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Realizing A Dream
Realizing A Dream

Career Choice

 17 Years Building and Learning


It is December 1993. Armenia is at war. People are leaving with every chance. Water is rationed and electricity is as inconsistent as full shelves in sparse shops.

Arpi Vartanian has just earned a degree in international management and, at 27, the bright Armenian-American from Michigan has promise and prospects waiting.

She puts a goose-down comforter and candles in one of two suitcases and launches her professional career in cold, dark Armenia.

Seventeen years later, at 44, she looks back...

"I lived like everybody else," she recalls, adding that a brief internship at the American University of Armenia had prepared her for what to expect. "I was excited like everybody else when we would get electricity for a short while, and I was fetching water when it ran out. I didn't eat bread, so I did not have to line up in long queues, and I would give my bread ration cards to a neighbor."

After directing an NGO training center in Yerevan, Vartanian accepted a one-year job in Washington, D.C., for the Armenian Assembly of America. She returned to Armenia, and was the Assembly's country director for Armenia and Karabakh until resigning early this year.

Unlike the professional lives of diasporan Armenians who made mid-career moves to relocate, Vartanian's life has uniquely been defined by Armenia. Was her choice the right one?

"It is natural that every person wonders whether one move or another was right," she says. "I am sure that in other countries I would not have gotten the feeling of satisfaction that I have had here, in Armenia, where I could make a small contribution to the development of the country.

And in a different place I wouldn't have learned much of what life has taught me here."

But even after 17 years, feeling at "home" is sometimes defined by seemingly trivial things lacking in the current one. Vartanian says she misses drive-through service on rainy days and being able to pay bills by check in the mail.

"I miss being close to my family," she says. "iChat and Skype are wonderful, but just not the same. However, when I remember back to the early 1990s, and we didn't have any Internet or e-mail, and phone calls on the 'AT&T lines' cost $4-5 per minute, well, I guess I can't complain too much."

Nor would she complain that Yerevan society is abnormal as compared with others—but its annoyances are peculiar: people not standing in line; drivers honking horns when the stoplight is still red, etc.

She is bothered, she says, by arrogance. "I know there are arrogant people everywhere," she says, "but this is a small country, and Yerevan is a small city. It just seems to be more obvious here."

After 17 years, she has learned, too, that distinctions between local and diasporan Armenians do not disappear.

"Most of my friends are locals. In certain matters I am a Hayastantsi. They often say to me—you are ours (Hayastantsi)—but there are moments when they say that I am a diasporan Armenian, or 'you are being totally American,'" she says.

(Information reported by Gayane Abrahamian)

Originally published in the November 2010 ​issue of AGBU Magazine. Archived content may appear distorted on your screen. end character

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AGBU Magazine is one of the most widely circulated English language Armenian magazines in the world, available in print and digital format. Each issue delivers insights and perspective on subjects and themes relating to the Armenian world, accompanied by original photography, exclusive high-profile interviews, fun facts and more.