www.worldon2wheels.com 2010 » Georgia

Going home

admin — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:43:19 +0000

I’m turning my bike around; heading for Sweden. In June i take a boat from Poti or Batumi on the Georgian black sea coast with destination Odessa, Ukraine. At the moment I see more reasons to go home than to continue and that is why I have decided to go home.

Updates to come in June.
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Kutaisi

admin — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 06:05:31 +0000

We shoot through the landscape, I cannot shake loose the image of the accident that has stuck in my mind from last time I traveled this road. I keep looking out the windshield. Next to me my flat mate Marija, we try to keep busy by talking but from the center seat in the back the view is all too alarming, doing 130 km/h, upsettingly often on the wrong side of the road.

Once we reach Kutaisi, feeling of being back again, new ideas, new perspectives after having time to digest the last dose of impressions, feeling this time that I will be able to make some clear distinctions between my feeling and what I see.

We are picked up by the bus station in Kutaisi where the first outlines of a Mac Donald restaurant is being drawn using cast iron and concrete. Some ladies are selling black sunflower seeds and lady stockings on the dusty roadside.

The lady that picks us up is a friend of a friend, she was a soldier during the war, came 18 years ago with her two daughters and her new born baby to Kutaisi. Life took a sharp turn. She is now working with an NGO that is giving legal advice to the IDP’s as well as giving some language courses, English mainly.

Our first stop, a beauty salon. To my surprise a man was given a manicure. I can’t help but wondering if this is something he would go do this along with his male friends. Positively surprised. Moving on through the day, meeting IDP women working on business initiatives in Tskhaltuba, the Soviet architecture, some boys are horseback riding outside Stalin’s favorite retreat. It is an unreal world. Nature and times impact, neither time nor money to hinder the slow collapse of this area.

Finally we end up in our host’s home. The family gathered, an apartment on the first floor in a derelict sanitarium, homemade red wine and toasts for friendship. Boys hanging out, an old BMW in the driveway: their retreat. Smoking cigarettes, reciting stories. Cows are roaming freely in the yard accompanying the evening activities. The washing is taken inside. The sun is setting as we head for a restaurant and the end of a long day.

The people we meet have not just lost their homes and jobs and often relatives and friends. They have lost something more abstract, peace of mind in some sense, the physical connection to their origin. Among all the burned out hope there are some coals still glowing. The women I met, the work they do to level out some of the barriers their situation statues, is remarkable.

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Waldorf school in Tbilisi and then some

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:31:34 +0000

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Strong Women in Kutaisi

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:00:08 +0000

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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Back in Georgia

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:31:41 +0000

It strikes me, as I walk to the office along with my Slovenian friend that strong feelings is part of daily life here, maybe thats why I like Tbilisi so much. I gain energy from the people in the the street, from their efforts in the market, from the run down houses, from the traffic, the traffic that also makes me fuming, someone honks the horn in a strange way and I get ready to meet the maker. Well, it is all good, maybe I have gained bit of the famous Caucasian temperament, one of the reasons there has been very little peace in this region for the last, what, million years?

Sweden has been fantastic, seeing that I can access both worlds make me positive, again, about the future. I love it at home, my friends, my family, the cold swedish winter. It was striking to ride from Stockholm to Falun, to see the landscape, the cleanness, the way people stick to the rules. Arriving here i took a taxi to town, the driver raced and was doing 170km/h when he decided to go multitask and write an SMS simultaneously, scared the skin of my face. But I love it, makes me sense the spirit in that moment of nervousness, can’t be without it.

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home and home

admin — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 23:09:08 +0000

It is, by any means wonderful to be back in Sweden, I met friends I have not seen for ages, some I had a proper talk with and some I just passed a few words with at a bar. It is all good. Outside the snow is knee deep on our lawn, it is almost crisp cold, at least at night and the fridge is, contrary to the one I had in Tbilisi, always filled with foods I have not seen for eight months.

Yet the differences between life here and in Georgia are puzzling. I just had a short talk to my parents about security. I feel that insecurity, even though it might bring loads of negative effects can have a positive effect on people’s behavior. I know people in Tbilisi who work full time and write a thesis at the same time sleeps four hours a night and still transmits energy. There is something about struggling and dreams that I feel I loose when I’m back here. I have it all, I don’t need much more. I feel more positive and energetic in an environment that has fundamental problems than one where most things are provided. Sure, I can always go back home, like now and feel the security my fellow Georgians might lack occasionally, that is a big difference. I could be and might actually be a tourist just enjoying that things are cheap and easy going, but I don’t think so.

