I spent Easter at 3 different homes - all were strangers but they welcomed me to thier home as if I was part of their family.
Easter starts on Saturday night here, and it is customary for whoever has lost a family member recently to invite all their friends to their house. So we were invited to a lady's house in a suburb called Massif. It is right outside the city, but high on a mountain. We got into my host mother's 25 year old little Lada. The car has seen better days but it is not worth buying a new one -even if one can afford it - because the roads in the city are adorned with pot holes as big as a kitchen sink. We had only gone about one kilometer and she noticed that she was almost out of gas. It had snowed the past few days and she hadn't used the car but because it was parked outside someone had stolen the gasoline from the car. People stick a tube in the gas hole and suck out the gas in the car. I am surprised that 1 liter of gas costs about $1 here. That's equivalent to about $2.20 per gallon - which is more expensive then what we pay back home.
Regardless, we stopped at a gas station and she filled up the tank with 2 liters of gas, enough to get us back home.
We stopped to pick up her friend, the wife of a former minister during the Soviet times. With the air about her, you'd think she's still living in the "good old Soviet days".
We were off again, the Little Lada that could dodged some big pot holes, stalled while going up hill, was honked at by a Mercedes SUV who didn't have any patience for the "commoners" to continue on their way, and then we finally arrived to what looks like a 1960s or 70s Bronx project. Most of the city and suburbs consist of highrise conformist ghetto looking buildings build during the Soviet era. But now with democracy, people don't understand the idea of maintaining their own property. When you enter a typical building in Yerevan there are cracks in the walls, puddles of water in the entrance from a ceiling crack or paint flacking off the walls. Only in the center of the city can you see a few newly built or renovated building. Yerevan is a city of contrasts.
We walked up the 5 flights of stais and entered a 1-bedroom apartment where the living/dinning room had a beutifully adorned dinning table filled to the max with all different types of dishes. They had planted grass in plates and let them grow into green plate mountains and had placed colorfull easter eggs inside with crocheted bonnets to keep the eggs warm.
I met the half dozen young girls who were invited. They were all friends of the 2 daughters. The Mother of the house is a large, masculine looking woman probably in her mid 40s...people get married really young here. In that small 1 bedroom apt lives the mother and her 4 adult children with ages ranging b/w 18-24 yrs old. There's no father in sight. Despite their small means they had put together a wonderful meal.
All of them wanted to know what I was doing in Armenia and thought it very strange that I am working for free. Volunteering is a new phenomenon that in foreign to this post-soviet country.
The young girl sitting next to me quietly asked if we have feasts like this back home. I assured her that my Mother cooks for a small army when we celebrate x-mas at our house. They think we don't invite people over back in the states. The funniest was when the former-minister's wife started telling the rest of them about the amazing feasts she had at very improtant people's homes. Ok, there's one thing i must explain here. In Armenia you are only someone if you know "important" people. By "important" i mean people in high-up positions or people with money.
One of her stories had to do about when she was at a Beirutsi-Armenian's house and she was offered some pastry. When she refused, the lady of the house was relieved because the pastry cost a lot of money she told her.
I have spent 10 days here already and i'm happy to tell you that i'm getting used to washing dishes in freezing cold water, getting a bucket of water to flush the toilet and bathing only 3-4 times per week (because taking a shower is a 2-3 hour ceremony where you have to fill the tank, wait 1-2 hours for the water heater to heat the freezing cold water, and then after taking a shower i have to stand in front of the electric heater to dry my hair). Before you know it i'll become a true yerevantsi!
'till next time
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