Off The Beaten Track 10: To Armenia With Love part 2

 Personal Reflections of Being an International Football Manager

The all England Champions League final between Manchester City and Chelsea this year, was a classic example of today’s modern game. Being a football manager must feel more like dealing with a multi-faceted international team these days, due to the number of foreign players (and managers) participating in the domestic league. I can appreciate the difficulties in this task through my own football manager experience.

I had always wanted to go abroad to do something useful, and in the summer of 1993 I went on a month long volunteer work program to Armenia. An international group was going there to help rebuild areas devastated by the 1988 earthquake. I quickly discovered I was the only non-ethnic Armenian in the group, and with my scant linguistic skills thought this would be an interesting experience to say the least! I was in a camp with the only other two women from the group and the North Americans. At least I got the English speakers and the French women had perfect English too. Most of them spoke fluent Armenian as well, so I told myself I should be ok, fingers crossed.

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  Being a Navvy in Gogaran. Image credit abmj

My team were located in the mountainous region in a small village called Gogaran. I became an accomplished “navvy” making up cement, shifting earth and digging, quickly becoming one of the boys. The other two women initially took part in the building work, but drifted off to work with the children of the village instead, although I noticed they only seemed to deal with the girls. I asked them why, and found out they had no idea how to deal with these energetic boisterous boys, who were really only crying out for attention. On my way to work the next day I spotted an old tennis ball and kicked it, only for it to be returned to me by a smiling eight year old lad. We continued our passing game all the way to the work site and he and his friends were waiting for a return match when I finished. An idea came to mind and using my interpreters I asked the boys if they liked football and boxing. The resounded answer was yes, so I decided to put my years of sport watching to good use. There wasn’t much equipment around, a few tennis balls and eventually a well worn football appeared and a skipping rope. I got the boys into a little training regime with boxing and football practice.  They could use the skipping rope to develop their coordination and footwork, and shadow box to use up some excess energy and be more aware of body positions. I wouldn’t let them hit each other because there weren’t any medical facilities for miles.  They could practice their football by passing, dribbling, shooting and working on their close ball control, while I was at work. In the evenings they showed me what they had been doing and I offered some coaching advice, and padded up my hands with socks and gardening gloves so they could box on target. From then on I was ambushed every morning and evening by a combination of shadow boxers and football fiends. But the reward was seeing the boys’ blossom now they had something to do and someone taking an interest in them. Very little was ever said directly between me and my boys because of the language barrier. But through gestures and leading by example I got my message across, and for any complex team talk I brought in my interpreters. This shows perfectly why sport (and particularly football) is a universal language

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  Boxing Ambush in the Mountains. Image credit abmj

At the end of my stay I persuaded the men in the group to agree to a few five-aside football games. Team “talks” with my lads involved much sign language, fresh water that flowed down into the village from the mountains, and barley-sugars I had stashed in my case. I’m proud to say my team acquitted themselves very well, against much bigger opponents. The tournament wages were packs of chewing gum, and my top scorer was awarded my coveted football club baseball cap. I was a Scots lassie who led an Armenian football team to victory, and I wouldn’t swap the experience for the world.

Off The Beaten Track 9: To Armenia With Love

Giving the Only Gift I Had

Just after Christmas in 2018 (27^th December) I was reminded of the true meaning of gift giving, as I listened to a Crossing Continents broadcast (Armenia: Return to a Town That Died) on BBC Radio 4. In that half hour, as tears of recognition and remembrance slowly trickled down my face, my mind travelled back to 1993, when I was a 23 year old volunteering in Armenia.

I had always wanted to go abroad and do something useful, and thanks to my then fiancée I got my wish. For a month I worked with an international volunteer organisation in Gogaran near Spitak in Armenia, helping to rebuild the village church destroyed by the 1988 earthquake. Residents had been offered housing, but they wanted the heart of the village to be restored instead.  Not only was the church obliterated on December 7^th 1988 but an entire generation of children were taken by Mother Nature as well, when the school collapsed on top of them.

         A Lost Generation. Image credit abmj

The village dynamic I encountered had no children between the ages of around 10/11 to about 17/18, the ornate headstones in the nearby cemetery marking the final resting place of the lost little ones.

