Narine Vardanyan, 23, talks on her mobile phone in her house’s only room. The Armenian mobile network is available in Vaghazin even though the village is about 55 kilometers from the border. The girls switch to an Armenian provider to call their relatives in Armenia. The coverage is sketchy due to the high mountains.

Narine Vardanyan (center) during one of her Armenian language class. The young teachers mobilized various of their friends and acquaintances to get a printer and two computers for Vaghazin’s school. They also organize different extracurricular events, including trips. When they took the school’s pupils to Yerevan last fall, it was the first time the children had ever seen a large city.

Veronika Shahnazaryan (right) teaches Russian numbers using hopscotch (“klasiki” in Russian). She accepted the offer of a long-term teaching position in Vaghazin instead of giving one-off lectures. Contributing to the development of Nagorno Karabakh has always been one of her dreams as her father’s family hails from the region.

Veronika Shahnazaryan plays with Belka, her neighbors’ dog. Born and raised in Yerevan, the 22-year-old teacher struggles at times with adapting to her new life and the village’s basic living conditions.

A view from Vaghazin over Nagorno Karabakh’s mountains. Until the war with Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, the village included about 150 families, mainly ethnic Kurds. At the end of the conflict, ethnic Armenians from either Armenia or other parts of Nagorno Karabakh settled in the village.

Foreign language teachers, mainly for Russian and English, are in short supply in village schools across Nagorno Karabakh. Vaghazin’s former English teacher used to travel to a neighboring village 3 kilometers aways as well to teach. For four years, until Veronika Shahnazaryan’s arrival in 2017, the school had no English teacher or English-language instruction.

Life in Vaghazin is not easy for Narine Vardanyan. “You miss your friends. They would be drinking [together] in a bar while you are here [alone],” says the 23-year-old, who graduated with a degree in journalism from Yerevan State University in 2016. “You miss the beautiful streets of Yerevan and its bars while you are in a village where there are no shops. Yet you know that you give love to these kids and they may keep that love forever.”

Twice a week, Veronika Shahnazaryan (right) gives private English language classes to 18-year-old Alina Mkheyan, who is preparing for entrance exams at both the Yerevan Art Academy and Armenia’s National University of Architecture and Construction. She wants to become a designer.

“The schoolchildren have developed a strong connection with us,” says Narine Vardanyan, with a smile. “They didn’t even want us to leave for Yerevan for the New Year. They wished that heavy snowfall would block the road.” In January 2018, Vardanyan started traveling three times a week to Movsesashen, a village about 15 kilometers away from Vaghazin. Movsesashen’s school has 13 pupils. The village has no internet.

Veronika Shahnazaryan (left) and Angin Mkheyan, the mother of Shahnazaryan’s private pupil, Alina, chat over dinner. The Mkheyans moved from Yerevan to Vaghazin in 2000. They were one of the first families to settle in the village. The Nagorno-Karabakh government gave them a house and a few cows to start their life. Alina Mkheyan’s youngest brother, Sargis, now 16, was born here at home.

Narine Vardanyan and Veronika Shahnazaryan collect firewood together. The two note that, though they’re teachers, they themselves also learn something new everyday. Their house, given to them by the village free of charge, is heated only by a wood-burning stove which they had to learn how to use.