Vote Fever: Etseri, Svaneti

Blog

Writing this in a small, sweaty, mosquito-frequented hostel room in Batumi, with three bunk-beds stuffed into it but only two of us occupying, thank goodness. Hot rods test their speed and stereo volume outside. I’m getting what I paid my 10 GEL for: the cheapest stay in the city and worth every one of its thousand Tetri. At least there’s free unlimited wi-fi at reasonable bandwidths, a luxury not yet to have reached the villages of Svaneti (Mestia excepted)! My guests taking advantage of Hanmer Guest House’s new “anywhere you can afford” taxi service is the reason I am here at all.

Meanwhile, back up in the mountains… while taking a few other guests to see a bit of Mestia a few days ago, I heard from my wife by phone that we’d been asked permission to let the new village water pipe be dug in and laid across our land. In exchange, we would have access to it from only about 20 m away from the house, rather an improvement over our current personal pipe length of over 150m! We both agreed that this would be a fine idea, and promptly the Bobcat came and dug. The pipe was installed, they even (more or less) restored the fence parts they had cut open, and we are now waiting for this exciting project, promised by the village mayor but not believed without our seeing it, to be finished before winter settles in. (Tetnuldi ski resort, at up to 3.2 km above sea level, having seen its first snow in early September.)

More: we have been seeing large piles of slate gravel being dumped along our village road, including two near the house. The whole disastrously bone jarring former river bed of a thing, from top to bottom, is to be resurfaced, they tell us! And there is a new kindergarten being built just above the original one (long years a home for refugee Svans from Abkhazia), at such a speed that one must conclude that serious money is showing.

And… next month are the elections, all over Georgia, from village to Tbilisi mayors and of Parliament into the bargain. So that explains it all. Pity that I as a foreigner can’t vote, and my wife has yet to transfer her registration from Tbilisi to here! The school outdoor sports arena begun a year ago has wire walls but no finished floor, so obviously this is not part of any attempt to curry favor, merely a dream which ran out of steam, leaving us more cynical than ever in the process.

This frenzied investment in local infrastructure at certain critical times is at least less bald than the earlier simple offers to buy votes outright for GEL which we heard about in years past. On the national level, the TV is showing some rather ugly anti-Saakashvili footage. However, its target is somewhat distracted, having successfully stormed his way back into Ukraine from Poland despite not having a passport left to his name and being quite a threat to the powers that be of that country. How often does a president of one country get to become that of another, both by revolution? (How could he cross an international border without being allowed, I ask myself? Obviously, he WAS allowed. Let’s not kill or even injure such a high-ranking figure and really cause an international incident. Georgia, after all, wants him back ALIVE!)

We bide our time somewhat anxiously, hoping that the next month and its possibly momentous changes in government will be peaceful but also a harbinger of necessary change. Time will reveal 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 1500 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/

Tony Hanmer