Iknew Armenia had experienced on-again, off-again conflict with Azerbaijan, its neighbor to the east, over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. But I did not expect all hell to break loose precisely as I was packing to go there on a journalistic internship.
After some heated consultations I proceeded anyway, arriving in Yerevan at 3 a.m. on Sept. 24, bleary-eyed and not knowing what to expect from my time at the Civilnet news website, sponsored by The Armenia Project NGO.
Across the border, just a few hours’ drive away, a major drama was unfolding. Azerbaijan had attacked the autonomous, Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh days earlier, and in a shocking development, almost the entire population of 120,000 fled their homes for Armenia, a country of less than 3 million.
Within days, my host organization called to say a refugee family, outside sleeping in their car, would like to move in with me. It was an exhausted-looking couple in their 40s and their daughter, no more than 5 years old. She was very quiet for a small child.
I was eager to find out more, but they did not speak English. So, I took to bringing home coloring books and crayons and craft supplies for the girl by the door, hoping to make the family feel welcome. Eventually the girl became more animated; once I even heard her laughing.
One night, I heard a knock at my bedroom door. It was the mother and daughter, who had come to give me some bananas. “My baby wants to thank you,” said the mother. “Thank you!” I struggled to fathom how a family that had left everything behind and now had next to nothing went out of their way to give me something.
World Central Kitchen, in partnership with the Armenian General Benevolent Union, set up a food preparation and distribution site in our building, providing meals to refugees. The mother started to work there, and I stopped by.
There I met another woman named Emma who fled Nagorno-Karabakh with her 94-year-old mother, who died in Armenia immediately after the 30-plus hour journey. She said her mother died realizing she was never going home. The woman’s fervent wish was to bury her mother back there, next to her father.
The Yerablur Military Cemetery, the busiest I’ve ever seen, was thronged by the bereaved diligently cleaning graves. Most of the gravestones were for young men, and several were elaborately decorated for birthdays they would never celebrate. I watched them from a respectful distance.
In early October, I traveled to the border town of Goris, through which much of the mass displacement had passed. I was struck by the contrast between the landscape’s stunning beauty and the darkness of mood. That same week, colleagues from CivilNet’s office in Stepanakert, the capital of the enclave, had arrived safely in Yerevan. I’m proud to have worked alongside them to bring this important story to the world.
Friends from abroad would ask me, “How is Armenia?” I struggled to explain in a text message about living and working alongside people who have lost so much. How it is devastating, but also inspires hope.
I was amazed at how war can permeate all aspects of life. The experience has deepened my conviction that this is my calling: telling the untold story, giving voice to the voiceless and reporting on underreported events.
As a native of Tulsa, I know events in faraway places like Armenia can seem irrelevant to our lives, especially with so many conflicts competing for our attention today. But beyond the economic and security ripple effects of war, there is also our shared humanity. And in the case of Armenia, the first state to adopt Christianity in the 4th century, shared religion.
Skylar Yoder, a former political analyst for the U.S. Federal Government, is an aspiring foreign correspondent. She is a native of Tulsa.
https://tulsaworld.com/opinion/column/opinion-frontline-view-of-war-in-the-south-caucasus-by-a-tulsan/article_bf754a02-9c8d-11ee-a30a-5730026f2771.html