Volunteering with ARK

My name is Philip from America. I’d been traveling for two months full on, moving places every few days. So I needed to stop and take a break. Why not volunteer again? I checked on the workaway.info website and contacted a host who had an eco camp in the southern Armenia town of Kapan. A few days later I was taking a shared taxi from Yerevan. Unfortunately, it broke down on the way, but after a long delay in which some mechanics came and fixed the problem, I arrived and met with the host Armen and his wife Siranush.  They lived near the center of town in an apartment that doubled as the office for their business, ARK Armenia. Two other volunteers had also come to help, as well as the organization’s content manager, Karine. The latter was an American who was living in Armenia. Every so often Karine would visit Kapan to do work for Armen, though most the time she was managing the website online from her apartment in Yerevan. The other volunteers were a Canadian woman and Belgian guy. We had dinner together not too long after I’d arrived. Sirnaush had prepared typical Armenian food and it was delicious. In retrospect I should have watched her cook during my stay in Kapan to learn a dish or two. No matter the place I’m always up for improving my culinary repertoire. One day Siranush plans to give cooking classes but not yet.

​As volunteers we stayed the night in the Kapan Camp, 1.5km from the center of town. It was up on a hill in a green area. The eco camp had three simple huts with two bunks each. There were also a small kitchen and place for a shower. The rest of the land was for gardening and raising crops. A work in progress, the camp was in need of weeding and other tasks to get it ready for the upcoming tourist season (June-August). I did what I could to make it nicer. For example, one morning I used a small hand sickle to cut wild grass around the perimeter. The job would have been much easier with a lawnmower and weedwacker, but in Armenia both were uncommon. When not at the camp I was usually at the office helping with the Internet side of the business. We had to update the website, and part of that required us to hike the trails in the area and map them on GPS. The first trail we took was to Baghaberd, a fortress that dated back to the 5th century. Its builders chose to erect it on a rocky hill with penetrating views into the nearby river gorge and mountain valleys. Now in ruins it had little more than a few stone walls. Still, the spectacular panorama was well worth the 2km hike from the highway. While we were up there I took plenty of photos. Karine included some in the webpage. Hopefully the pictures will inspire tourists to come to Kapan region to see Baghaberd for themselves.

The Kapan Camp aside, Armen also managed a second accommodation site in the village of Aradjadzor. It was actually a summer home that belonged to his family. In the Russian language such a place was called a ‘dacha’ and that was what it went by. This Dacha also needed some fixing up. I helped to clear weeds and blackberry bushes. Another day I painted some rusted railings. It was all hard physical labor. Perhaps had I done such work for more than a few days in a row, I’d have tired of working outside in the sun. But for the time I was in Kapan, I was happy to be of good use. Moreover, because of the house’s location in the mountains, the surrounding area had plenty of hiking trails. We charted one that led the way to Kapan, and to an old fortress called Halidzor. This was a long walk—4 hours—through thick forest. The uphill part I liked the most. I can’t really explain why but the challenge of forcing myself up a steep incline brings something out of me. If I take on a good pace I might not even rest, wanting instead to reach the top first. Anyhow, the opportunity to hike the trails was something that made my volunteering experience in Kapan an exceptionally great one.