Ragnar's World: Observe and report

Yesterday evening I spent at the flat. Talking to Gayane, the landlady, and her new daughter-in-law. Gayane doesn't speak much English. But with some help from sign language, and some help on my part, we managed to talk about more than just the weather. She told me about her upbringing in Uzbekhistan. She married there, and had two children. The her son developed astma. The doctors recommended the good air around Lake Sevan in Armenia. The whole family moved there, and her son got better. Her husband tried to get a job in Armenia, but for different reasons, he couldn't. So he went to Russia. He never returned.
"You know. Twenty years. No hear. He. Go Russia. Russian wife. I here. Two children. Twenty years. Nothing. I alone. Twenty years." Raising her children has been her whole life. Now they have moved out. Her son just got married. Two weeks ago. Her daughter-in-law comes over every day. I am starting to think why she has this homestay open. She needs someone to take care of. She treats us not as guests. More like relatives. Anything we want. Food, TV. Laudry. Fixing tours and other things. She will do it. She doesn't do it for the money either. If you're a volunteer, she will let you stay for free. She only charges money from tourists.
I changed the subject to Sovjet. A smile came upon her face. "I like Sovjet. Work good, pay good. Only problem : Only Sovjet. No Europe. No America."
"No freedom?"
"No freedom. But else good."
Who am I to argue?

Today, I got up early. Wanted to get an early start. Had two points of interest for the day. The Yerevan Observatory, and the Armenian Genocide Memorial. Gayane fixed me breakfast. "You egg?" I nodded. "Cook?" I tried to explain fried eggs. She nodded. A few minutes later, she appeared from the kitchen with scramled eggs... Something got lost in translation. But the scramled eggs were delicious, so who cares?
I share room with an English guy and a Swede. They came back at 4 this morning from a serious beer bash of Yerevan. Robert, the Swede, actually managed to get up at 9. Just before I left. We talked a bit before I headed out.
I wanted to walk a bit this day, since I spent so many hours on the marshrutka yesterday. An hour and a pint of sweat later, I had arroved at the park where the observatory was supposed to be. From the smell, it had obviously been turned into a public toilet. I found a kind of round structure, so I assumed they had tore it down a long time ago, and that the map was old. The map WAS old. A new building had been erected in the middle of the park, dividing it in two. I finally found the observatory on the other side of the building. Crammed between new buildings.
I loved the building. Of the old kind. It wasn't open, unfortunately, so I couldn't peek inside. But I walked around it, trying to imagine what it must have been like, sitting there, observing night after night. Like they did in those days. No photo. No computers. Just the eyes of the observer and his notebook. When I pull out my scope at home, I only spend maximum a few minutes on each object before moving on to the next. Imagine in the old days. Observers could spend nights on end observing just one object. Describing it in detail. Trying to figure out what they saw. That is by the way how smal green men appeared. An observer reported he was seeing "canalis" on Mars. Some imagined that these must have been constructed by an intelligent civilisation. Hence, mars-men.

Next stop, after some refluiding of my body, was the Armenian Genocide Memorial.
It is strange that such an important memorial is practically impossible to find a road to, but after two hours and about a gallon of sweat, I was still unable to locate the road up to the memorial. So I nearly gave up when I found a small walkway that met the walkway to the memorial. I was so sweaty and tired that I almost fell to the ground. I got inside, and the flush of cold air soothed my body.
During WWI, the Turks of the Ottaman Empire committed genocide on the christian Armenians. Sheik-ul-islam issued a jihad on November 14'th 1914 against the "infidels and the enemies of the faith". It is recognized that the genocide started on April 24'th 1915, when 250 Armenian intellectuals where arrested and executed. Hundred thousands where killed. The rest were forced into long marches without food or water. Many died during the march, and those who didn't, were deported to the desert of Mesopotamia where they died of starvation or dehydration. When the long lines of Armenians walked past a town, turkish people kidnapped children, and girls they liked. Girls as young as 14 were put in hareems of prominent turks. It is reckoned that somewhere between 800 000 and 2 million Armenians died. Turkey has yet to recognize the genocide ever happened.
I have been in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the Genocide Memorial in Kigali, Rwanda. The story is the same. The result the same. In the memorial in Rwanda, I wrote in the visitors log : "When will we ever learn?". When will we?