Highs and Lows

It is getting difficult here - wonderfully interesting - but difficult - it all links to what I began to talk about yesterday - my dissertaion here - my reason for being in Tbilisi - the research I'm conducting on IDP and refugee women in Georgia.

There are so many problems with IDP women here - there was so much tragedy - there continues to be so much tragedy -- and every interview reveals another horror that I can't even imagine - walking through the mountains in bare feet with no water or food, rape camps, soldiers playing football with the heads of the dead, a woman forced to eat her husband's corpse. And then there's the secondary dilemma of IDP women. The trauma of being ignored, silenced and invisible to the government, to the international community, to most of the citizens of Georgia. Thirdly then there are the living conditions now - almost unchagned since they first arrived here 12 years ago - those still in the Gali district (the southern reaches of Abkhazia) are in constant danger of rape, sexual assault, muggings - the Russian soldiers stationed there are a political rather than a security force - and the NGO's working in order to protect women there - and help with the post-trauma of living in under constant threat - can do very little to tell women how to protect themselves from the dangers. How can you protect yourself from a masked man who breaks into your home at night? Just as how can you protect the fields in which your livlihood grows without the money for fences or if the government will not allow you to farm land close to where you live? In Tbilisi - they live in communal centres - large apartment block skeletons 0 where elctricity and water supplies are scarce and families lived crammed into together. Then there are those that live in hospitals, in hotels, in sanatoriums for 12 years - living off a government pension of 11 lari ($5) a month!!!! It is heartbreaking - and although my dissertation tries to look at the space for empowerment and social transformation amongst these women - the new leadership roles that they might begin to play - or changes in the traditional idea of what a good Georgian woman is after the conflict - or spaces for peacebuilding and reconstruction that women are uniquely positioned to take up -- it is hard not to get sidetracked by the issues of justice, of identitiy, of psychological trauma - even of economic neccesity and hardship. I am coming to the end of a seires of about 15 interviews with a combination of UN officials, local NGO's, international NGO's and IDP women themselves - and right now it is hard to see the wood for the trees. It is fascinating - trying to understand exactly how a conflict played out is intriguing - but it is also deeply emotionally draining - you can't seek to understand conflict without facing the individual stories that interplay and muddy the waters of warfare. But that inevitably becomes personal.

At the end of the day I have to ask what I am able to offer these women who give up their time, and allow me into their personal space and lives in the most intimate of senses? When I kiss them on the cheek as they leave I feel a sense that I have taken and have given very little in return - I exclaim that I will send them the study - once it's completed - even though it will be in Englsih - that I will thank them in it. But really - is that any kind of exchange? What do I offer when I ask them to bleed their hearts for me? When I ask them if they have hope - usually in one of the final questions - what do I expect them to say? Yes - humanity always has hope - otherwise we would die - but hope for political reconciliation? This was always a political as opposed to a grassroots war - it was never about the people on the ground - and always about manipulations amongst the higher political strata. So - we rely on the same leaders who brought this country to the point of division it has now reached. So - hope for women's social transformation atleast? In a society that amongst IDP's is becoming increasingly more traditional - except for those few individuals that were moving towards equality anyway. Maybe. Hope atleast that the UN's New Approach to IDP's might work at giving them better living conditions atleast for the forseeable future - but how can that work when the government provides no funds and support for it?

I don't quite know how to end this email - I could tell you that atleast the women laugh and put on a beautiful appearance when they meet me - I can tell you that there are some NGO's that are making a difference - that are doing incredibly diverse and beautiful projects - I can tell you that UNDP is trying - I can tell you that as long as one project makes a difference to one individual that that is enough - I can relate the story of the stranger on a beach - who came across a man picking up one by one - the gleaming starfish that littered the shore - the stranger asked - why are you doing that - you will never manage to put them all back in the oceean - it makes no difference - the man replied - because it made a difference to that one starfish. But, right now there seems so little justification for those starfish to be on that beach - no natural wave that placed them there - the justification seems to be greed and power and a lack of attention or care for the needs of others. It seems to just come down to a lack of responsibility - by the government of Georgia - by the governemnt of Russia - by the international community - by each and every one of us. And I don't quite know what to say to change that.