“I have three future soldier-boys in my family. When my sons ask me what a motherland means, I’ll tell them that the motherland is the hungry life they are living, as well as the indifference and unwillingness of your country’s officials to render us a helping hand,” mother of five children Gayane Rstakyan said in the interview to Hetq. It’s already 12 year that this family lives in a rented apartment. According to Mrs. Gayane, they frequently turned for assistance to various officials, including Serge Sargsyan, when he was a PM, as well as to a dozen of deputies. But every time their letters were sent back to Armavir’s Mayor’s Office. The family was told at the Armavir’s Mayor’s Office that they shouldn’t expect any assistance from them, as they have no financial sources. “The state doesn’t support us. We don’t even get any benefits. My husband works at ArmenTel and gets 57 thousand drams of monthly salary. They tell me at the Social Security Department that this sum is quite enough for us and we do not qualify for benefits. I wander who qualifies for getting benefits, if our family doesn’t? When people learn that we don’t get any allowances they get astonished in what kind of a country we live in. All of my five children are schoolchildren. Since September we owe money to the stores for the school uniforms. If I count that all, our debt will make about $1000,” Mrs. Gayane said. The mother of the family has turned to the Armavir Social Security Department for getting benefits for many times. “My husband already feels shame to go there again. He says it seems we are begging for living. It is quite hard to go to a state body, but if we lived in a proper country, why would we go there? They would come instead and say that the state wants to support us, as we are large family with five children. I wish they visited us just like you did. They would come, knock at our door and inquire how we live,” Gayane Rstakyan said. This 7 member family doesn’t even posses any property. They don’t have even the first-necessity things and they have to use the things belonging to the owners of the apartment they rent. They explained our correspondent at the Labour and Social Security Ministry’s Department of Social assistance that this family hadn’t been registered in the family allowance system since the January of 2008. According to the department’s officials, they would  get their benefits out-of-turn. They said that Mrs. Gayane should go and register her family in the department’s lists. “The Ofices of Armeavir’s  Social Assistance Department are in the building of the Armavir’s Local Administration(Marzpetaran). Their officials would never offend the citizens. Anyway, if such cases of non-respectful attitude occur, they should complain to Armavir’s Local Administration,” one of the department’s officials advised. “The owners of the apartment are in Russia now and they have already warned us that soon they are going to return and we should leave the apartment. We have changed already 5 apartments in 12 years, and we don’t know where to go. I didn’t have my children especially for getting financial assistance from the state. But we had never been supported by the state. We need their assistance to at least stand firm on our feet. We have friends in France and they tell us that the state pays for each child such a sum of money that the parents can do without even working. In our country, on the contrary, they don’t do a thing to support large families,” Mrs. Gayane said. Gayane wants to have some more children. Both her and her husband love children so much, but they don’t have that opportunity. “I have three boys and in several years they will join the army. I bring them up in difficulties, make them good people, then somebody who never helped us will come and take them away from us. Don’t misunderstand me, please, I say all this with pain, but I really feel no obligations to my country,” said offended Mrs. Gayane. On the day of our visit, David, 12, the elder son of the family, didn’t have a copy book to do his homework.  They had to go to one of the stores and ask the employee to give them a copy book on credit until their father gets the salary. But father’s salary is completely spent of the day he gets that. They try to pay their old debts. On the next day they make new debts for buying bread and food. When the mother was telling about their hardship, the children had to leave the room feeling shame. We could hardly persuade them to at least be photographed. Grisha Balasanyan Translated by Anoush Mkrtchyan