It's strange to think that we're already 25% of the way through our 27 months of Peace Corps Service, but this week marks the completion of our 7th month of living in Armenia. Thinking about how helpless we were when we arrived in this country compared to the relative independence we have now makes me feel proud of how much we've learned. On our first trip to Yerevan, Sam and I were too unsure of ourselves and our language skills to even order lunch on North Ave- the most English-Friendly street in the capital. We walked up and down the pedestrian route, not straying from its broad paving stones for fear of getting lost in the strange city. Compare that with our adventure of 2 weeks ago when we got into a cab heading for parts unknown (waaaay outside the tourist-centered North Ave district) to negotiate a rental agreement all on our own. Alla didn't trust us to cut our own eggs in Shahumyan- now we cook and clean for ourselves in our own house. It feels good to be an adult again, even if we still get help from Hasmik when our gas goes out or our washing machine needs to be repaired. After 7 months of living like a child, things are starting to get back to normal.
And, at 7 months in, things should be starting to feel more normal. The every-day occurrences here are starting to loose their novelty: waking up to herds of sheep outside my window no longer surprises me, the smell of burning trash that frequently permeates the town has faded into the olfactory background, and while men smoking in restaurants and public buses are still the bane of my existence, their tobacco infused presence is now an expected inconvenience rather than a shocking development.
That's not to say that everything here feels ordinary now- I'm still stopped in my tracks by the beauty of the mountains surrounding Sisian. I'm still shocked and a little uncomfortable when my fellow teachers kick off the week with vodka shots on Monday morning or break out a bottle of wine half-way through the day on Wednesday. I'm still not used to it when people I've met once remember my name and greet me on the street.
Mostly, I still struggle to really understand Armenians. I don't mean language study (although that is a continuing endeavor for both Sam and myself), but rather I struggle to understand the Armenian mindset. What motivates Armenians as a people? What values guide their priorities? How do they view and frame the problems faced by their country? I feel like I'm only now starting to brush against the edges of answers to these questions.
I know that cultural values here are different than they are back home, but it's hard to say in exactly what ways they're different. All I can do is observe behavior and try to extrapolate from that a set of cultural principles and values that I can then use to predict future behavior to see if my extrapolations were correct. As I attempt this, I'm strongly reminded of my own semester of cultural anthropology in college, and wish I had taken the course more seriously. But in those days I was just another pre-med student with very little tolerance for the soft-sciences, so I guess I'll just have to get by with the little anthropology that I've got.
I'm not prepared to write an in-depth treatise on Armenian cultural values, but I can say that, in general and in my experience, Armenians value the collective and the social far more than Americans who tend to value the individual and the professional/impersonal instead.
For example, in impoverished American communities people talk about "getting out". Parents work hard to give their children the opportunity to move to more affluent neighborhoods. Young people are encouraged to study well in school so that they can secure a job and life outside of and away from the poverty of their home neighborhood, town or city. Things aren't like that here. Poverty is endemic in Armenia, with almost 30% of families suffering from or at risk of food insecurity. And yet people here don't hope to "escape" from this economic difficulty by leaving it behind (although many are forced to). Instead people encourage students to study well in school so that they may help improve their village or town when they are grown. The unit for improvement isn't an individual's circumstances but rather the community as a whole. Rather then telling students to 'go out and make something of themselves', students in Armenia are told "Go, study, and come back". It's almost shameful to leave/abandon your home town- which may be why the reported population of Sisian is so much greater than the actual population here: declaring your residence elsewhere is admitting that you've left your home.
I'm still a long way from truly understanding Armenians, and with everything that becomes normalized in my life, every instance in which I demonstrate increased competence, independence and familiarity, I'm confronted with nuances of Armenian culture that I still don't understand. But I am making progress, and this aspect of social collectivism in Armenian culture is, I think, not insignificant. The more things like this I can grasp, the more this country will make sense to me.
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