the way to Mt. Aragats, I don’t know where I am and my friend has a bad head injury.  I’m going to give the phone to an Armenian now so he can explain where we are.  Please put SIM credit on my phone so I can make calls.”

“Okay,” the Duty Officer says.  I hand the phone off to an Armenian and go back to talking with Imogen.  By now she’s sitting up and lucid.  This is good.  Claire’s in the gas station too.  She’s about to cry.  I hug her. “This could have been so bad.” She says

“In six hours, you and I will have a good cry together but for now help Imogen.” I say

“Can you get my wallet?” Asks Imogen, “It should be in the car.”  I run back across the highway to where the car and truck are mashed together.  A crowd of Armenian men is standing around.  I open the rear door and find Imogen’s wallet and keys in the back.  My phone beeps in my pocket, letting me know it’s been recharged with money.  The trunk is open.  Inside is my backpack.  I pull the sleeping bag out to give to Imogen.  As I’m doing so, my camera falls out.  I take it out, point it at the car and truck smashed together, but without really seeing them.  Click. 

“Please, brother no photo” Says an Armenian.

“DON’T FUCK WITH ME” I scream close to his face, in English.  He hangs back with the others.  This is no time to be polite.

7:32:43 AM

Breathe.  Just breathe.  You’ve been in a crash.  You don’t know how badly your body is damaged.  Right now, there’s no way you’ll be able to move anyway, so don’t even try.  Just sit there and breathe until the shock passes and you can move.

7:33:14 AM

Okay, you can breathe, that’s good.  Now’s the time to get moving.  Open the door, get out of the car.  Your door won’t open.  Your door won’t open.  Your door won’t open.  Get out the back.  Just slide.  It’s pretty easy sliding from the front right to the back left.  Out the door.  On the grass in the highway meridian.  You can’t see. That’s because you don’t have your glasses.  It’s still dark.  Feel around for them, find them.  Your flashlight.  It’s in your pocket from this morning.  Use it.  There they are, on the dashboard.  The frame is bent, but they’re working.  There’s Claire, she’s walking and talking, she’s okay.  Imogen is hurt she’s saying.  Got to call the Duty Officer.  WHERE’S IMOGEN?

7:32:13 AM

Cruising in the left lane of the highway at 110 km/hr.  Comfortable car warm against the predawn grey.  Half asleep.  From the right lane, a truck going 80 km/hr makes a left turn into the gas station.  I can see he’s going to hit us, there’s no way to avoid it.  Some inelegant thought like “We’re Fucked!”  I might have articulated it, I might not.  Crash.

6:12 PM

“How can I find out if I’m alive or not?”

“I’m glad Sam’s having his moment, this is good for him.” Says Imogen

“I know, I’ll call Saaqib.  He’s my best friend, he’d never lie to me.  He could tell me if I’m alive or not.”

I dial Saaqib in New York.  I hold my cellphone and stand at the window looking at the memorial to the Armenian Genocide.  He picks up the phone.  I can tell from his voice that I’ve woken him up.  It’s a good sign.  I might be dead, but I know that Saaqib definitely is not.  After all, he’s in New York.  I ask him if I’m alive.  He’s a bit confused.  I tell him the story, quickly.  I let him know that I’m probably alive, but I’ve taken a tranq and can’t really be sure.

“You’re alive, Sam” He says.

“Thanks, that’s what I needed to hear.  I know you would never lie to me.”

We talk for a few minutes about the clubs and bars in Yerevan. I ask him about work, how things are going with girls.  I tell him I got to go, but we’ll talk later, yeah.

I’m alive! I’m so happy!

Priceless

I get on the metro at Yeritasardakan, heading towards the train station at Sassoon David.  Except for the Marriott in Republic Square, Foreigners are still a rare sight in Yerevan, and Americans even rarer.  It's pretty obvious that the guy with mid-length hair, an overstuffed backpack, old sneakers with toes sticking out of the sides, khaki slacks and an old "Stuyvesant High School" t-shirt is a foreigner or some kind of weirdo.  Probably both.  The guy across from me is in his late 20's, thickly built, with a bald head and the Armenian national costume of a form-fitting "Versace" shirt, tight pants and shiny black shoes that come to a deadly-looking point.  He's staring at me, trying to suppress a laugh.  I look directly at him.  He looks away.  He puts on his sunglasses, all the better to see me with.  I nod my head, dropping my $5 ray-bans from my forehead to my nose, and look back at him.  He laughs.  At Republic square, two teenage boys, skinny and excited get on and sit next to muscles.  They're not as subtle as he is, looking at me and whispering to each other.  Muscles is a little embarrassed and feigns disinterest.
"What d'ya think he is?" they're asking each other. "He's definitely not Armenian, he can't understand us.  Russian? English?"
At Sassoon David, I stand up.  This enthralls muscles and the boys.  They go silent.  I go over to the the larger of the boys.  "Yes Hayeren hosum em, akbar."  I speak Armenian, bro.  Muscles and the small boy crack up.  I get off the train.

