77-year-old Misha Ghazaryan is from the village Norashen in the Ararat region. He is collecting his harvest to sell it at the night bazaar.
Misha's biggest land piece is 5 km away from his home. Every time getting there is a huge difficulty, as he does not have a car. From his 5 children, only a daughter is living with him. She has health issues, so Misha has to cultivate his 1500 sq.m land by himself.
The main income for his family is agriculture. It is already 5 years that he has been selling the harvest from his garden in this bazaar. Compared to previous years, in this year, the harvest is plentiful, but there are few clients. He ponders, “Probably they don’t have money or have left the country”.
He comes here twice a week and returns home with 5000 drams (10 dollars) on average. He says sadly, “There are six of us in our family, how will we manage to live with this money?'.
Misha Ghazaryan and Tornik Harutyunyan are 'colleagues' from the same village.
72-year-old Tornik Harutyunyan lived in Russia. Some years ago, Tornik's whole family left the home after a big tragedy. But Tornik comes to Armenia for a few months a year, to cultivate his lands and sell the products in Kayaran bazaar.
Grandpa Tornik doesn't complain about the harvest of this year. The only bad fruit was the cherries instead of the 410 $ of the previous year, Tornik managed to earn only 100 $.
Irrigation is a problem for nearly everyone. It suffices neither every piece nor every period. The villagers say, 'If the government pays attention, and solves that problem, our lands are fruitful and will give good harvest.'
Grandpa Tornik comes to the city at 2 am with his co-villager, and says “We come when the driver wakes up.” They pay 1,25 $ as a transportation fee, plus 0.40 $ per each box, and a 4 $ fee for the market.
The bazaar of Kayaran (which in translations means Station) has been functioning for decades, says the director Armen Hayrapetyan and adds, that it is an old tradition for villagers to bring fresh food to sell it with optimal prices.
The Kayaran bazaar was built in the place of the old market, which used to work for 20 years. Usually resellers work there, who have bought the products from the villagers with cheaper prices a few hours ago.
The resellers don't complain about the conditions of the market, the main problem is the lack of clients. People prefer not to work at a long distance, and buy from the villagers selling on the street.
Some part of the covered area of the Kayaran bazaar is for the villagers too. Here the villagers come at 7 am and leave at noon.
Here they pay 2$ as a fee for selling.
According to the information of the administration, around 200 families do trade in this bazaar.
Villagers mainly complain that because of the lack of the clients, the harvest stays and doesn't sell. 'You see, that every morning several cars, full of people leave the country, who shall buy all this?'
To sell from their parked cars, the villagers pay 4$ for a small car, and 6$ for a big car.
A good day is when your harvest is sold completely.
