With financial support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration (IOM Armenia) the NGO Meghri-1 is implementing a pilot project aimed at revitalizing the village of Shvanidzor and restoring its potable and irrigation water systems.

The village of Shvanidzor in the Meghri region of the Syunik Marz is one of the southernmost Armenian settlements, bordering Iran and lying at a distance of 400 kilometers from Yerevan. The village, with its 362 residents and 4,222 hectares, is covered in orchards.

The main water-supply in Shvanidzor comes via four kyahrezes that have reached us from the Middle Ages. Kyahrez is a Persian word meaning underground water canal. This is an entirely manmade canal system that collects underground water for domestic use and irrigation. Digging Kyahrezes is an eastern tradition, and one of the oldest water-supply systems still in existence. These canals have been built on the territory of Armenia since 721-705 BC. Kyahrezes can also be found in Iran, Afghanistan, India, China and elsewhere. In the Meghri region, kyahrezes supply the settlements of the southern part of the Arax valley - the town of Meghri, and the villages of Shvanidzor, Aghvank and Nrnavan.

The kyahrez structure is very simple. In a relatively shallow sector of underground water the first well is dug - a deep, narrow, tunnel which reaches the water layer. At a distance of 8-10 meters from the first hole, a second identical well is dug, then a third, fourth, and fifth, until the hole reaches two meters in depth. Then the wells are connected to each other through an underground passage, from the last one to the first.

According to the director of Meghri-1, architect Armine Petrosyan, the kyahrezes are a very stable system and can secure the water-supply without great expense. A section of kyahrezes is functioning in Shvanidzor, but with insufficient productivity. None of them have been ever renovated over the last hundred years; moreover, these underground structures have been damaged as a result of interference by non-experts.

The project to restore the kyahrezes is being carried out by Yuri Grigoryan, the sole expert in Armenia. He is the head kankan. The Persian word kankan means "hole digger". Kankans are respected people within the community. They don't use complicated tools or possess geometric knowledge; rather, they work with a sense of nature and the locality.

"There is a secret here at every meter. Unfortunately, I cannot master these secrets, I don't consider myself to be a master in this occupation yet," says Yuri Grigoryan who has been opening and cleaning kyahrezes for thirty years now.

He learned this forgotten craft exclusively thanks to his own inquisitiveness and persistence, since, as he says, kankans don't pass their knowledge to strangers, they hand them down to their children. Working as a helper to "democratic Persians" who emigrated to Azerbaijan after the revolution in Iran, Yuri succeeded in acquiring the secrets of this underground craft. "At important moments - when connecting one hole to another, for example, - they would find a reason to send me off somewhere so that I wouldn't see how it was done," Yuri recalled, "But I would come at night, climb into the holes and look."

For millennia the k yahrezes have been the main means of guaranteeing people's survival. Over the last century they have lost their significance in parallel with the development of engineering, but as time goes on, they are once again being appreciated as people have begun to realize that these structures are eternal, they function uninterruptedly, without requiring expenditure and investment.

"No one can say how long a history the kyahrezes have, but you can say for sure that it is longer than the history of any given settlement, because first the water had to be there, then people would come," Yuri Grigoryan said. He likened kyahrezes to our oldest architectural constructions. "We know Armenian architecture but we don't know that there is another architecture under the ground. You can't see anything from the outside but when you clean it, dig it, and reach the main parts, it becomes an unrivaled architectural structure that provides s water twelve months a year."

The kyahrezes require care. The water-bearing canals must be cleaned every spring and the condition of the wells and the canal system must be carefully monitored. The canal system must be checked after rainfalls and any obstacles removed. Taking all this into consideration, the head kankan, Yuri Grigoryan, has in parallel to his work been grooming apprentices to take care of the kyahrezes after he's gone.

Other villagers have also taken part in this project, so important for Shvanidzor. At Yuri Grigoryan's request, 67-year-old Misha Ananyan, a retired mason, is repairing fractures in the Kyahrez walls.

In order to preserve, maintain, and restore the kyahrezes , to correctly distribute water, to regulate the ecological condition of the water and to implement other projects related to the village, a community-based association of water consumers, Shvanidzor Water has been established in the village. The chairman of the board of this NGO, Hmayak Vardanyan, is pleased with the results: "At first, there was a flow of 10-15 liters of water per second; since the cleaning, this has gone up to 30-35 liters a second. If there is no water, people will not stay here." The next step, Vardanyan says, is to bring the water from the kyahrezes to people's homes.