I'm lying in bed, watching season 6 of Entourage.
Hey, Sam come here and read this for us, it's in English.
Well, okay.
My host parents are sitting in the living room with a neighbor and her mother.  They hand me three sample package of pills, slickly designed packages of brand-name prescription drugs, the kind they hand out to doctors to hand out to patients.  I've never heard of the meaningless corporate brandnames or their meaningless (to me) generic names.
She got these from America, how often should she take them?
Give me a minute, I'll check on the internet.
I google the drugs.  The first package is silver.  Two of the blisters have been popped and their pills taken.  Each of them are 8mg of a rather harmless looking treatment for constipation.  The other two are treatments for heartburn.  The first requires a four-week course of treatment and the second eight weeks, with another possible eight weeks if the doctor recommends it.  Both require followup testing and dose adjustment by a doctor.  But the risky side effects of both seem to be minimal, and one of them gave patients relief within one week of treatment.  There's five pills in each package, taking one a day.  That would give ten days.  Should I tell her not to do it, that only a doctor can give her these?
I sit down with her, and point the the first, silvery package.
"This is for if you want to go to the bathroom but you are not able to go to the bathroom."
Her daughter laughs.  No, no, that's not the problem.
"Okay, then you don't need it.  These are for..."  I can't figure out the word for heartburn.  I pull out my dictionary, it's not there.  I try the dictionary on my computer.  There's heartache, but it's not the same.  "A pain in your chest and your stomach."
No, no, that's not what she has.
My host family searched the dictionary
deeabetess.
Diabetes.
One minute.  I'll check on the internet.
I know generally about diabetes, that there's two kinds, that it has something to do with insulin and blood sugar.  I read through a few wikipedia pages.  Diabetes can't be cured by medication, but it can be managed through lifestyle changes.  I open the Russian wikipedia page on diabetes, which my host mother can read.  I look in the dictionary and find the word for "cureall."
"Diabetes has no cureall." I tell her.
"Walk for thirty minutes every day. Go to the train station and back."  My host mother writes this down on a piece of paper.  "Don't eat sugar.  No jam or honey.  If you can be 2 or 3 kilos less, it is good. Take one aspirin a day.  These medicines are not for diabetes."
Her daughter thanks me, invites me over for coffee, asks if she'll still be able to drink coffee and I say yes, but without sugar, and she asks if she can eat meat, and I say yes, a little, although of course it will be little because meat here is expensive and then they leave and I go back to my room and to watch Vincent Chase get laid and Ari Gold nail rivals with a paintball gun.

My Roommate

O Hai! I can haz Peace Corps Volunteer?

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

My new hobby

My new hobby is village popping.  I show up in a village that's never been visited by anyone from outside of Armenia, start talking to people, play with the kids, tell them I'm from America, show them pictures of New York on my cell phone, practice my Armenian, get invited to spend the night, get introduced to the daughters, marry, settle down, have a flock of kids in a 250-person town in the middle of the Caucasus, become a patriarch of the town, die and get buried in the local cemetery while everyone gets drunk at my funeral.

Well, the first half of that, anyway.  Today I stopped by a little village on the outskirts of my small town that had a fast-moving cement irrigation ditch in it that the kids liked to jump into.  No one has bathing suits, so the boys just strip down to their skivvies.  Whenever a woman walks by, they hide behind the bridge.  Here's a picture of my site-mate Scott taking the plunge.

And here's one of my host-dad doing some beekeeping

1/104

I’ve been at my permanent site a week now.  Things move slowly here in the desert, and that’s a good thing for now.  The adjustment to site is harder than the move from America to my training village. I need to learn to deal with the harsh desert heat, the rusted metal outhouse, made hotter by the decomposing shit below it, the flies in my bedroom and the kitchen, moving over the food and my body.  Dozens of tiny itchy bug bites have appeared on my hands and feet and seem to be working their way towards my torso.  Meals here are variations on bread and cheese with potato, yogurt or egg.  Meat is for a special occasion.  On the night my arrival, I was given a ribby quarter of a small chicken in the broth of my potato soup in honor of the special occasion. I was feeling sick at the time, so I made excuses to avoid picking the meat from the ribs and wing. 

I haven’t eaten as much as my host family wants me to.  Last night, I picked at the potato pieces cooked in a pan with oil. 

Eat! Encouraged my host father

Eat! Demanded my host nephew, a 14 year old who tells his elders what to do.

Ok, ok. I said.

My host father dumped a spoonful of potato pieces on my plate. 

No, thanks, I’m good. I said

My host father dumped another spoonful of potato pieces on my plate.

I squeezed on some more of the ketchup I bought on my last visit to the nearby town with a supermarket, and kept picking.

Yogurt. Said my host mother

No thanks. I said

She ladled the watery yogurt into a bowl for me. 

Sugar. Said my host mother.

I don’t want any.

She poured sugar onto the yogurt.  Flies started landing on it.

I finished picking at the potato pieces. 

Thanks for dinner.

Eat! Said my host father.

Eat! Demanded my host nephew.

I’m full. I said

This is yogurt! Said my host father

I know.

It’s good!

Yes.

Eat! Demands my host nephew

I’m full.  I say. Yes, this is yogurt.  I know this is yogurt.  It is good. I know it is good, but I’m full. I don’t want it now.  Thank you.

I haven’t yelled or screamed, but I’ve told them directly that I’m not eating their food.  The table is tense.  I get up, and go into the house for my bottle of filtered water.  I think about Richard Shweder, an anthropology professor I had at the University of Chicago, an academic battleship who assigned the books he regularly published with names like “Thinking Through Cultures.”  He had done his fieldwork in a Hindu Temple town and taught “Cultural Psychology,” the point of which was to disabuse undergraduate students of the idea that any set of moral order could be considered universal.  “In the Hindu Temple town where I did my fieldwork,” he would open the first class, “it is considered a greater moral offense of a man to eat chicken after his father dies than it is to refuse medical care to a person who cannot pay.”  The rest of term would be spent examining the culturally-appropriate justifications for excising the clitori of pubescent African girls, executing tribal ne’er-do-wells for witchcraft, abstaining from or indulging in contact with the opposite sex, certain foods, certain bodily fluids and many other anthropologically relevant cultural practices.  For my final project for the class, I crashed a party of tipsy Singaporeans and interviewed them on how they would divide a family with six children, three boys and three girls into two beds.  I found that “the moral grammar of Singaporeans places a high value on The Sacred Couple but is unconcerned with the incest taboo.”  The moral I took from the class was that most of our customs and values are cultural, and quickly change amongst other peoples.  

