My Apartment

Moving into my Armenian apartment was the quintessential Armenian experience. I was buffered by many stores of similar other volunteer experiences, but somehow I knew that my story would be better. It was not.

The apartment had not been rented out for three years, since grandma died in her bed. The closets were still full of her clothes and all the drawers were full of her things. The apartment had not been painted in twenty years and was very dingy. Water was available two hours a day (which means that you have to be home at that time to flush the toilet, fill buckets for bathing, cooking, and drinking, and get as much done as possible. Forget work or any other obligations you might have.) There was no hot water. You had to heat water on the stove and carry it into the bathroom to bathe. I asked the owners to put in a water holding tank, put in a hot water heater, and to paint. They agreed. The Peace Corps approved the apartment. (They make sure there is no mold, the gas is properly vented, the doors have adequate locks, and that the windows cannot be easily entered.) The owners said that the apartment would be ready in two weeks. It was not ready the Saturday that we agreed on, but the next day they called to say that it would be ready on Monday. I made arrangements for the strong young men living in my house to help me move. Monday at noon we arrived to find a huge state of disorder. A man was painting, his wife was cleaning, and grandma’s clothes were still in the closets. I really wanted the apartment empty but as is typical in all Armenian rentals, the owners leave behind things they can’t store in their own homes. I did get her to take the clothes out, but the drawers are full, and a huge amount of unsightly stuff is stored in a corner. My big win was to get them to agree not to re-hang the cheap Armenian carpets.

The owners left at 11:30 pm Monday night. I was exhausted. As I woke up Tuesday morning, after a sleep deprived night as I couldn’t get used to the loud refrigerator, and looked at the ceiling, I could not believe I was in the apartment. The paint job could be topped by any three year old. But it is typical of so much that is done in Armenia to not take pride in your work. Professionals are never hired. If I brush against the walls, paint powder comes off on my clothes. No drop cloths were used so there is paint all over the cheap linoleum floors. (The linoleum is just laid down, not glued or tacked.) When I bathed in the teeny tiny tub, the water sprayed all over the bathroom from a joint that is not tight. The water heater is too small to provide enough water for a hot sit-down shower. The oven works, as they assured me, but the door does not shut. It has more than a one inch gap. Yesterday we had a huge storm, including hail, and all the windows leaked. The apartment only has one small sink, in the kitchen. The bath tub doubles as the clothes washing basin. Oh, my aching back!

I’m on the fourth floor, which means that every trip down involves carrying garbage, and every trip up involves carrying food or some other item. There is a small store within a few steps where I can buy the basics, but I find myself really wondering if I need something after previously going down and up five times.

On my third day here the neighbor from just below banged on my door to complain about water leaking into his apartment, the noise generated by the water pump, and how loud my refrigerator is. I called my landlord who came over and tightened a pipe with a wrench (it still leaks) and who then said he could not do anything about the other problems. So I'm dreading another door knock. Of course, these conversations are all in Armenian and I may have this information all wrong! For all this I am paying $108 a month (the most allowed by the Peace Corps) and about half that for utilities.

I’m in an excellent location. And aren’t the three most important things about real estate location, location, and location? I bought a table and an oven. So now I think that I can stay here for a year.
This is my living area.  On the right are the backs of the closets, on the left is a pile of "stuff" left by the landlord.  I bought the table and will need to get more chairs, somehow.

Another view of the living area and the "stuff" hidden behind a curtain, which was left by the landlord.  The green sofa/bed has storage beneath which is filled with grandma's things.

My bed.  Beneath it is a storage area filled with grandma's shoes and purses. The cabinets on the right do not close. All the joints are sprung.

The only sink in the house is in the kitchen, and it leaks so I have a bucket and towels beneath it. The two-burner gas stove actually works well but the oven door has a one-inch gap so it is useless (and it does not accommodate a 9X12 pan.)

Both the pipe to the bath and the toilet leak.  This is the tiniest tub I've ever seen. It sits on a wobbly steel frame. Armenians never use shower curtains so water gets all over. The buckets to the left are for hand-washing laundry. The toilet seat is a squishy cracked plastic. I've searched all over for a replacement that will fit. It is thing that bothers me most now. 

I had to throw this picture in. It is the "shower" at another volunteer's house. The tank in the center is filled with water and then wood is put in the stove below the tank, the wood is lighted, and voila!, after an hour you have a warm, not hot, shower.

Detail of the paint job in my apartment. I almost wish I had not asked the landlord to paint.

Gender Imbalances

See the following website for an interesting discussion of the imbalance between males and females in Armenia. The links to The Economist are also worth reading.

Gender imbalances | The South Caucasus on the top of the list
http://www.crrccenters.org/news/?id=41


When I forwarded this article to a fellow volunteer, she said that it upset her and she mentioned how often people had said to her, “You only have daughters?” I have also received the same reaction. And then I don’t know how to respond in a culturally sensitive way, as I fight back my anger.

This favoritism towards males is very evident in families I interact with. The number of young males far surpasses the number of females. And volunteers who work in schools have huge issues with the immature and spoiled male students. Then just yesterday, my host sister expressed concern that her 20 year-old son who just came home from the compulsory military service, may go to Russia to find a job. My host mom’s two sons have lived in Russia for over twenty years. (One family has two sons, the other has a son and daughter.) So now I’m confused about the “value” of sons who leave the country, though they do send money, in terms of providing emotional and physical support in your old age.

