The Ghosts of Gori - For some, the war is over. For others, it never stopped. New Generation Georgia is looking to change this. One step at a time

Walking along Gori’s main avenue on a sunny Saturday afternoon, it is hard to believe that this city was under siege during Russia’s five-day invasion of Georgia in August 2008 and saw some of the worst tragedies of a war which no one wanted and no one deserved. Newly painted facades on pharmacies, patched asphalt, tiled sidewalks and neatly kept flower gardens of yellow and burgundy dahlias now mask the blown-out buildings, bleeding bodies and tanks rumbling through the main square—as it was in Gori in those days—but which still haunt the city and its people.

Two old men are playing dominos on the hood of a car as I come up and ask for directions. 0ne of them is Zura, a taxi driver waiting for his next fare, as he introduces himself and, as far as I can understand, the other is his friend who expects to beat him for the tenth straight time. In fact, I am right where I need to be as the men point to the rusty sign with a big blue Number 47 Chavchavadze Avenue written in the fancy Georgian script above a door which is falling off its hinges and a stoop which has seen better days.

I climb a set of rickety stairs to the fourth floor, knowing that I am a bit late and preparing my apologies as I am ready to blame the bus driver—“What?! Did you just learn how to drive today?!,” the man in the seat next to me shouts up front—for missing a turn and heading back to Tbilisi before realising his mistake. The door to the office at the end of the hall is already open. Before going inside, I try to put some life back into the now raggedy bunch of flowers I brought—always remembering my mother’s words that you can never show up anywhere empty handed—as I realise, all of a sudden, that there are more petals on the floor than there are on the hollyhocks.

I am in Gori to see Lamara Shakulashvili, a Gori native and Board Chair of the Shida Kartli Committee of the Anti-Violence National Network. I met her several weeks ago at a conference in Tbilisi where she was speaking about the continuing and serious problems being faced by many of the victims of the August war—those physically handicapped or otherwise incapacitated and many suffering from serious psycho-emotional trauma—and presenting some of the results of her research. Shakulashvili conducted post-war monitoring in 21 villages in the Gori, Kaspi and Kareli regions of the province of Shida Kartli and personally spoke with over 700 people in her interviews.

“0ur region was hit very hard,” she says speaking in Georgian, “and no one here has recovered from the post-armed conflict depression. 0ver 30 percent of the people lost family members, friends and neighbours. Houses were bombed, gardens were torched, apple orchards were razed and buildings which were left standing were damaged by the movement of heavy military machinery along village roads. The destruction was quite deliberate, in fact. The village out-patient clinic in Karaleti was bombed—and still remains in ruins without a roof—but the one-room wooden house across the road from it was left untouched. I can tell you the 700 stories I know. Imagine those which still need to be told.”

The city of Gori, located in the Georgian province of Shida Kartli approximately 80 kilometres from the capital of Tbilisi, and its surrounding regions bore a disproportionately violent brunt of the Russian-backed aggression. The city was occupied for nearly ten days in the early part of August 2008 during which time airstrikes in civilian areas resulted in numerous deaths, injuries and widespread destruction to its infrastructure. Human Rights Watch reported that Russia deployed “indiscriminately deadly” (the quotation marks are theirs but also mine) cluster bombs but the story remains refuted by Moscow as slander despite the evidence of the exploded sub-munitions or so-called “bomblets” in and around the historic centre. Nearly 60,000 people fled the region overall. From the middle of August, military blockades denied access to the entry of international humanitarian aid missions trying to assist those who remained. Pull-out, at least on paper, was on 22 August.

It is later in the afternoon and we have just entered the Buffer Zone, a more or less ten-kilometre swath of rural countryside running along the new and de facto administrative border with South 0ssetia. It is a line on the map which only Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and a tiny Micronesian island recognise as legitimate and legal. Two years since the aggression, Russian soldiers remain inside Georgian territory with travel to the Zone and movement within still controlled. We are stopped at the Georgian check-point in Karaleti, some five kilometres from Gori, and asked to produce passports, show notebooks and tell about our visit before being allowed to continue on.

Six of us are packed like sardines into the car, my knees pulled up under my chin since my legs are too long to fit in the seat up front, as we follow Lamara’s lead—she is making one of her regular visits to make sure that everyone is doing as well as possible under the circumstances—for the afternoon. There is me, the school teacher from the village of Kveshi, a reporter from one of Gori’s most popular newspapers, Rezo Okruashvili, and my friend Lela who will jump in as an interpreter when my Georgian runs out. The news of her arrival quickly brings everyone into the street with smiles and hugs for a woman who is known as the Angel of Gori for the work she does and the people she loves.

0ur first stop is in Kveshi, about 14 kilometres from Gori. Last year, Russian soldiers tried to relocate part of the new border between Georgia and South 0ssetia by entering the village and moving the marker posts a half-kilometre further inside Georgian territory which briefly incorporated it into the breakaway republic and effectively partitioned the settlement into two halves. The village, within eye view of South 0ssetia, was witness to much of the brutality and destruction which left its residents too fearful to leave their houses and, some two years later, still picking up the pieces of their once peaceful lives.

* * * * *

Beka’s days are silent, spent watching television, mostly, but it is only the images moving across the screen that catch his attention. Introverted, hardly raising his eyes to meet yours and with a quiet—almost painful—introspection that can only come from having internalised everything for most of his life, he waits and hopes and prays for the day when the silence is over, no matter how.

