“We were first to come to this village in 1988. We were told that when we came here we would get everything – cattle, a house, etc. We lived in the village of Shaghat; we didn't have a home – that's why we came. Since we were the first ones we had a choice. We chose a house for ourselves,” 58-year-old resident of Arevis Hasmik Gevorgyan told us.

Arevis is a village in the Syunik Marz, just seven kilometers away from the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. At the end of 1980's Azerbaijanis moved out of the village, leaving it Armenian-populated once again. Two years ago there were thirty families living; today only half as many remain. Though Arevis is a strategically important border village, it is not part of any government programs.

“There are many problems here – the village is close to the border and far from the provincial center, Sisian. There are no buses. In winter time when it snows, whether you're healthy or sick you have to stay in the village since the road is blocked. If the military personnel going to from the border clear the road, fine. If not we have to wait for the thaw,” Grandfather Spartak said.

The village has no medical clinic. The general practitioner from the first aid station in the neighboring village of Ashotavan is supposed to service Arevis residents as well, but villagers say they have “never seen the doctor's face.”

“The doctor alleges a lack of transportation, but I told her that once a month I take a taxi to go to the regional center to bring the salaries for the school staff and invited her to share the taxi to visit Arevis and see the villagers at least once a month but she refused saying, ‘It has to be convenient for me, too.' What else can we offer? It would just be better if people felt responsible for doing their duty,” said Rita Grigoryan, the school principal.

Arevis' eight-year school has five students, two teachers, and two run-down classrooms. Two of the five students are second graders; the other three sixth graders. According to the rules these two classes must be treated as one class, but the two teachers are trying to avoid that. One of them is the second grade teacher but teaches the six-graders some secondary subjects; the other one teaches the six-graders the rest of their subjects.

“How are we supposed to teach Armenian or math to second- and six-graders together? We teach them separately and try to do the best we can. We teach twenty-two hours a week but are paid for eleven hours,” explained Rita Grigoryan, whose son is also in sixth grade.

The school suffers from a shortage of teachers as well as a shortage of students. Grigoryan had trouble recruiting even one teacher. Not even the young men who are doing alternative military service in the area are willing to teach in this remote village.

Parents do whatever they can to send their children to Sisian to continue their schooling beyond eighth grade.

Rita Grigoryan	Anahit Baghdasaryan

“All of my five children continued their studies. Now three of them are in Yerevan and two others are in Sisian. There is nothing for them to do in the village so they study, get married and stay there. Of course, they don't have great jobs there either. If there were anything to do in the village they would have come back here to stay," said Anahit Baghdasaryan.

In two years, Rita Grigoryan, who is the most educated and active woman in the village, will also leave the village, so that her son can continue his schooling.

“I don't know what the future of our village will be. If there are jobs, perhaps a few houses will be built for some families to come and live here. If not people will continue to leave the village. The young people leave the village to find jobs and live in decent conditions. The state doesn't do anything to help,” Grigoryan said.

Over the past 18 years only two improvements have been made in Arevis – an antenna was erected enabling villagers to watch two TV channels and a telephone line was installed making it possible, with a lot of energy and patience, to call the neighboring villages and Sisian.

There are no vacant houses in the village; all of the dilapidated earthen houses that used to belong to Azerbaijanis are occupied. The adjacent lands are suitable for raising cattle. The population of Arevis grows a little bit each summer when people from Sisian move to the village to pasture their herds.

According to the villagers there may be people who would like to move to the village but there is no housing.

“There are no houses, otherwise people would come, especially now that there is some movement here and there is hope that there will be jobs. We need jobs because we have no bread here. We don't grow wheat here, and it is hard to exchange livestock or dairy produce for flour. We need to at least make enough money for flour,” Spartak Harutyunyan said.

The villagers pin their hopes for regular work on the Marjan gold mine. The American Global Gold Corporation is conducting feasibility studies there.

“It's a great thing to have a job near the village. True, it's a hard physical work but it is important for our villagers and for several men from some neighboring villages to have jobs and earn money,” Arthur Grigoryan said.

The Marjan gold mine is located three kilometers from the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, in other words, men work under the surveillance of the Azerbaijani frontier post.

“We disturb them sometimes when we get too close to the border, but if they were going to shoot they would have shot at us in our village, too. Our employers told us that there was no security problem. They said they had agreed with the Azerbaijanis that we could work near the border. Our foreman is always with us. If it were dangerous he wouldn't have come with us,” Arthur said.

The gold mine has given the villagers hope. They expect that life in their village will change soon and that their children will stay with them and the population of the village will grow.

Arthur's wife Margarita is expecting her third child. The school teachers in this border village are anticipating an increase in the student body of at least one when their child goes to school in 2012.

Lusine Ghazaryan