The Armenians are very concerned about the welfare of their guests.  They’re also quite certain that this young, unmarried guy who can’t even speak properly is completely unable to take care of himself, and if left to his own devices would soon get lost, starve and die of cold, in dirty clothes.  If I don’t eat this food that they love and have eaten all their lives, something must be wrong with me, and that would be terrible, and would require much worrying and home-remedies. 

I need to release the tension.  I return to the kitchen.  My host father has finished his bowl of yogurt, after pouring sugar and torn up chunks of bread into it.  

Ahhh.  He says.

Eat! I say

I did! He says

This is yogurt! I say

I know he says, and my nephews and host Mom crack up.

I force the bowl towards my cousin.  Eat!

No, no, thanks, and my host father starts laughing.

This is good! This is yogurt!

By now they’re in hysterics.

Eat! Eat! Says the 7 year old nephew to the 14 year old

You Eat! He says

No, no, you must eat! I say.

No! no thank you!

Ok, I’ll eat then.  I take some bites of the yogurt.  The family is wiping their eyes from laughing so hard.  I eat about half the bowl.  I’m getting used to the taste.  It will take time, but I’m getting used to it. 

So here I am...

My first 48 hours at site.  How did it go?  There are some accomplishments. My site-mate, Scott, and I rode the marshutney one way to get to the nearest town with an ATM, a shuka, an airconditioned supermarket and a sit down restaurant, then read the Russian train schedule to catch the Soviet-era train back into town.  This felt like an accomplishment.  The six-car train seemed to carry as many people as a single marshutney.  In my car was a middle age Armenian lady and two long haired dudes passing a bottle of Armenian wine.  Long haired dudes with sandals.  And beards.  Armenian men keep their hair short, their beards trimmed and their shoes black and pointy.  "Hey, what's going on fellas?"  They look a bit stunned.  "Francais?" "Espangol?" I try the other two languages I know.  "Paval Ruskie?" They ask.  "Nyet.  English and Hayeren and Francais."  "Oh! English! Good! We are Slovakians! We are hitchhiking!  We were in Iran, and we met an American, he was from California, his father died and left him a date farm.  What do you think of this country?  It's just like Slovakia was when we were young."
We sit with them, pass the bottle.  I break out the extra-fancy cheese I bought at the air-conditioned supermarket.  It's the kind that comes wrapped in individual triangles.  "Oh! Cheese! We are starving!" Say the Slovaks.  They share their sunflower, and we pull the seeds of out it.  I open up one of the seeds and find a maggot.  "Oh! That is gross!" they say, "Throw it out the window! We will try to hitchhike to the Georgian border tonight! We need to be back in school next week!"  We jump off the train at my village.  It's a real jump, at least a vertical meter to the platform.  "Goodbye! Good luck living here for two years!" call the Slovaks as the train pulls out towards Gyumri.
When I get home, my family is worried.  Where were you? They ask.  I explain that I had gone to town to do banking and shopping, like I had told them this morning.  Yes, but we didn't know when you would be back.  I took the train.  You have my cellphone number right?  Ah, yes, well, you know our nephew is a little touched in the head.  He ate the paper you wrote your cellphone number on.  Oh, well, let me give it to you again then.  Ha ha ha, isn't this funny.
At the air conditioned supermarket, I buy two lemons.  I want to prepare "Ice Tea" I tell my family.  What is "Ice Tea" asks my family.  It's tea with lemon that you put in the refrigerator.  It's very American.  Okay, if you want, they say.  While the water boils, I slice the first lemon and squeeze the juice into a canning jar.  My host mother provides a tea bag.  I'll need three or four I tell her, but she only has one.  We add an herb that's used in medicinal "teas" instead.  This is good, I tell her, do we have sugar? She reaches for the sugar bowl on the table, and dumps the entire content into the canning jar.  I taste.  It's good.  Host mama puts out the teacups.  No, we have to wait.  It will be ready in four or five hours.  Oh. Okay.    Five hours later is 3 pm, the hottest time of the day.  My sitemate is visiting.  I break out the Ice Tea, pour it into cups for myself, host Mama, each of my host nephews and Scott.  mmm....That's good ice tea.  Scott and I agree.  The nephews are happy.  Mama doesn't want to try it.  Ice tea is not for her, she says.  Papa walks in from working on a truck.  Here Poppa, try some "Ice Tea."  Hey, that's really good.  Well, maybe I'll try a little, says Mama.  She tries a sip.  By this time, Scott and I have drained the canning jar.  We'll make another one, says Mama, only this time, we'll put some sour cherries in it.  Okay.

A conversation between myself and my host brother:

Him: How can America be strong when you let in Muslims? Aren't you worried that they'll betray you? 
Me: Immigrants come to America because they want to be there, and because of that we become loyal to America. But American society also founded on the notion that all religions are equal within American society. We can be members of different religions and ethnic groups and full members of American society at the same time. My best friend was born in a muslim country, and our president's father was born in Kenya. 
Him: We had a king once. He built a city, and brought in people from other countries to live in the city. Then there was a war. The other people opened the gates of the city and let in the enemy, and the king was killed. 

Also-Bananas here cost 50 cents, and women's haircuts $2.50.  Bananas in New York cost 25 cents and women's haircuts $50.  Discuss.

It's been awhile since I gave you something to step to...

I haven't had it in me to sit down at my laptop and write a coherent post.  Here's some notes on village life while I'm at the I-Cafe.


My family has been harvesting hay for the winter, to feed their cows.  My host brothers spend their days in the fields with scythes, getting sunburned.  My uncle spends his days working on his Belorussian tractor.  When the tractor is working and the hay has been scythed, he drives it around to the fields and bales it with a hay-baler-trailer.  By the time I get home, there is a pile of hay bales in the backyard as tall as the house.  I help my family lift them into the attic and the barn to store for the winter.  "Thanks for helping us," they tell me.  "Thanks for the yogurt and cheese," I tell them.

