I did not think to mention the car accident we passed as we left Tbilisi heading west in the early morning light. Suddenly, we could see from a distance how people had gathered at the side of the road. I did not have time to make out what they were doing until I could see one person, or the remains there of, bleeding half way down the ditch. Passing 50 more meters: the car, which had rolled around, smashed and torn. Through the crashed back window of the car I could see the shape of a head. The crowd of people peeking into the car, neither the police nor the ambulance had arrived yet. It was just minutes after the accident. We slowed down, the hairs standing on my back. The sun was just about to rise through the cloudy skies. What rude awakening is waiting the families of these men.
We passed another man laying some 25 meters down the road, bleeding, not moving. Life seemed just so precious then, at the sight of this sudden loss of life. When we arrived in Kutaisi some hours later I could still get the shivers from the sight of the men scattered down the road.
The dramatic morning on the road moved into a yellow house, a large conference room, filled with energy, and conversations. Women refugees from Abkhazia and South Ossetia met for the first time to share their common lot in the ‘fund Sukhumi‘ women center. I heard, through a translator, stories abut overcoming hate for the future of themselves and their families. Many of them had been living as IDP’s for 17 or 18 years. It is time to move on.
The next morning, a wind from the north, breakfast in the cozy guesthouse. We took of to meet some of the women form the conference the previous day in the their homes. Many of the IDP’s are living in health spa hotels from the USSR era. Dwellings that has been falling apart for the last 30 some years, thatched with bits and pieces of material. Some 30000 thousand people live like this as I understood it. They have been for 17 years.
Some IDP’s have moved into newer buildings or restored old ones, raised too quickly and already, after some two, three months mold is breaking through the walls. I meet women that are leading schools, who have started small businesses to make last the 28 GEL the IDP’s get in support from the government each month. It is life on the very edge in some sense, there is still some hope I feel, I think the way the women here have organized and support each other is one very important factor to why everybody is not just plunging down in despair.
I come to think about the sudden destiny of the people in the car, the slow destiny of the people here. There is a great deal more to do here than about the situation of the people in the car, they could have used seat belts and maybe been better of. The analogy here is the organized women; they might hinder the fall and give life more meaning and a better and more peaceful future. I hope.
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