What Can I Say?
It's been nearly six years since I emailed Georgia Today enquiring about writing regularly for them, and since being accepted soon after that I've not missed a weekly issue. Usually my articles are about what's happening in our village or elsewhere in Svaneti, but sometimes I write about other places I happen to be in, such as Zimbabwe, Canada or the UK.
Having lived in seven countries and been to a total of 41, with three continents under my belt by the time I was four, it has been a wild ride, never dull. "Luck" put me in Moscow in August 1991 when the coup d'etat was happening against Mikheil Gorbachev, my only visit to the USSR. I had no Russian language ability at the time but knew it was history unfolding. Expecting to get the last few shots from my last roll of film, I ended up having to go to a poorly stocked shop in the city center to buy more on August 19.
On the 20th, my friends and I flew out; my cargo pants' pockets were bulging with nine rolls, and I had no idea what I'd do if these were confiscated... but they weren't. My precious frames stayed with me. Photo-journalism isn't my preferred style, but it had to be then.
St Petersburg a year later, and much of northern and western Russia by train for the next seven years, were exhilarating for me, but probably more like terrifying for the average Russian. Hyperinflation ate away at ruble savings, until a house price was enough for a loaf of bread. Shops had to learn competition and customer fickleness as they began stocking a bewildering variety of goods, unknown previously. Available, but affordable too?
Cutting across a top corner of Kazakhstan in 1993, going from Moscow to Novosibirsk, I expected my train stop to reveal camels and spice mounds, a Central Asian dream. No, just another former Soviet city of concrete! And preparing to move to Baku, Azerbaijan in 1999, I concentrated on the Shi'ite idea, instead of the right one. No head-to-foot black with just the eyes showing women here! This wasn't Iran, it was, again, post-Soviet.
But Baku for six months, fascinating as it was, was just a way-station on my route to Svaneti, the reason I had left my beloved Russia for the Caucasus. The Svans were calling me home to a place I'd never been but would settle down in, married and landed at last. I own property nowhere else but in Georgia, and a house only in these mountains.
Now, as Georgia considers the reality of its after-election period, with the American event looming in a few weeks, it feels like the world may be rushing into change faster than we can imagine. That's what satellite TV and the internet bring us, even tucked away up here in our splendid isolation as autumn's glowing colors and the occasional early snow almost make me weep for beauty every time I poke my head out the door. We're in a small village with a single concrete road running through it, no shops, DIY infrastructure, but we can still learn about world news seemingly as it happens, anywhere, instantly.
I check my word count as I'm writing this, but that's just for convenience. I never lack for something to say, even if it's not exactly "what happened this week". Sometimes it's a bit meta, or recursive, or about itself, but that may not be irrelevant, sometimes. One of these years this will all, or mostly, end up in a book, my love song to Svaneti and the odd other place. But especially Svaneti.
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 1350 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