Not Panicking: Etseri, Svaneti

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So it must be time to comment on the impact of the growing global coronavirus crisis on… this local community of mine.

We’ve just had the 4th and likely year’s final team of young volunteer guests come up, 12 active sportspeople this time. They were in Batumi for two weeks before arriving, having flown there from outside, and all remain asymptomatic. Until a day or so from now, when the young man who has the school’s gymnasium’s keys returns, they’ve been removing more than half a meter of snow from the outside school sports arena. They brought with them a volleyball net and several volleyballs, a rugby ball, some Frisbees and other sports equipment. We can add to this a badminton set; the school also has table tennis.

School, by nice coincidence, is out from Feb. 2-16 across Georgia, to allow disinfections to be carried out everywhere. We hope that our villagers will see no infection threat from our visitors, and allow their children to join in with some great active fun indoors and out. There is unlikely to be more snow, indeed strong sunshine is attacking the remaining snow, but a little shovel help will speed things up nicely.

I’ve been rounding up all the neighborhood shovels I can borrow daily to add to my two, IDing each with the initial of its owner in marker on the handle, and throwing in three wheelbarrows so the team can remove the arena’s snow and allow its astroturf to dry. They’ve finished half of the space, enough to play soccer or other sports on in some capacity.

Meanwhile, Georgian news does report that hotel cancellations for Georgia, primarily Tbilisi, in March-April are up to nearly 90%. This is a catastrophic for the hospitality industry, as it will mean empty venues which are nonetheless still heavily beholden to the banks for outstanding loans. They will have no means to repay those loans without clientele.

Our own guest house had received quite a few summer bookings from its various sources, online and by phone, before the virus made world news. So far, no cancellations here. But our actual tourist season only gets underway in early summer, and once these current volunteers leave next week, there are no reservations until that season.

We have heard one or two neighbors hint that they don’t want to see foreign guests here, probably fearing what danger they might pose to our relatively isolated community. But so far there hasn’t been any official request or demand that we shut down the guest house, although my wife and I have discussed this possibility and the likely necessity of complying with it. While it may be impossible to perfectly eliminate an infection threat from outside, I do see that one can take certain steps to minimize it, such as not receiving outsiders. But should we? I have relatives planning to visit from Canada a month from now! What will the world’s travel climate look like then? I can’t say.

At least the internet seems capable of offering sane, calm, rational advice for infection-preventative methods, on sites with a relatively good amount of trustworthiness like Wikipedia. I try to follow the advice, hope, pray, that we can get some success in beating this thing. How long can it survive on something like the ubiquitous paper money, for example? (Its relatives like SARS can do so at room temperature for up to 9 days, which is worrying.) How could we treat paper money or other suspected infectious objects at home? (Possibly by microwave, though this must be done right, for up to 4 minutes, with the items dampened to eliminate fire risk and to allow boiling water to do the killing.) Regular hand washing with soap, and avoiding touching face with hands, are more recommendations. Face masks? For those likely infected, not for the healthy.

And so we hold our breaths and wait.

Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 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