Opinion - Columns - Bob Cuddy

Saturday, May. 16, 2009

Oceano retiree builds cultural bridge to Armenia

Connecting lives through the Peace corps

Comments (0) |

When Penny Porter retired as a school teacher a few years back, she decided to stay away from the rocking chair and do “a good deed for the world.”

So she joined the Peace Corps.

Most folks think of Peace Corps volunteers as 20-somethings living in mud huts and building bridges down by the river. But the stereotype is outdated. The corps takes folks of all ages and many skills.

So Porter, 64, enlisted, setting off a cross-cultural exchange that put her in Armenia and brought an Armenian teenager to Oceano.

When Porter applied, she had no idea she would be going to Armenia. But when she got the call, she quickly contacted Armenian-American County Supervisor Katcho Achadjian. He put Porter in touch with his sister, who schooled her linguistically and culturally.

Armed with that knowledge, Porter went to her Peace Corps assignment, got through training and landed in Kapan, a mining town in Armenia’s far south. There she set up an English class.

Argine Karapetyan, a local ninth-grader, heard about it.

Argine, now 16, already spoke Armenian and Russian — Armenia was part of the USSR — and had been taking English classes since the third grade.

But she and fellow students were “usually taught only the grammar,” she says. When she heard about Porter’s class she saw a chance to “learn how to talk.”

Argine learned well — so well that Porter recommended her for the State Department’s FLEX (Future Leaders Exchange) program, a country-to-country operation that helps people from different cultures understand one another.

Getting the go-ahead wasn’t easy, Argine says. She had to write “long essays: Why do you want to go there? Will be easy to adjust?”

“The selection (process) is rigorous,” concurs Linda Rollison of FLEX.

Argine must have written impressively, because she came to Oceano Aug. 6, and is living with Porter there. The teacher returned home in the summer of 2008.

More importantly, Argine is attending Arroyo Grande High School.

So what about those American teenagers, Argine?

“They’re funny and real crazy,” she says, a shy smile sliding across her face. “But not in a bad way,” she quickly adds.

Socially, she says, she feels the same as she did in Armenia. With three adults in the room, she does not elaborate.

Argine says her nine months in San Luis Obispo County have dispelled stereotypes about the U.S. The first to go was the widely held belief — elsewhere — that “everyone’s living in a huge house and has a lot of money.”

Perhaps the biggest difference, however, is the diversity. Armenia is a homogenous society. Here in the U.S., Argine interacts with people of all ethnic backgrounds. “I just count them as Americans,” she says.

And they took no special notice of her, she adds. “I want to say thank you to everyone for not looking at me as a stranger.”

As part of her exchange experience, Argine gives talks to local groups about Armenia. She brings up the Armenian genocide, which took place in Turkey between 1915 and 1923.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars estimates that “more than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture and forced death marches. The rest of the Armenian population fled into permanent exile.”

Most Armenian-Americans are children or grandchildren of the survivors. Yet most Americans do not know about this genocide, and the U.S. government is reluctant to acknowledge it because Turkey denies it happened, and the U.S. and Turkey are geopolitical allies.

“They (my audiences) say it is wrong,” Argine says. “But it’s kind of hard for them to feel the pain.”

“We just want it not to be forgotten,” she adds.

The cultural exchange does not end when the student goes back home, Rollison says. Young men and women like Argine — who wants to become a doctor — are not only emissaries but also the future leaders of their respective countries, she says.

Argine goes home June 23, a year older and many years more sophisticated.

PAX, the hosting organization for the FLEX program through the U.S. State Department, is looking for host families to house young men and women like Argine next year. For information, call 1-800-HOST.