Interview with my Neighbor- Sarah Harutunyan

Sarah Harutunyan, a mother and grandmother of a loving family. And at the age of 64, wakes up every week-day to catch her bus that leaves to Downtown L.A., she has gained skills to work as a jeweler. She enjoys taking walks at the park, and having some tea with her friends. Before all this, she had lived in a village located in Armenia, called Vahagni. According to her, there were about 2000-3000 people living there. She describes her life at the village as simple but fulfilling. It was fulfilling to her, because they were surrounded with good neighbors, fun events and the fresh air of the mountains. She was educated and had traveled to Yerevan to receive a diploma in health/nursing. When she looks back she misses the events, that some people might take for granted. She says that people back then enjoyed raising their cattle, and they worked for themselves. Almost everyone’s status was equal, unlike today’s way of life.

My name is Sarahishka. I am 64 years old. I was born in Gogarki Lori county, in Vahagni village. I was born up in the mountains, and that is why my name is Sarahishka. (The word "sar" in Armenian means mountain). It was an old tradition, that they named anyone who was born in the mountains Sarahishka. I had a fairly good childhood in my village, but I wouldn’t say it was the best. As you know living in a village we didn’t have many opportunities, due to the villages’ situations. People were occupied with raising cattle and sheep. Everyone had cattle and sheep or other type of farm animal, there were only a few that didn’t. Everyone had one because everyone was linked together, and knew each other some how. If someone didn’t have an animal, someone would give one to them as a gift.

  There were only a few people who had donkeys and horses. Donkeys and horses were a way of transportation for villagers. When transporting sticks of wood or grass horses would be used. The kind of person that would own a horse, were usually officials. For example, since my father was a secretary, we have had two horses. These horses were there to help us with chores around the village. We sometimes also used them to transfer messages, letters, or news to others. And the mountains were very high, so horses became helpful. This is what my childhood mostly consisted of.

I remember during summer at our village a man would come and play Canderbaz (this is an event where a man would tie a rope from 2 ends, and walk or jump on the rope, like at a circus). Uh, people who watched payed him money, but being in a village we only had payed whatever we had; like apples, eggs, or any type of fruit. He entertained us. I also remember when people came to our village and organized events such as tsgkahvak (gathering flowers). We also had vartivor ( a day dedicated to water, children or adults would splash each other).

Our school village had a high school, and that’s the school I went to. Other villages, some next to us, only had elementary schools. Everyone had a right to go to school. And it was actually necessary for everyone to attend school. It was embarrassing for someone not to go to school. Everyone had to attend. And everyone had to graduate high school. Whoever didn’t graduate high school, was looked upon as shameful. This is why many people from the other villages would come to our village. Our school was named Nadejda Krupskay, it was a Russian school. I think we had about 20 kids in our class. Our school was in good condition. It wasn’t too good, but we adapted. I did well in school, and graduated.

Oh, I remember when my village used to receive news, we would receive news almost everyday, if not everyday every other day. We had a mailman. He would also bring letters, but we received letters maybe once a week because it came from the city of Kirovakan. But before, it was named Kharakilisa. The letters were gathered over there, and then the letters were sent out to our village. But we did have newspapers, and publications. And it was very exciting when the mailman would come and shout something like, "so-and-so has mail!" It was very interesting and exciting.

We did have radios, and they worked quite well. We also had those old analog record players. There were only a few people in our village that had one, my family was one of the few. We had it because my father had a good job, and was the head worker. He was a secretary. We heard all our news from the radio. The radio was on everyday, 24-hours a day; we never turned it off. There would always be reporting interesting and good news.

We had wonderful neighbors, at our village. There were many interesting people. Since there were no hospitals near our village, there was this man that helped all the villagers. He was the only person that knew how to put a cast on someone. He was very well known and popular. We also had another interesting old lady, we called her Azi. She was very kind, and knew everybody. She always helped people with their problems.

Uh, New Years was very fun and exciting for our neighborhoods and families. Of course, it wasn’t how it is now. Back then, it wasn’t fancy and we didn’t have everything, but it was still fun to celebrate. We had Christmas trees up in the mountains. Every family would go to cut down a tree for their house. Uh, we had very few toys to hang, instead we hung up whatever we found. For example, we hung nuts, small fruits, and made shapes out of cotton. We sometimes cut shapes from colorful paper, things like that. Like I said before, we spent time cattle-breeding. It was tradition that before New Years every family would butcher their own raised pig. Their relatives would come to this celebration. It was also tradition for the relatives to bring wine and their own glass cup to whomever house they were going to go to. The reason many did this was because many villagers couldn’t afford wine, or only had enough for just one glass cup.

The children were very happy for New Years. And I remember that my village had many old houses. And the roofs of these house were made out of mud. The children would make a hole in a roof and tie a bag to a string. Then they would slide these empty bags through the holes, and into the peoples house. The people living in the houses, would put gifts or candy in the bags. The children on the roof later pulled the bag up to take the gifts. It was a very interesting event.

We only had one store in our village. One corner of the store was for buying food, and the other corner was for buying clothes. The store was very helpful to us. The way we payed for the merchandise was by taking depths. We payed the store back at the end of each month, after we had received our paycheck. And that is why we couldn’t go as quickly as we would like to have, because as you know being a villager we couldn’t pay too much for clothes. There was always something to purchase, it was never empty. And if it was empty we had transportation such as trains to take us to Kirovakan.

A couple of years after the Earthquake in 1988, I moved to Yerevan (capital city of Armenia). I worked as a nurse there. It wasn’t too good when the Soviet Union stepped down, but we adapted. However, many workers lost their jobs and had to move to a different city to work in order to make a living.

Interviewed by Ani Kocharyants