Jeff Norling went to Armenia on an eight-day humanitarian mission last month and returned home satisfied with what had been accomplished and with an utter appreciation of the Armenian people and their country.
“The biggest thing was that any time you help an Armenian out, you feel like you just became their best friend,” Norling said. “That happens in a lot of places. However, there, you really feel like you’ve got a bond with that person.”
Under those circumstances, Norling made hundreds of friends in the three villages his six-member team visited during their time in Armenia.
The team went as part of the Partnership for Peace program. Five are members of the Air National Guard unit headquartered in Topeka; a sixth is in the Army National Guard. Maj. Edward Keller coordinated the effort. Keller, a Topeka police detective, is on a 16- to 18-month tour of duty as Kansas National Guard liaison for Partnership for Peace, Norling said.
Capt. Chris Hill, a spokesman for the Kansas National Guard, said that for the hands-on team, the 190th Air Refueling Wing sent an optometrist, Lt. Col. William Hefner; a dental technician, TSgt. Michael Riblett; an optometry specialist, Spec. Olivia Hof; a public health officer, Capt. Ingrid Trevino; and Norling, a public health technician. The Army National Guard provided a dentist for the mission, Maj. Martin Powell.
“There’s been a relationship with Armenia for some time in training military, understanding the culture, assisting them in learning, in our particular area, learning the medical aspects,” Norling said, describing the Kansas-Armenia relationship as “like a sister country.”
Norling was invited to be part of the program earlier, when he was to be sent to Armenia to help teach first aid to that country’s military. Instead, he was deployed for a tour of duty in Iraq.
This year’s mission more than made up for the delay.
“We went to three small villages, all between the sizes of 800 people and 1,500 people,” he said. “They’re in a remote part of the country, where medical care is not readily available. They do have access to a doctor, but there’s not adequate access to medicines, dentists or eye doctors.”
The U.S. team brought with them various prescription medicines and thousands of pairs of eyeglasses, donated through Lions and Optimists clubs. Those supplies were waiting for the team at Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, when they landed. The team hauled them along through the countryside to dispense at the village clinics.
There, they found an abundance of people eager for dental and optometric attention during the three days spent treating instead of traveling.
“I can personally say that I assisted in finding and fitting about 250 pairs of eyeglasses,” Norling said.
The donated eyeglasses were labeled for distribution according to their lenses’ prescriptions, so Norling would search through the boxes to find the appropriate corrective pairs.
“Usually for each patient, you’d have to go through a half-dozen to 30 pairs of glasses to find one that worked,” he said. “Some people were happy to be able to see anything, and they took the first pair you’d hand them.”
At least one of the patients received a pair of “adjustable” eyeglasses, which hold two lenses that sandwich a gel in-between; the gel comes from syringes on the temples of the glasses.
“If they’re far-sighted, you fill it up with gel; if they’re near-sighted bad enough, you crank it the other way and it fixes the lenses,” Norling said.
The patient for those was a man who had not been able to read for 15 years. Norling attributed part of the problem to cataracts and the other part to having no access to optometric care.
“The moment we fitted him with some of those adjustable glasses, he was thrilled to death because he finally was able to read the newspaper,” Norling said.
The man’s enthusiasm for reading wasn’t an aberration. Throughout Armenia, being able to read is a priority.
“They have a 98 percent literacy rate there,” he said. “You wouldn’t expect that in that part of the world, so finding these folks a pair of reading glasses was important to them.”
Norling found the Armenians to be appreciative and sociable.
“Everywhere we went, the people were very forthcoming and very kind, and they offered up food and drink every time we went anywhere,” he said. “They were very accommodating.”
The heavily agrarian country and its customs interested Norling. Citizens barter and trade for grains, meats, fruits, crafts and other needs.
“That’s how they maintain their lifestyle is to trade and share,” he said. “That was another unique part of their cultures.”
They operate on almost a 100 percent cash economy, he added, and building a house or ranch is done as money is available.
“If they run out of money, they stop the project. Then maybe a year or two later they have the money and they start back up again,” he said. “They don’t have a local savings and loan to go to.”
He saw evidence of Armenia’s political ties to the former Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as he traveled in cities and through the countryside.
“You can tell that it’s an old Soviet country by the buildings,” Norling said. “The government buildings are done up in more of a traditional limestone, marble, with a lot of arches, all that kind of stuff.
“But the housing and the apartments and a lot of construction that the Soviets were involved in ... when Armenia declared its independence, when the country had to fend for itself, a lot of the construction projects ceased at that point. There are still remnants of that construction, with cranes sitting around. ... There are a lot of half-built places.”
Some of the buildings, though, have been standing for centuries, and that fact intrigued Norling.
“The country itself is rich, full of history. To walk through these places and see the architecture and the engineering — they survived earthquakes, they survived wars, they survived just regular weather and wear,” he said.
“One of the monasteries we went to, built in roughly 800 A.D., still had monks living there. It overlooked a giant gulch and the rest of the mountains.”
Many Armenians still travel those mountainsides on horseback and on mules. Although many people in cities do own cars, few in the remote countryside do.
“In Tatev, that village was so remote that many (people) didn’t have the means to get out or the money to buy the fare to go,” he said.
As the humanitarian team slowly made its way over primitive roads winding through the mountains and valleys of Armenia, Norling was struck by thoughts of home and the highways and roads he travels as a technical trooper for the Kansas Highway Patrol. And he made a promise to himself.
“I’ll never complain about the gravel roads here in Kansas,” he said, “and I’ll never complain about the highways in Missouri and Oklahoma.”
create (anonymous) says...
What a neat story. What a great feeling these men and women must get from helping these people. The mountains must be wonderful, such a rare sight for a Kansan. At the same time, even though these little villages must be so picturesque, I feel lucky to live where medical care is available at a moment's need.
October 6, 2007 at 11:35 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )