From the Hard Drive - Swear-in, Language and Culture (oh my!)

I, (state your name), do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, domestic and foreign, that I take this obligation freely and without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge my duties in the Peace Corps by working with the people of (the host country) as partners in friendship and peace.

With those words, on Thursday morning (moved up from the afternoon because of our field trip), we were sworn in as Armenia’s first group of Peace Corps Response volunteers. I’ve taken that oath three times now and it always seems a little more Corps than Peace to me, but it’s also a moment of pride, as I make a commitment to represent the people of the United States and to help the people of Armenia. David Lillie gave a wonderful and moving speech (though, as in the Philippines, touched with the irony of the short amount of training we experienced leading up to that moment). The staff had dressed up for it and acted appropriately happy for us. We received pins with the Peace Corps logo, the Armenian flag and the American flag, and had some refreshments and handshakes and hugs.

The Armenian flag has horizontal stripes of red, blue and orange – I asked the AO what it stood for and she said she had been told the pink tuf stone, the sky (or Lake Sevan) and the apricots. I later had the chance to ask the Language Coordinator and she said the red was for the land, the passion of the people and the blood that was spilled, the blue was the sky and the orange was the sun.

Before getting sent off to our homestays we had a little language and culture on both Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. As I mentioned, we have a tutoring allowance, and my homestay host speaks English very well, so the language wasn’t as critical for me as it was for the others, but falling at the end of the day both days, we didn’t get a lot. Still, I find that what we did get I have been using, so it’s already a good base – hello and thank you and some other common words. Before coming here I had been under the impression that language, alphabet and religion were what united the people, but now I am not so sure about religion (people don’t seem to be as devout as I thought they’d be; part of that might be the comparison to the countries in which I’ve previously served, where religion was so central to the culture, and part of it might be a vestige of the Soviet era, where religion existed but was outlawed - more on this as I find out more). So it’s language and alphabet that define the culture – and here, the Peace Corps language training includes learning the alphabet. It’s a unique one. So is the language – it’s on its own branch of the Indo-European tree. The street signs are in Armenian and English, and many other signs are in Armenian and Cyrillic, so I might pick up some Russian while I’m here, but it will definitely be helpful to be able to read.

Off to our homestays we went – accompanied by a driver and a staff member (and a huge water filter system, two space heaters, a fire extinguisher, a carbon monoxide/smoke detector, the medical kit and all the handbooks, in addition to my luggage). My homestay is in an apartment building near the hotel where we stayed (for safety and security reasons I’ll not get more specific), in a wonderful central location. My homestay sister (she prefers that to mother) had dinner prepared for me – a beet salad (I asked her what it was called in Armenian and she said vinaigrette – oh well; I still want to learn to make it!), some dumplings (I don’t know what those are called either), baklava, and some of Armenia’s famous cognac (one glass, not multiple toasts). She showed me to my room and left me alone to unpack and organize – and then I went to bed and slept (not the entire time), reappearing twelve hours later and finally somewhat more awake!

From the Hard Drive - Introduction to Work

We had lunch with the Program Managers and counterparts on Wednesday; this was a good chance to ask some initial questions and to hear some of our counterpart’s thinking. Tim seems very dynamic – Homeland Handicrafts is what it is entirely due to his vision and direction. Then we met separately with our Program Manager, Stepan. Gordon and Jeanne fall under the TEFL program and Brian and I fall under Community and Business Development. We read about the overall project framework and discussed our roles. We’d like to serve as consultants, both to Homeland Handicrafts and to any of the PCVs whose projects feed into Homeland Handicrafts – right now, all of the artisans that the NGO works with have been identified by PCVs, and the PCV serves as the local contact. Stepan is there to offer any support that we need, which is great. He has to clarify with Washington what our reporting system will be – I’m kind of hoping for the simple monthly/mid-service/final reporting of the Philippines and not the complicated reporting format that they were implementing in Morocco just as I left, but I’ll go with the flow. Our counterpart mentioned giving separate projects to Brian and me, albeit with overlap and collaboration, and I found that reassuring.

