Trip to Mt Ararat - Noah’s Birds Still Big News
I recently traveled to Eastern Bayazit or ’Dogubayazit,’ a town so far east in Turkey that it is closer to Tehran than Istanbul. This little corner of the world was the site of a bad case of bird-flu last year.
Then I was here to buy cattle to replace the birds, but now eggs bring me to what has become a chicken-free zone. Free-range birds are banned to prevent the spread of bird-flu.
You guessed it, we are building a poultry egg farm, which will provide the area’s eggs, employment for the neediest women and school support for the girls who live here and in the 86 villages on this side of Mt Ararat. The ladies are excited!
But not everyone is thrilled: On my second night we answered the phone to hear an anonymous voice say simply, “You have gone too far. You will die.”
(photographs by Brookelyn Fitts - http://brookelynphotography.com )
Me and colleague Mehmet at the building site. Nice view of Ararat.
Big building, big plans.
Profit sharer…
On a lighter note: Our time in Istanbul featured a visit to my old home, the lovely island of Buyukada. From the mother of all coincidences department - the Fort Worth-based Van Cliburn Foundation’s Sevan Melikyan and Maria Guralnick were on the island too! This is also Sevan’s home and they happened to be visiting the same week. I met the originally in Fort Worth, TX, where I was a competitor in an amateur piano competition. Have a look at YouTube to see what LMD’s International Director does in his spare time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hGuwJ6jAKk