A blond young man, much too pale to be a villager, stopps me in the street.  "Your teacher, she is Ms. L?" He asked me in English.  Yes, she is.  "What is her number?"  Are you her friend? He cannot answer the question.  "This is where she lives, yes?"  She does live there.  One of the other PCVs goes to get her.   "Tell him I am not home.  He likes me.  I do not like him. We were in school together."  she says.  The young man parks the green car with two of his buddies in it in front of the house I'm in with some other PCVs.  He comes in.  "Where is she? What is her number?"  She's not here, we tell him.  Maybe she went to Hrazdan, a 40 minute drive away.  He doesn't believe us.  We don't have her number.  "Maybe you do, you just don't want to tell me."  Well, if you're going to lie, lie big.  I directly confront him.  She's not here, I tell him, and we don't have her number.  Intimidating body language. Stand tall, cross arms. Wearing mirrored Sunglasses.  No more friendliness, no clueless American abroad. Careful, measured, direct speech.  Suddenly I'm glad I weigh so much more than everyone else, that I'm a head taller than him.  "You do, you're just not saying," he says.  But as he says it, he laughs, and looks away, and I've won.  We don't have her number, She isn't here.  Go home.  Do you understand me?  He's not going to go home right away, he doesn't want to lose face that much.  But he stops bother us, sits in the car for 15 minutes while I watch him, then turns and drives the three hours back home.  

Teaching model school in the village, we expected eight or ten kids to show.  Instead we got fifty or sixty.  One boy begins to disrupt the class.  I pick up his chair to move him away from the disruptive group of boys and to a studious group of girls.  "Ganatsi, Ganatsi," I tell him, using the imperative.  He runs out of class.  "What happened?" I ask my PC trainer, observing the class.  "You told him to go.  You meant to say, 'Ari,', come. Don't worry, he'll be back tomorrow."

In the city where I come to use the internet, I run into Mormons! They're wearing white shirts and silk ties from Hong Kong, carrying the book of Mormon in Armenian.  One is from Utah, the other Washington.  I'm surprisingly enthusiastic to meet them, trying to preempt the creepy friendliness of the missionary.  But they've been in the country 6 months and are starting to stray.  They thought they would be going to Latin America and learning Spanish.  They've lost the enthusiasm for their work, and are just going through the motions.  In a way, I'm dissapointed.

I walked through stinging nettles two hours ago and my legs are still tingling...

Here's a little game that Peace Corps likes to play with new volunteers.  First, they tell them to plan and implement a community project by their fourth week in country.  The new volunteers will be given no financial resources, except for a lesson on Community Organizing tools like, "find out when everyone's schedule is, so that you won't be weeding fields in the middle of the winter" and "Make a map of your community so you'll know where things should go" and "figure out what your communities highest priorities are by making a neat little matrix."  They'll tell the volunteers to make sure that our projects meet the community's wants and needs and have a sustainable impact.  The volunteers will be encouraged to meet the mayor and plenty of other strangers and to ask their help in designing and implementing a project.  Because they've only been studying the language for a month, they're not going to be able to say much, but some major points will get across. Some mayors will ask the Americans to repair the roads, others will ask for a new irrigation system.  Ours encouraged us to teach the children English and said that she really loved sports, so maybe we could do something with that.
So we planned a sports day, and put up a sign at the school inviting the children of the town to the football field, where we'd repainted the goalposts a brilliant white, the sustainable part of our project.  We painted a map of town on the sheet, and had the kids sign it and mark the locations of their home as a gift to the town.  Some of us played football with the kids, always a winner, and some of us taught Yoga, which was a surprise hit, even with the 14-year old boys.  I got ambitious and set up an orienteering course, drew a map, translated "Orienteering" into "Depee" which literally means "Towards," gave a quick lesson on English words for cardinal directions, gave them some compasses to use and pointed out the first flag, at the top of a hill.  The kids were superexcited to find a flag, but had no idea how to use a compass or find the next flag.  So I ran up to the top of the hill, and yelled for them to go West.  They had completely forgotten the lesson on directions.  "Aravmooq!" I yelled, and pointed to the west.  They ran west, and found the next flag.  I led them around the course, and they had a great time.  Three more times, with three groups of kids, I ran up the hill, pointed them towards flags, then ran them down.  At the end of the day, we played a 30-person football match with all the kids in town that remained.  With no language skills and only a few dollars out of our pocket, we had a pretty good community project.  By the time it was presented in Powerpoint to the other volunteers, it was a pretty great community project. 
Peace Corps will then play the second round in the game.  They'll tell the volunteers to host a July 4th party for their families.  They'll tell them to share their American culture.  The volunteers will get excited.  Burgers! Hot Dogs! Fireworks! They'll think of all the things they love from home.  They'll think of beers by the grill, watermelon seeds and water balloon fights.  Here, Peace Corps will say, is all the money you need to make this happen.  Don't buy booze with it, but spend it however you see fit.  Go for it, have a blast.
But here the difficulties will start.  Where to have the party?  50 people is a big crowd.  There's no public space in a small village to accomadate that many people.  One of the families agrees to let us use their storage room on the 1st floor.  A little carpentry on some tables, and appropriation of furniture, and there is enough space for everyone.  We hunt around the main town for food and supplies.  The butcher provides ground beef for the burger.  We find watermelon, we find Cokes and ice cream for floats, we find water balloons and sparklers.
The 4th finds us missing a few essential resources.  There's no grill to be had, so we put the patties on a chickenwire fence laid over wood that has been burned down to coals.  The water's off in most of town, so Kathryn and I walk to the other end of town to a house with water to fill the waterballoons, then carefully lug the bucket back.  The grills not quite ready yet, so we play waterballoon toss with the kids, a big but quick succcess.  We notice that mostly women and children have come, and few men.  The ones that have come seem to be searching around for something.  One of them finds a bottle of beer someone has brought.  Aha! He says, and cracks it, pouring a round.  But it is just one bottle of beer, and it's not a drinking kind of party.  Dissapointed, they retreat upstairs to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.  We cut the burgers into sliders, because Armenians are usually wary of new foods.  They politely try them, then eagerly devour the Chicken Khorovats in an American Glaze that we've also made.  We've made a few side dishes, but nothing like the decadent spread of yogurts, salads, breads, and cakes at a typical Khorovats.  There's little time for us to sit and enjoy the meal.  We're running around bringing in different foods and shooing the chickens away from our grill.  At the end of the feast, we wash 50 sets of dishes in a bucket-assembly line.  By the end of it, we're exhausted, our host families have tried a bit of hamburger, listened to American music (we dance with the kids to Elvis and the Beach Boys) and watched their kids run around with sparklers.  They politely thank us and head home.
Here's the lesson Peace Corps likes to teach with this little game.  If you come into the country, listen to their needs and give them what they want and what you can offer, things will be surprisingly easy for you and they'll appreciate it.  If you come into the country with plenty of money and give them what you want, with resources they don't have, you'll end up stressed and exhausted and they'll politely thank you and head home.  

