Office Missions
My boss organized some trips to the regions to meet with Government officials and NGO’s in August, while many others from work are on vacation. Monday and Tuesday this past week we spent in Akhaltsikhe (yes, I am proud to spell and pronounce it, one of the victories of my time here...) and in Borjomi. Borjomi is where the best water in Georgia comes from. 
I tasted it straight from the ground, slightly salty with sulfur taste. It’s actually good and supposedly excellent for the health. Our meetings were in Akhaltsikhe, with the State Agency for Employment and Social Affairs, the Youth Assocation, the local government (Sakrebulo), the NGOs in the region. The meetings are of course in Georgian so there is little for me to learn from it, other than scrutinize the buildings and people (which definitely can be interesting). And then I learn a little from what Keti tells me afterwards. The hospital, where we had one meeting, was in a really poor state, with no floor paneling, beds that looked like they belonged in a prison, and no air to cool down the patients. It was very speical to see how the babies are delivered, through a window facing the street, in baby blue blankets, almost like a drive-through for newborns...
We met with two of Keti’s friends from France who are traveling in Georgia for 3 weeks. They had stories to tell… One of them had a terrible neck-pain. We went to Keti’s sister in the evening who coincidentally is an “acupuncturist”. The girl was poked with two sewing needles in her forehead, and when they were removed, her pain did not cease and blood came trickling down her forehead. She said she felt better in the morning however.
After more meetings the next day, we went with the French girls to a monastery out in the middle of nowhere were monks are still living and practicing, including a man with a 3 foot long beard. We also made it to the most stunning sight I have seen: Vardzia, a city comprised entirely of caves, from the 12th Century. It was initiated by the father of Queen Tamar and she completed it. Originally there was room for 50,000 people to live there, and it didn’t seem like such bad conditions. They were able to hide from their enemies, from the sun, and live in close proximity with one another!
The final field trip this week was to Kazbegi on the Russian Military Highway. We went with the french girls and Konstantin came along to hike for the weekend. Beautiful Caucasus mountains but also somewhat creepy to me—maybe it was the clouds, maybe the fact that I cannot imagine living my whole life so far from the city. We met with the department of statistics (which basically collects no data because it is never requested by the central government) and the regional authorities.
I tasted it straight from the ground, slightly salty with sulfur taste. It’s actually good and supposedly excellent for the health. Our meetings were in Akhaltsikhe, with the State Agency for Employment and Social Affairs, the Youth Assocation, the local government (Sakrebulo), the NGOs in the region. The meetings are of course in Georgian so there is little for me to learn from it, other than scrutinize the buildings and people (which definitely can be interesting). And then I learn a little from what Keti tells me afterwards. The hospital, where we had one meeting, was in a really poor state, with no floor paneling, beds that looked like they belonged in a prison, and no air to cool down the patients. It was very speical to see how the babies are delivered, through a window facing the street, in baby blue blankets, almost like a drive-through for newborns...We met with two of Keti’s friends from France who are traveling in Georgia for 3 weeks. They had stories to tell… One of them had a terrible neck-pain. We went to Keti’s sister in the evening who coincidentally is an “acupuncturist”. The girl was poked with two sewing needles in her forehead, and when they were removed, her pain did not cease and blood came trickling down her forehead. She said she felt better in the morning however.
After more meetings the next day, we went with the French girls to a monastery out in the middle of nowhere were monks are still living and practicing, including a man with a 3 foot long beard. We also made it to the most stunning sight I have seen: Vardzia, a city comprised entirely of caves, from the 12th Century. It was initiated by the father of Queen Tamar and she completed it. Originally there was room for 50,000 people to live there, and it didn’t seem like such bad conditions. They were able to hide from their enemies, from the sun, and live in close proximity with one another!
The final field trip this week was to Kazbegi on the Russian Military Highway. We went with the french girls and Konstantin came along to hike for the weekend. Beautiful Caucasus mountains but also somewhat creepy to me—maybe it was the clouds, maybe the fact that I cannot imagine living my whole life so far from the city. We met with the department of statistics (which basically collects no data because it is never requested by the central government) and the regional authorities.
posted by Kristel at 2:14 AM
1 Comments:
I've been to Kazbegi 3 years go with Doug.We went to the Russian border to pick up one girl who was coming from Russia.
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