Change Please: Svaneti
Ireturned to my province, home and wife just in time for the local elections, and we were promptly swamped with coverage on every Georgian TV channel we turned to. This, however, paled in comparison to what happens in the USA in the year leading up to an election… that media bombardment becomes simply unbearable, and reduces me to gladness that I don’t actually live there, sorry.
Seeing that Tim Burford, who produces the Bradt Guide to Georgia among other things, had written a most timely open letter to the new mayor of Tbilisi through GEORGIA TODAY, I have decided to do something similar to the new powers that be here in Svaneti.
It seems that your clan struggles of centuries past have not let up, and that the dark side of tourism: jealousy of the successful, further divisions in communities, has flourished in recent years along with the ongoing vast improvement of conditions and infrastructure here. Roads are much better; guest houses and hotels, particularly in Mestia and Ushguli, have sprung up en masse; distributors supply many local shops (including my own) with all they need regularly. But the ones who succeed risk the ire, hatred even, of others around them. A house divided against itself will fall, don’t you know this?
Whole communities can and should benefit from the growth of anyone’s business in them! We try as much as possible to use local talent for acquiring our furniture, firewood, honey, electrical repairs and so on (soon to be added: milk). Our shop, the only one in the village, allows people to walk to find what they need right here.It has boomed under my wife’s talented leadership from its humble beginnings on a single small table. They don’t have to travel anywhere now for these daily or other periodic needs. We do our best to keep prices competitively low, and we keep a tight rein on credit lines, too.
If local families can think, ‘I can both earn and spend money in my own community, I can really live here,’ the winning is all round. This was the main theme of Nevil Shute’s novel A Town like Alice, and it has become one of mine in life, too.
Tim mentioned the successful crackdown on drink-driving in the city. I wish I could say that this extends to us here, but my own sad experience as the victim of same leads me to say: Stop sweeping it under the rug just because you know the guy! Say to the perp: ‘I’m saving your life instead of having to spout hypocritical platitudes at your funeral about how nice you were, idiot, and by the way, it’ll cost you 1000 GEL and your license for six months! Say thank you to me that your wife won’t be a widow, your children half-orphans, for life! Cheap at the price, innit!’
The twenty-something son of former hosts of mine is a winner in the elections for his community. He seems to have become the kind of man who already fits the title he now bears, instead of getting the title first and then having to scramble to do something with it. This is the right order of things, and I wish him every success. More like him, please! There to serve their communities, not to be served and grow fat and rich at our expense!
Now we have some time to watch and see what will result, in Tbilisi and across the country. Please, let our desperate hopes be met.
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 1700 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