We switched on the heating today. Autumn is time for switching personalities. That’s when my all going out self becomes a red wine drinking bread maker. Yerevan has a new face now, cold and rainy – finally a truce with the dust. I’ll wear some blush, as I don’t like pale harbors. Some people go away, some people hide. And the pomegranates are all over in the markets. They just opened up for us, talking about the future. For the next weeks I’ll be working in a center for disabled children, a center with athletes and basketball heroes. 2 chapters more and I don’t want to think about war for indefinite time. Nor games. Let’s keep it warm and cozy.

no luck day

We’re going to the Genocide Museum with O., a Turkish guy .The closed border between Armenia an Turkey makes them separate worlds, where Turkish people wonder if is it safe to travel around Armenia and enables a moment of suspense each time we say ‘This is O., he’s from Turkey’. N. says he saw someone being beaten up in the street the other day. I didn’t witness such kind of thing since I’m here and feel quite safe walking around. I could say that in general people are high tempered and quick to raise their voices. Someone told me that Portugal was Pisces. I would say that Armenia is Scorpio, emotions flow on big waves and never forgets. Actually I saw a scorpion in the living room the other day. It said welcome to the motherland. Today we’re going there to remember.

waves

Thank you Mr. Vann

“There are three ways of trying to win the young. There is persuasion.
There is compulsion. There is attraction. You can preach at them; that is a hook without a worm. You can say “You must volunteer; that is the devil. And you can tell them, ‘You are needed.’ That appeal hardly ever fails.”

(Kurt Hahn)

If home is where the heart is

Long time, no news. I’m working in a school now, every morning, my role is to enroll the children in different kind of activities. The first ones were yoga classes, very funny and clumsy ones. They’re groups of five year old children, so it is not so easy to come with activities as I don’t speak Armenian and well, they are 5, so everything has to be very physical and practical.
This week I had my first homesickness episode, I just entered in a melancholic mood as I woke up with a very sad and beautiful piano song that someone was playing in some classroom next door. Homesickness in a sense of ‘what am I doing here?, not necessarily missing Portugal. Right now I define myself as a researcher and my search is focused on finding my place in the world. I have friends there, family and I feel privileged to have so. This enriches me and makes me able to conquer the world! (in a modest way, let’s say.. =) ) But I’m still looking for my place, where I can work on something meaningful, explore and have a nest.
Time flows with a different rhythm, I’m here for a month and a half but it certainly feels longer, life develops in unexpected ways when you’re away and I’m fatally attracted by the unknown. Life looks stimulant and curvy, you never know what will come next and I’m up for it. I imagine it could end tomorrow or I could end up being a 90 granny telling stories and pushing the small birds to fly. Actually I believe I’ll live at least until my fifties and again experience big pain. And if I survive, I’ll be more free. These are just personal superstitions, so there’s no point in explaining it.
Yesterday we were in Sevan, Armenia’s big lake, winter there when we arrived. The sun came up in the afternoon so I was able to put my feet on the water and listen to the water for a while. There’s no more beautiful sound than this, it makes me go deep to the center of me and come back to surface. We stayed in a cottage near the water, ate barbecue and pretended it wasn’t freezing cold. I woke up after the strangest dream and had to stay still for a moment to convince myself that this cottage was the real, that the paper walls were blue, as this was more a trip that an actual dream. It was disturbing and powerful, a full dive into my unconscious it seems. In those first moments I decided not to keep much details of it, let the waters of the unconscious sail their way. I have a heart wounded and filled with water. And at the same time I feel I have the heart of a lion. So I roar.

The Curious Incident of the Cat in the Night-Time

Recently we moved to another house, FYCA moved to another office. We packed and cleaned, unpacked, cleaned, did to do lists, what is missing lists, what cannot happen lists. Like the flat manager getting in our room in the morning, me in shorts and crazy hair. Or having hot boiling water in the toilet but not in the shower. We have water from 7 to 12 and then from 7 to 9 pm. I made Armenian coffee this morning. We finally have a fridge, and Lilit, who was just now biting my fingers and suddenly fell asleep. Now the office is next door and we have Armenian classes in the kitchen. From the main street we can see Ararat mountain. Home can assume different shapes.

(some days ago)

attachment

This chapel has cockrel heads on the entrance. A bit of dryed blood on the floor. Pieces of the animal tied in rope on the left. Jesus is glued on the walls with little bits of wax. If you find a stone on the floor you can glue it on the wall and have your wish come true, blessed in blood and by the holy spirit. The light comes in from the holes between the rocks and heavan watches while you pray. The mountains around answer in silence, using words that only the heart can understand.

