Siunik Marz - 2 of 5

Siunik Marz
page 2 of 5

After another few hours in the bus and a lunch on a cliff overlooking a tree-studded valley, we made our way down the the southern edge of the country past the small town of Kajaran. You can see the homes leaning over into the river.

We continues to climb up 4,500 feet on one the windiest and scariest roads I have ever been on. We drove up wild switchbacks that climbed straight up moutain ledges with small shoulders protecting our van from drops of hundred of feet. The road was filled with oil-trucks bringing Armenia it's much-needed energy from Iran and other trucks importing or exporting whatever the two countries traded. So our van needed to keep passing these tankers on the skinny two-lane road, and just as often our van was being passed by quicker post-soviet 4-doors passenger cars. Occassionally the passes were on blind curves and I closed my eyes and hoped we wouldn't be knocked off mountain. (On our last overnight excusion our van actually got into an accident while trying to pass on a blind curve, but I'll leave that story to another post.) I was the only one in the bus with my seatbelt on and everyone teased me, but it made me feel slightly more comfortable.

In this picture you can see a large tan sploch in between the two mountains. My understanding is that this is an open-pit mine. One of the biggest challenges Armenia is facing now is trying to find ways to bring money into the country. A lot of people's well-beings depend on there being good jobs and enough money coming and staying in the country to ensure that there is a decent standard of living. In general there is a huge lower class not much of a middle class and a tiny upper class. People get by, but just barely and with a lot of effort. So like many countries, Armenia occasionally turns to mining.

There are a few problems with this for Armenia. Firstly, mines are not a good way of distributing wealth. The actually miners have dangerous, unhealthy jobs and don't get paid well. The mine owners themselves are rich and often foreign and the profits just evaporate away from the very people who mined the ore. And mines, especially open-pit mines are horribly polluting and I can only imagine what is being leached into the water and drained down to the villages downstream. This is especially problematic in a country as small as Armenia. In a country like Russia or Canada it is bad enough, but they have more of a luxury to destroy a plot of land and move on.. In Armenia (which is the size of Vermont) if a piece of land is destroyed, it has a relatively much larger effect. And once the what is being mined disapears, so does to the jobs and the money. But if Armenians need money now, if an especially harsh winter or a bad summer crop can really make the different, what are people to do?

Not that there is massive mining in Armenia, but it illustrates the economic problem that faces the country: how can it find a stable way to bring in money to support its people? How can Armenia overcome the curruption in its government, not screw over its citizens, and bring money into its economy? It is funny coming from a radical background like San Francisco where I can critique the evils of capitalism without having to worry about paying rent or surviving winter. But in Armenia people need ways of supporting themselves. And realistically that means dealing with these issues.

That's enough for now. I could go on and on. Maybe I'll have more of a chance to get into this in a future post.

After we came down the mountain and before we arrived in Meghri, we can upon a couple of Iranian oil tankers parked by the side of the road for a reason that is still unclear to me.

Out driver stopped the van, talked this friendly farmer who lived right up the road and bought some gas. I don't know why the farmer put the gas in our tank and not the driver of the tanker. Maybe he had just bought some gas and was selling it to us? Anyway he was very friendly. I couldn't talk to him because my Armenian language skills haven't come together yet, but while I was watching him he asked someone if I was Iranian. They told him I was half-armenian.

Another reason why we stopped was because coming down the mountain had made the breaks red-hot and they needed to cool down. But hot metal next to an open gas container and an oil truck aren't exactly the safest set of circumstances so we were all sent over to the other side of the road.

As we waited, the trucks continued to speed up and down the highway. There is actually a problem on this highway of people being run-over and killed when the road passes through towns and villages. One of the programs funded by the place I volunteer at in Yerevan is working to educate children about road safety. I just went to the town of Goris to interview kids about what they've learned and am making a radioshow/podcast about the program. I will post it up here when I've finished it.

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