Azerbaijanis living in Kvemo Kartli are Turkic-speaking people representing the legacy of the conquerors that came to this area at different times. in the 1926 Census they were referred to as Azerbaijanis. The Azeri population that settled in Kartli is comprised of two streams of migrants: 1. The Turkish-speaking population that was resettled between 15th-18th centuries; they went through the heaviest psychological and physical stress before they adapted to the new place. 2. Migrants who moved from one place to another to improve living conditions having adapted to the new environment. Currently the Azeri population in Georgia numbers 224,606. They mainly reside in Bolnisi, Dmanisi, Gardabani and Marneuli districts, mostly in district centers apart from in Dmanisi muniiciaplity where there are many Azeri villages. Some live in Tetritskaro and Tsalka districts.
The village of Kamarlo is located next to the picturesque Lake Yaguflo. A worn-down road leads to the village located eight kilometres from the town of Dmanisi. According to the last census in Georgia performed in 2002, the population of the village was 713 people; all of them ethnic Azeris. Pikria Abdulaeva is amongst the village’s residents. She belongs to both cultures. She is an Azeri from her father’s side and Georgian from her mother’s. Azeri is the language of the village. Pikria speaks Georgian and served as the interpreter for our visit. Our arrival in the village caused a stir and the women invited by Pikria started arriving at the home of Phanura Kurbanova. In the garden the women explained how they make kizyak or fuel for winter. First, cow manure is leveled to the same thickness and is left to dry. Later, it is cut into pieces with a shovel. The pieces are then stacked in a sunny and ventilated place where they will be left to dry through summer and autumn, until the cold weather begins. This process turns the material into fuel. Kizyak is often made by women and children. The women then listed every activity they had performed that day from making bread to tending cattle to putting up wallpaper. Shoes were removed to enter the house.
The women recounted their memory of state farms. “Now it is easier, because there are no state farms. We used to work from morning until night and then come home and continue working in the house. In autumn, sometimes they would give ten tons of potatoes to each family and we had to manage this ourselves, carrying them, drying them, loading them, selling them or storing them for winter”. But for others, the state farms are associated with better times. Guliaz Gajieva is over 100 years old. she herself asserts she is 112. “We worked a lot but it was good work. I was even invited into the Central Committee of the Party as a leading worker, once”. Guliaz used to milk cows.
The women were enjoying the conversation. First, they maintained the attitude that “everything is good” and did not talk about problems. Gradually, however, they opened up. Out of the ten women who articipated in the conversation, four were divorced, half of them had lost husbands or sons, two women were married at the age of 14 and one of them had been bride-kidnapped. Often, women are complicit in these kidnappings. Gulazar was kidnapped as a bride for Pikria’s (her now mother in law’s) cousin. She was 14 and the groom was 26. Now Gulazar and Pikria share the same last name and are on good terms with each other, despite Pikria’s involvement in the kidnapping 17 years ago. Gulazar gave birth when she was 17. She had the baby in Baku and told the doctor about the circumstances surrounding her marriage. The Doctor sent a message to the village, saying “one of your young girls was forced into marriage at the age of 14! Take some measures!” The young husband could easily have been brought to justice for the forced marriage but they managed to avoid this through the help of some acquaintances in the right places. “Why didn’t you spare the girl?”, we asked Pikria. “Why?”, she answers. “Now, she has such a handsome husband who is the representative of the rural council”. Gulazar, who was listening, laughed along with the story as well.
The other women related stories of their marriages. Kheyala had not been bride-kidnapped but, rather, was matched with her husband when she was 14. She lived in the neighbouring village of Salamalik where there only was an elementary school which did not take her beyond the fourth grade. Before marrying, she lived with her parents where she looked after the household. She says, “If we had had a better school, then maybe they would not have married me off at such early age”. Kheyala has three children and added that three children are enough and that she will not let her daughter marry before she turns 19 or 20.
The issue with daughters is a critical one. On the one hand, the mothers do not want their daughters to have the same lives they did. On the other, they see that it is not easy to change the situation.
