I am ethnic Greek and I was really interested in the story of Pontic people who had come to Armenia from Pontus.
On august 3, Frontik Nikolaidi, head of Ponti Greek community in Yerevan, invited me to Yaghdan - a Greek village, situated in Armenia’s Lori region, near the town of Stepanavan.
The asphalt road changed into an impassable path, as I approached the village. But even the poor condition of the roads resulting from authorities negligence, did not spoil my first impressions of the village.
Fresh air, wonderful nature, the forest planted by Greek people – this is what I have enjoyed for 8 days.
On the second day of the visit, I went to see the village symbol - famous “stone” – together with my friends. It was located on a mountain peak and it took us 3 hours to get there.
The symbol stone was more like a huge rock, with a wonderful view of the village.
Out of 200 families living in Yaghdan, only 30 are Greek in origin. While in the Soviet times the population of Yaghdan was purely Greek and many of the villagers did not know a single word in Armenian.
In 1990, when Greece officially announced that all Greek people living in the USSR could go back to their homeland, Yaghdan residents also hurried back to their birthplace. Now many houses are abandoned there and the whole village is not as well-cared-for as it used to be before.
Arthur Khachatryan
arthurkharidis@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment