Published since 07.2002
Published on May 16, 2008
MELONHEAD?: ONE GIRL’S EARTH DAY IS A LESSON IN HARD WORK AND GROWTH
- I have lived in a rural area for 17 years but it was only last week when I learned of how hard a villager’s work is. Relatives who live in Yeraskhavan village (Armavir region) were planting melon seedlings. And the idea of putting tiny seeds into soil looked so attractive to me. My naiveté is now being cursed by my fingers, hands, legs and back – the product of my attempt at the village life. Such work begins in villages at 7 a.m. By comparison, the ArmeniaNow newsroom opens at 10 a.m., and many Yerevan shops not until after that, at 11. But out here in the countryside work has to be finished by noon to avoid being scorched by the sun. On this planting day, though, it rained. Was raining, too, I the heart of the lady of the house, as the crucial work was in jeopardy by the weather. “What does this rain want from us? At last we’ve got quite a number of people (five from Yerevan, six from among their fellow villagers, as well as four members of their family proper) to help us get done with this pain,” complained Tsaghik, a woman with a restless character. As if succumbing to those complaints, the rain stopped. We waited for the soil to get dry in the sun and began our work with a four-hour delay only at 11. We had to catch up on the work, and there was already plenty of it. Dirt had to be plowed; beds dug by tractor had to be smoothed out; 60-centimeter-wide cellophane had to be spread on two sides of the 40-centimeter-deep bed. The cellophane inside the bed and on its banks is fastened with dirt so that the wind will not take it, the beds had to be watered and seedlings planted. And all this for 33 beds, each 40 meters long, a total of 8,500 square meters. The hosts, Aghvan and Tsaghik, had decided to give the easiest, as it seemed, assignment to me as to a girl who does a white-collar job in the city. At first I was spreading cellophane together with our hosts’ son, Hovik, who is 12. Using one hand he held the cellophane roll and with the other was unfolding it. Meanwhile, I was holding the cellophane by the edge and walking till the end of the bed, then putting soil on the cellophane end and then going back to repeat the same action. Over and again. The first four times were easy, the soil that became looser because of the rain was the only concern that I had as floundered through it with my feet sticking in it and dirt filling my sports shoes. After completing the fifth bed I no longer felt there was soil in my shoes – as if I, too, were being planted – but I was breathing heavily. I hardly could move my legs when I was spreading cellophane from one edge to the other. I tried to walk slowly on the way back in the hope of getting some rest. I changed my ‘occupation’ after the 10th bed. Now I was in charge of arranging seedlings. Aghvan, had brought cases with seedlings from the village, which was a kilometer away from the crop site. Melon seedlings had earlier been grown in soil enriched with peat. In the village two women had cut the peat into 10-square-centimeter pieces with seedlings centered in the middle and put them into cases. The cases were heavy, up to five kilograms, that’s why they were unloaded and brought to the beds by guys – two cases for each bed. Tsaghik and I arranged them, I working on one side of the bed, she on the other. The beds were long and the cases heavy, it was impossible to walk and carry these cases all along the bed and at the same time bend down to arrange every seedling. In order to avoid that I first would take the case to the middle of the bed. Then I would take seven seedlings proudly sticking out of a square peat piece, holding four in my right hand and somehow holding three in my left land, and walking I would put them into bed cavities already filled with water – at a distance of one meter from one another. For every bed I went at least six times back and forth to get new seedlings from the case. I stooped 40 times for each row. Yes, I counted. The seedlings we arranged were planted by four women – two working on one bed. Since, as Tsaghik was saying, they were “professional seedling planters”, they worked very fast and we hardly managed to keep pace with them, often getting short of breath. After five beds, my fingers were like extensions of the peat – the same rich, black color. “Don’t worry, one wash will remove it all,” the daughter of the hosts Lilit, a teenager, was trying to dispel my concerns. I tried to believe her. With only a few last beds remaining, I got stuck in mud with both feet where water had overflowed the garden bed. The color of my sports shoes could not be distinguished, my socks also were all in mud, but luckily they were so long that the mud did not reach my legs. There was no point in complaining, I made my peace with the process and proceeded. The work was finished at 6 p.m. Before that, when the seedling planters had reached the last bed and I had finished my stint of work, I sat on one of the wooden cases, with my back aching. No matter how hard I tried to conceal that ache, I couldn’t. “You must have got very tired,” I was hearing from all sides. For me, it was an adventure, a test of will that I hope I didn’t fail. For the others, though, is routine, the maintenance of village life, of rising with God’s sun and praying for God’s kindness on the crop. And complaining when God’s plans and theirs are not the same. I, gladly, return to my newsroom. My village friends, though will do this over and over from melon season to tomato season, to pepper and eggplant season . . . Until these seedlings are dried up vegetation and their fruit has, with hope, turned into revenue. Until, too I hope, the aches I feel now will be rewarded with a bountiful harvest for those whose hard work I’ll appreciate more each time a melon is cracked and its juices cover my peat stains.
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Today in Armenian history- 1812 The Peace Treaty of Bucharest (Romania) is signed between Russia and Turkey. Bessarabia is attached to Russia.
- 1904 Vahan Manooelian is killed in the fighting at Gomer during the Sassoon Rebellion.
- 1926 Inauguration of Yerevan's first hydro-electric power station. Orjonikidze, Aghamali-Oghli, and Eliava give speeches.
- 1980 Commemoration of the 1500 th anniversary of David Anhaght (the Invincible).
- 1981 Death of William Saroyan (writer) in Fresno (USA). He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1940. He was born in 1908.
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