I’ll skip ahead chronologically for now to the next day, when we went on a field trip with our counterpart and his IT/translation person. This was an opportunity to see how they introduce the program to a new community. They advertise for a couple of weeks (the PCV in the site put up posters, and then there was word of mouth) to say they are coming and will review the work of any interested artisans. Tim does a presentation on seven principles of selling a successful product (such as make it small and packable) and then reviews the items that people have brought to see if they have any potential, based on his experience. The people who stay behind to ask questions and/or who appear more dynamic during the presentation are usually the ones he ends up working with. He gives them a couple of weeks to develop a product based on his principles and then comes back to the community. If the product idea is good, and the price seems reasonable based on his formula (he pays everyone the same hourly wage, plus materials, plus an extra percentage to be split between the artisan and the local partner NGO – Homeland Handicrafts takes nothing), then he will ask for a sample and/or agree to sell the product. Usually 20 or so people show up at the initial meeting and one or two when he returns. Brian and I took pictures and took notes – and already have lots of questions and ideas. It was a great opportunity, but it was an information overload on top of jet lag, and it meant that our survival language and culture lesson was cut short, so while I am glad I went, in a way I wish it had been this coming week instead. It’s all right, though, because unlike in the Philippines, we have a tutoring allowance here, and I intend to use it to learn some of the language!

One thing that was disconcerting was that as the meeting was breaking up and people were standing around, there was a woman with a daughter of about 12 or 13, and the daughter kept staring at me. In retrospect, if I had had some language I might have asked her name and made other small talk, but at the time I didn’t even think of that; I just felt uncomfortable. There were other women with light-colored hair in the room (not natural, but mine is enhanced as well), so I couldn’t understand why she was staring. I don’t think I look that different from the other people here – but I guess that I do. Later, Armine, the Language Coordinator, told me that of the four of us, I was likeliest to get unwanted attention. So if I come back to the U.S. with darker hair again, it’s because it’s a survival technique! Or maybe I will get used to it – it’s just been so long since I’ve been stared at that I’ve forgotten that aspect of being in the Peace Corps.

I started reading the Emergency Action Plan, and I realize that in the last post I failed to mention a few other potential dangers that were discussed in our session. I mentioned earthquake and petty crime, but there is also war (relations with Azerbaijan continue to simmer), civil unrest (there were violent protests after the 2008 election; the next election isn’t until 2013, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s happy), radiation leak (the nuclear plant is old and in a seismic zone; there’s been a rule that PCVs can’t be placed within 30 km – but Yerevan is within 30 km), and then mudslide, hailstorm and flood.

(I got some language from my tutor to try to describe what I wanted, but my hair is now lighter, not darker. I’ve been complimented on it, but I don’t like it! And it cost too much for me to redo it right away… so I’ll wait until next time and try to get it darker – or at least back to what my Chicago hairstylist wrote down! Also – since learning about the dangers here of earthquake and nuclear plant leak – and being here for a minor earthquake – both New Zealand and Japan have happened…).

Cathedral, Markets and Memorial

Jeanne had told me that the main shuka, or food market, was really something to see, and I met her at its Metro stop this morning. It was right across the street from Yerevan’s “new” (2001) cathedral, so we stopped there first. Surp Grigor Lusavorich (St. Gregory the Illuminator) Cathedral was built to celebrate 1700 years of Christianity in Armenia, and it has 1700 seats. The architecture is a modern take on the traditional (I think Professor Billington would approve of the geometric shapes, domes and arches), and there’s very little adornment inside. The nearby shuka had some interesting Armenian touches, such as stands of dried fruit, white cheese, and pickled everything. The regular fruit included some beautiful pomegranates (it is the symbol of Armenia but I had not seen any yet!), tiny bundles of greens (there really aren’t a lot of vegetables available right now – mostly root vegetables and a few leafy ones), and some of the Armenian sausage that I had tried in the restaurant in Los Angeles (someone had brought some to my host mother for her event last week and I’ve been enjoying it this week – it’s not bad!). There were spices, dried flowers and herbs for tea, beans and grains (meat and fish, too, but we stayed away from that part of the market). Clean, airy, picturesque.

