Waiting Room: Etseri, Svaneti
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Iforgot to mention in last week’s article, about the great scything job recently applied to my yard, that the Horrible Giant Hogweed knows what to do when it’s cut short. It immediately, even right down to an inch high, springs into emergency mode and makes new flowers! As if holding its breath just for this moment. Because who knows when the sickle will sweep through again and reduce its inability to reproduce? And that’s what this game is all about: flourish or perish. So, a couple of weeks after the great buzz cut, the new bunches of hogweed blooms are springing up for all their worth, as if their lives depend on it. Which, after all, they do. But I might just come through myself with clippers, and fight this fight to the end, plant by plant. I just might.
We still wait for the “kreba,” the village meeting at which our new young mayor will address us as a community for the first time, and many things about infrastructure will be decided or simply argued over and laid aside. One can hope, but the precedents do not bode well. But I still do hope for change and forward motion for water, roads, electricity, and much more.
Another thing we are anticipating is the upcoming Svanetoba, the festival of Svaneti, to be held in Mestia this Sunday. Every village will have tables of its unique wares, foods, drinks, arts, handicrafts and more, in competition. There will be an evening concert in both Georgian and Svan. Hundreds of foreigners and locals will come together to celebrate everything Svan. I’ll have more to write about once this has happened, of course.
Waiting is indeed the theme for me this week. I had not seen my wife for three weeks when she came back from Tbilisi yesterday, having gone mainly to prepare for and sit an important exam for improving her schoolteacher’s qualifications. She seems to have high expectations after the 5-hour ordeal, but we have until mid-August before the results will be made known. There were not only multiple-choice questions on the test- long-form written answers were also required, so each test must be gone through by one or more people to mark it. With hundreds or thousands of applicants, this must take considerable time. The wait is hard.
At last she’s back home, though, at my side where she belongs. A long trip to Tbilisi is best made use of by doing as many things as one can, because we only manage to get there several times a year. So, while missing her, I also encouraged her to see all the people she needed to, do all the little but necessary things before returning. I’ve been holding the fort as best I can, even putting a “closed” sign on the shop a couple of times while I worked the field. It’s vital to make use of the weather. The last gleanings of the scything needed raking up, and you can’t do this if they’re wet from rain or even dew- you have to wait until the dew has dried, then rake in the heat. Those sweatbands I bought for a song in Canada some trips ago were most useful.
Now that she’s back and in the shop, I can also begin cutting up much of the last load of firewood we had delivered. This was largely thin pieces, which my electric circular saw can handle, instead of the noisier and more dangerous chainsaw, which needs fuel anyway; electricity’s free here, so why not make use of it?
We also await news coming out of our friends the Smiths’ murder case, the trial for which is set for this autumn. I can only hope that the truth will out, and justice be served. So, many things to wait for, but everything has its time.
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 1900 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:
www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
By Tony Hanmer