Stories from Armenia, Part One

From Russia with Love

As all small, poor, third-world countries, Armenia is desperate for foreign investments. They are hard to come by in a country where the government has failed to fund infrastructure constructions, to reform the legislative system, and is itself very corrupt. Without a simultaneous tackle of all three problems, economic development will be hard to come by, and foreign investments even harder.

Russia is Armenia’s only foreign investor worth discussing. Russians rarely look at Armenia as a place to set up factories. Instead they buy out assets that can be dismantled for scrap and sold for a quick buck. Basically, nothing to write home about.

Less than one third of Armenia's economy (and GDP) is based on soft or service-oriented industries: banking (the topic begs for a separate article), food packing (wine, jams, cheese), wireless technology, tourism and, until three years ago, housing construction: tear down anything, build new apartment complexes, and sell to Iranians, Armenians from Russia, and a few people from Los Angeles.

Armenia’s few undeveloped mines are up for contracts to any outside bidder, including Turks doing business with Iran. The Chinese are buying like crazy. Armenia now counts a community of Chinese workers in the thousand. Two Chinese restaurants in Yerevan (food’s not bad), and a radio station in Mandarin cater to them.

But Russia remains Armenia’s main business partner, and they are not to be outdone. I might as well get to the point, otherwise you may think this is a story of love from Russia. Hardly!

A Russian agency has arrived to Yerevan to open up shop. It has rented a huge space (or maybe bought it) and employs some 500 people to conduct business:

Great? You bet!

Wait, wait. Don’t get overly excited.

The agency in question interviews, screens and prepares Armenians… for immigration… to Russia.

The agency provides visas, permanent residency, housing, travel expenses and jobs for Armenians to pack up, and go. Entire families at a time.

But go where?

Entire villages are being relocated, not to the lovely Caspian basin, not to marvelous Moscow or the fertile lands of southern Russia, or the prosperous oil fields of Tyumen. The destination is… hold on to your seat … south Siberia… on the border with China. Thousands of Armenians have been relocating to these remote, desolate, sub-freezing regions for menial work, physical labor… or anything resembling a living.

Russia is a capitalist country now, in case you missed the news. It too has resorted to importing people to replenish its diminishing population, and has found Armenia as a partner with a perfect “sense for business.” The entire leadership crowd of present-day Armenia prides itself for being very business-friendly (patriotism? What’s that?!) and a decision to allow such an agency to operate had to be approved by the highest office in the government, thus effectively making Armenia a net exporter of human beings (please, not to be confused with a real export industry).

There’s no doubt that years of aimless economic voodooism has resulted in more and more Armenians leaving the homeland since independence. More than 70,000 have left in the year 2010, and as many have already left in the first half of this year alone. The very government officials who are in power to address the crisis are actually spectators to the exodus. Immigration is used to keep an unpopular government in power by dismissing from the country people who may join mass protest of a million on the streets, the kind we have been watching sweep the entire Middle East these days – by students with no hope for jobs, elders with no dignity, mothers unable to locate their husbands who left the country for work but were never heard from, women who are forced into white slavery in Dubai or Istanbul, hungry academicians, army veterans, and the list goes on.

Immigration out of Armenia is hidden policy of a government that prefers to “see them go, rather than stick around and make trouble.” It serves yet another purpose for them: the government can grab the money sent by Armenians living and working abroad by artificially manipulating the currency exchange rate, or raising the price of basic food staples- which are monopolies of government ministers and members of parliament to begin with. That money (which accounts for another one third of Armenia’s GDP) is spent entirely - by the people who receive it - on necessities. Nothing is saved or invested. It does not contribute towards the construction of a sustainable economy.

I do not see any foreign aid (the other one third of the GDP) being invested in any long-term plans to refurbish the infrastructure, reform the courts of law, or to create jobs. A fifteen minute drive from Yerevan in any direction out of the city will reveal literally thousands of dilapidated residential buildings, abandoned shops, businesses, factories and schools, crumbling roads, emptying neighborhoods and villages.

It would be more fitting of the leadership in Armenia to undertake a plan to tear down all those eye-sores on the side of the roads, so visitors such as myself can be fooled that, maybe, things aren’t as bad as everyone from the UN on down has been saying. Besides, the undertaking to beautify the landscape may do some good to very sad unemployed laborers who are, most likely, on a waiting list to immigrate to, where else… south Siberia.

Incidentally, the mighty Russian (immigration) agency has made requests to open similar centers in other countries as well. I didn’t learn what the response was, and frankly, I really don’t care. But I did find out that both Georgia and Azerbaijan turned them down.