We then went on to the Vernissage – I had the inspiration to buy for my nieces charms of their initials in the Armenian alphabet to put on a necklace; if anyone out there wants a letter let me know – they might be the ultimate packable gift! The letters are interesting and definitely Armenian – I may get a bunch for myself to make into earrings. I’d been wanting to go back to the Vernissage anyway – now that the March 6 and 7 craft fairs are over, I have a much better idea of what’s out there, and some of the artisanal items are growing on me. Later in the day, I went to the Painter’s Vernissage with Brian; I enjoy viewing the art there.

I spent the early afternoon at the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Museum; it will be crowded on April 24, Genocide Memorial Day, when everyone (and by that I may mean the entire population of Yerevan; we will see) comes to lay a flower at the eternal flame. I wanted to go when it was empty and quiet. The feeling of solitude begins with the walk across the bridge over the Hrazdan Gorge to get there. The museum itself is simple. There isn’t a lot of commentary, but instead there are pictures, figures and words that speak for themselves. In the first room there is an accounting of each province – how many Armenian villages, how many Armenians, how many Armenian churches and how many Armenian schools there were, accompanied by photos of the cities as they were in the early 1900s and pictures of prosperous-looking people. A semicircular hall then contains photographs and drawings of forced marches, mass graves, death, and starving people. Display cases contain books, official letters, eyewitness accounts and more photographs, detailing what was taking place. The final room contains before-and-after numbers, a large photograph of an orphanage in Syria, and proclamations from people recognizing the genocide (including the governors of many U.S. states, though not the Federal government). There is a grove of trees outside planted by officials from nations and other groups that recognize the genocide. Turkey does not admit to the genocide and many governments for political reasons do not recognize it; this is sad, but what is also sad is that Armenia is so insistent on the recognition being a precondition to any moving forward that it is unable to move forward. And of course what happened is sad. Everything about it is sad.

The memorial, per Lonely Planet, consists of a 40-meter high spire next to a circle of 12 basalt slabs leaning over to guard an eternal flame. The slabs represent the 12 lost provinces of Western Armenia, while the spire has a fine split in it dividing it into larger and smaller needles, the smaller one representing Western Armenia. Some surmise other layers of meanings – the 12 slabs huddle like refugees around a fire on a deportation march, and the spires might be a highly stylized monument of Mt. Ararat and its smaller peak, or blades of newborn grass.

Usually when I see memorials to such terrible things, I feel the need for ice cream afterwards to cheer up. Earlier in the week I had been thinking about Magnum bars, one of my favorite foods in Morocco. After walking back across the bridge into the busy part of the city, I went to a supermarket that is known for having a lot of Western goods (for example, peanut butter) and in the ice cream case, there was something that looked a lot like a Magnum bar! In Cyrillic, it said Magnate, but the packaging was similar. It wasn’t double chocolate or double caramel – it was vanilla, coated with chocolate and nuts – but it tasted Magnum-like (i.e. heavenly); I’ll be on the lookout for more.

The Crossing Place

Before I got here I suspected that what unites Armenians is language and religion. After I got here I surmised that it was the language and the alphabet. And then I had an additional thought – it’s also the diaspora. Before I got here, a friend said that history is the history of the conquerors, because the conquerors get to write it. Well, the Armenians are an exception – they have been conquered several times and yet they endure, in part because of the strong diaspora. There are many more Armenians living outside of Armenia than in the country itself!

I just finished a book, recommended in the Peace Corps welcome book, that reinforced and detailed this. The Crossing Place: A Journey among the Armenians, by Philip Marsden, chronicles the travels of the author to discover the essence of Armenia. He was inspired when, exploring Turkey, he came across a bone. When he asked what animal it might have come from, a shepherd told him it was “Ermeni” and tossed the bone to his dog. This led him to want to discover the spirit of the Armenians and how they have survived despite being at the “crossing place” of history, continually caught between warring religions and ideologies (some of this is from the book jacket).

