Tags
Armenia, grief, Gyumri, Mankatoon, orphan, մանկատուն, survivor's guilt, The Unwanted Children's House
Here are my heroes. I was sent to Gyumri, Armenia, to teach English, but what consumed me instead was the Mankatoon (մանկատուն), The Unwanted Children’s House, the State-run Orphanage for, as the director once told me, “babies 0-5.”
The nurses you see here are my heroes. They were faced with the impossible task of taking care of children the locals didn’t even think were human. In 1996 we were faced with massive shortages in so much (food, medicine, etc) that plagued Gyumri. These women, who hadn’t been paid in months, perhaps years, were, on top of having to take care of their own families, ones who came every day to the orphanage with love enough to care for those who no one else would. And the mortality rate for these children was terrible. With no medicine and the only thing we could feed them was watery, emergency-aid soup, they died. All the children I took care of for two years are now dead, so I’ve been told. I was only 25 and not ready to face a world where children starved to death and I was powerless to do anything about it.
I think, one day, I will see my babies again and apologize to them. Because they died and I survived and I carry that guilt everywhere I go.
memories of my ghost sista 
Survivor’s guilt, a heavy burden. I’ve never been in such a situation, and it’s a criminal world that puts you, or anyone else, in man-made traumas like this.
On my Way…
Yes, it can be a horrific world we live in, but it can also be a world filled with unbelievable grace and beauty. For all the problems the people of Gyumri had, they were only generous and kind to me, a foreigner living in their midst who could hardly even speak their language. I will always love that city, though it broke me in the end, it also gave me love and acceptance during a time when both was hard to come by in my life.
Wonderful post….too wonderful for a greedy artist like myself who wants all their time to piss around with rambling prose and cropping around with photos. I’ve done my bit in the ghettos of America, and I can’t say I would want to do it again. Misery, despair, and the armed conflict such feelings lead to are such big business it’s like Honest Abe said of being president during the crack-up of the U.S. – “I feel like I’m so busy renting rooms out in the front of the building I don’t have time to put out the fire raging in the back.”
Later…
I would never in a million years want to go through that again, either. But if there is anything good that can be taken away from such experiences it is that my time spent with those children shaped my life forever. We all are faced with terrible tragedies in life, I suppose the real question if how we deal with them and whether they change us for good or bad. Let us hope for the best.
I have students still who e-mail me about once or twice a year telling me of universities accepted to, and academic or artistic achievements and its all good…better than a life working the streets of the ghetto. Saw some study that had teachers near the top as far as satsfied in their work…and they’re always down low on the average pay. Hmmmmm
Later….
Yes, considering that teachers are the ones who’ll fashion the generations to come you’d think we’d pay them more. That is wonderful that your students make sure to tell you how their lives are doing. You don’t get that much as a hospice nurse … unless you have an Ouija board, I suppose.
Or live in a Ghost Hotel, or go to Lilydale and pay a medium with no guarentee you might not end up chatting with somoene’s pet chihuahua.
Later…
Yes, I am very fond of your Ghost Hotel. There is a very beautifully made movie from Japan called Spirited Away which is set in a ghost bathhouse. I liked the idea of ghosts from around Japan all coming to the bathhouse like they use to do when they were alive. It’s by the same director who made Princess Mononoke.
Vonnegut put out a small book of collected pieces from NPR, called “Thank You Dr. Kevorkian” in which he came up with his usual unique POV trick to interview the dead…and Hitler’s message to the world was something like, “Excuse me…”
Later….
Haha, oh that wacky Hitler! I wonder if he ever regretted not pursuing his dream of being a painter? I met Dr. Death once. It turns out Kevorkian was a painter himself and came to Michigan State University where I was an undergraduate to exhibit a collection of his art. The painting I recall the most was one of the (then governor) John Engler, dressed up as Hitler, standing in front of the capital building in Lansing. For a guy the media called Dr.Death he had terrible sense of style, you’d think he’d wear all black and slick his hair back but he usually wore clothes that made him look like he just came from the Salvation Army’s 50% off sale. Plus he was eating an ice cream cone the entire time I saw him and getting vanilla all over his mouth, giving the appearance of having rabies. My friends and I later joked that he simply bit the people he helped commit suicide. Ah, Jack.
Amusing, though not really well-done as it could have been, bit of Vonnegut’s oral storytelling. He interviews the famous, and the non-famous who were just interesting to him for whatever reason. Kevorkian is just a device…giving him controlled death rides.
Later…