The diaspora, historical buildings, and doctors

Last week I met several interesting people in Armenia:

(Diaspora: A dispersion of a people from their original homeland. This includes Armenians in Glendale, CA and other parts of the US, and those in Russia, Italy, France, etc.)

The first person was a young woman who had recently graduated from the University of Vermont. She was spending a month in Gyumri. She is of Armenian descent, had studied Armenian through her church in the States, and comes from a family that has been actively involved in Armenian issues within the diaspora community. Her grandmother had been forced to flee this area during the 1915 Turkish genocide. We had a little heated discussion about the current state of affairs in Armenia. Her points were that America does not provide enough aid to Armenia (USA per capita aid to Armenia is the second largest in the world after Israel), that Turkey must apologize for the genocide and pay reparations, and that until this happens the status quo is OK. I feel strongly that this country receives too much ineffective aid, that the government is not committed to make the changes necessary for an effective economy (revising tax system, customs regulations, banking regulations, and consumer protections), and that the government is relying on the international community to help its farmers while expressing no interest in helping them itself. (Half of Armenians live below the poverty line. Two out of ten of them are extremely poor.) In a country the size of Maryland, it is surprising how few people have ever been out of this country, which would expose them to new ways of considering the world. The closed borders isolate this country from trade and cultural exchanges. The anger at Turkey and Azerbaijan is palpable here; an anger that dates from 1915 and 1992. Russia has a significant presence in Armenia (8,000 soldiers) as it patrols the closed Turkish border. I can’t help but feel that this situation is to Russia’s advantage as it keeps Armenia tied to it economically and Russia can maintain a military presence in the Southern Caucasus. Armenia is at war with Azerbaijan (an oil-rich country) which requires mandatory two-year military service for all Armenian males. Turkey has a fast-growing population of over 70 million versus 3 million in Armenia which is experiencing a low birth rate and significant outward migration. Armenia is on Turkey’s less-developed, poor, and Kurdish-populated eastern border. Other than because of pressure from the international community, it does not appear that opening the border is a Turkish priority. It has been 95 years since the genocide and the diaspora community seems more concerned about recognition than the fate of Armenia today.

The next day I met a woman in Gyumri who is an architect and a professor at Mississippi State University. She has been coming to Armenia since 1992 during the summers (while her husband teaches at the American University in Yerevan), is currently a Fulbright alternate, and is doing research on Gyumri’s historic houses with the goal of finishing a book and, hopefully, creating interest in preserving Gyumri’s historic homes. She has not been able to get the government interested at all. The current mayor of Gyumri is building a huge city hall, which will not have a tourist office, though he does have a “tourism” person whose focus is outdoor concerts. He is not interested in promoting the churches, historical homes, home stays, reliable maps, or signage that might draw tourists. During the 1988 earthquake, most of the Soviet-era buildings (1922-1988) were destroyed or suffered major damage. Homes from the pre-Soviet era survived, and many of those survived because of their vaulted foundations according to the architect. She talked about going into one of these buildings in the Gyumri city historic district where several families live. There was a courtyard with an outhouse shared by about thirty people and there was a single spigot for water from which all residents drew their water. She interviewed a mother and daughter who lived in a basement-like vaulted area in the worst poverty conditions she had ever seen. This “home” is less than 1/4 mile from the new obscene mayor’s office. We had a long discussion about corruption in Armenia. She was reading a Russian history book which brought up the subject. She said that the corruption is not a recent phenomenon. It has been a part of the culture of all Soviet countries since at least the time of the tsars (about 1500.). She feels that it is so endemic to this area that the custom of “payments” for services by public officials, jobs, political offices, grades, etc., can never be changed. She was also discouraged by how little improvement has been made in individuals’ lives since 1992.

In Yerevan, where I went for R&R, I met the American Embassy medical officer. This doctor and his New Zealand-born wife are tri-athletes (and they definitely looked the part) with three very small children. They do not live in the embassy compound because he said that they do not want to socialize with people he treats. They have actively embraced living in the Armenian community, which I really admire, because the compound would be so much easier. Then another man, an American doctor who is evaluating rural health care delivery systems in Armenia, joined in our discussion. This doctor said that Armenia has at least three times as many doctors as the country needs, and that the majority of these are very poorly qualified. (Current doctors graduated from high school at sixteen, then went to medical school for six years, and became doctors at 22.) These doctors are not “qualified” for internships or specialized study at any European or American universities or hospitals. Armenia is putting in place tougher requirements for a medical education but it is not limiting the entrants into medical school. Most graduates of medical school are not able to find jobs in their field. Diabetes is a huge issue in Armenia. The first doctor said that there are no endocrinologists, and that when doctors prescribe for diabetes they often do too little too late because they do not understand the disease. Another issue is “stones”, gall stones and kidney stones because of diet and because of the fact that most Armenians do not get enough fluids. They said that people suffer hugely from these stones. Another issue is the lack of diagnostic tools. Many tissue samples have to be sent to France for diagnostic purposes because there is little faith in the labs here. While there is a huge excess of doctors, there are very few medical technologists and pathologists.

Medical school graduates, who have “paid” for their grades, have to “pay” to get a position in an office or hospital. They recoup this expense by charging (off the records) their patients for services. As a result rural areas are under-served as these patients are often barely surviving and cannot afford to pay for supposedly free services. There are a few rural clinics supported or staffed by German and Belgian organizations, and by Doctors Without Borders. The second doctor said that Armenia pays about 1.5 percent of its budget for medical services which is the lowest of any country he knows of. (Just think about Medicare and Medicaid in the US.)