Five month-old Michael lays in the old, metal cradle. His clothes and blanket are as old as the pass afire that he sucks on so much, making it seem like that is the only thing that he eats. The problem of getting food is also a problem facing Michael’s four brothers and six sisters, but they are a little older than him; they’ll survive. But not Michael.
The Sargsyan family earns a living the hard way. They share what they have among them, starting with the kids from youngest to oldest: Michael, then one and half year-old Alina, three year-old Hakob, five year-old Marina, seven year-old Margarita, eight year-old Vagharshak, nine year-old Varduhi, eleven year-old Andranik, sixteen year-old Naira, eighteen year-old Seda and 20 year-old Sasha.
Eleven kids, minimum means
“My kids stay hungry for days but they don’t show it. They are ashamed of the neighbors,” says 38 year-old mother of eleven Sona Sargsyan. “They wait quietly until we find something to eat. The older kids can take it, but you can’t explain to the younger ones that there is no work, the subsidies are getting late. The child will cry.”
The Sargsyans live in the Tsovinar village of the Geghrakunik Marz and they live on the 40,000 poverty subsidy that they get which is enough for 2 bags of flour. The two bags only last for two weeks.
“When we only have dry lavash (bread), we are still satisfied. We have some land, we get some potatoes, but the kids suffer from malnutrition. My younger kids don’t drink any milk for months.”
Michael and one and half year-old Alina, who is about 5 kilograms in weight and lower than the normal standard, are not growing well. Although Alina is 17 months old, she still can’t walk. Eleven year-old Andranik’s teeth are falling out, his gums are swollen and there is inflammation.
“They would give this heroine a title, a house and a car during the Soviet Union,” says neighbor Nvart Kocharyan. “The authorities want us to have more kids because there are not too many people. Do they take care of the kids if they want us to have lots of them? Eleven hungry children, no clothes, they don’t go to school for months just because they don’t have shoes to wear to go outside. What kind of life is this?”
The biggest problem is unemployment. The family man Soghomon Sargsyan was a driver at the time, but after the cattle-raising economy collapsed he was left unemployed.
“There are no jobs. I will do whatever is out there, but there is nothing. The only thing I can do in the village is cattle-raising and cultivate land. If you don’t have that, it’s like hanging from thin air. That is just what I feel like,” says Sargsyan. “I went to Russia for a year. They made me work like a slave, they tricked me and didn’t give my one year salary. I didn’t even have money to return to Armenia. After all that, how can I leave my wife and eleven children and leave? What if I don’t get a chance to come back?” he says.
Besides the issue of getting food, the Sargsyans live with the fear of finding themselves out on the streets in the near future. Ten years ago, after their second child was born, the roof of the house fell apart and they immediately moved to Soghomon’s brother’s home with the hope of building another home. But they still don’t have a house of their own to this day.
“We are guests here. We don’t have a corner for ourselves. We keep having fights with my brother-in-law; he keeps telling us to leave so that he can get married. I don’t blame him; he is 40 years-old and doesn’t get married because of us,” says Sona.
Each of the eleven children has a dream. Naira and Irina wish to get a good education, Varduhi wants to have a nice backpack to go to school and a doll with hair. David, with big eyes and cheeks turned red from the cold, dreams of “lots of chocolate so he can eat, eat and never finish, give to his sisters, brothers, but so it won’t finish…”