Epic Volleys: Etseri, Svaneti
Blog
No need to panic for fear of guests with a scary virus! The international group of 12 which has come up from two weeks in Batumi has earned a good deal of local respect for its hard work in clearing the snow off the school’s outdoor sports stadium. (We measured: 0.9 x 12.7 x 25.2m = roughly 288 cubic m! Can my calculations for packed snow density be right that that weighs roughly… 138 tons?! That’s 11.5 tons, or over 200 times my body weight, for each of the 12 people).
The gift of a new net and volleyballs was put to immediate use in the indoor gym, as soon as we could find the guy with the key and arrange openings. We cleared all the wrestling mats from the floor and swept it. Then, a few shouts over people’s fences that the game was on, word got around, and on the young men came.
At least the regular rules of volleyball are recognized, so, no need to agree on this or that version. The village fellows are fiercely competitive, perhaps reminding one of the Haka ritual before a New Zealand rugby game; but our guests also acquitted themselves very well. As it turned out, neither team was purely one set or the other, so the “us versus them” idea was not very strong. We even had a few ladies taking part, and the locals included a boy just starting his teen years alongside men three times his age; all were equal to the play.
It got quite loud a few times, with shouting matches against one of the two net referees’ decisions, but generally his word was accepted. I was the other ref, or mostly bilingual score-keeper, so that the foreigners could keep track. Several times the score went neck and neck past the required 25 points per game as the win must be by at least two points. There were several sets of best of three games, with a few spectators coming for the excitement, which was considerable as the level of skill was rather great, given that no one there was actually a professional. Beer was passed around, but not to excess; several local guys had a smoke during play. Our guests bought snacks for all from the shop near the end.
Meanwhile, outside, shoveling of the outdoor arena continued, our group having enough members to spare for this simultaneously with playing volleyball, and a couple of them making lunch too! They returned to the lit space after supper, it being lit at night, for a final push for the day. Each morning I would round up a few free shovels and an extra wheelbarrow from neighbors glad to lend their support, and they dug in. The darkness of the astroturf means that a thin layer of snow left on it will quickly evaporate in the strong spring sun, which warms it well.
Today it’s four-a-side soccer (including goalies) in this newly prepared, spotless, fenced-in quadrangle. First side to get four goals wins, regardless of time. Here, too, the locals are pressed hard by our guest team, which for a while even has a young lady from Norway taking part and scoring. When I share the above statistics of snow removal, they are even more impressed, and express their gratitude, saying that at least another month would have gone by if the snow was left untouched. With a second week off from school, the children are delighted at their unexpected gift of a clean playing field so early. I, too, am pleased that the 1600m altitude doesn’t seem to affect my guests much.
Tomorrow, they’ll do some house cleaning here, some snow removal for a lady expecting hay in her barn, and another stint of either soccer or volleyball. Then off home around the world, separating ways eventually, some perhaps to return, others possibly never, but who knows? All touched by this place and leaving much goodwill and fond memories behind. We then have quite a long hiatus before anyone is scheduled to appear on our doorstep from outside: a month or more, to wait and see as the virus creeps closer, today having appeared via foreigners in a village 10 km away. At least Etseri’s tourism season doesn’t start until early summer. A month might see things looking very different.
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