Paradoxes

"Ask that your way be long,

at many a Summer dawn to enter

with what gratitude, what joy, 

ports seen for the first time..."

It’s surprising, how short a time it takes to fall in love with a place. As you can probably tell from our blog posts thus far, we’ve all fallen hard and fast for Armenia and for the people we’ve met, and too deeply for me to easily believe we've only been here for a few days. 

Armenia is such a paradox. It's a place that has been taken over by so many different governments and cultures since its ancient founding that it shouldn't have such a strong, unique cultural identity--but it does. It's a place where the scenery--the mountains that rise so steeply they knock the breath out of you when you see them, the little rivers that froth beneath the cliffs they've cut, the green land that tumbles away from you when you stand on the tops of the mountains--is so amazing that the poverty of the people who live in it strikes you like a slap in the face. The best view in town belongs to the people of the "poverty area," where whole families live in unheated, un-air conditioned metal containers smaller than my college dorm room. How can such hardship exist in such sheer beauty? 

The paradox is renewed at our work site in a little village high above Vanadzor. Our work is hard and we end every day sore and tired, but we love it. We laugh, we dance, we have tickle fights with the children of the family we work with: Suren, Syuzi, Siramargh. The children are beautiful and bright; when we play with them, it's so easy to forget the poverty of the village in which they live. A look around provides a sobering reminder. 

But the people themselves are wonderful: hospitable, friendly, caring, kind, and--what surprised me most--playful. And the language barrier has all but disappeared. Our new friends speak varying degrees of English, and we speak little to no Armenian (although Jessie has the word for "milk" down-pat), but by now we can all understand each other without even trying too hard. Gestures, facial expressions, and laughter communicate what words can't. This is surprising too. On past trips, I've always been intimidated by the language barrier and therefore was shy around the people of the place I was visiting. In Armenia I hardly give it a passing thought. It's so easy to understand everyone when everyone wants to be understood. 

The other day at work, I was taking a break after a shift on the bucket line. Our driver, Melik, was shifting the pile of dirt we've been adding to the gravel mixture. He called my name and tossed me a flat, vaguely triangular stone.

"It is a heart!" he said, grinning widely. "Brittani's heart!" I laughed, palming its cool, smooth surface.

It's sitting in my backpack now, my little Armenian heart. I'm taking it back home with me, and it will probably be my favorite souvenir. It will be a sort of replacement, I think, for the small part of my heart--the small part of all our hearts, really--that Armenia is always going to keep.