The district of Prometheus on the outskirts of Stepanavan was built in 1988 to house the construction workers who had arrived from various Soviet republics to help the city rebuild after the earthquake. The trailers located there were meant for only temporary residence, planned for a maximum of two years. But refugees settled there, and then when most of them left the country, this area became home to the poorest residents of the city. For seventeen years, these eight-meter long trailers have been the only shelter that many large families can afford. Over the past few years, some families have received apartments with the support of various organizations and moved away. But the rest, as many as thirty families, still live there.

Winter begins in November in Stepanavan. But on November 29 th , there was only one trailer among the thirty in Prometheus with smoke coming out of its chimney. The trailer was home to Nelly Papyan, who has been living there with her three small children for nine years now. She said of the fire she had made, "There was nothing else I could do. Even though I'm a woman, I climbed up a tree and cut these branches off. If I'd been caught, I would've been in trouble for sure. They are so merciless that they even give you trouble over dry twigs, just going to the forest is a risk. There was nothing else I could do; there are no shoes or clothes left either - I've burnt them all."

Nelly Papyan is known as the most intelligent resident of the trailer park, the only one with higher education. "I graduated from the Institute of Physical Education and worked at a school. Everyone has always loved and respected me, but poverty has brought me to this part of town today. I work with my children day and night so that we don't starve, and steal twigs from the forest so that we survive the cold," she said.

None of her children go to school; they have been forced to drop out to keep the family going, by doing whatever odd jobs they come across.

One of Nelly's neighbors, Gohar Muradyan, lives with her four children. She is about to live through her thirteenth winter in a trailer. The events surrounding her four-year-old son, Arsen, are considered to be nothing short of a miracle by the other residents of the trailer park.

"I'm married, but it's as good as having no husband, because he's almost never home and I have to fend for the children myself. The toughest time is winter, the children feel cold and want to keep warm. Because I couldn't go to the forest, I was forced to pluck off parts of the trailer's wall and burn them for heat," Gohar said.

And so one night while Gohar was trying to figure out a way to keep her children warm, the trailer weakened and its roof collapsed on the then two-year-old Arsen. He was fortunate enough not to be harmed, and Gohar moved to an empty adjacent trailer.

"I couldn't stay there after that, could I? There was an empty trailer next to ours; I broke the lock and brought our things over and have been staying here for two years," said Gohar, adding that the same fate awaits this trailer - parts of its walls will be used to heat them through this winter as well.

The residents of this trailer park are mainly single mothers who have no one else to rely on. Each of them has her own tale to tell. The only things uniting them are hunger, poverty, and the fight for survival through the approaching winter.

Election Campaign Outhouse

"This toilet is from the mayor of Stepanavan's election campaign. He came and saw that this district needed one. He sent some people and they dug a hole, made some sort of a metal enclosure around it, and left. He got elected, and he doesn't care about the fate of this outhouse anymore. The slightest wind could knock it down," residents of the area narrated bitterly.

Prometheus, with all its poverty and destitution, has been completely ignored by the local authorities. It's pointless to even talk about sanitary conditions here. The last time that the trash was collected in the district was a month ago, that too as part of the election campaign of the mayor currently in office. The trailers have no water supply network; children need to cover a distance of one kilometer to get water from the nearest tap. The only toilet in the trailer park stopped working a long time ago due for lack of maintenance. The new outhouse, installed a month ago, is already overflowing with waste.

"We only see them once every three years. They remember us only when they need us. Otherwise who pays any attention to us? Do they give us any respect?" asked 71-year- old grandmother Raya, the oldest resident of the trailer park. People from Prometheus have asked for help from the authorities on numerous occasions, but always in vain. Moving beyond indifference, the Mayor's Office has resorted to threatening those who try to focus attention on the situation here.

"Kocharyan came once, too, and we went to bring him over to our part of town. We wanted him to see and understand how people live in his country, but City Hall officials didn't even let us come close, they threatened us and sent us off, saying 'Try complaining to anyone and you'll lose the trailer that you live in now,'" said one of the young residents of the trailer park, preferring to remain anonymous.

There are children living in each and every trailer in Prometheus Residents claim that each of the children in the trailer park suffers from one medical condition or another, clearly as a result of poor sanitation and hygiene and the constant dampness of the area. Listing some of the other glaring problems that exist here, Prometheus residents jokingly added, "At least we can hope for another outhouse three years from now."

Photographs by Onnik Krikorian