Dzoo oonek? i Huevos Desparecidos !

Dzoo oonek?  That's the question on everyone's lips in Yerevan supermarkets.  Do you have eggs? 

I just have to take a moment to ask: where have all the eggs in Yerevan gone?   A couple of nights ago, I was at the supermarket, and they had a ton of eggs!   The next morning, they were all gone.  Who bought them all overnight?   How is it that it's 2 days before the New Year, and there's not an egg to be found in the city?  Actually, after going to half a dozen stores, I finally found 2 places that still had a few, but they were selling them at 3 times the normal price!   I paid $0.30 per egg!  But I needed them, so what choice did I have?

There are rumors circulating that there was a chicken disease going around, and many farmers killed their chickens to sell the meat because they didn't want risk some kind of outbreak.  But I think the truth of the matter is that the egg monopoly is price gouging. Yesterday, the organization where I am volunteering presented its annual report to the public.  Interestingly, eggs were a huge topic of conversation.  Most everyone I spoke to said that stores will restock the eggs today (the 29th) and raise prices even more.  It's a real shame. 

A note to all Western Armenian speakers.  Western Armenian speakers call eggs "havgit," which has the word chicken in it ("hav").  In Armenia, eggs are generally called dzoo.  The word covers all types of eggs.  They don't use the word "havgit," because technically, "havgit" are eggs that come only from chickens.  So it would be wrong to call the eggs of other animals "havgit."   The funny thing is that I don't hear them  call chicken eggs "havgit" either, though they do understand what it means.  Just an observation.