There’s something in the wind blowing from the steppes of Siberia, and it ain’t love.

Brown Bound

I was overwhelmed by emotions when I got the news of my son’s, Nar’s admission to Brown University for the Fall Semester of 2011. He was ecstatically jumping through the roof (I have photographs to prove it). I was consumed by tears to see a good son’s dream come true, the reward of his hard work and years of unwavering commitment to the “more”. But, most of all, it was for the relief from an arduous and exacerbating journey that has involved my entire family for four years.

What a relief it was!

It is hard to fully and accurately describe the undertaking of immigrant parents to prepare and qualify a son or a daughter for the Ivy League. For all the involvement and planning given, parenthood still tends to be a thankless job these days, except, when a son meets expectations half-way and delivers on his promise, and makes his parents proud.

I have nightmares of the endless hours spent in contemplation, analysis and planning; living in perpetual attentiveness, determination, anticipation, setbacks and renewed hope for months on end. Phew! For the unlimited amount of restrained self-confidence that was essential …always!

The events, projects, and involvements that we as parents had to maneuver, and negotiate were endless: Science fairs, math camps, leadership retreats; I have lost count of the museum visitations, arthouse movies, summer schools, piano recitals, photography competitions, and public speaking opportunities; pSAT, SAT, GPA’s, AP’s, UC’s and a few other tasks with not-so-well known acronyms. Then there’s academic counseling and pep-talks that I had to arrange in order to keep the inspiration and motivation alive. The application process itself was a long list of things-to-do: Essays (sometimes a dozen per college), comprising of the “common essay” (Nar’s was about Woodrow Wilson), multiple short essays (300 words each), and short answers (to a dozen questions). Community service was nothing compared to the send-off of your 17 year-old to a foreign country for a five-week summer internship. No application is complete without letters of recommendation by teachers. Beware of wordy narratives. Finally, before you know it, it's time to pack your bags and hit the road for college visitations- a tour of college campuses up and down the California coast... and the northeast corridor.

In September Nar will be attending Brown University. He will be part of the 248th entering Freshmen Class to walk through the iconic Van Wickle Gates on the first day of school onto the campus along with 1475 others who value a trademark interdisciplinary education- an academic immersion into humanities, the arts and sciences for students who will gather at Brown, literally, from all corners of the world, along with their professors, thinkers, guest lecturers, researchers and purveyors of knowledge and enlightenment.

Over the entire 35-year history of his small Armenian school in Los Angeles, Nar will be only the fourth graduate to attend an Ivy League school. In my case, nothing has been so hard as to come to terms with the contradiction between an ancestral call for an Armenian education for my children and a son’s urge to break away with a passion to grab the opportunity to study at one of the nation’s best institutions of learning. I was in constant (and bizarre) inner-fighting between my loyalty to the school and the administration’s malaise by not “thinking big” with students who live with big dreams, in order to achieve a better college admission profile for the sake of the reputation of … all Armenian schools.

And then Cecilia Donsker turned up with flair…in defense of Nar’s school, our school.

Mrs. Donsker was Nar’s teacher in Kindergarten. “Armenian schools are going through hard times these days with declining enrollment” She explained to Nar, “and I thought of something positive to offer to all those who have doubt.”

As an answer to all parents who ask, “Where do graduates of our school end up going? Or what colleges do they get admitted to?” She thought it would be best to show them, rather than tell them the answer. So she invited Nar to the graduation ceremony of this year’s K class to introduce him to the community. “I figured” she said on that day in her introduction, “ If Brown University is good enough for JFK Junior, then it’s good enough for one of our own” and she called Nar to the stage in front of a thousand gathered, take a bow, wave, that kind of stuff. She was charming with her initiative while she gave Nar a good dose of encouragement, but most importantly she made our school look good.

On that day, Mrs. Donsker assured Nar that she will make a point to visit him at Brown if she was in town: That’s in Providence, Rhode Island, home to 500,000 people, in a campus of 5896 undergrads on top of a hill right in the middle of the city. They call themselves Brunonians (my daughter Lar prefers “Brownies”), and they don’t miss an opportunity to match wits with students from that “other” Ivy League school… a little farther north.

Congratulations Son. All the power to you! We shall be there for you all the way through, and look forward to greet you at the other side of the Van Wickle Gates when, according to tradition, it will open for the second time for you… on your last day of school, to let you out onto the world with other graduates of the class of 2015.

In Deo Speramus (In God We hope).