Last week I visited another volunteer who lives in Berd, a small town (7,000 people) in northeast Armenia very near the Azerbaijan border. Berd originally had 32,000 residents in the Soviet era when it was a center for diamond cutting, shoe and clothing manufacturing, and wine and cognac production. Rebecca was an emergency room nurse for many years in Florida. She was assigned to an NGO which helps children with disabilities, but when it turned out that they wanted her only to bring in grant money and to teach English (her native tongue is Chinese and she did not feel comfortable teaching English grammar), Rebecca began making the village rounds with a female doctor. The doctor serves three clinics in neighboring villages.
Rebecca is leaving Armenia this month after two years. Behind she will leave a medical lab that serves the three villages and a very close friend in the doctor who has relied on her for information and confirmation especially about heart and internal problems. Armenians are very wary of their poor health care system and often patients only agreed to do what the doctor asked after they received assurances from Rebecca that the doctor was right. We went to visit the lab, which is currently being constructed through grants Rebecca obtained. The laboratory equipment has been paid for but is currently two weeks late in arriving. The major improvement is that Rebecca got the mayor of the village to put in a water line to the clinic. She threatened not to get the money otherwise. (The clinic has existed for years without water. Can you imagine a doctor not being able to wash hands? The outhouse was across the street.) The clinic will only be able to do simple lab work but Rebecca says that even being able to do urinalysis will be a great help. The next nearest lab is two hours away.
Berd is heavily forested and hilly, and it was very hot and humid. It was a total change from dry, rocky, windy, cooler Gyumri. Across the street from Rebecca’s apartment lived a crowing rooster and many chickens, two oinking pigs, and a barking dog that kept me up all night.
We left Berd at 8:30 in a shared taxi to return to Yerevan for a meeting. The taxi arrived a few minutes early, unheard of in Armenia. Then we began our four-hour trip back to Yerevan on narrow switchback roads that would challenge even the hardiest seldom-carsick passengers. Our journey was an experience in itself.
First, after a few minutes Rebecca realized that she had forgotten to turn off the water. She had no running water the day before; we had emptied all the buckets the day before and had not been able to wash that morning. She had turned on the faucets hoping that we would get some water before leaving and then had forgotten to turn them off. Her apartment would have been flooded when the water started flowing. So we went back.
Next we stopped to drop off her garbage. All garbage has to taken somewhere (or people just throw it in the streets or rivers.)
Next came a potty stop in the woods. Then the driver made another stop to pick some yellow flowers which he said made wonderful tea.
Then we stopped at a gas station. This took 25 minutes. I absolutely cannot understand why it takes so long to put benzene in a car. Passengers cannot remain in the car, the trunk has to be emptied to access the tank, and the hose is about ¾ inch thick. It looks more like the hose we use to pump a bicycle tire. In the meantime the driver picked more flowers for us as we stood out in the hot sun.
Next we stopped for Armenia (same as Turkish, strong tiny cup) coffee at a small roadside stand and sat outside. I have never seen a take-away coffee cup in Armenia. Then the driver insisted that we take pictures by a waterfall.
Next we stopped at a statue of a deer because another passenger in our car wanted a picture of herself there.
Lastly we drove off the road onto a winding dirt road through fields and stopped at a house where the driver bought fresh honey, which had to be laboriously ladled from a cylinder into a glass jar. Then the hostess had to show us her beehives, which were so sweet because they are near an orchard of mulberry trees. Miraculously we did arrive in Yerevan 4-1/2 hours later.
All these stops are typical of taxi rides in Armenia. Just the week before three of us were in a taxi from Gyumri to Yerevan when the driver took us in the opposite direction to pick up a friend and then took us in another direction to go with that friend to the bank. After twenty minutes of waiting we hopped out of the cab and grabbed another one to take us back to where we could catch another taxi to Yerevan. Just as we were shutting the doors to the second taxi, the first driver came out of the bank and started yelling at us. Our second driver would not take off until we had settled the matter with the first driver. We explained that we were going to be late for our meeting, but in Armenia everyone is late for meetings so they really could not understand our problem.
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