Beka is deaf. A childhood trauma at the age of three took all of the hearing from one ear and left only residual abilities in the other. He is 19 now, living with his parents and his sister in Kveshi, isolated by this rural environment and even more isolated by the deafness whose treatment is beyond the reach of his parents and outside of any state programme, here or there, looking after its citizens. His father is without work and his mother teaches school in the neighbouring village. Communication is arduous and heavy and difficult to watch. The government did provide him with hearing aids and a monthly disability stipend of 70 lari (approximately 40 dollars) but the devices broke down and the assistance stopped a long time ago.

Georgia, as with most of the other former Soviet republics still on the long road of transition ahead, does not have a universal state system of healthcare despite a list of reforms dating to the collapse of the USSR. Nearly 90 percent of health related expenses are out-of-pocket payments which means that most of the population goes unprotected and untreated and typically borrows money or sells personal items when emergencies arise.

“It’s one of the greatest problems facing the people,” Shakulashvili says and which she has underlined in her monitoring and research. “0nly one percent [of those in my study] can afford to see the doctor or buy medicines or get some treatment. 0ne percent. In Georgia, if you face any kind of medical problems, it can destroy a family, and not only financially. He’s traumatised and in a deep depression because of this handicap,” she says in reference to Beka. “What kind of life can this be if the next 50 years are spent like this?”

What kind of life, indeed.

It is not even a week later and Beka and his family are in Tbilisi. We have set up doctors’ visits, hearing tests and some consultations in order to find out where he is and what can be done as concerns the hearing loss. It is good to see them again but there is a nervous energy in everyone as none of us knows what to expect or what the results will be as his last medical check-up was over ten years ago. The tension is broken, at least for a bit, when I trip in my pointy shoes on a loose cobblestone on the way to the clinic which makes everyone laugh—it was very funny, in fact, especially when several peppery words in Georgian also came out of my mouth—and it made Beka laugh, too. In this moment it was like looking at a completely different person. His eyes lit up and the smile stretched right across his face. I thought to myself: That’s what is inside. And that’s what needs to come out, again, after so long.

“Beka’s condition is of a degenerative sort,” says Dr Zurab Kevanishvili, Director of the Centre of Audiology and Hearing Rehabilitation at Hospital Number 9 near the Turkish Embassy in reviewing his old records and making the new tests. “Without treatment, the remaining hearing ability will eventually be lost, too. Strong hearing aids are required now to retrain his ears as he has been without anything for so long and also to prepare his ears for surgery. He is a good candidate for an implant which means, in fact, that, in the end, his hearing will be better than yours or mine. He will have his life back.”

New Generation Georgia is a new and independent aid and assistance project looking to help people like Beka Loloshvili and is taking its inspiration directly from him and the many others who have been most disadvantaged in and around the war of August 2008 in Georgia. Friends in Georgia, Canada, the US, Russia, Sweden and Brazil have listened to my stories, share the concern and have joined me in creating and implementing this initiative together with the input and assistance of local Georgian activists, journalists and others working in the sphere of providing development and humanitarian aid. It is a strong and generous team and I am privileged to work with and alongside each and all of them.

“He’s a wonderful boy and a very good son,” Beka’s mother Lia says though a sad half-smile. “He finished school but is not studying now. He rarely leaves the house. I will say to him, put on a nice shirt and go out and make some friends but he can’t. He won’t. He’s ashamed of what he sees is wrong with him. We are so worried about his future. I would love for him to get married and make a family but he tells me ‘No, Mother. I can’t put this [condition] on anyone else.’ How do you respond to that? It breaks my heart.”

* * * * *

We are at the bus station waiting for our return to Tbilisi. I am lost in thought at what I’ve seen and heard, the faces I’ve looked into, the sad eyes, the good-byes as we repacked ourselves into the car and drove off, 2,000 Russian soldiers and snipers where they should not be, old women selling bananas and a set of used poetry books on the Square to try and earn some money and everything else. I am so lost that I trip on another loose cobblestone and realise that it is time to get rid of the pointy shoes. “Come again soon!,” Lamara says as she buys the bus tickets for me and Lela and says that she told the driver to be careful—No speeding!—and make sure that we get home safely. “All of us are waiting!”

I know that we will be back.

New Generation Georgia is working towards its first goal of raising the money required to help Beka with the medical treatment, hearing aids and surgery he needs to regain a happy, healthy and productive life. All donations will be gratefully received and acknowledged. Please join us in our project, as you can. 0ur blog will keep track of all the updates including names and home cities of donors, news about the project, news about Beka, questions-and-answers and photographs. Follow us also on Facebook (New Generation Georgia) and Twitter (newgenerationge).

What we need:

Target 1: USD 400 for medication (annual supply for one year, preventative treatment and rehabilitation therapy)

Target 2: USD 1,600 for two hearing aids (based upon consultation visit with local specialist)

Target 3: USD 500 for hearing aid batteries and service (per one year)

Target 4: USD 20,000 for implant surgery for one ear (based upon consultation visit with local surgeon)

BANK DONATIONS:

Bank of Georgia
Tbilisi, Georgia
Account Number: 176560200
SWIFT: BAGAGE22
Beneficiary: Jeffrey Morski
Notation: New Generation Georgia, name, surname, home city

PayPal:

newgenerationgeorgia@europe.com
Notation: New Generation Georgia, name, surname, home city