It’s 4h30 and I woke up with a cockroach walking over me. We were not supposed to still be in this room and that’s it, I’m not staying anymore. I can bear to know them around the bathroom and even smashing one before going to sleep but this too much intimacy for me. We’re sharing a room with no lights besides the main one, that seems more like calling factory workers to clock in than to invite to a good night of sleep , which brings me to my present position, on a chair near the door, using the hall light, trying not to wake up my roommate. Helas to paper and pen. I guess that’s how I’ll find out how this city looks like in early in the morning. Sunrise should be around 6h30 and will erase the silence of this early hour. It’s still possible to hear some cars passing by but we can call it silence when compared with the daily sound bites I was told there is a bakery around Republic Square and maybe that’s a good spot for early birds – bakery meaning a store where they sell bread and pastries, not a place where you eat toasts and coffee and milk and pasteis de nata. I always miss that about Portugal. Six years ago I was living in Madrid and whenever I got to Portugal that would be the first thing I’d do right after getting out of the bus, uma torrada e uma meia de leite.It’s in these small things we realize how we build borders.
Today is 6 months since my father died, tomorrow it will be one year since our lives changed for good, it was when the concept of irreversibility enter my life abruptly. This thought is deep rooted in my mind, all the other thoughts touch it and connect with it. On 26th August 2009 I was having my ID card done, officialising that my identity was about to be run over and rebuilt again. This is how I never take it from my wallet anytime I have to fulfil a form, I now exactly the date I should right down. There is a tea house in Porto that my father liked a lot, who wouldn’t, as it has the best pasteis de nata of the city. They’re not the common ones, they’re more similar to Lisbon’s pasteis de Belem, delicious. If you’re near Porto just look for Chicara, on Rua do Gondarem. You won’t regret having a tea with fancy old ladies, warm scones, and the pastries, of course. After his surgery, my father offered these pastries to the surgery team, nurses and doctors. He was a gentle person. I wouldn’t as I understood that they were doing their job, being paid and getting full social recognition. Knowing you’re good and efficient should be rewarding in itself. Pastries are for light minded afternoons. While he was sick my mother and me ate a lot of sweets. I never ate so much chocolate as last winter, winter makes me crave for chocolate and last winter I was having it all the time. Dark chocolate, tea, almonds cookies and cheese. It rained a lot, we were at home eating chocolate. In February we were pale and overweight. There is a cloud that blurs those times. Clouds are natural pain killers produced by the brain, always focused on the survival race. (Thought: physical clouds, drops-of-water clouds as a manifestation of god; clouds transform themselves in elephants and trees, harmless pieces of nature, you don’t find your pain in clouds, just dreams. I’m not preaching about almighty minds, I believe in a god with no brains).
Today I’ll be taking photos an event so I’ll need some Armenian coffees to keep my eyes open behind the camera. Strange things happen when you travel. I’m drinking coffee, no hands shacking effect – I stopped drinking coffee two years ago, as my hands would start trembling. I’m smoking menthol cigarettes. Some weeks ago I was feeling like drinking coke all the time – that must be the waking up ‘n refresh kick that Yerevan asks for. I started eating meat – but that was before coming here, so it doesn’t count for these mathematics. I like eating cucumber at breakfast – before I barely ate it. I drink salty yoghurt with pizza. There nothing strange about drinking milk with sardines (note: these metaphor is bases on true facts, for more information ask A. M. S., my brother). Strangeness is in the eyes of who strangeness sees. Things change. But I still don’t like cockroaches.

We spent a week in Ijevan. It was the first time I got out of the fortress of cars, noise and one million souls that is Yerevan to find a more authentic Hayastan. Ijevan is a town where old soviet buildings live side by side with cows and chicken. From the window of my room I could see the mountains all around – and still, a lot of garbage. The human presence is strong in this sense. Buildings are unfinished, pure concrete, but behind each door a family builds its own nest, with its television and coffee and candies. I lived with an Armenian family for a week, sharing their meals and watching the evening soap opera. Tomatoes, cucumbers, panir (cheese), bread. A lot of Armenian coffee, showering after 8h30, when water is available again. We’ve been hosted by Young Tavush, a local organization very committed with local development and youth participation. They wanted us to help in the creation of new strategies for volunteer management and we’re going back there in mid September for a seminar they’re organizing at that time. Local people assumed I was Armenian, nothing exotic about me. We ended up going to an excavation where they were studying an ancient wall that remained from an old settlement in the region. On Saturday we headed to Stepanavan, passing by Vadnazor to change marshutka. The last bit between this city and our destiny was the most impressive , as all of the sudden the landscape turned from dryness to a refreshing green. Stepanavan is even smaller than Ijevan. There we had our on arrival training for EVS volunteers. We met our colleagues from FYCA and some other few volunteers. After getting used to all the calmness and silence of this more rural Armenia we took a taxi back to Yerevan on Monday evening. Storm and lightening, rain and cold weather, a new face of Armenian weather. Arabic, Russian music, Celine Dion, Elton John and voila, ‘You touch my tralala, my dindingdong’ included the soundtrack of the trip back to the capital. Short after midnight, again the city in front of our eyes and a new month about to begin. It rained a bit today, a prayer for flourishing times.
(On prayers: see attachment)

(24th August 2010)