In the March 9 election for mayor in the Syunik community of Nzhdeh, Gegham Ohanyan is the only candidate.

If he wins, 52 year-old Ohanyan (photo), the current mayor, will enter his fourth term as the head of this administrative unit of 139 that also incorporates the neighboring village of Tsghoun.

Ohanyan says that many of those officially registered in the community actually live elsewhere, including the deputy mayor, the accountant and even the mayor’s family members.

He says that since the community never had a kindergarten, they attended the pre-school in the town of Sisian and were registered there.

When I spoke with the deputy mayor and told him about my plans to travel to Nzhdeh, he tried to convince me to meet him in either Sisian or along the road somewhere. As he put it, “you’ll rarely find a car to go to my home in Brnakot, 30 kilometers away.”

Finding some kind of transport along the Brnakot-Sisian-Nzhdeh road is considered a fair piece of luck. Not only isn’t there any public intercity transportation, but the potholed roads are practically impassable; especially in the winter months.

“In January, the road was completely closed,” says Alvard Youlchyan. “Because there’s no store in the village, we had no bread to eat. I had to borrow some flour from my neighbors so that my kids wouldn’t starve.”

He says that his arms have grown longer than his sleeves by constantly carrying pails of water from the stream for washing and cooking.

While we were talking, a young woman noticed the camera in my hand and warned me not to take any pictures.

“Do you call this life? This is a hole that you are photographing, there is nothing of merit here,” she chided me.

When I asked Alvard if she would be voting in the election, the woman said she didn’t even know about the election. She said that the mayor isn’t to blame for the poor condition of the village, its lack of transportation and water.

“He doesn’t have the power to do anything. Those officials in Yerevan don’t even know where we are. Until they do, they’ll neglect us and we will die like this,” Alvard said and then left to meet her son bringing fruit from Sisian.

Mayor Ohanyan partially agrees that he doesn’t have the means to make big changes in the community. He says that even though Nzhdeh is considered a border community (at 2,030 meters above sea level) adjacent to Nakhichevan, it hasn’t received special treatment from the national government in Yerevan.

In fact, it was only this year that local students received certain cuts in tuition costs.

Ohanyan talked a bit about the troubles related to raising revenues for the community budget and the fact that land tax collections have fallen behind since many landowners no longer live in the community after they received land deeds in the 1992 privatization program.

Ohanyan says that the community took seven such landowners to court and won. The reclaimed land has since been leased to others. He says nine more legal suits will be filed after municipal elections take place.

He confesses that with a budget of 1.2 million AMD it’s impossible to solve the most pressing of the community problems.