General Fevrier Turns Traitor.

About 6 months ago, Martha and I congratulated ourselves heartily on avoiding a Peace Corps hardship post – like Mauritania or the like, and thus limiting our exposure to hairy insects, the ravages of quaint tropical diseases, or worse; the bat fly.

“But those posts don’t have to deal with 2 feet of snow, do they, Martha?!”

Yes, dear friends, the Imereti region of Georgia has been getting ‘dumped on’ for the past few days, and our equivalent to the Eisenhower tunnel has been closed, hereby dissecting the country in 2, and forcing the cancellation of planned trips to Tbilisi and meetings at the Peace Corps office. We’ve gotten reports of hundreds of people getting stuck on the main road, trains becoming snowdrifts due to power outages, and certain Adjaran PCV’s getting molested and chased by several mini-avalanches while attempting to walk to the nearest regional center.
This has also brought about the usual bevy of questions at school (before we closed up shop due to lack of heat): “Do you have snow in Colorado?” or “Have you ever seen so much snow?” My usual answers to these questions posed by my co-workers are “Yes,” and “Yes.” It just so happens that Martha’s sister Libby has been stuck in Durango due to massive snowfall (Pow-Pow, to use the parlance of our time), and Crested Butte has received over 400 inches of snow in February. Again, America 1, Georgia 0.
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Martha and I have been coping well with the continued winterization of Terjola, thanks to the combination of our wonderful host mother, and our petchi, both of which are pictured herein. We’ve spent our time away from school frantically feeding our stove with as much wood as it can consume, eating food with enough calorie content to warm a small town or power a medium-sized battleship, reading, and doing research for our secondary projects.

A couple of quick notes from the sleeping bag:

1. I’ve just finished up “The Making of the Georgian Nation” by Ronald Suny, and have found some interesting and rather frustrating information. First, the fact that many of the very challenges and obstacles I find in my daily work and interactions at school have been previously documented by various travelers to Georgia over 200 years ago means deep frustration for yours truly. Additionally, Georgia has been, along with Armenia and parts of Azerbaijan, a contested no-man’s land between great powers for much of its history. Romans, Persians, Greeks, Turks, Mongols, and the Russians, have all pushed and pulled their armies across this region, in a never ending game of “let’s-play-geopolitical-chess-and-sack-Tbilisi-while-we’re-at-it.”

2. If you find that you have some free time, I strongly recommend perusing the following report: “Environment and Security: Transforming Risks into Cooperation” by an initiative from the UNEP, the UNDP, and OSCE. (ENVSEC.ORG) This initiative equates environmental problems and natural resources mismanagement with political instability, and strives to eliminate any environmental drivers from possible future conflicts. As they put it: “vulnerability assessment, early warning, and risk monitoring.”

It’s a really well written report, and provides a nice survey of what the Southern Caucuses are dealing with environmentally. Incidentally, its maps are kick-ass. I can say this because I’m O.K. with being both the world’s largest nerd, and a Geography major. The map I’ve included is from the chapter on Georgia, and though you’ll have to download the report to access the full legend, Martha and I are currently living equidistant from the large red circles of Kutaisi, Tkibuli, and Zestaponi, near the banks of the purple-lined Rioni river, inside some dotted line corridor, on some orangy-yellow stuff.

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