He does his initial research in longtime Armenian communities in Venice and Jerusalem (I had no idea that the fourth quarter in Jerusalem is the Armenian quarter – but then again, I’d never thought about it). He goes from Cyprus to Lebanon and Syria, where many of the people forced out of Turkey in 1915 ended up (he also visits caves and other places where many of the forced marches ended in death, not in survival). As an aside, Gordon and Jeanne took their Peace Corps Response assignment here in part because they taught for two years in Aleppo, Syria, and got to know many Armenians there. The author then goes to Turkey, where there are still a few Armenians but also lots of historic structures designed by them – the Armenians were architects, merchants, mathematicians, astronomers, and other innovators.

He then goes on to Eastern Europe – Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova – where he encounters older Armenian communities; the Armenians were moved there as a result of the Turkish invasion in 1064 and also relocated there by the Persians. In these countries, there isn’t as much knowledge of tradition, and the last Armenians in some towns are dying out. He crosses parts of the Soviet Union as it is breaking up and at last ends up in Armenia itself. Most of the places he visits in Armenia are things I would like to see – Gyumri, the second-largest city, where there is still evidence of the 1988 earthquake (he was intrigued enough to go out of his way to the epicenter; I probably won’t), Lake Sevan and the world-heritage monasteries of the north, and then he ends his trip in what he thinks of as quintessential Armenia, the south – Goris, Kapan and Meghri, which at the time are under fire from Ajerbaijan.

He finds that the loss of the land is as palpable as the loss of the lives, and that there is a spirit that is represented by Ararat, a spirit that lives on. It was an interesting book and it gave me something to think about in light of my upcoming trip, to the homeland of a different people who are also mostly diaspora and who have also survived despite genocide. I’m not sure how much more I’ll read about Armenian history, but I’m glad I read this one.

P.S. I received two more issues of The New Yorker today (the second and third since I arrived) - happy to be reading those!

On Motivation and Inspiration

As I was getting ready to leave Morocco, I wondered if I would ever be able to work in an office again – to get up to an alarm clock and work all day long, all week long, with never enough vacation time. I really appreciated the lack of structure, the simple life, the time for cooking from scratch and reading and writing, the time for tea. There was so much time there! My work in the Philippines gave me hope – I could go to an office every day (well, as long as I had the flexibility to work from home one or two days a week) as long as I had enough independence and was working on something I believed in. I’ve taken a step back here – it’s hard to get anything done at the Homeland Handicrafts office, with new input coming at us all the time and no time to process. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get anything done at the Peace Corps office either, with PCVs in and out and lots of noise. Now that I have my computer and an internet stick, I spent a day working at home this week and made a lot of progress! So maybe there’s hope. Or maybe I have to consider what others have been telling me even as I have been (unsuccessfully, upon both returns) looking for a full-time job – perhaps I need to start my own business and be more in charge of my own destiny. We’ll see.

I’ve also been somewhat sobered by the situation here – while I have met some Armenians who are creative and ambitious, I’ve met some development and NGO workers who seem jaded and defeated. Whether it’s the post-Soviet mentality or the Armenian personality or the government and business environment here, they seem to think there is little hope of getting anything accomplished – yet they plug away, though I am not entirely sure why. In fact, sometimes it seems the main business here in Yerevan is NGOs and aid organizations. So a cynic would say that they plug away because it’s a paycheck. I have been thinking that it would be rewarding to continue to serve (for pay) – Foreign Service, USAID, a development NGO. But I also have read about the pitfalls of foreign aid and I know that there can be agendas other than that of helping people, so I fear that I too could become disillusioned. And I know that in a non-profit organization I could end up with the same kind of crazy boss, office politics, long hours and all of the things I had in Corporate America and don’t want to have again. So I’ve been thinking some gloomy thoughts lately as I think about what is next.

