Armenia

By Nessuna

Taking a bus to Berd in the early hours of Saturday morning was more of an adventure than anything else. One of my friends, John, is a Peace Corps volunteer and mentioned that I was welcome to visit so I jumped at the chance. After all, it’s not everyday you take a five hour trip to a town in North-East of Armenia, located on the border with Azerbaijan.

“Is it long till we get to Berd,” I impatiently asked the woman next to me after the fourth hour on the road. “Yes, quite a while,” she responded, although I could hardly understand her strong accent. “Are you from Berd?” she asked in return.

I was surprised by the question because she should have known better if only because of my speech. Later, when I mentioned this to John, he seemed to have an explanation for the woman’s assumption. “It is just that nobody else goes to Berd,” he said.

The town of Berd has water three days a week and there are no street lights so you need to always have a flashlight in order to find your way in darkness. Basic things that I took for granted in Yerevan seemed almost a luxury here. And then there was the mud.

Because it was everywhere, any attempt to escape it seemed futile. The next best thing to avoiding it was ignoring it altogether.

“Are you sure you’re Armenian?” asked John as we climbed all the way up to the ancient Berd fortress dating from the 10-11th Century. For all that he knows, I am supposed to be like most Armenian girls by wearing high heels shoes and above all else, in being preoccupied only with keeping them clean.

It’s a gray day, but nonetheless beautiful. A little fog that settled on top of the cliffs made the landscape look like a scene from a fairy-tale.

Berd Fortress © Raffi Kojian / Armeniapedia 2005 (Used with permission)

Later we go for a walk. I am curious as to what would make a young American leave his home in upstate New York and spend two years in the middle of nowhere. Honestly, I am not even sure I would go for it myself. Of course, the perspective of changing the living conditions of people anywhere in the world is very appealing, but the everyday reality can be quite daunting, if not to say depressing.

We do seem to agree that one has to be a little crazy to become a Peace Corps Volunteer.

to be continued…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 2:54 am and is filed under United States, Blogging, Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Armenia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.