Aygepat Harvest Festival & Halloween Celebration

So after many date changes and frustrations the Aygepat Harvest Festival & Halloween Celebration finally happened on Wednesday and it was a huge success! All the frustrations were worth it and it was probably a good thing that they happened because they gave me a taste of what it can be like to work in Armenia and I proved to myself that I can in fact do it. I need to work on developing more patience – I always thought I was a patient person but there is definitely a difference between being patient in the States vs. being patient in Armenia. The whole experience helped me learn more about the Armenian work culture and how I can best work with my co-workers and bosses to get projects done. I learned that I need to calm down and learn to take a breath when I get frustrated because trying to explain in the moment what is frustrating me only makes it worse. I also need to have a little more faith that things will work out even without my direct supervision.

The many date changes were due to the fact that my village mayor had invited the marz petaron (the regional mayor) to come to the festival and we were operating around his schedule. Apparently it was quite a big deal that he came to the festival – there was news crew there from the regional TV station covering the festival and last night my whole family went over to our neighbor’s house to watch it. When the marz petaron arrived everyone lined up to great him and the mayor greeted him along with a girl in traditional dress. There is a ceremony here where there is a loaf of traditional braided bread that a girl in traditional dress holds and a small pile of salt is placed on the bread and you rip off a piece of the bread and dip it in the salt and eat it. All the new volunteers participated in this ceremony when we met our training host families. The bread represents the wheat that Armenians believe is the life source of their people and the salt represents…well I don’t remember exactly what that represents maybe the salt of the earth or something. Anyway the marz petaron participated in that ceremony with the mayor and then my village mayor released doves. All of that was a surprise to me because the majority of the traditional Armenian parts of the festival were planned by the mayor, his assistants, and my counterpart. Next there was a series of traditional Armenian dances performed by a group of the local children and songs performed by a local singer. Then my counterpart, Vika and some of her students performed a small play about fall. The marz petaron and the village mayor made speeches. Then the school director made a small presentation of certificates and gifts to the local students who had been accepted to university, which included a couple of my English students.

Later Vika read a small thing we translated about Halloween and introduced me to everyone. Hopefully now that I have been formally introduced to more people in the village they will no longer think that I’m some random Russian girl who has moved into the village. After the bit on what Halloween is Vika invited people over to my table to sample some Halloween treats (candy apples, caramel corn, candy corn, mellow crème pumpkins, and cookies) and then I was mobbed by all the village children, but with the help of my host mom and neighbor we regulated the kids and they all loved the treats. The deputy regional mayor really liked the candy corn.

The whole village was really involved. In a traditional Armenian harvest celebration different groups or villages create decorative tables displaying fancy craved fruits and vegetables and bountiful baskets of the harvest along with homemade wine, bread, and pastries. The post office, the policlinic, the 10th form class from the school, my counterpart’s family’s store, and the mayor’s office all had tables. At the end of the festival everyone goes around sampling the harvest and treats. There were probably 75 to 100 people there and everyone seemed to have a really great time. Everyone at the mayor’s office worked so hard to make it happen and it was a great display of the amazing community spirit of my village. After all the uncertainty we achieved what I hoped to all along – a successful first big project to help me learn how to plan and execute projects successfully in Armenia.