SurViral: Etseri, Svaneti
BLOG
Some questions may arise about how we people in the far-flung provinces are coping with The Virus as it unfurls its deadly flag wider and wider day by day across the world. Here is my perspective from distant Svaneti: typical for here in some respects, unique in others.
We try to maintain a mood of thankfulness for everything we have: water runs, electricity is mostly on, the house (which contains the village shop) is full of food and other necessities, and is being stocked up by still-running distribution minivans; we are healthy. Not a single person we know personally in the world has the virus. Yet.
But there are losses too. The guest house season for 2020 is likely to be a total miss. Relatives from Canada who planned to visit us and go travelling abroad together in April are staying home now. Ditto for friends from there in May. My current digital camera, having needed my brother in law to take a look at it in Tbilisi, is repaired but stuck in our apartment there. The new one which I bought to supplement it there is waiting for me in Canada, victim of the aforesaid failed visits. For someone who has been a serious photographer since age 11 (42 years), not having a good camera is HARD.
School is out and online Facebook group video chats with 1-8 pupils are a challenge for my wife. These are real hurdles, but compared to those of other people, pretty minor.
I make lists of things to do around the house and yard. A big ongoing one is tackling the huge scrap woodpile which is an eyesore out the south-facing windows. It’s been there for years, slowly rotting, most of its content useful only as firewood. So I’ve been tuning up and using the electric circular saw (earplugs in, of course!) to deal with the thinner stuff, the axe to split what is still too wide for the stove, and will use the electric chainsaw on the thicker bits. New categories arise, needing sorting: bags of small scraps to start the fire with; pieces joined with nails needing a crowbar to separate them before cutting; plastic and other garbage mixed in; pieces needing only sawing (by either circular or chainsaw), or only splitting, or both.
The wonderful crawlspace we made a trapdoor into so as to store wood under part of the floor is now completely full, likely two years’ worth of wood there nice and dry and close at hand. So I’m bagging up the rest of the wood as I cut it, and putting it on the barn’s 2nd story. We have SO much firewood. NONE of it will be left outside for the coming winter, needing digging down to through feet of snow under a tarpaulin to reach!
Other smaller odd jobs, as well as a list of important supplies on which to stock up for household maintenance for… how far into the future? I’m trying to include the coming winter as well as the seasons leading up to it, especially water connection bits and pieces, as that’s always a weak point in the freezing months. Electrical parts too: fuses, wire, sockets, switches. Aside from what’s in the shop, we can’t just run out for what we lack: Mestia is 28 km away and expensive, Zugdidi is cheaper but 110 km away!
Calling, by phone or video chat, people I haven’t spoken to for some time, if ever, by these means, going back to school friends as well as distant relatives. Who knows when the last opportunity for this will come? I don’t like talking by phone at the best of times, even in English let alone Russian or Georgian, but this is important.
Trying to restrict our news intake, either by TV or by internet. The stress is just too overwhelming, not to mention the need for “antennae of skepticism” to be active for fake news.
Avoiding local funerals, more important events than any other reason for a Georgian feast. There’s been one in our village recently, not related to the virus, but I’m aware as a non-citizen of Georgia that punishment measures for one such as me breaking the new laws could conceivably lead to other things than a fine, like deportation. Unlikely but not impossible. Besides, the law banning gatherings simply makes sense, regardless how the neighbors whose relative I “failed to honor” feel.
I think that overall I’m glad we’re not in Tbilisi for this crisis, because life here during it feels less abnormal than it would there. We can even start to grow almost all our own food here if we have to! So life goes on for us; we hope it does for you as well, dear reader, wherever you are. The last thing I’ll add is that, as a believer in the afterlife, a Christian, I expect that death is only a door to something eternal, the glory of which will put ANY earthly suffering to shame. This is my final hope.
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