ArmeniaNow A warm sun gathers young and old men in the center of Getik village where they discuss their problems: lack of potatoes and wheat, they burn dried manure instead of gas, animals give little milk, they cannot pay off credits, and they haven’t received their pensions yet…

Getik is one of the villages of Jambarak region, Gegharkunik province. Peasants of the village, some 120 km north of Yerevan, are desperate. Each spring, a few families lock the doors of their houses and leave the village.

Head of Getik village Ashot Dalakyan says that his village has shrunk year by year, and that migration has naturally slowed, but has not stopped.

Of its official 130 families (with 530 residents), 30 houses have been locked shut. Last year Getik had six births; one child went to the first grade.

The roads leading to Getik are not in good order. It takes an hour and ten minutes to drive from Yerevan to Jambarak, then one hour - from Jambarak to Getik a distance of only 12 kilometers.

“The roads are very bad; factories make no investments here, considering the region to be risky, close to the border. I want to say at least something good, but I cannot find it to say. We keep two animals for a whole year to slaughter and sell them in the end in order to buy a pair of shoes and macaroni,” says Getik resident Arayik Saribekyan.

Being inspired with the winter warm sun, Arayik laid a table in the yard of his house. There are only home-made vodka, pickles, bread and cheese on the table. Glasses are being filled and emptied. And then the famous Armenian ‘anush lini’ is pronounced. Cheers.

“Look at our village this way and you will understand yourself how people live here. Houses are in poor condition, roofs are destroyed, worn out… There are villages which at least have a good appearance, whereas our village looks very poor, too. Nobody knows where we live,” Arayik says.

Samvel Saribekyan, who visited Arayik from the neighboring village of Ttu Jur, says that the situation is the same in all villages of the region, the problems are identical.

“As the Armenian saying goes, “we are not from the same house, but we are in a common situation.” This happens to us now,” Saribekyan says.

Arayik’s wife, 43-year-old Siranush Ohanyan, who joins the conversation with a tray full of coffee cups, says that a peasant’s work is a thankless task. And if a year is unfavorable (in terms of weather), then they become completely helpless.

“This year we sowed hectares of fields with wheat, we spent 200,000 drams ($560) on it, but we hardly got 50 kg wheat. And one kilo costs 100 drams, so we will get only 5,000 drams ($13) for our wheat crop, and that’s it. How can villagers live then? Those who leave Armenia searching for migrant work do not come back. Two more years, and all doors of Getik village’s houses will be locked,” Siranush says.

Cattle-breeding is the main business in Getik. Some of the village’s men are contract-based employees in the military units near their village, some three kilometers from the Armenian-Azeri border (Getik is not considered to be a border village, however).

Many detachments from the village participated in the Karabakh war.

“If we pass that hill, we will see the Azeri’s post. During those years [Karabakh war years] we kept thoseposts’,” Arayik says.

Siranush interrupts her husband, “During the war they kept it [the village] at the expense of their lives, they were awarded with medals, but now nobody cares how these people live. It is a pity that one day we also will leave Getik.”

“If it were necessary even now, we would defend [our village] again,” Arayik says.

Only 120 hectares of 336 hectares of Getik’s arable lands is being cultivated.

“These people fight with the weather every year, they are tired; the cost of the crop does not correspond to the market price. (She says that last year it cost villagers 80 drams per kilo to grow potatoes for which they got only 25 drams per kilo for the crop). And this year our villagers did not plant potato, and its price reached 180 drams per kilo,” Dalakyan says.

The number of people, who deal with cattle-breeding, decreases in the village. ‘Ashtarak Kat’ major dairy company buys milk from the villagers. It has a large dairy workshop in Jambarak.

“There is a concern that the workshop may be closed, because people have quit cattle-breeding. They get rid of the animals due to their poor social conditions. For example, they have four cows, their debts increase, therefore they slaughter one of the cows [to pay off the debt]; and this happens every year. Those who had ten cows ten years ago, now they have only three,” says driver of ‘Ashtarak Kat’ Karo Yavriyan.

Getik’s residents are desperate of their situation. Their present is sad, their future indefinite. Head of the village Dalakyan says that the government must support community development programs in the village, that they cannot do anything all alone by themselves.

And Arayik Saribekyan, addressing the journalists who visited the village, said, “It is good that you have come, at least, you have remembered the residents of this village, and at least you have come and asked us how we are…”