illustrations:
Christmas- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2133687&l=0e26e&id=5621123
The Last few months- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2148890&l=565db&id=5621123 http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2148892&l=e1a7e&id=5621123
Tonight marks four weeks since my return to the United States. Part of the reason I haven’t written is because I find it very difficult to figure out what is necessary to say and how to both accurately and adequately represent my last few weeks in Armenia and the plop back into America.
The best I can do is rattle off some scattered thoughts. Before I do so, I just want to thank you for meeting me here, amidst confused meanderings, for these months. Please do not undervalue the effect your prayers, comments, emails, letters (however lengthy or brief) had, and continue to have, on my life. THANK YOU.
During my last few weeks I got in deeper and deeper with the village children. We hung out daily- whether that meant sitting around in the evenings, playing "football", adventuring through versions of "capture the flag" or making a serious effort to clean up the mess of a village.
An American family sponsored a group of my little buddies from the poor village school to clean for football uniforms. The village is literally LITTERED with CRAP. It is EVERYWHERE. And since it is everywhere, it is no particular person’s mess and no particular person’s responsibility.
Because of a lack of jobs and purpose, men loiter for long hours and shoot the breeze between cigarettes. Anywhere they congregate puts them in full view of the inhuman mess. Nobody does anything about it except to generously bequeath their situation and mentality to those who come after them...but they’re probably just re-gifting.
During our project, some of the kids who cleaned for uniforms picked up one piece of trash every ten minutes and didn’t at all understand the sense of what we were doing. Heck, I even had one kid who decided the best trash-picker-upper would have the heaviest bag, so he proceeded to bypass trash for sizable rocks.
Their logic was convincing. They didn’t make the mess, so it wasn’t their problem. Any area we cleaned would soon be dirty again within a day or two because of an incessant wind with the bad habit of depositing plastic bags right where you had just cleaned. It was impossible to clean up everything and very difficult not to be daunted by the amount of time it took to finish five feet. It would take weeks and a few more than 11 schoolboys to make a tangible difference.
That said, a handful got something out of it. A group of kids who were not on the football team came and cleaned with us anyway (probably more for something to do than for anything else, but still). And a couple of boys kept coming to clean even when they had put in enough hours to earn their uniforms. They cleaned both with me and on their own time. One made a comment that they lived in a place for pigs. He asked me if America was like this. His expression and deepening commitment through all of this cannot be translated.
The day before I left, this same group of friends ditched school (I know, what a good influence) and pulled me out of the Sisters’ house for a "surprise." They were five boys between the ages of eleven and fourteen. I was directed to sit down and watch as they acted out Armenian skits (all rhymed), each said something about who God is, recited poems that they wrote and memorized for me and sang me songs. The boy who I was closest with of the group turned, almost in kind of a self-disbelief, and said, "I have tears in my eyes".
That night a couple of co-volunteers and I roasted s’mores (or the closest thing to it- the same generous American family helped get me some graham crackers and mallows) with this core group of village kids. After burning everything they could get their hands on, and when it looked like the party was nearly over, they changed their approach and brought the fire everywhere else- including to a candle in front of our trailer.
At this point one of the poorest boys in the whole village (in every sense) and who is made fun of daily by everyone because he smells and is always dirty etc- turned to me and said, "can we pray?…can we pray for your- airplane?" The others immediately joined in- "yeah yeah- for your good trip home?" All the kids gathered around the candle, made the sign of the cross and prayed the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be (prayers they learned from the Sisters) for my safe trip home.
It was all I could do to say anything after that- especially goodbye.
The goodbye to the disabled young adults in the Sisters’ home was also difficult- but in a different way. They understand something more of goodbye, because everyone- all the volunteers and Sisters- eventually say it. In fact, I worried that by coming and going I was opening their deepest wound. It is infinitely better that people come and love them than that they are alone, but it’s just hard. For the moment, and perhaps for always, they are in the care of the very loving hands of volunteers and Sisters.
Before I sign off permanently, I want to correct the image of Armenia that I dared to offer in one of my first entries- an entry I wrote before I had even exited Yerevan. I think I described Armenia as a kind of poor, Mexican Europe.
That is absolutely wrong.
I filtered the little I saw of Armenia through the little I had seen of the world- and that’s what came out. That’s the kind of thing I did/do all the time- and one of the many flaws about the way I think and act that this experience helped to surface.
And after almost ten months, I’m still not sure what to say about Armenia. She’s ancient and Eastern. She survived soviet oppression, but remains stuck somewhere and hesitant to leave that place. Faith and Religion are her forgotten bedrock. She embraced me, and I’m not sure why or what I am supposed to take from long days nestled in her mountains, but I hope someday that I can do something to thank her, her sons and daughters and their Creator.
