Tbilisi nowadays is a scene of feverish construction and renovation work. Spending time there, a visitor can easily be seduced by the obvious progress being made. Over recent years, the city has visibly changed for the better, even if not all the new landmark constructions are to everybody’s taste. It is not only the appearance. Chic new cafés have appeared, and new restaurants appealing to more exotic tastes, such as Japanese and Thai. In spite of problems, and despite the nearby Russian threat, Tbilisi is a city on the up.
And the same can be said for one or two other towns in Georgia. Central Batumi is a building site, with tall buildings going up along the seafront that seem to be more Dubai than Black Sea. As in Tbilisi, perhaps even more so given that it is concentrated in a much smaller town, the gardens and fountains, the cafés, all give an impression of rising prosperity.
But travelling across Georgia, the country in between Batumi and Tbilisi presents a different picture, which reminds of how much hardship the country has endured, and continues to endure. Following the end of the Soviet Union, and the collapse of the Soviet market, most of Georgia’s economic base was wiped out, almost at a stroke. The series of wars, civil strife and near anarchy of the early 1990s, and the decent of the country more or less into a failed state, added to the woe. The visible legacy of this is the industrial wasteland around several towns across Georgia, industrial zones that no longer have any industry, just the skeletal remains of industrial buildings. On my first visit to Georgia, at the end of 2003, I was told one of Georgia’s main exports was scrap metal from its abandoned factories. Another major export has been its people, who left in droves in the 1990s, unable to make any kind of living in their homeland.
Six years ago, as an election observer, I spent a few days in the western town of Samtredia, the ugliest town in Georgia I was informed by our interpreter, who hailed from Tbilisi. Yes, our driver, a native of Samtredia, agreed readily, smilingly, almost proudly, Samtredia was indeed the ugliest town in Georgia. Driving through the town’s former industrial zone, we passed acres of decay and decrepitude; tumbled-down warehouses and factories, their windows smashed, ceilings falling in; twisted, rusted metal and old bits of machinery. And among all this were people, somehow scratching a minimal living in this de-industrialised wilderness.
And yet I and my colleagues enjoyed wonderful hospitality in Samtredia. Right there, at polling stations in amongst that wasteland, we were offered food and wine, coffee, and, on a couple of occasions, even marriage (surely a sign of desperation, even if delivered with a smile). One evening in Samtredia, we were invited to a party at a local restaurant. There we were treated to a typically Georgian, gargantuan spread, complete with the obligatory toasts, to which I was able to respond with genuine warmth and emotion, so moved was I by our welcome.
And there are many other towns depressing to visitors, much like Samtredia. This trip, I stopped briefly in Khashuri, a town in central Georgia, a grim, dusty, dilapidated place, with almost nothing I could see to provide relief and give its residents cheer. The obligatory fountain, almost identical to ones placed in towns around Georgia under President Saakashvili, designed, no doubt, as a simple, quick measure to brighten places up and make their people feel a little better, seemed out of place to me, as if mocking its dismal surroundings. What can it be like to live in such a place?
And yet, as I found in Samtredia, some do manage to keep their spirits alive. But the people of Samtredia, Khashuri, and other towns in a similar plight deserve better. The spending being lavished on Tbilisi and Batumi should be shared around a bit more evenly.
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