Happiness is an Internet Cafe with Microsoft word that lets me get to blogger...

I have to recalibrate my readings of strangers. In America, I can gauge strangers fluently. The 20 year old from France who has come to Columbia University to study Politics and Economics? I will go to bars with him, talk with him about life, invite him into my home, introduce him to family and friends. The 22 year old from Mexico who has come to New York to work in a restaurant’s backroom? I will sit and drink beers with him and talk about life, bring my friends over, but unwritten rules keep him out of my home and family. Meet someone, and they’ll know when it’s appropriate to ask your number and you theirs. Are they a friend of a friend, or someone completely random? Maybe you should google them first, be their facebook friend, or not. That guy in the reading room of the New York Public Library sitting next to you, do you trust to say “watch my bag and laptop while I go to the bathroom?” What about the Columbia library, or the Starbucks? Do you take rides from strangers? Not if they offer in the street, but if the posting comes on craigslist and they reasonably put-together, then you might. You’re not to judge a book by its cover, but in a city of millions that’s all you have the time to go on.
But what about Armenia? I can’t speak the language, can’t detect the vocal and cultural nuances that indicate so much about a person. So when Katie and Michael and are I walking a dirt path around the mountain to see what we can see, and we wave hello to some farmers, and Katie walks right over and starts talking to them in Armenian, opening up who she is and where she’s from without any wariness or the well-practiced distancing that lets bargoers and subway riders talk politics before exchanging first names, I’m a little startled. Oh Sam, they tell me, you’re just a New Yorker. Strangers are okay, people are friendly here, you can talk to them, it’s fine. So we walk a little further, and the next group of farmers waves to us, excited to see the novelty of strangers, and beckon for us to join. “Ari, Ari, Nesti” Come, come, sit down, join us. Go for it Sam, this one is all you. Yeah Sam, try it.
And so I walk over. Hello I’m Samuel. I’m Vahag, I’m Arman I’m Daniel. Daniel? My father’s name is Daniel! Where are you from? Russia? Norway? Germany? America. AMERICA? Yes, America. Where in America? New York City. Is that close to California? No, California is here, New York is here. This is Katie, this is Mikail. We’re living here. We’re studying Armenian. We’re teachers.
Bundles of hay are pulled up. Sit down, sit down. It’s lunchtime, eat with us. That’s Lavash, that’s Varung, that’s Dzu, that’s Vodka. Oh, you know the names of things! Great! What’s that? What’s that? Here, drink a toast. Okay, one or two. “To America and Armenia and Friendships.” Hear Hear! Gaynost! Here, have some lavash! Let’s take another toast! Oh, you’re toasting with Lavash instead of Vodka, that’s very funny! My son here studies English! “Hello, what is your name” “My name is Sam” Aha! Very good! He will go to university and be a professor!
Thank you, thank you, we should be going now, we have to get back before dark. Here, take a ride on the tractor. Katie can ride up front, we men will ride on the harvester in the back. Michael and I sit on the harvester. He points out that a single cruise missile costs more than my entire stay in the country, and isn’t it more cost effect to make friends in foreign countries rather than killing enemies? Up front, the driver offers that Katie take the wheel, but she refuses. He insists, she refuses. He takes his hands off the wheel and steps out of the cab, riding on the sideboard. The tractor goes straight on the dirt path, but the path starts to curve. He laughs and gets back in the tractor. The tractor drops us off a mile from Fantan, and we walk back into town, stopping to right the shell of an overturned abandoned car. In town, a stranger with a dump truck greets me, “Sam, I’m going to Naverj’s house, come in, I’ll give you a ride.” I take him up on the offer.

Starting to Come Together

6/20/2010 10:32 PM

Things are starting to come together.  Languages, relationships, perspectives.  I can now communicate my basic wants and desires, make simple declarative sentence about what I’m doing and where I’m going, and what I will do and where I will go.  Nouns and verbs come slowly.  Only after dozens of repetition will words stick, especially verbs that are always changing and conjugating.   The oddest words stick in my brain.  I remember Tzeetzernack, swallow (the bird), but not to drink; Tan, a yogurt drink, but not sandwich;  Chosel, to speak, but not to see.  I feel less and less like a baby in a man’s body and more like a pre-teen, just starting to explore the world and be trusted with responsibility.  I’ve written very little this week.  Here are some highlights.

-Technical training becomes more sophisticated. We ask Tatiks about their traditional remedies, and family members about their views of the health system.  We view a hospital and a health clinic.  On the wall of the hospital is a soviet era-poster of bespeckled doctor in a medical gown and white van Dyke beard showing which foods are nutritious and which are not.  Next to it is a USAID poster of a softly focused woman and her baby explaining that prenatal care and delivery are paid for by the state and international aid agencies and women should refuse to “tip” their doctors to ensure their baby is born healthy and cared for.

