Mashutkas in Armenia

I want you to take a Mashutka with me. Out of the breeze and warmth and café life of Yerevan, Armenia. Out past the grey rocks and dust and dryness of the city which we will leave far below us. I want you to sit squashed in the back of this mini van with me – face dripping with sweat – as it dribbles down to the end of your nose – from where you can’t quite be bothered to wipe it – as everyone else is equally sweaty.

We have just asked in vague attempts at Armenian-English if “Garni” is the destination .. and this has led to an increased interest in us and particularly my blond hair and blue eyes and probably whatever you look like too. We have squeezed ourselves in the very back of the mashutka – and are now perched between a man who is holding a handkerchief over his nose and mouth –for no real particular reason – he will not remove it for the duration of the journey – and will mumble comments out to us every once in a while from beneath it’s folds. On the left is another skinny wrinkled man who is holding a basket for his wife – a large woman who is sporting a crazily floral orange dress. In front of us– almost in our eyes are the perfect black and red curls of a young Armenian – she has obviously spent the better half of the day working at the masterpiece that is her flawless appearance – glitter covers her shoulders, her arms and swamps her hair – making her radiate Barbie-ness and brilliance. She is – like most Caucasus women – a minutely delicate figure –well endowed above her tiny waist. Just as I think the mini-bus can’t take anyone more a set of young Armenian men enter – and spend the rest of the trip peering backwards to question. Every one of talking – even though we don’t understand what they say – and they don’t understand what we say we manage to exchange pleasantries – to hear about the woman’s son who has just passed his diploma – which is promptly produced – for the bus to know that I am 22 – for three explanations of how to get to Garni cathedral to have been argued over and discussed in intimate details.

As we rumble over the potholes several more people scramble on board – and a friend of the orange dressed lady decides to settle herself in next to us – we are beginning to smell in all too much detail the scent of humanity packed like sardines on a day that is reaching up into the 90’s. And the scent seems to be permeating everything – as we become more and more aware of other people’s elbows and legs pressing into us. But as we rise above the city (with some difficulty – it must be said) we are reaching the little towns outside – the animals out in amongst the dusty rocky earth – and those towering soviet blocks – that don’t seem to fit the desert like landscape – pigs waddle into the balconies of the apartment buildings – now creaking and cracking with the heat and the cold extremes of this area. Sheep’s wool is being dried on other balconies – and a sense of decay and a bygone heavy duty industry stands starkly in the form of old chimneys and factories laid to waste against that beautiful blue sky. A sense of a biblical time returning and taking over once again permeates the place – as though the soviet years were a blip upon the reality of life in the Caucasus – which is more full of long hot summers, Turkish coffees, agriculture, sunflowers, sheep rearing and family than collectivization, homemade vodka, quotas and communist youth clubs.

Armenia is different from Georgia – its wealth is much greater – the Diaspora has done their part in creating changes – and restructuring the economy. More Armenians live outside of Armenia than within the country boundaries. Yerevan is a symbol of a more western way of life – café’s and bright lights betray a sense of a place that is familiar with pastimes and travel. Despite the Georgian insistence that Armenians are an ugly dark people they are stylish – in that half western guise that betrays some kind of naivety as to what those short mini skirts and low tops often mean in western cultures. Yerevan has tourists – still not really hostels – but definitely tourists. It feels safer. It is like a sigh of relief after the weeks in Tbilisi. Armenians sit in cafes late into the night – and do not disappear as they do in Tbilisi – they are doing well – and that sense of being on the right track pervades the café culture and the numerous kind people we will meet on the bus, at the Temple that we are about to visit and later in the monastery on the hills outside. There is decay – there are difficulties – you have only to peer through the handkerchief guy and beyond the locks of Barbie to be able to look out of the mashutka windows at the rolling farming communities immersed in quiet disintegration.

Georgia is lusher and greener – its crumbling buildings are uniquely European – its endless winding streets of balconies and courtyards are more beautiful and charming than anything that Yerevan has to offer. The river sided by the walls of the old city, the fortress and a statue of mother Georgia cannot but be loved – but they hide a darker, more dismal world that still sits in poverty – and has not gathered itself together quite yet. As the under secretary of the state department to the US said on Friday – prospects for democracy in Georgia are the best of anywhere in the post communist block (excluding those lucky EU members). But unless Saakashvili’s attempts to impress the international stage with his vision as a democratic reformer and peace maker are matched by real economic reforms then he will not last long. Already a sense of disillusionment permeates any commentary on him.

And the dark side of Georgia has by no means faded. There is real poverty here – and there is real conflict and danger. In the past two months here in Tbilisi four foreigners have been targeted and beaten up so badly that they have been sent back to be hospitalized and treated in their own countries. Last week four other people and I tried to go to Svaneti – a UNESCO world heritage site – ten hours from here – despite being a group of both Georgians and foreigners the Georgians at our foundation insisted that we not go, insisted that the whole thing would be far too dangerous for a group of 5 traveling by plane for 24 hours into the region. There is barely police control up there so they said and the blood feuds mean it is only safe to venture there if you are invited by a local family who offer you protection. Other areas remain tense over the conflicts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Chechnya.

It is easy to wonder if I could spend my life here in Georgia. The truth is that I find the whole place a difficult one. It was only this weekend in Yerevan as I sat on that Mashutka and walked through the cafes on one of the squares that I realized how tense it sometimes is in Georgia – how the constant assurances that it is a dangerous place – that it is not safe – that I should not walk alone, take taxis alone, walk in or out of the apartment alone sometimes get to you. They take the curb off your sense of freedom. Being blond and female doesn’t help. My feminist convictions only make me realise how far our world still has to come - I realize how much safer I feel when I’m walking with a guy – how reassuring it is to have a guy nearby. And I wonder why it is that a woman cannot feel safe walking the streets alone. Within a world of traditional gender roles my own gender strikes me ever more clearly and distinctly. I feel a woman and a sense of empathy with women ever more strongly. This is largely affected by my work here also. This last week I have spent a large amount of time with NGO’s and IDP (internally displaced women from Abkhazia) women. Hearing their struggles and their difficulties is what is making this trip so memorable and makes the annoyance of security only a small inconvenience and not a major trial. I love Georgian women. I am continually filled with admiration for their work, their attitudes, and their energy – indeed their ability to survive.

This section of my time here would require an entire new blog – and indeed a 10,000 word dissertation – and already it is getting far too late – and more than that my focus here was supposed to be on taking you on a ride in Armenia in the back of a mashutka. I seem to have wondered off slightly. Maybe you will just have to imagine the rest – when you push your way through to the front of the bus – with cries and calls of how to get to the temple ringing in your ears. Of the woman in the red dress who will invite you to her uncle’s house for lunch – of the middle aged men at the temple who will press fresh goat’s cheese and the thinnest of bread and tomatoes into your hands for lunch, of the taste of spring water – drunk from a fountain with the commemoration of someone’s beloved one above it – of the 7th century BC temple in black rock – of the monastery and its gloom and Armenian lettering that oozes peace, of the grasses that overgrow the crosses and arches – and of course finally of the green mountains and the hot air and the tiredness of the end of a day of sunshine and sweat. And then of the shower at the end of it all and the good feeling of lying down to nap for a few hours before the café’s of Yerevan spirit you away.