And along came an inspirational event this week – something that reminded me that there are people out there dedicated to causes, believing that change can happen and that people matter. I was bumped from the guest list from the reception in honor of the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps, but someone mentioned my name to the Ambassador, a college classmate. She recognized it and said I could get in touch. I emailed her, and she invited me to a reception at the Embassy honoring a Woman of Courage; I went to it on Tuesday night. First of all, the Ambassador herself is impressive – her speech was impactful (http://armenia.usembassy.gov/news031511.html). Yes, the picture is of me with her! More, the woman who was honored – sadly, posthumously – sounded amazing. As the head of Transparency International here, she fought corruption and tried to make a difference. There’s still a long way to go – here and in many other places – but with people like her, there’s a chance that the world can be a better place. I know that my time in Peace Corps is a drop in the bucket but I do feel that I made a small contribution to my community in Morocco and to the disaster response and poverty housing effort in the Philippines. Yes I can! Make a small contribution here too….

Ancient and Modern Civilizations

Yesterday Gordon, Jeanne and I went to Erebuni, the fortress and museum of Urartu, the civilization that was here in 782 BC; Erebuni evolved into the name Yerevan. The museum contains cuneiform tablets, old wine, beer and grain storage containers, old jewelry, tools, weapons and the like. The fortress/palace was built on a hill in the southern part of town, with views of Ararat, Aragats (the highest mountain in the Republic of Armenia), and all of Yerevan – looking very different now with huge stone abandoned Soviet factories and lots of buildings and roads vs. mud huts and one of the first civilizations with agriculture and animal husbandry. We had the place to ourselves and wandered among the ruins. It amazes me that people have always wanted to proclaim that they were here – from the cuneiform, which when translated talked about the ruler at the time, to the graffiti that modern non-rulers have added to the ancient frescoes.

We read about the gods that the Urartu worshipped, and it is pretty remarkable that so many cultures worshipped the same gods (sky, war and sun were the Big Three here) and have so many of the same shapes (swirls and zigzags, animals, fertility symbols). It struck me that monotheism was really quite a break from these ancient beliefs – really, a quantum leap in thinking. And it was an interesting day for it to have struck me – I had spent most of Saturday and then Sunday morning in the Peace Corps office on the internet, reading about the Japan earthquake/nuclear power plant and about North Africa and feeling sad at all of the troubles in the world, but affected even more by emails from friends struggling with health, job and other major life issues. I was thinking about the collective unconscious and how I could send positive energy out; how powerless I felt from so far away, and how I too will struggle when I get back – I hope to stay as healthy as I can as long as I can, and I hope to find my way (calling, love, location) without spending too much time in the doldrums that seemed to be in many of those emails.

Again, it’s good to focus on the positive. The day was cold but clear, and it was great to be on the top of that hill and to learn something new and experience something old. I spent a good chunk of time on Saturday working on Everywhere Exercise, and it felt good to make some progress there and to work on something cutting-edge. I also spent time on Saturday with Brian, with first lunch and then tea and then a little bit of the British Film Festival (we abandoned it about fifteen minutes in when there was a lot of yelling in another language and no sign of English subtitles) and webcasts of The Office (more fun than a movie about a son and a grandmother anyway) and then dinner. After Erebuni, I went to Gordon and Jeanne’s homestay – they live in a much less central neighborhood – that is, a real neighborhood – and had dinner with them and their host mother, who is an astrophysicist. More, I am happy to have heard from friends and to know that they’re out there and that, far away though I may be, I am here for them.

Today I met with the Cafesjian Museum Store buyer, bringing with me the best products in the Homeland Handicrafts stable. She didn’t like most of them but gave me good feedback as to why, and she agreed to take a couple of products forward to her director. I was hoping she would be interested in more – the craft fairs are good for the little impulse buys, and we need to find markets for the more expensive items; export is an obvious answer, but it would be helpful to find some outlets here. I hope to spend most of the rest of the week going through the many emails Tim has sent us in the past month and a half – given everything else going on, I just moved them into an email folder without addressing most of them – and organizing things on my computer, now that I have it back. On Sunday I leave for this year’s See The World trip, back April 1. But now that I have the computer back, I can post the entries that were on my hard drive when my computer broke!