-Bringing out the first Frisbees in town.  At first, we play in the schoolyard, a good way to exercise during recess.  After school, I hike up to the hill where my host brother is herding the sheep.  Before I go, papa spots him through the soviet-era telescope, sitting on the hillside chewing a blade of grass.  He’s naturally very good at Frisbee, being both athletic and a top-notch physics student, and we play until it’s time to drive the sheep home.  Herding sheep is surprisingly entertaining.  The flock moves like one big plastic animal.  To get them to move faster, run and yell behind them and thwack some rumps with a stick.  Eventually they will get ahead of you, and come to a huddling stop and start eating grass.

-Going to Yerevan, passing a group of American tourists on the hill where Mother Armenia stands and telling my host brother to not speak English so I can overhear their conversations.  They turn out to be completely inane.  At a Yerevan street market, $35 buys a used guitar made in Leningrad.  The build quality of the guitar is terrible.  The top is unvarnished, the neck is held to the body with an exposed bolt, the strings haven’t been changed since before perestroika, but the sound is great, twangy and strong.  I call everyone I can at home and tell them how excited I am. 

Sunday Was Another Day for the Peace Corps Brochure

Sunday was another day for the Peace Corps Brochure.  The town was celebrating a feast day, a regular occurrence whose schedule condones and controls the slaughtering of precious livestock for meat.  Before I woke up, my host brother had slit the throat of a ram, tied it up by its hind feet, skinned it and disemboweled it.  “I didn’t want to wake you.  It’s too cruel to see,”  he said.  When I got to the house of my host uncle, these pieces were laying on the side of the path, and the muscular bits of the ram were being cut into chunks and skewered for Khorovats, the Armenian Barbeque[1].  I cut some potatoes, which are physically, morally and gastrointestinally benign. 

“Come, we go to church,” said my host brother.  We walked to Maggie’s farm, where her host grandfather was behind the wheel of the town’s Marshutney.  Ordinarily, he’s friendly, but will occasionally turn on an intense temper, especially on other drivers and disobedient children who get into the milk.  Afterwards, he’ll be friendly and charismatic again, as if nothing happened.  Inside the van are Maggie-jan and her extended family and my 9-year old cousins.  There’s grandmother, her sister, the son, the daughter-in-law, their three children, several sets of cousins and their broods.  We drive through the center of town and turn left at the post office.  We are now on the dirt road leading to the mountain.  The van’s windows are covered with black velvet, and I push it back to see pilgrims climbing the steep dirt road the van is now bouncing up.  None of the windows in the back of the van open, and there are no air vents, so we pilgrims endure the four seats in the back, feeling each other’s body heat and smelling each other’s smells as we look towards the front window to keep from getting carsick.  As we come to a particularly steep and slippery grade, the van starts sliding backwards.  Some of the men jump out.  The van tries again, and fails again.  I see my chance, and jump out the door.  The air is cool and clean.  The van tries again, stops in the middle, tries again, stops 2/3rds of the way up, tries again, and clears the hill. 

At last we make the church and the van is descended on by a horde of four-foot tall grandmothers bearing thin yellow candle sticks.  Noticing the Americans, they glom onto me.  Maggie’s grandfather urges me to just wade through them, but I trade a 100 dram coin for a roll of candlesticks, then wave my 25-cent talisman to keep the others away.   The church is a small stone structure, built into the side of the hill, with a slanted metal roof to keep off the rain and snow.  I step inside, and the bright warmth of the day is replaced with a cool moisture of a stone room, lit by hundreds of small yellow candles stuck to the walls and placed in braziers dripping wax on the floor.  I light my candles and stick them to the walls, and my host brother points out a stone cross that was carved by his uncle to commemorate a relative who was killed.  “Was this in the war?” I ask.  “No, by neighbor” my host brother replies.  “When did this happen?”  “2006.”  Oh.

I could stay in the church a long time, examining the icons and elaborate models of other, larger churches, but Maggie’s grandfather wants to get back.  Getting back in the van, I graciously let the other pilgrims in first, and grab a seat near the front of the van and the open driver’s window.  Two minutes later, I am justly rewarded when the six year old girl sitting on a lap behind me ejects whitish vomit onto my shoe.

We go to my host uncle‘s house, where the skewers of lamb meat have been roasting in the pit oven used to cook lavash.  In the smokefilled kiln, men pull out the skewers and taste the lamb.  The meat is ready.  We bring the meat to the women in a tub lined with lavash.  They put the meat into bowls, set the table, put out the salads and juices that they have made.  The men sit and pour vodka into each others glasses, toasting Armenia, the noble sheep, each other, and the pleasure of good company and good spirits.  The women bring the bowls of meat, and offer me the first choice.  I pick a rather squishy offering and cut into it.  The inside is white and fatty.  I take a bite.  It’s oddly creamy, almost like butter, and not chewy like fat.  “Inch e sa?” I ask.  The men laugh and grab their pants.  I’ve just taken a big bite of sheep balls.  “It’s good for you!” I’m told “and it’s tasty too!”  Well, I don’t want to be greedy.  I cut the ball into eighths and pass them around the table.  A fine solution.  I offer up a toast, and the sweet warmth of Russian vodka gently burns away the slick of prairie oyster in my mouth.  Soon I’ve eaten all the Khorovats and salad that I can, and am having trouble moving off of the deep couch.  But not to worry, the women have brought out pastries and cookies.  Not even a strong cup of Sourch can help me as I stumble home, into my bed, and fall into a deep and satisfied sleep.