                Only Younger Children. Image credit abmj

The radio program featured two Northern Irish fire fighters who had travelled to Armenia in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, to help rescue/recover the people trapped. As I listened to them talk of their harrowing experiences digging for children in the remains of a collapsed school, I was back in Gogaran again. For me, I lodged in the replacement school building with my team, and a lot of the initial digging involved moving the earthly remains of long lost souls, shifted from their original graveyard by the tectonic catastrophe. The earthquake decimated communities and families, housing was in desperate short supply, and the fall of communism created an economic collapse with limited job opportunities creating a lack of hope. Every aspect described I had witnessed firsthand myself, the young men with no prospects, the makeshift housing, the electricity only coming on for a couple of hours a day. I could empathise fully with what was being said, especially how those memories remained etched into your psyche decades after they were first created.

Never before had a radio program spoke to me with such force, as memories flooded over me. Then the tears I desperately tried to hold back emerged as two particular stories from the firemen were recalled. Years after the earthquake, the men returned to the site of the school they had worked at, only to find the school caretaker still there living in a metal oil tanker container. As I listened to this, I recalled being invited by our cook to her home, a small strangely shaped structure kept immaculate inside that housed her and three children. I was given a feast of flat bread, honey, garden fruits and tea, and it was only when I left did I realise why the home was strangely shaped. Yes, it was the metal chasm of an oil tanker container. My host had offered everything she had, as a way of thanking me in particular as a non-ethnic Armenian, for travelling out there to try and help. That same simple selfless generosity was experienced by the firemen from Northern Ireland as well, one chokingly describing being given a jar of pickled fruit by a grieving mother. She had kept a constant vigil beside the school, enduring bitterly cold conditions, with only a coat and small fire for comfort. Her children were not recovered, but she gave the firemen all she had as a gift of thanks for their effort. On hearing this I freely admit my tears went completely unchecked.

The Monastery of Khor Virap. Image credit abmj

My own Armenian fruit story involves a bunch of juicy black grapes, blessed during the Orthodox Holy Feast Day of the Assumption of the St Mary in August 1993. I’m not sure if this event was permissible under Soviet rule, but I recall being told it was the first one held since Armenia had gained her independence. It was a big deal and TV cameras were recording the service. Since I have a small guidebook for The Monastery of Khor Virap, I’m guessing that’s where our group travelled to witness this momentous occasion. The air was thick with incense, the heady words of blessing completely indecipherable to my ears as the priests resplendent in golden embroidered robes of blue and pinks, gave out bunches of beautiful looking grapes, to a congregation of perhaps a thousand plus.

                           A Sacred Service. Image credit abmj

In this mass of humanity I surged forward and received some blessed fruit. At that moment, the grapes were the only thing I had of any value and meaning, having only the clothes I stood in, a small bum bag with a camera and guidebook. I remember thinking “these must mean something” and Jesus being the vine sprung into my mind. Ok, the fruit is the blood, like communion wine I guessed, and I had an overwhelming sense that someone in that sacred building needed God’s blessing far more than I did. Scanning the vast area thronged with people, my eyes fell upon an old woman, bent double, wrapped in a dark shawl, pressed up against the wall, clinging onto her daughter’s arm. She reminded me of how Old Mother Hubbard was depicted in nursery rhyme books.  Not taking my eyes off the old woman, I broke ranks from my group and pushed my way toward the wall. On reaching Mother Hubbard, I gently touched her arm and held out the bunch of grapes. She gasped, threw her hand to her mouth in surprise as her daughter beamed a radiant smile in my direction, and nodded to her mother. The old woman’s eyes shone like the sun as she made direct eye contact with me and grasped the grapes I offered. She became teary eyed, mouthed profuse thanks and wouldn’t let my hand go. My team leader thankfully had spotted my escape from the group and had followed me; otherwise I’d have had great difficulty finding them again. He gently coaxed the lady to let me go, we waved goodbye, and then I got a rollicking for breaking ranks. He then said “you have NO IDEA what you’ve just done, do you?” I shrugged and replied “I just gave her all I had”. He smiled, gave me a hug and with a catch in his voice mumbled “EXACTLY”.

The parallels between some of the firemen’s memories and mine where uncanny, and through the medium of radio we were brought powerfully together. The ramifications of the Armenia earthquake of 1988 had taken us to that country to help, and we experienced the true meaning of giving through a gift of fruit. And to this day, whenever I see a bunch of juicy black grapes, I see that woman’s eyes too.

              Awaiting the Blessed Grapes. Image credit abmj