CARY WOMAN’S WORK IN ARMENIA BRINGS ITS OWN SPECIAL REWARDS
By Elizabeth Shestak
Cary News
March 27 2012
North Carolina
Caroline Lucas has found a way to make it work
Huddled in her winter coat, Green Hope High School graduate Caroline
Lucas sits in one of the unheated rooms of a friend’s apartment in
Berd, Armenia, a rural mountain town where she says the snow falls in
November and doesn’t usually melt until spring.
As she shares her story via Skype, the Internet video chat service, it
is clear this Cary native and Peace Corps volunteer is not at all
bothered by the cold, or that she originally hoped to be stationed in
an African country, or at least one where she could practice her
French and Spanish.
Lucas, 25, nonchalantly threads tidbits about what her life is like in
the northeast corner of Armenia as she talks about what she thinks is
the real story – the women of Berd, and the toy bears they have been
making by hand as part of her Peace Corps experience.
Lucas chops wood to heat the small house she’s been living in the last
few months on the outskirts of town, something the neighbors find
quite odd since she is, after all, a woman and in Armenia that is very
much men’s work. She cooks on a portable gas stove, provided by the
Peace Corps, and she uses an electric kettle to heat water with which
she “bucket bathes.”
Soon she’ll have a new apartment in the city, and with that comes
tremendous upgrades like hot water. She loves a hot shower.
But her sacrifices as a Peace Corps volunteer pale in comparison to
the lifestyle of many Armenians, particularly women who are widowed,
or whose husbands have gone to Russia for work, as is quite common.
The unemployment rate in Berd is rumored to be as high as 85 percent,
and in a country where patriarchy still reigns and women are often
uneducated and unskilled, hot water is the least of their worries.
A bear-ish job
A Berd (pronounced Bairdt) Bear takes about 18 hours of labor to come
together, starting with the Armenian-style knitting stitch to the
hand-sewn outfits each bear wears upon completion.
A handful of women had been taught this method by a German nun over a
decade earlier, Sister Hanna, and the skill has been passed on.
The bears are one of the crafts being sold by women by the Berd
Women’s Foundation Resource Center. The center was co-founded by John
Hart, the Peace Corps volunteer who arrived in Berd about a year
before Lucas (volunteers overlap by a year, typically) and since her
arrival, Lucas has helped the fledgling, regional operation go from a
handful of employees to now nearly 30, with hopes to export the Berd
Bears to America later this month.
“She hit the ground running,” Hart said of Lucas. She followed his
advice to “get integrated” as soon as possible, and to focus on
creating sustainability.
As volunteers they are not there forever, and a lot needs to get done
in the two years they are stationed abroad. Since 2011 over 230 bears
have been sold, generating some $9,000 US dollars in a region where
mothers sometimes cannot afford their children’s medications due to
unemployment. For each bear sold, about half of the money ends up
directly in the hands of the women who made it. Some of the rest goes
back into educating the women – the center has already hosted an event
about domestic violence, and hopes to bring computer skills classes to
the area as well.
“She’s been on conference calls in random hours of the night in
California,” Hart said, brainstorming additional projects the BWFRS
can take on.
Lucas insists a lot of recognition should go to the Armenian
non-profit Homeland Handicrafts. Its founder, Timothy Straight,
visited Berd and saw the potential in the bears the women were making
at the resource center and agreed to partner with them.
The unexpected
Lucas’ interest in alleviating poverty was ignited during a college
trip to Tanzania. She knew she wanted to visit a place she wouldn’t
normally go while on vacation – and that she did.
“Going to Tanzania literally changed my entire life,” she said. Seeing
that sort of poverty up close made it clear that her focus would be on
bettering the lives of those underserved.
The Peace Corps did not surprise her parents.
“Caroline has always been a child that wanted to travel and see the
world,” said her mother, Rosemary Lucas.
She and her husband are grateful that although the basics like water,
gas and electricity seem to be unreliable at times in Berd, the
Internet service has been miraculously consistent and they can see her
on Skype about every two weeks. “I feel like she’s available,” her
mother said.
Lucas did not envision this as her Peace Corps experience. She had
studied abroad in Africa while earning her degree in political science
from Chapman University in California, where she was originally a film
major. She did a work-exchange program on a coffee farm in Hawaii and
volunteered in Ecuador last summer. She thought she was destined for a
sub-Saharan African station where agriculture would be the focus, but
an allergy to red meat made that sort of placement impossible.
Lucas had also worked for a non-profit in Washington, D.C working with
domestic microfinance recipients, which influenced her placement as a
Community and Business Development Volunteer.
“To be really honest, I was not happy about it,” she admits. But after
taking an intensive Armenian-language course, and experiencing
firsthand the overwhelming hospitality of the Armenian people, she
began to feel much more at home.
And of course, there are the women.
The women of Berd, she said, humble her every day.
“By working with them, I have learned what it really means to make the
most of what you have and to never take any opportunity for granted,”
she said.
At times it can be challenging to assert her Western sense of gender
equality, all the while maintaining respect for their cultural
differences, but she marvels at their spirit and strength, learning as
much from them about life as she is teaching them about independence
and finance.
“Cheesy as it sounds, I know this is where I’m supposed to be,” Lucas said.
http://www.carynews.com/2012/03/24/55267/cary-womans-work-in-armenia-brings.html