More Culture, and a Moment of Peace

Last Saturday I took the Metro up to the last stop and walked onto the bridge over the Hrazdan Gorge. Along the hillside there's a lot of trash; once again I had to remind myself that in the U.S., the big anti-litter campaign happened in my lifetime. At least there's not a lot of trash in the city center. From the bridge, there's a good view of the city, encircled by a ridge. The circular street plan is really quite ingenious. Something else interesting about the city is that there are many businesses, restaurants and cafes below street level. In certain parts of Chicago, many entrances are below grade, because they raised the street level after the fire (if I remember my history correctly). Nobody has been able to tell me why there are so many things below grade here, but I'll keep asking. Peace Corps Armenia recently added Regional Managers to its staff - they will do a lot of the administrative work that the Program Managers were doing, so the Program Managers can focus more on the programming (Community and Business Development or TEFL). I met my new (Central) RM the other day. He told me that for his thesis he wrote about the transportation infrastructure of the Silk Road. We then looked at web sites about the Silk Road and about infrastructure - it took me back to the civil engineering days. The ancient Silk Road is actually not one route but a variety of them; Armenia is in a strategic position though, which explains its history of being conquered over and over from both the east and the west. The infrastructure exists for commerce now, but as long as the borders are closed - and they're closed on both sides - it's all just for the map, not for reality. I looked on Amazon for books about the Silk Road, and maybe I will order one - it'll be interesting to learn more. I have friends who were PCVs in the Philippines and have been traveling the Silk Road since they COSed - they are due in Armenia in a few weeks and I am looking forward to seeing them!

After the walk on the bridge, I had another Saturday work meeting, about another craft fair. This one is on April 2; Mother's Day here is April 7 - it is also the end of the Women's Month that started on March 8. PCVs are organizing the bulk of the fair and Homeland Handicrafts is just having a table - I think. I then met Gordon and Jeanne at the Matiros Sarian museum; he was a painter and is on the 20,000 dram bill. It's a house museum, containing many of his works and also his studio; his family still lives downstairs. He is known for vivid colors - I love the works that were exhibited. Early works show a lot of Middle Eastern scenes. He had a hard time during the height of the Soviet era but he kept painting. He was devoted to Armenia and many of his works are landscapes of Armenia. There are also some great portraits and still lifes. I recommend a visit to www.Saryan.am to have a look at the collection - it is beautiful. We then walked back to the Cascade through the Painter's Vernissage. Separate from the flea/craft market area, there are paintings for sale there on the weekends - displayed around a statue of Sarian. Brian bought a little painting one day. After visiting Bob and Linda's house on my way back from Morocco and seeing some Moroccan art on the wall, I wondered if I should have bought any art in Morocco. Maybe I will buy something here....

We climbed up the Cascade (using the interior escalator part of the way, not walking up all the stairs) and sat for a while, looking at Mt. Ararat looming over the city like a ghost. It really has a presence when you can see it - so close that you can touch it, yet forever unattainable, a reminder of the Western Armenia that was lost. Gazing at it, I felt at peace - and I realized that I haven't had many moments here that are that tranquil. I haven't been there for sunset yet, but I hope to catch more than a few of those - I hear the light is amazing.

There's a British film festival this week; free movies sponsored by the British Council here. On Tuesday I saw "Made in Dagenham," about women machinists at Ford Great Britain whose 1968 strike led to equal pay laws in many industrialized countries. Perfect movie for International Women's Day. I plan to go to a couple of the other movies, though they may be depressing (one is about the killing fields in Cambodia and one about a son and a grandmother who lost their father/son in Iraq). It seems that every English-speaker I've met so far in Yerevan was there. It really felt like an escape from life for a while, too - I used to see movies all the time but haven't seen that many since leaving for Morocco; a good movie can really draw you in. Music can draw you in as well. Last night I went to another concert at the Opera House - this one was a "Cine y Tango" concert featuring Astor Piazzolla music. One of these days I will catch up on my emails and post pictures, but in the meantime it is nice to take advantage of these cultural opportunities!