A Sporting Chance: Etseri, Svaneti

Coincident with the start of the 2016-17 school year in mid-September, certain school renovations also began. I'm not sure why, but this time, rather than summer when school is out and not going to be interfered with by workmen and noise, has typically been the season for such things.

At least now it was outside work being carried out rather than inside, which isn't so bad for the school pupils and staff's concentration. First, they brought a lot of earth, and began leveling the mess which is the current schoolyard, crisscrossed with water channels, traversed by cattle and other farmyard animals, in wet weather a quagmire. Then they put in cement and posts for a handsome new set of fences, complete with gates. This was really something!

But the big moment came when they began working on a smaller area inside the grounds. More cement and posts, all carefully lined up with string, in a neat rectangle. Suddenly their intent became clear, a copy of all those Saakashvili-era constructions which sprang up all over Georgia in apartment courtyards, schoolyards and village squares: a sports stadium of Etseri's very own!

Now, the school does already have an indoor gymnasium, and let me tell you, several of the local teenage girls are DEADLY at dodge-ball therein, while the young men do themselves proud at volleyball. But this new arena, if they do it properly, will sort us out for a whole slew of other sports: soccer, basketball and badminton at least, as well as more volleyball and others.

It's certainly a potential major improvement in the lives of the local young men as well as school-age children. These youths typically have not enough to do, little regular employment, nothing to spend their energies on aside from the drudge of farming chores. As a result, here as well as elsewhere in Svaneti and I suppose across Georgia, they take to drinking, well, like fish to water. The results are predictable.

I'm not saying that this little addition to our village infrastructure will reverse that alcoholic trend and "save us all". But... it might make a difference. Bring some pride; encourage some healthy competition; take up some otherwise idle time (which the Devil knows how to use), instead of seeing who can hold his (only his, never her!) moonshine the best without dying, or, if he dies of it, we'll all publicly mourn him but curse his name in gossip. Well, yes, if you're asking, I do feel these deaths in the community, men I have known (if one is "lucky" a drunk driving accident will only kill the driver, and spare his usually predominantly female passengers); fathers of school-age or younger children, the latter of whom will gradually forget Dad as they grow up. The waste of a life is infuriating as well as tragic.

What about half a year's winter? Indeed. One will have to think about this harsh reality and its effects on our new facility. Hey, or more properly eh, I'm partly Canadian; I know what to do with an outdoor sports arena at below zero C! Board the edges, flood the thing (the water's even free here), let it freeze, and bring on the ice hockey! I'm not an expert at this, having returned to Canada at the late age of ten, but I'll give it my best shot along with the rest!

So much sometimes can depend on such a little thing, after all.

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