I am given to understand that the blogs, Facebook posts and other more public communications output of the TLG foreign staff are occasionally translated into Georgian and read out publicly for your consumption. Therefore, having something to say to you as a group and now discovering that I may well have the means to be heard:
Please do something about the garbage situation in Mestia and all of Svaneti.
The renovation of the town, and the massive attention currently being given to the whole province, are a source of delight to me, a resident of Georgia since late 1999 and recent home buyer (along with my wife) in Etseri. At last, some attention being given to this magnificent, far-flung gem of a region!
I now teach English in Mestia's No. 1 Middle School; and frequently on my way to or from work, I see a nice wheelbarrow of rubbish being dumped straight off a bridge into the Enguri far below. "Out of sight, out of mind", right? If I can't see it, it's no longer my problem. We used to think the same way about the world's lakes and even its oceans - and look at them now! The 5 Great Lakes between Canada and the USA are a great example of the terrifying result of decades of uncontrolled dumping.
Plastic bottles and bags, mattresses, tin cans, glass - anything which won't burn goes straight into that marvelous river, or doesn't get that far but chokes its banks instead.
There is a fine for littering being instituted in various places in Georgia already. What will you, its government, fine yourselves for the ongoing environmental catastrophe still being allowed to occur elsewhere? It's only the people's fault when there is an alternative, when their rubbish is being dealt with by the state. Until then, they are only doing what they can in the situation. Glass is as biodegradeable as rock - no surprise, as they are both mineral. Metals - they do slowly degrade chemically, by corrosion. Plastics? All sorts of nice possibilities there, depending on the variety, mostly turning into chemicals too long to pronounce and too mutagenic or just plain deadly to ignore.
My 18-year-old hiking boots recently gave up the ghost right here in Mestia, after a good walk near the Koruldi Lakes. What can I do?
1) Throw them straight into the Enguri myself.
2) Put them with my host family's unburnable trash and forget about them - make them their problem.
3) Burn them in the family stove! Mmmm, all that rubber and leather!
4) Take them out of Svaneti myself, by marshroutka (I don't have a vehicle at the moment), and throw them away in a city bin in Batumi, Tbilisi or somewhere similarly civilized.
5) Deliver them, and all my other non-biodegradeable garbage, to the Town Hall of Tbilisi and leave it all there on the sidewalk, with a note attached saying, "Welcome to Mestia", while the TV cameras are running.
Yours most sincerely,
Tony Hanmer
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