Alida Nasibova is 42 years old. She related the hard story of her divorce ten years ago. Alida is now raising her only child, a daughter. Her ex-husband has since died. Alida works as a teacher of the lower grades in the village school and provides every incentive she can to her daughter to study. She has big hopes that she will be able to change her life by getting an education. Pikria works at the village school as a teacher of Georgian. She says that the attendance of younger students is much better than the attendance of the older ones. Pikria says that her son is the only graduate who is continuing his education in Tbilisi. The majority of school graduates do not continue their studies.
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Villagers travel to Baku fairly often, not for education but to visit relatives or for short-term work. Migration within Georgia is hampered by the language barrier which means that they do not travel much to other districts in Georgia. Phanura is a widow of over a year and wears a mourning kerchief and almost never smiles but she is quick, responsive and open and does everything quickly and silently. For her guests she made khinkali which consisted of thinly rolled boiled dough with butter and a sauce made from sour milk with herbs and spices. Sakna Gajieva is Phanura’s neighbour who came to speak with us briefly before getting back to baking bread at her house. She gave us hot bread for the way back and Phanura gave us some cheese as well. We were very touched by their hospitality, help and openness.
4 Beehives and their inhabitants from the high mountains of Ajara started their new life on the terrace of one of the largest Hotels in Batumi, Georgia, the Hilton Batumi, to produce honey for hotel guests. The General Manager of the Hilton, a keen birdwatcher and conservationist had the idea, seeking to showcase the beautiful countryside of Ajara and take this first step in illustrating the story of locally sourced food and the people who produce it.
By linking the hotel with the Ajara Beekeepers Business Association, the hives were installed. Urban beekeeping is increasingly popular in Europe as bee colonies decline and new ways are sought to develop a more ecologically sensitive lifestyle as urban centers grow. The Hilton also installed a honey showpiece at the breakfast buffet, of mounted honey comb, a large map of the 10 honey production gorges of mountainous Ajara and the indigenous flora on which the bees feed with the honey and comb sourced through honey producing company Matchakhela Ltd.
These initiatives which form a part of the ALCP programme’s work in the honey market system illustrate the great potential of the honey sector to feed into the promotion of Ajara as a great and varied tourist destination.
Income received from the Hotel hives will be donated to children in need in the rural municipalities.
News travels fast and perhaps other hotels may take up the initiative now it's been advertised through the Hilton chains newsletter.
Khelvachauri Women’s Room is taking its first steps in helping women access public resources voice their opinions and participate in local self-governance. The Women’s Room model that is being replicated in Ajara was first established in three municipalities of Kvemo Kartli from 2012 and subsequently in all municipalities of Kvemo Kartli and Samstkhe-Javakheti. The first opened in Batumi with the Association of Business Women of Ajara (ABWA) in the Ajara Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) was the first of all a new type of urban and business based women’s room, with the ideas of providing business trainings and an urban connection for the municipality based women’s rooms already opened in Keda, Shuakhevi, Khulo and Khelvachauri municipalities and soon to open in Kobuleti. The rooms are proving popular with these WR’s already providing more than 1200 services in three months.
The Women’s Rooms are a municipal service, a resource and consultancy space for facilitating open dialogue between local society and municipality officials, aiming at promoting women’s participation in the decision-making at the local level and increasing their access to municipal information and services including on health care and agricultural programmes. Women’s Rooms also offer a platform for trainings and meetings, supporting new initiatives and instilling women’s active participation. The space has been taken up quickly with the Association of Young Lawyers and the School of Democracy using the rooms to raise women’s awareness on human rights, economic and educational opportunities. Visitors can use library and internet for free. All of the Women’s Rooms in Ajara are easy to access on the first floor of municipality buildings and can be freely used by people with disabilities for meeting with Gamgebeli and other officials to speak about their issues. Gamgebelis hold weekly meetings with local citizens in the W’s Rs. A Free hotline number (Khulo 0 800 100 109; Shuakhevi 0 800 000 008; Keda 0 800 100 103; Khelvachauri 0 800 100 106) allows rural women to voice their issues in the Gamgeoba.
