When I first
arrived in Armenia I was awestruck by the landscape: mountains, open skies, and
field after field of wildflowers that filled the valleys and climbed the slopes.
Coming from the forested hills of North Carolina’s Piedmont, I was used to
smelling pine and honeysuckle and tasting the random wild blackberry dangling
from a vine. Never before had I seen wildflower-covered plains seemingly jut
into mountains much higher than my dear Appalachians. My hills have long been
tamed into sectioned reserves and carefully cultivated parks. What I found in
Armenia was an untamed Eden.
Eden might not
be too far from the truth; Armenia is an ancient nation with a rich past. Whenever
I travel to a new country, I love to discover the history of the land I am
entering. The Bible cites Mt. Ararat, a part of ancient Armenia, as where
Noah’s Ark landed after the Great Flood.1 Archeologists have even
found cuneiform inscriptions in Yerevan (the capital of modern day Armenia) in
782 B.C., making Yerevan the world’s oldest city with documentation of the
exact date of its foundation.2 The Kingdom of Armenia was
established around 600 B.C. and extended to parts of modern day Turkey, Syria,
Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.3 Among other firsts, Armenia became
the first official Christian nation in 301 B.C., thirty-six years before
Constantine the Great was baptized and ten years before the Roman Empire
embraced Christianity.4 Since its establishment, Armenia has been
conquered and passed into foreign hands time after time, but again and again
the country has reemerged, even surviving monolithic civilizations such as the
Roman and Ottoman Empires. Even the name Armenia itself has historical
significance: “Ar” stands for “life, light, and God,” and thus the name Armenia
literally means “people of God.”5
However, the
past hundred years have not been kind to Armenia. From the Armenian genocide in
the early 20th century, to the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in 1980 that
leveled the country and killed 25,000, to the Soviet invasion, and most
recently, to the war with Azerbaijan over the contested land, Karabakh, the
Armenian people understand suffering. This understanding seeps into their
day-to-day lives, living in small oft said comments: all Russian products (and
there are a lot) are referred to as “Russian trash;” despite being located in
Turkey Mt. Ararat is referred as “our Ararat;” and always “Karabakh is a part
of Armenia.” While suffering might sound out in the base note, the heart note
of Armenia is certainly the people. Tried and true, their abundant generosity
knows no bounds.
Although I began
my journey in Yerevan, Armenia, I actually spent most of my time outside of
Armenia proper, in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area of contention between Armenia and
Azerbaijan since the Soviet expulsion in the early 1990s. From 1988 to 1994,
this region of the world was shell-shocked with land mines, bombs, and gunshots,
leaving more ruins than functional buildings. The town I was in, Berdzor, was
so destroyed by the war that it had been easier to move the city center than to
clear the rubble that remained. Even today, almost twenty years later, the area
still has more bombed buildings than not. Landlocked and surrounded by closed
borders with Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan, the nascent nation has more problems
than just the ruins it lives in. Throughout Karabakh, the people only have
water for fifteen minutes every two days. Even in the modern city of Yerevan,
only fifty to sixty percent of the people have water throughout the day. Although
the water shortage is an important issue, the people also lack the financial
power to rebuild their communities, as the average income of male workers in
Karabakh is only hundred dollars a month.
During my time
in Armenia and Karabakh, I served with Project Agape, the only aid organization
with international connections that serves the Karabakh region. Due to
political tensions between Karabakh and Azerbaijan, most international aid
organizations refuse to work in Karabakh, lest they risk their relationship
with Azerbaijan. Through Project Agape, I mostly did construction work (reroofing
houses) but I also had the opportunity to do arts and crafts with kids at the
orphanage Project Agape sponsors, and visit some of the potential houses in the
community that Project Agape might work on in the future.
On my trip, I
was able to interact with the local people and what struck me the most was
their generosity. Despite their economic situations, every family we visited
wouldn’t let us leave without a sampling of fruit, cookies, or coffee. Although
every instance of generosity left me awestruck, there was one experience in
particular that will remain with me. Several people who came with me to Armenia
this past summer also went last fall, so we visited some of the houses they had
worked on the previous year. One of the houses we visited belonged to an
elderly woman named Anosh, who lived there with her children and grandchildren.
Before construction, her house had been little more than crumbling rocks and
mortar with a tattered roof. However, once the team completed the construction
work, the house had new mortar, a roof, and floorboards. I had heard that the
previous year Anosh had looked so downfallen it was as if she was carrying the
weight of the world on her shoulders. I had expected to see a woman scarred
from life, but instead I was immediately greeted with a bright toothless smile
and a warm hug. She ushered us quickly into the house, giving us snacks and
water, smiling and pointing all around the room at the decorations she had
added. When we finished the tour of her two-room house, she brought out a
beautiful crocheted scarf and walked over to Cailyn (another girl on the trip)
and me. Although neither of us had worked on her house, Anosh wanted to express
her appreciation by giving us the scarf. Since there were two of us and only
one scarf, Anosh gave the scarf to Cailyn but immediately walked over to a vase
at the side of the room and pulled out a wildflower to hand to me. Although
short on water, Armenia is not deficient in terms of the varieties or numbers
of wildflowers that dot the countryside. I had seen countless wildflowers on my
journey already, but this wildflower had special meaning to me. It was a gift
given freely, reminding me of the Native American proverb that states, “May
your life be like a wildflower growing freely in the beauty and joy of each
day.”6 At the end of our visit, we left Anosh smiling at the door
standing tall with her feet firmly planted, determinedly holding onto her family’s
new life.
After I received
the wildflower, I quietly filed away the memory of Anosh and focused once more
on working. Yet the day before we left Berdzor to return to Yerevan, Anosh
walked through the gates of Project Agape, with a small bag in hand. I went up
to greet her and she pulled me aside. She couldn’t speak English and I could
only speak a little conversational Armenian, but from the determined set of her
eyes, I could tell she had come to do something important. She pulled out of
her bag a beautiful pink crocheted scarf along with some chocolate. Unsatisfied
without giving both of us girls a token of appreciation from her own hands, she
had knitted another scarf in only a few days to give to me. Anosh’s
gratefulness and generosity, so present in the Armenian people I had interacted
with, have inspired me to be more grateful for all I have been given and to
give more generously with my time and money to others around me.
After traveling
to Armenia, one question remains with me: what is it that attracts us to serve
our neighbor and to give with abundant generosity? The closest comparison I can
find is that of a wildflower that grows unintentionally and unbidden, just as
our service and generosity must be to our neighbors if we want to see our
labors come to fruition. From my research prior to arrival, I had already marveled
at the historical tapestry that was woven into the land, but what I experienced
gave dimension and color to the vision I had created in my mind. Like a
wildflower that brightens the field stretching toward the horizon, the people I
met and formed relationships with in Armenia colored my time there, forming
something more beautiful and genuine than I could have imagined.
1.
Embassy
of Armenia to the United States of America, "Discover Armenia."
Accessed November 16, 2012. http://www.armeniaemb.org/DiscoverArmenia/History/History.htm.
2.
Tourism
Armenia, "Armenian History." Accessed November 16, 2012.
http://www.tourismarmenia.net/about-armenia/history.
3.
Armeniapedia,
"Armenian History." Accessed November 16, 2012.
http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Armenian_History.
4.
Wikipedia,
"Armenia." Accessed November 16, 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia.
5.
Wikipedia,
"Armenian Mythology." Accessed November 16, 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_mythology.
6.
Proverbatim,
Accessed November 16, 2012. http://www.proverbatim.com/native-american/native-american-may-your-life-be-like-a-wildflower.html.