6/16/2010 10:30 PM

A storm knocked the electricity went out as I finished that last piece typing on my notebook in the living room.  My host family has brought me four candles in elaborate holders to type, so I work on my laptop by candlelight.  “Just like when the neanderthals sat around the fire and surfed the internet” says my host father.  In return,  I shined my headlamp on the cows as they were milked and as the milk was poured through a coffeecan strainer into a vat.  I have about 30 minutes of battery life left.  Should I waste it on playing music or save it in case I need the computer before the electricity returns.  When will the electricity return anyway?

---

[1] Traditionally, Armenians believe a man is as rich as he need be if he can eat Khorovats at least once a month.

The Taxi Drops Off Me, Jillien, Danelle and Lala...

6/13/2010 7:12 PM

The taxi drops off me, Jillien, Danelle and Lala at the edge of Yerevan proper.  “It’s a twenty minute walk into the center of town” says Lala, pointing at my map to show us where we are.  Someone walks up to us and offers assistance.  I buzz the guy away, but Lala stops and explains in polite Armenian that we’re fine, thanks for offering, and all the best to him and his family.  Apparently it’s the kind of town where strangers offer directions with the best of intentions. 

The girls are here to do some shopping, and I’m here to flaneur, or, as the Armenians put it, zbosnel, to stroll, to observe, to perhaps be entertained.  Some people are music snobs, others are drink snobs.  I’m a city snob, a connoisseur of the urban environment,  picking out themes and interactions like notes in a melody or bouquets in a wine.  Like music and wines, there are cities for different tastes, and judgment is subjective, but certain things CAN be universally agreed on, and certain subjective judgments will hold true across a wide range of critics and consumers.  A city connoisseur will pick up on things like a city’s walkability, its street plan or lack thereof, its locality and distinctiveness, and a half-dozen or so other characteristics. 

The city center is on a hub-and-spoke plan, with Republic Square at the center, broad commercial and institutional avenues extending out at regular intervals, connected with residential and retail streets.  Our first stop is a 24-hour pharmacy, a good find, stocked with brand names behind glass counters and professional looking women in lab coats ready to advise you which brand of toothpaste or razor to use.  Jillien and Danelle judge this too expensive looking, and they do sell exotic foreign goods like contact lens solution, at 8000 dram a bottle.  For reference, 8000 dram will get you a car and driver for the day.  So we stop into a convenience store, with a full range of products from Russian “Kapo” shaving soap (250 a tube) to Parker fountain pens (7500, with one ink cartridge, a box of generic replacement cartridges are 200, a box of waterman cartridges 2000).

Underneath each major intersection is a pedestrian passageway full of unbridled capitalism, small stalls selling sunglasses, candy, soda, cell phones, home décor and books.  Books are very popular and expensive.  Armenian-Russian, -English and –French dictionaries and textbooks are the biggest sellers.  One intersection is exclusively for booksellers.  They sell used Armenian tomes and a few glossy new ones in Armenian and Russian.  I pass on a Russian version of Twilight in favor of an Armenian copy of The Little Prince to practice my letters with (600 dram).  LaLa knows these particular booksellers.  She was also a student of the author of the most popular and comprehensive Armenian-English dictionary. 

We stop at a café in a park that rings the city.  Lala, like all people who have dwelled in a city long enough to see it change, laments the changes since she first knew it.  The city used to be distinctively Armenian, now it is becoming a hodgepodge of imitation European, turning public parks into cafes, mixed with the bustle and chaos of Asian cities, with hundreds of little stores in what used to be austere Communist underpasses.  Also, the city is getting too expensive, the middle class is getting pushed out and traffic has gotten worse than it used to be.   There’s a kind of universality to her complaint.  I share with her New York’s disneyfication, suburban sprawl and gentrification, and we agree that things used to be better in the old days.

We stop at what in New York would be a vacant lot, but in Armenia houses a 13^th-century church.  The church looks much smaller than it should be, a small chapel of a large complex.  In fact, it was before the communists came.  They destroyed the larger church and the Armenians built a school of science and engineering in its place “to hide the chapel” according to Lala.  When communism fell and religion was rediscovered as an integral part of national identity, the school of science and engineering was destroyed.  A billboard displays an ambitious computer-graphic of what the original church would look like rebuilt.

I drop into the Moscow theater, an ornate building in a large square filled with Lovecraftian metal sculptures of spiders.  The movies are all mass-market American: Computer-generated comedy #3, Video Game Adaption, Comic book adaption #2, Formulaic Action-Comedy.  The prices range from 500 dram for a seat in the back in the middle of the day to 2500 for a “VIP seat.”  I’m anxious to see what that entails. 

Guests Find Home

6/5/2010 12:53 AM

Every American is aware that guests, like fish, stink after three days.  That is why I’m at the critical stage of managing my entrance into a family not just as a guest who must be fed all the food in the house and waited on hand and foot as the codes of Armenian hospitality demand, but as a functional, contributing family member; or, if that is too ambitious, a likeable, friendly, if slightly odd boarder from the big city who dabbles in village life.  Peace Corps loves to challenge traditional gender roles, but to challenge I first have to have legitimacy in the traditional male gender role, something that I feel American social science, dominated by theories both feminist and queer, fails to appreciate, and, by extension, most NGOs.  So today at lunch after school, I managed to communicate to Papa that I’d like to work on the farm. 

I changed out of biz-cadge and into the American farmer’s blue jeans, grey T-shirt and sneakers.  Poppa wore his button-down shirt tucked into slacks and plastic gardening shoes.  I came out of the house to find him working in the manure field.  The manure had been mixed with straw and laid in a field about eight feet wide by fifteen feet long.  Poppa was cutting into the field with a flat-headed shovel, cutting out dried bricks of manure to use as fuel from the winter.  When he saw me, he quickly cut the last six bricks from a row, and began his tour of the farm. 

Here are our three cows, he gestured towards three bulls tied to stakes.  They’re for meat. 

Then he gestured to the wide open fields around the town.  The milk cows roam around town, he indicated, eating grass.  He walked me to a flock of sheep and introduced me to the shepherd.  Six of these are mine, he explained, the other ten are his.  They’re for meat, milk and wool.  Mama and I make yogurt and butter and sell it in town. 

