World On 2 Wheels

I still think there are things to clear in my mind. When I look through my notebook I find I have just put down words to describe what I see. Churches, mosques, doors in arches but the house is gone. Garbage. The first morning the clouds are passing by outside the window, it cleared after an hour or so and the path I’ve walked the night before became details rather that nighttime outlines. Yellow gas pipes, a meter and a half or two over the ground. Little alleys that ends by a cliff. Views are stunning down in the valley, clouds in the distance, hovering over the mountains past Steparnakert. Trees with bare branches, It will be green here in the summer. It will become beautiful.

Snow, loads. will I get out? back to Yerevan? I need a beer, feeling of being overwhelmed by all the information and again, the snow. The trash that litters the streets is covered, the ruins take more round shapes. I slept at Armens, the french man I met the day before. Woke up to the cold bright morning. brilliant hospitality. A house full of books, warming only one room at a time, sitting and listening to stories about how the politics have gone rotten and how education is just a word, not an institution. Armen says, give us jobs, education and rights and we will have democracy.

We were to visit the hospital, 40 people working there. But it is not open, no one there. Armen gets fired up and tells me that they have a hospital for surgery, funded by money from French diaspora, though Shushi does not need surgery, they need basic medical expertise. We pass through parts of the city and there seems to be the same in many places, things are built, people hired but things are not working. With some exceptions of course and in fact the people I meet and spend some time with are all fantastically energetic and very positive. It is the environment that makes me confused. The ruins of houses, again. and the horror of the history. wars for hundreds of years.

I walked with Armen, walked alone later in the day, I climbed around in the ruins and as night falls over the snow and the street lights turned on i took refuge in the art center that has been built with diaspora money for the children in the area. I was there on and off in the three days I was in Shushi, to see the work and to meet the souls that glow in a remains of what is said to have been a great culture center in the Trans Caucasus.

I had to leave before I was quite finished with seeing Shushi, took a taxi in the morning, paying the local bread delivery man some dollars to get down to the bus stop. I want to come back, stay longer, meet more people, get a better understanding. Still confused, but at a distance. always possible to distance oneself as a member of the more fortunate few in the world with roots in northern Europe.

I came along for a ride. The swedish women rights organisation, Kvinna till kvinna, that I will work (taking photos) for later this spring was driving to Jerevan and there was room left for me in the car. The scenery along the 250km Tbilisi-Yerevan route is diverse, The mountains, the plains, lake Sevan, the industrial yards that has spent the last 30 years collapsing. Everything combined with good food, good company and a police stop that looked like it would cost us a bit.

After a day of photographing Yerevan and the spring that paied it a visit I got an early start, a wild taxidrive to the wrong part of town and then right and finally a minibus to the disputed region Nagorno-Karabach. I had a number to call once I got there but was warned that the phone might not work in the region, from political reasons. Hours and kilometers on roads that climbed up to the high mountains, snow, men in leather coats and leather hats and lots of cigarettes. I was quite happy in the bus, I fell alseep a few times and woke up every time to more astonishing sights. We crossed the border with no problem, though the border guard asked for my phone which I kindly refused to give him.

Once we arrived in Steparnakert, the capital, I got my visa sorted with the kind athorities at the foreign ministry and found a women that could lend me her phone, mine was obviously not working. The women that lend me the phone alredy knew the women I was meeting, small place this is.

Another small ride in a minibus, packed beyond sanity, people, legs, arms, bags in a big bundle and the a couple of more people got on the bus before we left town. One of the a french man who gave me his Karabach story and who obviously devoted his life to the region and to the town Shushi we were heading for. He told me Shushi used to be the third cultural capital of the trans-Caucasus, in the last century, but now only hosted some 3000 people which were not quite content with their situation, few jobs, little education, few rights.

He also knew the woman I had the number for and called her to announce my arrival and then promptly showed me the way to her work, a cultural center for young and old. From there on impressions have been many. I spent one night a guesthouse, got invited to stay elsewhere, switched, ended up with the french guy, got into trubble for that, or he did at least. Snow, massive snowfall, worries about the return trip, assurances about the splendid road conditions, my own impressions from looking out the window. You see I need to sort out my impressions before typing them down.

For now, I look forward to eat some of the preserved veggies, look at my pictures and climb into the bed and cver myself with three blankets. @+

Last days before going back to Sweden over christmas are hectic and it seems, like so many times before, that the 24 hours between two dates are just not enough. My morning routin of running laps on the hippodrom has been cut short since I had to stay up the previous night to work on some photos. I enjoy this somewhat creative stress but it seems my body does not.

It is good then to have benefit of being in a country where most of the people are not affected by the same stress as my self. The cues are moving slowly, no matter what, the metro escalator is a cork that calls for a pause and a deep breath. It is just a matter of relaxing at this point and try to let the flashing peaks of stress die out into the mass of morningwarm bodies.

I have started taking lessons in Russian. Once a week I meet up with two of my students, a young girl and her grandmother, an elderly lady with more energy than the Duracell rabbit. I met the girl outside the sovjet block building, we take a dodgy elevator that smells from sewer and damp to the 7th floor where we meet Lea, my russian teacher. She has always prepared something to eat, some cheesebread or some cakes, some strong turkish coffee and some pumpkin. We spend a couple of hours by the dinnertable in the dark, heavily decorated living room, laughing at our mistakes (I teach her Swedish in return), looking up words and passing the notebooks around for help on spelling. She seems to me to be quite different from many other Georgians, she is not too strict on the roles of ost and guest and I feel quite at home. She used to be a professor at the academy, she plays the piano and the other week she gave me and her grand daughter a small concert in the living room. The grand piano desperatly needs tuning but the energy that transmitted through the room when her fingers ran over the keys was magic, it send shivers up my spine. Makes me love my russian, makes me want to have classes every day!