Viary: Etseri, Svaneti
Blog
We just made it back from Tbilisi by marshrutka (minibus), my wife and I, on the day that 17 cases of The Virus were detected in Lenjeri, near the town of Mestia. That was August 9. Now things are continuing to unfold.
On the 10th, travel quickly became more restricted. I was able to order and collect half a box of eggs for our shop from our Zugdidi distributor, at the bottom of our road where it meets the Mestia highway, at about midday. Mildly panicked buying had already set in, with all sorts of people calling us up about this or that item’s availability. The 50 kg sack of flour went in a flash, as did the sugar. Other staples, oil and pasta, are disappearing from our shelves.
Mestia, Lenjeri and Ushguli are all under quarantine, with no entry allowed, and exit only under agreement of a two-week quarantine. We were expecting three overnight guests, guides from a new tour company coming to check out the guest house for next year’s business. No, said the 144 virus hotline: not allowed to receive them. Exit from the entire province is now allowed only by the same two-week quarantine rule, and entry is also forbidden. Essential businesses are allowed to stay open internally; presumably, distribution vehicles will still come and go? Our TV was not showing any channels for a while, needing the attention of our neighbor who doctors it as required. But at least until then we got information by internet.
Rumors we can do without, and must discourage; only official news, please, so as not to muddy the waters and create unnecessary stress for us and everyone! We might start a list of every single person who visits the shop, date and duration, for the purposes of contact tracing. But so far no official anti-virus people have appeared.
I’m glad that we were able to enter Svaneti in the nick of time. If we weren’t here, locked out, I can well believe that the shop might eventually get looted. All three doors into the house are steel, but there are no bars on the windows at all… Better we sell calmly than return late to a break-in. (This might happen anywhere in the world where there’s only one big shop for many miles around and the population feels desperate: I’m not pointing the finger at anyone, individual or race, in particular.)
I had persuaded Lali to accept an additional condition before this new situation. We would only accept anyone into the guest house who could demonstrate, by passport stamps, that they had been in Georgia for a minimum of two weeks before reaching us. A single prospective guest, from Ukraine, failed this before coming and we offered her to another home in the village, but they also refused.
We had been looking forward to a week or so camping and driving along the Black Sea towards the last week of August, meeting friends along the way in various locations. (The mountains, for me, offer everything I could want except that sea, though it’s not far off, Anaklia being about 2.5 hours’ drive away.) But this might not be feasible now. Time will tell how quickly The Virus can be contained in our sparsely populated province. Action has been quick and firm, which bodes well.
What effects, local and national, might this all have? Hospitality providers in Svaneti which had so been looking forward to an influx of tourists from outside Georgia to restart their businesses and continue paying off whatever bank loans they have must now shut down again, even to Georgians and those resident in the country. Their employees are again short of income, as are their suppliers.
Meanwhile, those tourists now entering Georgia for the first time in months can go elsewhere, but not come here; so elsewhere will benefit, which is something. Here we can also subsist on the food we grow or produce: milk products and meat, fruit and vegetables; later, potatoes. Distribution of foodstuffs from outside, the non-local staples, will help. This is all unlikely to last long, and we also hope that the Virus situation elsewhere in Georgia (as happened now) will not be able to affect us again. BUT this is a place where freedom is much more highly regarded than the lowlands, sometimes to its detriment, e.g. for large commemorative gatherings. We must be careful!
Update for August 13-14: The number of infections in Lenjeri has now risen to 30, with 12 new cases overnight. Masks and distancing being enforced voluntarily. The table is back in our shop doorway, preventing entry past the door. At least there seems to be some cooperation starting to ensure distribution of foodstuffs and staple goods to shops like ours, including things we would normally drive to get from Zugdidi and now cannot, like oil, flour and sugar. It’s taken us all these months to have a single case of The Virus among the local population in Upper Svaneti, and now this!
August 15: 50 x 50 kg bags of highest quality Georgian flour arrived at the shop by truck today. Not a gift: we bought and will sell them, but nicely organized by the mayoralty of Mestia and our own village mayor. We will pull through.
August 16: Testing for The Virus is being done in all the villages of the region. No new cases have been found in the region from the last two days.
August 17: A visit to our guest house by two representatives of the National Center for Disease Control and Public Health. They are making the rounds with a list of printed recommendations for all local guest houses and hotels to follow in the interests of minimizing danger from The Virus. To be followed by monitoring, with the hope of lifting the quarantine in Svaneti before the appointed deadline of about September 13. Much appreciated contact, information and attention.
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