OVERCOMING HANDICAPS: WOODWORK TRANSFORMS LIFE OF DISABLED MAN IN ARMENIAN BORDER VILLAGE
FEATURES | 06.06.13 | 16:00
Photo: Gohar Abrahamyan/ArmeniaNow.com
By Gohar Abrahamyan ArmeniaNow reporter
Hrach Ghukasyan overcomes his deficient mobility with the aid of a
piece of wood – but that’s not a walking stick. It is 13 years that
the 32-year-old resident of the border village of Nerkin Karmraghbyur
in Armenia’s northeastern province of Tavush talks to wood every day
as he shapes it into various items.
An ordinary piece of wood becomes a meaningful item in the master’s
hands and provides answers to his questions.
Ghukasyan, who has lived with disability in the last 16 years, has
managed to overcome his immobility to continue to live and create,
some 220 kilometers from Yerevan in the place where jobs hardly come
by even for able-bodied persons.
“I mainly make tables. It takes me five days to make one table. I
also make cabinets, sometimes chairs, simply making a chair is more
difficult and requires more work, and my hands do not work well,”
says Hrach.
Wood also played a tragic role in Hrach’s fate as he broke his neck
and damaged his spine at the age of 14 after an accident.
“During the war years in the early 1990s we stayed in the mountains
for our safety. On one autumn day when we were finally returning to
the village I went to the forest for firewood and while I was logging
wood I fell from the tree,” says Hrach.
It took more than a year of surgeries and rehabilitation at various
clinics in Yerevan for Hrach to be able to get back to his feet and
start walking with the aid of crutches. He decided he would be up
and moving despite doctors’ recommendations to remain still.
“The hardest period was the first few months. I had not been ill in my
whole life before and after the accident I had to stay in hospital a
lot. I spent my first year after the accident in hospital. Then I was
placed into a wheelchair, but I decided not to use it after a while. I
pulled myself together and got back to walking again,” says Hrach.
The house where he lives together with his parents is the last house
in the village that is a soft target for Azeri snipers and often comes
under fire. Hrach himself says half jokingly, half serious that they
live closer to Azeri outposts than to the village administration
building.
They started to build the house still in 1991, but the war put an end
to the plans and the house is now only half-constructed. What looks
from the outside as a two-storied building inside has only one small
room fit for living, while the second floor serves as a workshop.
A distinct smell of wood is all around the place where in one corner
there are finished tables and chairs and in another corner there is
still unprocessed wood. Each tool and instrument is in its own place
and every detail has its practical meaning in Hrach’s shop.
Azeri outposts can be clearly seen from the workshop windows, but
Hrach, while apprehensive of the danger, still appears untroubled by
the imposing threat.
Climbing the inconvenient stairs every day with the help of his mother
he gets down to work that is fulfilling and through which he earns
a living.
“I was probably 17 when I had become tired of everything. I became
secluded, did not want to see anyone. In order to forget everything I
began to work with the wood and slowly we became friends,” says Hrach.
There are more than 186,000 people living with disabilities in Armenia
today, which is 6 percent of the total population. While more than 67
percent of them are of working age (18-63 years old), only 9 percent
of them are actually employed.
In the case with Nerkin Karmraghbyur, where the only employment
is provided by the local school, kindergarten, medical facility and
village administration, and where farming is complicated by a constant
threat of fire from the enemy, having a paying job, let alone for
a disabled person, appears next to impossible. But the man who has
overcome his own handicaps has been working hard to overcome these
social handicaps as well.
“I’ve always liked making things by myself. I can use the computer,
I learn different ways of woodcraft from internet sites,” says Hrach.
The tables that he makes are sold for an average of 80,000 drams
(about $190) and despite the fact that many in the village buy
furniture on credit, the woodworker doesn’t complain.
Still, Hrach considers that his life in the city would be easier as the
bumpy village roads make life so much harder for him. Besides, he says,
cities and towns have employment centers for disabled people, where
he would spend more interesting time communicating with other people.
“Leaving the house is a problem for me. I cannot easily get to
the village center and so I cannot socialize. I often hear a lot
of questions about my condition and that’s also embarrassing,” says
Hrach, who thinks that people should not discriminate based on the
health condition. “This is my lot, but I try not to lose heart. I try
to live by my present. When I idle, I get sad, but when I am at work,
I have no time to feel down.”