Wednesday, February 3, 2010

“The only thing left of our culture in Armenia is our language. And that is slowly being destroyed, with low level street language being promoted on our main television stations, and the lack of education of those running our government. Funny that Public Television has given a linguist a show in which he tells and shows people the mistakes they’re making, then, that same station’s own talk show hosts, news journalists, and of course the serials they produce all use uneducated street language, making the same mistakes the linguist is trying to correct.

“Right now, I can say the offices of president and catholicos are vacant. If the president doesn’t care about our culture, for one thing, or giving up Western Armenia, by way of agreeing to the illegal border with Turkey, how can we call him president?”

These were the words of what I can safely call an intellectual, a computer expert with three children, who is unfortunately considering moving his family from Armenia.

“Think about it,” he said. “Our government, our leaders, don’t appreciate science, our youth, nothing of the sort. They talk about granting money to help our university students continue their education in Europe. But they only give part of the amount needed to live and study there. Do you know who ends up going? Sons and daughters of the rich. The average Armenian has to turn down the money, as they have no way to pay the remaining amount needed to live and study in Europe. So the rich, who can make up the difference, accept the money and send their children to Europe. Kids like mine end up left out, and unfortunately disillusioned.”

He sat and shook his head, and said, “It’s not a good decision to take one’s family and leave Armenia, then again, it’s not a good decision to stay here...”

After our visit, and on our way to the bus stop, we came across a small bakery, and went in to buy some bread. It turned out to be a Georgian bakery. When we asked the miserable, conceited Georgian how much the bread cost, and he answered in Russian, we said we didn’t need bread, and left.

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