I really had no idea what to expect as I arrived and I knew little about the place. I knew that they were at war with neighbouring Azerbaijan, over an Armenian enclave called Nagorno-Karabakh, about as brutal a conflict as any in the world at the time and I knew that there had been a devastating earthquake in 1988 in the north of the country, leaving over 25,000 dead.
The result of these two events had left Armenians impoverished and desperate. Armenia was a landlocked country, whose main transport arteries ran through Azerbaijan; these had been cut, as had fuel supplies; in response to the earthquake, the government had decided to shut down the country’s nuclear reactor as precaution, a reactor that provided a third of the country’s power needs. Added to the Azeri economic blockade, the life of the ordinary Armenian became unbearable.
I had been sent by the aid agency primarily to do a survey of beneficiaries of a pilot project. With temperatures dropping well below zero in winter, pensioners in particular were suffering appallingly; with no means of heating or cooking for themselves, some were literally freezing to death in their apartments.
A pilot project to distribute some stoves and kerosene had taken place a few months previously. My job was to interview the beneficiaries and incorporate lessons learned from the pilot into a much wider intervention in time for the following winter.
It had sounded an interesting assignment and I had volunteered immediately, but as I sat in my candle-lit room after the first day, I wondered quite how I would report my findings to Moscow when the power came back on. We were allocated one hour a day and never knew when it would come. We would go to sleep with the light switch on, so that we would be woken by the sudden invasion of light.
At three in the morning, the hotel floor (where both the rooms and the office were situated) would come to life, as people recharged laptops, faxed Moscow and photocopied important documents. But what would I write?
Ten dead on the first morning
I had been assigned a driver and an interpreter, who was even more shocked than I was by the end of that first day, so much so that I sent her home early. Basically, we had a list of addresses to visit and a few questions to ask. We took a torch since the lifts in the apartments needed electricity and there were no lights on the stairs.
I soon realised that a torch was a luxury that few could afford; coming out of one fifth-floor apartment, an old lady handed me several sheets of newspaper. My interpreter explained that I should set it alight and there was just enough paper to provide light to the bottom of the building.
We entered the first apartment block, fighting against the fumes of urine and decay. Apartment 11, Aida Grigorian. No answer. A neighbour came out after a while. Didn’t we know? She died three months ago. She just simply gave up. At the next apartment a similar story. Died in her bed. And then another. And another.
By the end of the first day, the owners of ten of the thirty-two apartments that we visited had passed away. It got so bad that our hearts would pound as we knocked at a new door, praying to hear the sound of footsteps on the other side.
Not that the ‘living’ beneficiaries provided any more cheer. Far from it. It was perverse. They would be delighted at the visit, the first in weeks in some cases. They all looked emaciated, well-dressed in ill-fitting clothes, all living in well-furnished apartments, with crockery and china in display cabinets and photographs of handsome grandsons on the wall. They all moved slowly, as though any sudden movement might cause them to snap. And they were all so humble, so apologetic that they had nothing to offer us guests, apart from tea.
There was no electricity, so there were no distractions like television or the radio. Few had visitors and they were simply left to sit and ponder at how life had turned out. Having worked all their lives, they felt that they had been abandoned by all.
What constitutes a meal?
Not quite by all. The moment that affected me the most that day had occurred in the flat of an elderly lady as emaciated as the rest, but somehow a spark lived on inside. She was absolutely delighted with the stove, she said, before telling up about her diet; it was not untypical of what we had heard all day.
Her pension, when it was paid, was sufficient for twelve loaves of bread a month; she had two meals a day – two slices of bread in the morning with a cup of tea, and a cup of tea in the evening. But it was the answer to the next question that really affected me.
“Have you ever received humanitarian aid from another organisation?” The question was posed so as to avoid overlap.
“Why, yes. Yes, I have.” Her face brightened at the memory. “Let me show you. Just a minute.” And she disappeared off to the kitchen, a spring in her step, as though we had just given her new life. “Here, this is what I was given, about a year ago, I think.” She held it out. “But I am saving it until I am really desperate.” It was a one-kilo tin of potatoes.
My subsequent report caused more than a few ripples and resulted in a $2 million project proposal, which was soon funded by the American Government. I only wondered how many pensioners would still be alive to benefit from it. For now they were dying in the summer, their immune systems unable to cope with the constant lack of food. The imminent onset of winter would add cold to the equation and there was no end in sight to the misery.
After completing that survey, we headed north to Gumri, the city closest to the epicentre of the earthquake. Again, I had to conduct an assessment, to see how best to address the numerous needs. Although the earthquake had struck five years ago, people still lived in railway containers.
President Gorbachev had visited in the aftermath of the earthquake and promised to rebuild the city; people believed him and moved out of unsafe apartments and into the containers. But Gorbachev was soon removed and the Soviet Union died, leaving these poor people in limbo. Unlike the pensioners, they were not very pleased to see me.
“Another bloody survey,” screamed one irate mother of three. “Why don’t you f--k off until you come back with some concrete help? You people make me sick.”
Her frustration was understandable. Many agencies were working in Armenia. Most would conduct surveys to assess the needs, write a proposal based on the assessment, and then hope a donor would fund the project. The whole process was necessarily time-consuming, whereas the needs were immediate. All these displaced people wanted to know was when help was coming, a question I obviously couldn’t answer.
Paul Bradbury - Author of Hvar: An Insider's Guide to Croatia's Premier Island, and Lebanese Nuns Don't Ski
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