(continued 6/5/2010 1:42 PM)

We walk to a row of abandoned stone buildings built into the hillside south of town.  They’re as wide as a house and hundreds of meters long.  Their roves have long since collapsed, and the grass inside grows thicker than on the fields outside.

Soviet farm buildings.  He explains.  For pigs. 

“But no one around here raises pigs,” I want to ask, but lack the Armenian.  A cow munches the plants inside.  We walk down the hill now, with purpose, until we come to the backyard/garden/farm where Papa’s brother, my host uncle, lives with their Papi and Tati, his wife, her unmarried sister and his two children, Georgi (9) and Emi (8). 

He meets us wearing an old sweater and pants, along with his Tatik, who has stunningly pale skin and long white hair braided in a circlet on her head.  Despite the sunny, 70-degree weather, she is wearing a long black wool coat that comes to her feet.  She tells us we are to repair the sheep shed, which is slanted to one side and lacks a roof.  The shed is built of metal poles pounded into the mud, covered with a lattice-work of rebar and walled with scrap metal, all held together with strong wire and twine.  First we pull the poles out of the mud.  This is complicated by the necessity of freeing the poles from their twine-and-wire attachments to the walls and rebar roof.  In this, I help by pulling out my multi-tool, which sports a wire cutter in the pliers, a metal file and two knives, one straight, one serrated.  Both my father and uncle are duly impressed, but prefer to use their dedicated wire cutter and a straight kitchen knife. 

Once the poles have been removed from the ground, they are replanted and pounded into the dirt by my uncle, standing on a 55-gallon drum, while my host father guides them into the ground.  We then retie the roof and walls with wire.  Tatik hands us a sheet of scrap metal and we slide it onto the rebar lattice.  My uncle jumps on it, standing on two meters of rusty metal pounded into mud.  Papa, Tatik and I hand him pieces of waved roofing made out of a sort of brittle cement or ceramic, and occasionally another piece of scrap metal to move around the roof on. 

Once the roof is finished and the walls are checked and retied where they need to be, we go into uncle’s house for lunch.  Their living room is luxurious, covered in traditional carpets with an upright piano in the corner.  His bathroom is as large and well tiled as an American’s, with a heated towel rack.  In fact, the entire house has central heating, as well as a modern washing machine in the kitchen.  We eat potatoes with chicken, with all the appropriate Armenian side dishes of lavash, cheese and greens.  Georgi and Emi watch us silently.  We talk, as well as we can, about America and Armenia and what I am doing here. 

He is strong, he tells me.  He wrestles.  Would I like to wrestle with him?  No, I laugh.  “Chararoutian Corpus.” Peace Corps.  The family gets the joke and laughs.  What about arm wrestling?  Okay, I tell him.  Mek. One.  We are gathered in the living room.  The whole family is watching.  We place our hands.  He knows all the tricks, I can’t gain an advantage on him from the beginning.  There are several tricks in arm wrestling, but only two strategies.  The first is to overpower and quickly gain an advantage on the opponent by immediately using your full strength.  The other is to outlast your opponent, match his strength, keep his hand as close to the center as possible and wait for him to exhaust himself.  I decide on the latter.  We are closely matched.  But I showboat for the family.  “GAAAAAAAAHHHHH” I yell.  I’m hoping he will laugh, and lose some grip, but he doesn’t.  In the meantime, he has increased his strength and pushed me a third of the way over.  I refocus, but too late.  He has me at a superior angle.  I submit, he’s very happy, and the family all laugh at my ridiculous scream and tell me how much they like me.  He drives me and my host brother and his children to see Ararat in the distance, then I play dodgeball and monkey-in-the-middle with Georgi and Emi and Arman.

6/5/2010 7:25 PM

An extremely minor and fast flash of panic.  Have spent the entire afternoon in my room, first completing the previous journal entry, then messing around on the computer, then taking an exceedingly long and pleasant nap.  Six hours alone in my room.  Not good.  Should be out learning Armenian and working and what have you.  Then a flash of panic at the thought of going out of my room and having to be “on,” mind constantly running in high gear trying Armenian words, wearing appropriate clothes, being polite and pleasant, minding gender norms, trying to read emotions and intents of everyone around me. 

6/5/2010 9:34 PM

As soon as I walked out the door, mama told me to wash up, that dinner was on the table.  It’s Saturday night, so a big fancy meal.  Fish (Trout?) from lake Sevan wrapped in Lavash.  Then I walked out on the farm with poppa and Georgi.  Poppa taught me the cardinal directions (I can’t remember them), discussed his love for the land and asked about farms in America.  I communicated that yes, we have cows and chickens and lots of wheat and that corn was a big thing.  Poppa is the Jeffersonian ideal of the yeoman farmer, with his three meat cows, one milk cow and six sheep, his peach and cherry trees, his wheat fields and wife and two sons to work the farm.  Still, he couldn’t farm alone.  His brother owns the tractor, his father tends the sheep in the fields, and the entire town looks out for each other’s well being.  After walking the farm, he told me to go play with Georgi and Emi.  Now the sun is setting over Mt. Aragats, stormclouds are rising over the mountains to the Northeast, the boys are watching TV, mama is asleep in her rocking chair after a hard week.  I have the window open to air out my room before the storm and am listening to Lorin Maazel conduct L’nationale orchestra du France in Uranus, the Magician, from Gustav Holst’s symphony of the planets.   

6/5/2010 9:50 PM

Mamajan just woke up and brought me a bowl of freshly picked and washed fruit.  Life is good. 

6/9/2010 12:48 AM

I asked Papajan if he wanted to come to New York.  No, he doesn’t.  He wants to stay in his village where the grass is green and the sky is blue and things smell good and he has his house and animals and family.