Get Off the Bus, Gus!

I could have stayed on the bus.

No one would judge me for it, and there would be plenty of opportunities to connect with other Armenian families later in the day. I knew today’s story didn’t need to be THIS story, of a 12 year old boy in need of a sponsor.

I got off the bus, but you probably knew that already, didn't you?

You knew that even though life is hard, opting IN is what helps me. It’s what keeps me going and tethers me to the world in a healthy way that I could not have taken for granted just a few years ago.

I had read a little bit about Nikol’s family early this morning, and I wanted to learn more, so I walked up the snowy path past the huge haystacks and into Janet, Andranik, and Nikol’s stone house. It was spacious in comparison to the house we would visit next, which was actually a cramped metal boxcar intended for temporary use following Armenia’s earthquake 27 yrs ago, now all these years later serving as a permanent home for a family of five. 

But Nikol’s stone house, while spacious, is falling down around the family, who can not afford to make repairs. In fact, Nikol recently changed where he slept because he is terrified the roof will cave in on him in the night.

 

 

I’ve joked a bit about my age on this trip, as I am quite a bit older than the other bloggers. I mean, I can’t believe I worried whether or not I should wear skinny jeans on the trip. These young bloggers are hip. And my use of the word "hip" just now pretty much shows that I’m not.  However, when I meet Nikol’s parents, who are 52 and 56, I would not have been surprised to learn they were in their 70's or older, so harsh have the years been on them.

As it is, they are as old as many grandparents in the region, and it is a cause for regret that they are barely able to feed their family at this stage in life, let alone spend money doting on their adult children and grandchildren.  As part of the old guard who remembers living under Soviet rule and having all of their needs met, Janet and Andranik find their current reality hard to fathom, let alone accept, but they have no choice.

Despite various physical ailments, they, along with Nikol, walk to a neighboring area twice a day to care for someone else’s farm animals. There they are surrounded by manure, but are not allowed to take any home to heat their house. 3 hours of labor in the morning, and 3 in the afternoon, done by the family together, yields a total of $1.40 a day. Enormous debt the family has carried for years (with interest rates up to 36%) looms over them, spreading a feeling of hopelessness and despair. When winter is over, the cows will be taken elsewhere, and that meager job will disappear. 

Yet here is Nikol, with his huge brown eyes and ready smile, who shows us some Judo moves (doing a few on me at my request), plays a few notes for us on a Euphonium, and tells us about the World Vision summer camp he attended last year. He is playful, respectful, curious, and kind. Our guides will tell us later that it is hard for him to make friends because in such a small village, his abject poverty sets him even further apart from his peers.

 

 

 

When Nikol opens his notebooks to show us his drawings, I feel a pang, but in a good way, thinking of my own brown-eyed boy and how each of his interests became our own and how he was (and is) a light to us as Nikol is to his parents.

We find out that Nikol’s school is going to start requiring students to have a computer, and that his teacher already gives out links and websites as part of assignments. To hear the words "links" and "computer" while standing in a room with a collapsing ceiling, a water tap nearby in the yard, and an outhouse down the way, is jarring and incongruous. How much more will these loving parents borrow just to get what they need for Nikol?

When an elderly woman prays that her ailments and stiff joints will ease up enough to allow her to milk another person’s cow in the hopes they will have enough money to PURCHASE MANURE, how ridiculous does talk of computers sound? What about Nikol's father, unable to use one of his arms because of a war injury? Where do computers fit in his reality, which at first glance looks like stepping back in time to a century ago? 

I don't know, for although they are kind enough to invite us into their home, to open up about their fears and struggles, I cannot truly put myself in their place.

“Nikol has a very tender heart,” our guide says, explaining that even at 12 he is a doting uncle who loves to play with his little nieces and nephew. “Yes,” I think, “I bet he does.”

And I know right then, even though a tear has slipped out of my eye.

Even though I can't transport the parents back to their youth, when life looked so very different from this daily struggle for survival.

Even though I can't wipe away the debt.

Even though I can't help Nikol fit in the way every middle schooler wants.

I know that Nikol will be our family's next sponsor child.

And now he is.

There are other children in Nikol's village who are in need of sponsorship, including his one of his nieces and his nephew. Here's information if you are interested.