After only spending a week in Yerevan and a couple nights in Stepanakert, my
emotions and understand of my homeland have changed completely from my first visit
to Armenia. The first time I came to Armenia and Artsakh was in 2006 with my family. I
was 13 years old, and had the time of my life, sightseeing, taking pictures and just
experiencing a whole new environment and lifestyle. This time around, yes, Iʼm still
taking those usual pictures and revisiting the basic sightseeing spots, but Iʼm really
gaining a totally different experience out of it. This time around, Iʼm trying to understand
exactly why Iʼm at a particular monument or why this church is different from all the
other churches found throughout Armenia. Last week, we visited Sartarabad, we took
pictures and confidently discussed the victories of our people. We all thought we knew
the stories, until one of our group members, Unger Khachig, took it into his own hands
to acquire more information for the group, by speaking to one of the female workers at
Sartarabad. They spoke for a long period of time, and in the end we found out that this
women was no ordinary employee, but rather a widowed wife who had been working
there since the martyr of her husband in the Kharabagh war. Thatʼs one story none of us
would have known if it wasnʼt for Khachigʼs interest on learning more and speaking with
the “deghatsis.”

Sightseeing isnʼt just taking pictures next to the church or monument, or reading
the small description on a nearby plaque, explaining the significance of the church or
monument. To gain the full sightseeing experience, one needs to take the time to
understand and respect that piece of history preserved for us today. Four years ago, I
did not take this approach, but today thanks to Unger Khachig, I have now acquired the
real secrets of good sightseeing in Armenia.

In 2006, I was lucky enough to come to Artsakh as well. We stayed in Shushi,
such a beautiful city but sadly destroyed by war. At the time I understood that Artsakh
had just survived a war and thatʼs why it was destroyed. But being only 13, I can say my
understanding of the real situations in Armenia and Artsakh were blurry and quite
unclear. Four years ago, living in the Sushi Hotel, I did not quite understanding the real
lives of my brothers and sisters in Artsakh; believing life here was decent, with water
and food available at all ours of the day. Obviously, I was wrong in many ways. I began
to understand the real Artsakh during our first few days in Stepanakert. After our first
dinner, fellow group members, Stephan, Khachig, Levon, and myself were sitting
outside with our host mom while she was washing the dishes. She explained to us that
the neighborhood where her house is, the same house that we are staying in for the
next 2 weeks, only has access to water from 7pm to 9pm, thatʼs only 2 hours for an
entire household days of work to be done, washing dishes, laundry, shower and the list
continues. Itʼs a very difficult lifestyle but somehow they manage on a daily basis. Life is
difficult here in Stepanagert, and even harder in the smaller towns of Artsakh, yet they
donʼt complain. Life in America is heavenly compared to this but as Americans we still
find ways to complain, we complain if our water is too cold or too hot, whereas in places
such as Artsakh, around the world, that donʼt even have access to clean water, or even
water in general. Regardless of their sad conditions, they truly are the happiest people
Iʼve ever met.

First time I came was in 2006 as a young 13 year old tourist boy, who had no
actual understanding of the struggles of the day. Now Iʼm here again, as an 18 year old
young adult, who now has a greater understanding of the struggle. My emotions and
understanding have changed so much in 1 week, i know it will further grow and change
in the remaining 5 weeks of my stay.

From Artsakh,
Raffi Senekeremian

7:50am….Unger Tornado Vrej, storms back into our room, pulls our thin sheets off our winning faces, occasionally flipping someoneʼs mattress upside down; causing a domino effect of our 10 kilo Armenia pillows falling onto the hard ground, followed by all of our bedside items and finally our tired bodies.

8:00am….We sit around the large table in the front patio, with our new best friends, the crazy bees of Artsakh; who love to do backflips in our tzmeroug juice. Babo, our host grandmother, brings us our bread and պաﬕտորով յուղուձու. (thats Kharabagh-zi lingo for eggs, tomato and oil juice.) Our main entree is usually bread, the eggs are always secondary.

8:45am….Weʼre about to leave for camp…Vrej storms out from the bathroom…its clogged… again. We sit through his 10 minute spiel about how the Artsakh toilets donʼt have the same turbo-jet power as our transformer toilets in America. We somehow tangent off from toilets to Optimis-Prime. Everyone gets a bucket, fills it with water and rushes into the house to begin the flushing out process.