There is so much creativity among the people in Georgia, I get inspired. I have very creative friends in Sweden as well but I never get the same kick out of walking down a street in any town in Sweden. I see thing that could be done everywhere, and there is actually a possibility to do things it feels like. There are so many directions in which Georgia might develop that I feel I need to stay a bit longer to find out just a bit more, it is great!

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Hectic days

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 08:09:44 +0000

looking out from the exhibition

Last days before going back to Sweden over christmas are hectic and it seems, like so many times before, that the 24 hours between two dates are just not enough. My morning routin of running laps on the hippodrom has been cut short since I had to stay up the previous night to work on some photos. I enjoy this somewhat creative stress but it seems my body does not.

It is good then to have benefit of being in a country where most of the people are not affected by the same stress as my self. The cues are moving slowly, no matter what, the metro escalator is a cork that calls for a pause and a deep breath. It is just a matter of relaxing at this point and try to let the flashing peaks of stress die out into the mass of morningwarm bodies.

I have started taking lessons in Russian. Once a week I meet up with two of my students, a young girl and her grandmother, an elderly lady with more energy than the Duracell rabbit. I met the girl outside the sovjet block building, we take a dodgy elevator that smells from sewer and damp to the 7th floor where we meet Lea, my russian teacher. She has always prepared something to eat, some cheesebread or some cakes, some strong turkish coffee and some pumpkin. We spend a couple of hours by the dinnertable in the dark, heavily decorated living room, laughing at our mistakes (I teach her Swedish in return), looking up words and passing the notebooks around for help on spelling. She seems to me to be quite different from many other Georgians, she is not too strict on the roles of ost and guest and I feel quite at home. She used to be a professor at the academy, she plays the piano and the other week she gave me and her grand daughter a small concert in the living room. The grand piano desperatly needs tuning but the energy that transmitted through the room when her fingers ran over the keys was magic, it send shivers up my spine. Makes me love my russian, makes me want to have classes every day!

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Food culture

admin — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:53:43 +0000

The 24 hour restaurants are not busy at 6 in the morning but they still serve the full menu and the whole kit for anyone awake to eat it. I payed a visit to one of these god forsaken venues last night as they were cleaning up, chairs on the tables, half sleeping staff punched out by a table. The service was not bad for the late/early hour and compared to many places here in Tbilisi, including the up-market restaurants it would be considered really good service.

I have been working on the photos for a cook book on Georgian cuisine in one of the fancy restaurants in the old town by the river. The music played in this place has started to give grey hairs and full day head aches, it is really the very least attractive music available here in Georgia. They also follow a scheme where the volume is increased rather than the opposte when more guests arrive. anyhow we have managed to get some pretty fair photos of the lovely Georgian food.

Green bean sallad

stew

click the images to get to my Flickr page for more photos.

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Magnum

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:56:16 +0000

A new photo book about Georgia just came out. It was an order from the Georgian president and as I have understood he wanted to show the bright sides of Georgia. He brought some of the Magnum photographers over to document the spring of 2008 in Georgia in a different way.

For sure the photos are different, but not in the way Saakashvili anticipated. There are a certain degree of questioning in the pictures that he did not like. Some beautiful and simple photos of Tbilisi was added in the beginning and the end to dampen the emotions the rest of the photos might stir up. It is also very comic that the georgian text in the book got mixed up with complete jiberish at the printing house and the first batch was decided to be donated to libraries. But at the end of the day, it is a beautiful book with text and photos far beyond. it is as always the very vanguard of photography, an inspiration for the mind and eye!

Regional meeting, greens from Sweden and the Caucasus got together to talk about the future

I have started a photoproject about the Green party in Georgia, the Swedish Green party is engaged in helping them and supporting them. Now as my time is mostly focussed on the food photos and the teaching I have only met them a couple of times, I think there is potential for some really interesting work here, they have a big challange facing them or many rather.

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photos

admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:08:17 +0000

I tagged along when SIDA was invited to one of the Ossetian refugee camps outside Tbilisi. They are funding a local football association.

My brother came to visit, he looks better in kodak chrome, but B/W works!

Me and my brother went to a small village outside Gori. Here we are disturbing an old man who is mustering his cows.

And we went to the Kaheti region in the east of Georgia. brilliant light, brilliant food and lovely people!

I have a new job taking photos for a cook book about Georgian food. this is katchapuri, a very representative dish.

Food is a passion, thats for sure. I dont agree fully to the way the food is presented. it is very “Jante”, there is no ambition to make it beautiful to match the taste, of course with exception but today i was trying to photograph a fish that looked more dead than is pleasant.

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