Women’s Room coordinators and municipal Gender Advisors, were trained on the importance of women involvement in decision-making using guidelines on The Application and Implementation of the Law on Gender Equality of Georgia by local self-government bodies to increase women’s participation in the community meetings, that was resulted in significant increase from 3% (2014) to 33% (2016) of women’s participation in these meetings.
To find out more about W’s Rs ongoing activities, visit Ajara (Batumi,Khulo, Shuakhevi, Keda, Khelvachauri), Kvemo Kartli (Dmanisi, Tsalka, Tetritskaro, Rustavi,Marneuli, Aspindza) and Samtskhe Javakheti (Akhaltsikhe,Adigeni, Borjomi ) W’s Rs Facebook pages.
Posted by Helen Bradbury: Team Leader, Alliances Lesser Caucasus Programme
ALCP has been featured on BEAM Exchange. See the story below.
Rural farmers can only grow their income when they have access to the drugs and veterinary services to keep their animals healthy and growing too. Alliances has partnered with a national veterinary inputs supply company to improve access to drugs, information and vet services for poor farmers in rural Georgia. There are strong signs competitors are seeking to replicate the model, which is also scaling up nationally and in neighbouring countries.
The challenge
Over 2 million people in rural Georgia rely on subsistence farming, typically owning less than one hectare of land. SDC has been funding a series of programmes in Southern Georgia since 2008 to improve the livelihoods of livestock farmers.
During initial surveys, Alliances learned that less than 10 per cent of farmers were accessing veterinary drugs or services in their community, in rural vet pharmacies mainly self-stocked from trips to Tbilisi. Others bought drugs when travelling to the capital. In the rural vet pharmacies a limited range of often improperly stored drugs were sold at high prices due to the resultant transaction costs. Local advice was minimal, unavailable or out of date. This had led to a lack of farmer trust in local veterinary products and services and unwillingness to invest.
Suppliers had failed to grasp the market potential of developing rural distribution, lacking both the information and capital to do so. The uncertainty about whether farmers would buy their products meant the perceived risk held suppliers back from making the first move.
Name: Natural Produktsia Ltd
Place: Dioknisi Village, Khulo Municipality
Type of business: Cheese Factory
Product: Imeruli Cheese
Suppliers: about 450 women from 13 villages of Khulo
Current production per day: 5 tons of milk (700 kg of cheese)
The Problem
The 450 women now selling milk directly to the milk collectors of the Natural Produktsia Ltd Factory in Dioknisi, Khulo used to make cheese from their milk. Women are responsible for milking the household cattle and making the cheese, butter, sour cream and cottage cheese which is then sold as an important part of the family’s livelihood.
Selling these products however is hard and uncertain. The journey by marshutka to Batumi Agrarian Market can take up to 4 hours on bad roads. It is taken to the market by husbands or other male family members or sent with the driver and met by a relative who then tries to sell it. There is no guarantee of a sale and often the family is forced to accept a low price from the market vendors rather than take it home again.
“Women in Georgia – Tradition and Contemporaneity” is a short documentary film prepared by ‘Netgazeti’ (online newspaper) about women living in Ghordjomi Community (Khulo Municipality, Ajara). Ghordjomi is one of the largest Muslim communities in Ajara and is known for its early marriage traditions, and other strict rules and attitudes towards women. The film describes the harsh daily routine of the women starting from 6 am in the morning with taking care of the cattle, children, household and the restrictions they face in daily life.
The ALCP AJ programme’s Focus Group Survey and Gender Analysis captured these issues and also noted the consequent effect on the participation of women in the decision-making processes at the community and local governmental levels which is chronically low.
From the ISET Economist Blog (https://www.iset.ge/blog/?p=4633)
By Eric Livny
The “do no harm” (primum non nocere) principle is well known to students of medical schools. It is one of the most fundamental maxims in medicine, as formulated, for example, in the Epidemics book of the Hippocratic Collection:
“The physician must … have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm“.
Doctors are taught that medical interventions are not risk-free. Thus, when facing a “problem” one should consider whether to use a particular procedure (e.g. surgery or chemical treatment) or do NOTHING.
Not surprisingly, this very principle has applications in many fields other than healthcare. And it is high time for this principle to be studied and applied in Georgian policymaking.