9:00am….Our 12 person Mob, all dressed in black, rushes out of the house. Now we wait for the number 16 aftobus. We walked to the school the first two days of camp, no one agreed to do it a third time. We stand on one side of the street and spot a number16 bus on the other side. We run there to find that itʼs going in the opposite direction from our school. We see another bus. Itʼs heading our way. It stops at the bus stop. Being the Americans that we are, we donʼt walk to the bus stop but rather wait for the bus to come to us. ( we wonʼt do it again tomorrow though)

9:35am… On the bus we got many glares and stares from the older deghatzisʼ, not to mention the fact that Raffi got a nice beating from the uncensored Soviet bus doors. Keep in mind it takes 28 minutes to walk to the school. We get off the aftobus in 35; and one stop too early at that. As we got off, we watched one of our kids from camp wave back at us, as the bus drove away to the bus stop right in front of camp.

9:43am…We finally get to the blue gates of the թիւ 2 school, dedicated to the Fedayi Ashod Tourian,“Pegor”.  40 new fresh faces ran up to us begging to join our Janbar in Stepanagert. We couldnʼt reject their eager puppy dog faces. A rush of excitement pierced through us all as we distributed them into the three groups.

10:00am… “Մեր Հայրենիք, Ազատ անկախ…” Day 3. Camp begins with 150 people.

10:30am…English lessons begin. In case you think itʼs easy to teach tri-lingual children how to speak English ( they know Armenian, Kharabagh remix Armenian and Russian), itʼs really not. But after much struggle we were able to figure out how to describe a verb and what itsʼ translation is in Armenian (բայ).

11:30am… Getting through the first lesson, we tried teaching the kids how to play heads up seven up, you know the one we would play in 7th grade. Epic Fail. We moved onto Freeze dance, you probably played this in 5th grade. It went a little better.

12:15pm…The Artakh-zi kidsʼ favorite activity, singing revolutionary songs. These kids learn an Armenian revolutionary song faster than an American kid can eat a Big Mac. Fast forward through lunch ( the main entree again was bread), an educational about health and smoking, a lot of Nersik and dancing, and some good old fashion AYF camp Butt volleyball. The kids went crazy…the red blue orange competition officially began. Կա-պուտ Կա պուտ!!!

4:00pm…Exhaustion and Fatigue has taken over. Everyone is relieved yet sad that camp is over for the day. Khachig begins to smile from excitement. ( we usually donʼt let him smile for too long, it ends up looking creepy). Of course Tamar is չէնէ-ing it up outside with some of the kids, our patience wears thin. We want to go home already.

4:15pm…The walk to the մարշրուտկա ( the local word for aftobus) finally begins. A group of campers follow us on the same path home. We all look like the little բադիկներ, Vrej can be considered our mama բադիկ.

4:17pm…we stop at a store for ice cream and watermelon. Levon comes out with a bag of junk food. “Bro I just bought all of this for $7!”

4:20pm…we stop at another store for ice cream. Rita stops at every store she sees in order to find this one type of hazelnut ice cream she had in Hayasdan 5 years ago.

5:00pm…We enter the gates of the house, pass the giant meat truck parked in the driveway along with all our hanging laundry, Babo greets us at the door and we all run to the ground floor; to the new home we created for ourselves Stepanagert.

With smiles and laughs from Arstakh,

Carina

It’s quite the cliche thing to say but the truth is that the month or so that I have been in Armenia has done more for changing my perspective on many issues and understanding my own self, wants, needs, desires and dreams than the last 20 years of my life. The world can offer all the riches out there but Armenia will always make me feel every inch the royal. Where else can you wake up to the sight of the majestic Ararad, a sacred relic to the world as a whole? Where else can you share ice cream with a taxi driver or play chess with old men on the street or find the heart of Christian religion, untainted and pure? Where else will I look around me and see a home as opposed to a temporary lodging beautifully adorned but lacking a certain warmth that Armenia radiates? From the warmth of the people, particularly outside Yerevan, to the cool sirenity of the nights, life offers more than I could have possibly imagined back in Toronto. Here, I can breathe clean air and drink from the mountain springs. Here, I can feel the magnitude of my love for a country I only managed to dream about as a child. Here is where I am myself, where I laugh with abandon and walk with a confidence I have never felt before. As the Armenian legend told to our children states` an Armenian is strongest on his own soil where his roots extend for centuries while his power depletes in half on foreign land. Here, every emotion is amplified, but moreso, every moment is a refreshing new step that leads me closer to discovering my own self.

Tamar