It is harvest season in Armenia. The rural development team makes regular visits to villages to monitor Civilitas programs. The individual stories are representative of the dilemmas facing individual farmers and Armenia’s rural economy in general.
I get excited about our trips to the villages. It’s a good chance to disconnect from the office routine, from e-mails and tasks and try to reshuffle and test the ideas behind our projects, while looking for various other opportunities. It’s also a good chance to meet new people, get to know them and understand, to a degree, the problems and issues they are dealing with in the villages.
It was colder in Yerevan over the weekend so, geared up with warm clothes and some chips and fruit, we took off towards Goris with a plan to visit two communities – Harzhis and Bardzravan. Both communities are included in our Dairy Production Enhancement project, that we are implementing with the support of Polish Aid and in collaboration with the Strategic Development Agency, and they will be beneficiaries of milk cooling tanks by the end of February 2010. It is an interesting project and it raises a lot of questions that are difficult to answer.
Like, what do you do with a community that can stand on its feet with your assistance but would have a hard time surviving without the “incubating” circumstances initiated by us? A bank would never approve a loan for these types of communities where the payback period is longer than the devaluation of the amount loaned, the collateral is not even in the equation and when you add up the interest rates (even with the most favorable interest rates) these communities are simply not able to make the payments.
Harzhis: Putting grandmas out of a job
Harzhis is located ten to fifteen minutes off of the main Yerevan-Goris highway and is fairly close to Goris (24km). It is 90 km from the administrative center of Syunik and is one of the oldest communities in Armenia, with a fortress that dates back to the tenth century, churches, old bridge, etc. The community has 175 households with a total population of 919. The community has a secondary school that has 165 students, a community library with 5000 books, a community center, a kindergarten and a primary health care clinic. The community has a natural gas supply line, but the gas pipe only goes to the center of the community. The villagers were complaining and asking us to assist them with building the internal gas distribution line. The internal roads of the community are not paved and the community does not have any irrigation network , so, the farmers’ only choice is to cultivate wheat and then barter it with different merchants that visit the community or simply make flour and bake bread throughout the year.
While driving through Harzhis we met some of the residents of the community and our “Hello, how are you?” gradually turned into a coffee at their house (as usually happens in Armenia). We presented Civilitas and started talking about different rural projects that we are implementing. We tried to concentrate their attention on the milking units’ project. They complained about the price of milk and as usually happens, started comparing the raw milk price (80AMD) to the price they pay for a bottle of Armenia’s premier mineral water: Jermuk (180AMD). I have tried to explain (100 times probably, in different villages) that the actual Jermuk water is actually free and it is the end-product that costs more and if they compare a carton of milk on the shelves of the supermarkets with the bottle of Jermuk on those same shelves, they’ll see that milk costs more.
While talking about the advantages of the milking unit, the Grandma complained that the project is trying to ensure that grandmas are not needed anymore – especially taking into consideration that they recently bought a washing machine that does all the laundry. I couldn’t tell if she was pleased or worried.
We gave them some of our brochures and prepared to leave, when one of our hosts asked if we could assist him to purchase a tractor. A used tractor would cost anywhere between ten to fifteen thousand dollars and he would be willing to sign a contract for two or three years to repay the loan. We promised to look into it and try to find a donor. We left to continue our trip, hoping that the next time we visit this community we will have something in hand and this project will be in full swing.
Bardzravan: The scary reality
Bardzravan was our next stop. A community located 33 km from Goris, 48 km from the administrative center of Syunik and 283 km from Yerevan. It’s a community which, according to our partner organization, has a very big potential for milk production development. This community also has several old churches and settlements. It has a population of 127 in 36 households. When we arrived in Goris we were told that Bardzravan has a breathtaking view of the Vorotan gorge and a beautiful church right on the edge of the cliff, so the first thing we did was visit the place and check the view before it was too dark. The view was really magnificent with the Tatev monastery on the other side of the gorge and several villages looking at you from the other side.
We met a Zaven babig at the church, bringing calves home from pasture.
Zaven babig lives in Bardzravan with his wife. He had five children. His oldest son died during the war in Karabakh. His two daughters are married and live in Vayq and Kapan. The second son works in Kajaran and the youngest daughter is studying nursing in Vayq. He says he’s happy in the village but the younger generation does not want to stay in the community, they all want to have jobs and work in the cities. He says this year wasn’t a good year and he harvested less than he anticipated. They mainly plant wheat as the lands they own are not irrigated and “there is no market for anything else anyway”.
The community, he says, used to have a large amount of cattle during the Soviet times, but everything is lost now and people are leaving, especially during the last three to four years. The number of kids in school decreased from 54 to 8. Zaven babig hopes that the plan of the government to build a cable lift to Tatev may be a boost for their community. The village is 24km far from Tatev monastery and they were told that there will be a hotel built in their community. He says that he hopes that this plan will assist them to make sure that the youth stays in the village and helps to develop a vibrant community.
With an invitation to his house for a dinner and our polite refusal (reasoning that we still had to get to Goris), we said good bye to Zaven babig , thinking that 8 kids in a school of a community is a really scary reality. Can you imagine your whole school is only 8 students? You’re friends with all of them. All grades together do not make one normal sized class.
On our way out we met the principal of the school and the mayor. The principal was quick to invite us to his house for a dinner and joked that he is a villager who is not that clever and thanks to that has almost no problems. On my comment that eight kids must be a hell of a reality to live with, he corrected me, with pride, that it’s not eight, it’s eleven, as if that makes a lot of difference. The mayor started to tell us about the recent activities in the community – how they gathered together and fixed the water lines or cleaned up the community. He was really hopeful that the milk cooling center would help them develop the dairy production from raw milk to cheese production. He has a group of farmers who are currently busy with cheese production and they think that the cooling tank will give them the break to sell the milk in the summer (when the volume of milk is at its peak) and further develop the cheese production throughout the year. He was full of initiative and ready to work to develop his community that has 11 kids in the school and a potential for development of the milk production.
With mixed feelings, we set off towards Goris, understanding that the dilemma of assistance to communities on the edge is still a question without a solid answer.