Reach for the Stars; Etseri, Svaneti

Most of our guests to Hanmer Guest House don't bring all their own food, cook for or thoroughly clean up after themselves—that's what they pay us for, right? However, some have a different agenda and modus operandi. Some even come with quite other motives than tourism, although the beauty of Etseri's surrounding mountain landscapes makes itself powerfully felt to all, regardless of why they are here.

A foreign friend of ours in Tbilisi wanted to add some summer fun to the English teaching which my wife and I do here from September through June, by bringing a small team and holding an English club. We had done such a thing in our home several years ago, and it managed to bring in about 1/3 of the entire schoolchildren's population of 60, which was quite something. It was twice weekly for July, the days and times set by the children for their convenience. This one was only for three days, but actually the numbers of participants were similarly high.

Weather, mercifully, was kind enough to let the indoors/outdoors mix of events happen mostly as planned: hardly any rain, and none when they were arriving or leaving, indeed only a sprinkling on one of the days at all. Ages of the children ranged from some preschoolers with a mother in tow, to visiting post-high school young ladies, but no one was turned away. The focus was on learning more English through fun, but also on a theme: what are your dreams in life? A great question in this rural community, where many young people yearn to escape the cycle of farming and little else, head for the big city, study through university, get a good job, and perhaps break out of what destiny seemingly has for them. A common enough problem around the world, one realizes, looking at urbanization trends.

Over the three days, the idea of "reaching for the stars", your perhaps far-off goals, was explored in some detail. My wife is also a great example of this, although she wasn't there this week. Coming from a rural background herself (Kakheti, east Georgia), she finished university in Tbilisi, and only then started studying English aged about 30. The modern world means that she can use this gift for translating books into Georgian, while still living on the small farm she and I run, and make pretty good money at it. I, too started my Georgia Today weekly job from Svaneti with a single email; no phone call, even. It was months before I went to Tbilisi, met any of the GT staff, and picked up my first nicely accumulated salary.

A set of cutout yellow paper stars accumulated on the window of the upstairs meeting room, and they're there still. On each is written the dream of one young local participant in the week’s events, in English. One of them reports that "I have no dreams"... but I doubt this.

The team of eight guests, from a variety of countries, all had stories to tell of having and striving for dreams and goals in life. They made great friends with the local children, inspired them it seems by the emotional goodbyes, and I fondly hope that they can come back to us to continue what they put hard work into achieving, both English-wise and as far as motivation and encouragement go, of which there were also plenty.

They came, they cooked, they cleaned, they conquered!

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 1300 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

Tony Hanmer