We’ve made more than two dozen trips to Meghri since the start of our Bringing Water to Syunik’s Border Villages project, but this trip was different. It felt different. Never before has the road to Meghri been so colorful. Never before, have we seen so many cars/trucks transporting fruits and vegetables from and to the region.

It felt like all of a sudden something happened and Meghri is at the center of everyone’s attention and people are in a hurry to get their share.

The answer to this sudden shift is the harvest. It’s amazing how small cars “filled up to the neck” with persimmon and big trucks with boxes of the same fruit (carrying probably 3-4 tons per truck) are traveling through the region, adding to the already marvelous views of the road that goes through forests and hills.

Andre, our intern from the US, is traveling with us this time and this is his first visit to this part of Armenia. He is enthusiastic and full of ideas: to build up ski resorts on the high mountain slopes of Syunik; to invest in wide highways to connect Meghri and the Armenia-Iran border to the rest of Armenia.

Throughout the trip, he was throwing different infrastructure initiatives at us which, in his opinion, would help to develop the region and achieve its true potential. I was trying to bring him down to the level of mere mortals and tell him about the realities and obstacles and the history behind different initiatives implemented so far. It was an interesting and amazing mixture of daydreaming and conviction about the myriad opportunities.

Through arguments, conversations and the casual “look at that mountain” or “wow this is a beautiful turn” we arrived in Alvank, one of the two beneficiary communities involved in the Bringing Water to Syunik’s Border Villages project.

The project has already accomplished some of the goals it had, including the clean-up of the water tunnels (chahriz) that supply these communities with potable water.

The construction-rehabilitation work is completed and now is the time when we are trying to assist these communities with the creation of systems that will empower them to manage their water resources. The communities have already taken the first hard step: elected water management boards that will participate in the decision-making process together with the community mayors. These boards hold regular meetings and are in the process of putting together the long-term plan for sustainable management of all water in both communities.

We held meetings and received an overall update about the progress with the community water management plan. We suggested to the mayor and the board that they consider creating a separate position in the community administration for a chahriz clean-up specialist and restated our willingness to develop local capacity for clean-up and maintenance by sending local experts or willing young residents (one from/for each community) for training to Iran. The Alvank community was able to increase the water fee it has been collecting from the community from 100AMD to 300AMD, accumulating almost 250,000 AMD annually, which is barely enough to pay the salary of the water maintenance employee whose main task is to regulate the water flow between different districts of the community. They still have a lot of work to do. The long term planning should include increasing the fee for water in a feasible timeframe with realistic amounts that would provide enough funds for the community administration to deal with these issues.

Shvanidzor, our second community, has almost the same processes with two differences. First, the mayor of this community has more experience in running different types of projects with various donors, which basically means he will do everything to appease a donor or a project implementing organization.

Therefore, it is a bit harder to find the reality between his efforts to keep them (donors) happy and get more from them and the actual on-the-ground situation and the overall progress of the project activities.

The second difference is in the background of the population living in the community. Shvanidzor is one of the oldest Armenian communities in Armenia and the people residing here are locals who have been living in this community for generations, while Alvank, used to be Aldara, an Azeri community, repopulated by refugee Armenians from different cities of Azerbaijan. This last aspect makes a lot of difference, as the people in Shvanidzor are more receptive and are more aware of the water supply issues and problems.

With an agreement to return and participate in the community meeting that would explore the long term water management plan, we set off toward Yerevan, with a secret desire to have another opportunity to witness the spectacular views of Syunik in the Fall.

For more pictures click here