Can you imagine? No you can’t. Just try and imagine for a moment: the
wife of a well paid official comes out of an elite beauty salon and
immediately attracts your attention. She doesn’t attract your attention
not with her beauty and not her hairstyle. But this really isn’t
something worth imagining. Fine, I will try to describe it. She comes
out of the beauty salon with a unique and beautiful hairstyle. She is
wearing old (if not ragged) clothes, worn out shoes and carries a bag
made out of polyethylene. She comes out of the salon and looks at the
passer bys. This is not something to imagine, but there is no other way
to describe the developments in the cities of Armenia and Karabagh
(capital cities) during the past decade. There is Euro construction
everywhere and the villages remain empty. Our country is developing in
a ridiculously unbalanced way. The reason for being unbalanced is not
due to the economy, but rather, the morality. There is no drinking
water in the villages, people collect rain water for taking baths, and
as for the capital city, there are fountains everywhere. The people
surrounding the fountains do not even care to think about their
compatriots who drag water in buckets to their homes.
In order to see this inequality, it is not necessary to go all the way
to the farthest village in Armenia or Karabagh. It can be seen on
Baghramian street or in Masis. The walls of the schools are falling
apart, the ceiling drips, the bathroom door is closed due to no water,
but then you see two computers in one of the classrooms which is
falling apart. “The benefactor gave them to us” you hear them say. The
benefactor donated the computers, fine, but wasn’t there one person who
stopped to think that what the school really needed was more than just
technological devices. In order to keep their reputation high, the
school principal and the village chief will not say that they made a
deal with the benefactors. The regional chief and one of the teachers
from the region will not say that because they can delay solving the
school’s problems for a little while. The Prime Minister of the country
and the Minister of Education and Sciences will not say anything
because they are better off without that. They will not only avoid
saying that, but also, they will present the president with a progress
of having computers installed into the schools. The president will not
say a word either, but rather, he will predict that Armenia is moving
towards a technologically advanced country. So, we must thank the
benefactor who was able to provide Armenian schools with European or
American brand name computers. The benefactor could not do anything
else. If American and European brand name companies were to provide
Armenia with washing machines and toilet seats, paint for doors and
windows and other materials, then maybe the benefactor would think
about the students that go to school and see it falling apart.
Generally, it is hard to be a benefactor. Recently, I saw a benefactor
in the village of Vank in the region of Martakert. His charity did not
make me grateful, but rather, it made me think twice about benefactors.
The successful businessman and nationalist has made such a boat in the
village that he has even amazed the benefactor of benefactors. You look
at what he has done and realize that money is not the only thing that
is needed to do charity, you also have to have the brains and taste,
not to mention consciousness and seriousness. If the benefactor felt
the latter two, instead of destructing the front side of the dudukist’s
house, the benefactor could remodel the roof of the neighboring school
in the village so that the students would not be forced to feel the
pain that Vahan Teryan went through. But what do I want from
benefactors? Why am I talking about them? The benefactor is not the key
figure when it comes to development of the unequal structure. The
benefactor is an individual who has his unique taste and preferences.
When he or she comes to the village and sees that the government
provides 15,000 drams a year to the medical center for medicine and
other materials, while the unemployed sits in his home and gets the
same amount, then we can say that the blind can look through a camera
and that the deaf can hear songs on a player. Whoever says that this is
charity can throw a rock on that benefactor. Our country is probably in
the third and fourth places for having many benefactors. That is our
real enrichment, but it is often wasted because of moral inequality and
acts of parvenus behavior. Today Martakert, which has been fought for
and has been won with the cost of many lives, is miserable. Meanwhile,
Yerevan is fulfilling Tamanyan’s dream. In order to irrigate the fruits
of Martakert (they can feed all of Karabagh), 20,000,000 million drams
is needed. But our government provides 20,000,000 million dollars of
the 60,000,000 million donated by the “Linsie” foundation for
remodeling eighteen schools which are going to be located in Yerevan
and the surrounding regions. Can you imagine how beautiful the schools
will look where more than a million students will come to study? Can
you imagine how businessmen, officials, the corrupted people and the
organizations receiving grants will make sure their children study at
that school, people who think or don’t think that Armenia is becoming a
woman with a beautiful hairstyle and cosmetics, whose soul is empty.