Welcome DavOs

_________________________Our Trip_____________________

This was our first trip to Teghut, which is about 200km from Yerevan. We had never been there before. It took 4 hours to get there. There were 24 of us (journalists, photographers, doctor etc). Before getting to Teghut, we passed by Alaverdi. The view was awful, and though it was a sunny day, the sky was dark.Teghut is going to be like that after a few years.
When we reached Teghut village, we saw a group of villagers standing outside. We decided to talk to them, to discuss the problem, and to get a feel for their opinions.
To our surprise, the talk became a “fight”. We used to think that villagers were against forest destruction because they care about their health, but in reality they were happy, because now they could have work. They didn’t know their children could develop health problems from the mine and they didn’t care about it. I didn’t even speak about the trees and animals. It would be useless to talk about animals when people don’t even care about their children. But, no, they told us, they do think about their children. The mine will give them an opportunity to earn money and send their children to Yerevan city. They were also falsely informed about the number of trees to be cut down, because when we asked them if they knew how many trees will be cut, they answered “100”. In reality, over 170.000 trees are going to disappear.
The villagers didn’t believe us when we told them we are just young activist who left our jobs to come and fight for nature. They think somebody paid us to do this.They no longer believe that humans will do something for nothing.
This is a very poor village and a cooper mine is a real “dream” for them. I want to mention the last thing they told us “They give us money, we are on their side. You give us money, we will be on yours”. MONEY…. KILLER MONEY!
We left them and we were very sad and angry. We realized, that asking them to help us and not offering a way of living is absurd. But unfortunately we cannot offer them something yet.
We left for the forest. Of course we weren’t allowed to pass the borders of the mine. We were looking at it and our hearts were really unhappy. All of these magnificent trees were going to disappear soon.I was looking at the trees and I wanted to cry, to ask it to forgive me for I am a human being and cannot help. That amazing forest was going to become an empty dead-zone with no ecological diversity.
We did not have the good fortune to meet any animals in the forest. Because they are so afraid of people, they would never reveal themselves, but we knew they were there, feeling our desire to help.

Our first trip was really important to us because now we know what we are fighting for!

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