3^rd day of work

I showed up early because we were going on what Armenians call a kef, which is basically a picnic. It really doesn’t translate and I was told that I couldn’t translate it as party. It consisted of Barbequing food and drinking and dancing.

I first showed up to work and saw that the men were doing some shots of brandy. This isn’t a normal work situation, it’s for the party, but still . . . it’s 8:30 in the morning. They asked if I wanted any and I declined. I wasn’t pressed on the issue, which is somewhat interesting, not from my own experience but from the experiences of other volunteers. There is often talk about people being pressured repeatedly to drink (the males mostly) because in the culture it is appropriate for men to drink and participate in toasts (which is the only way people drink here, they don’t ever sip, but they don’t ever take a shot unless there is a toast to something). But I personally have never been all that pressured to drink when I have said that I didn’t want anything to drink. I guess Armenians know I’m serious when I say I’m not drinking. Also since I am in a city the experience is very different than village life (which is what most volunteers experience) and so this also probably has something to do with it as well.

But anyways, we get our stuff together and all pile in to a little Marshutka (a van which is the most common form of public transportation) that we’ve rented for the day. There was probably 15 or 16 of us in this rather modestly sized Marshutka, so it was cozy. Armenians are able to fit a lot more people than that into one of these things and in the aisles there are little stools that people pull out from underneath the bolted down seats that allow for extra seating, and if it’s a short ride within the city people will be standing.

We drove out of town and the first two possible sites were filled up so finally on the third one we stopped. We wanted to be close to the river but we were on the other side of the road so, no lake. There was a house there, that was shaped kinda like a trailer and on cinder blocks. We pulled up and unpacked the van and started the fire and preparing the picnic area.

The women started preparing breakfast (Lavash wraps with cheese, and coffee) and the men started preparing the grill, chopping wood, grabbing twigs for kindling, and burning a pile of trash. Yes you read that last one right. That will come up later, but they had gathered trash from around the campsite and then lit it on fire in the adjacent field.

So after we’ve got the fire going and are about halfway through grilling the chicken, (Khorovats, is there term for barbequing/grilling and also the event itself, actually like in English, we’re having a barbeque this Sunday). Okay I’m gonna start this sentence over: Halfway through, the owners of that little house, and our camp-ground area, pull up. The grandma (the tatik) starts yelling at us, all I really make out in the conversation is you are not allowed and then some of the women in our party responded with we will clean up after ourselves, and they point to the burning trash pile that we had lit earlier.

I laughed a little inside. There are things that one has to understand about Armenia. There really isn’t much, if anything in the way of trash disposal. Some places might have something like that, but even the official ones I have seen, they are just burning the trash anyway. They don’t have the facilities or the money to set-up anything like we have in the US. And I highly doubt Americans would be doing anything different if we didn’t have the waste management infrastructure that we have.

This seemed to put the family at ease and the father came over and we toasted to his ancestors (presumably the original owners of the property) and to his family, and we ate some chicken. In general Armenians are pretty hospitable so I don’t think they would have ever kicked us out. Later our marshutka driver pulled the van up to the campground (it was up a semi-steep hill) and pulled out his speakers and started playing some music. Some of my co-workers started dancing and one of the older women grabbed me (quite hard, seriously I’ve been pressured more to dance than to drink here) and made me dance for a few songs. I didn’t know what I was doing and so we tried some simple dances and I think I was hazed enough after that.

I drank so much coffee that day. The coffee here is brewed by just dumping a spoonful of coffee grounds into a pot for each person and with about as much water and then just boiling it until it’s about to boil over but take it off just before. You then have little espresso cups and that’s basically what you have, if maybe a little thicker, there’s always a thick black coating at the bottom. I like it.

There are no chickens in Vanadzor. I had them at my house and would see them everyday in Alapars, I sort of miss that I think. They always reminded me of the ones from Zelda, where you'd hit them three times and then they'd go crazy and kill you. Not that I ever hit them three times (or any times for that matter) but the aimless chickens running around did make me think of those little villages.