A LOOK AT A GEORGIAN PORT ALONG THE PROPOSED CASPIAN OIL ROUTE
Molly Corso: 2/1/02

Supsa is a village, about five miles from the Black Sea. The population is around 1500 families - approximently 5-6 thousand people. According to everyone, back in the days before the USSR collapsed and the civil war started in Abkhazia, Supsa was a bustling rural marketplace - people from all over the Caucasus came to buy fruit and vegetables and trade wares. Many people in town were employed either by the collective farms which harvested the fruit, etc. or in the exporting business. People close their eyes and sigh as they tell me about the old univermarg (large department store) which, according to people from around the region, was the biggest and best in the area.

When you arrive in Supsa by train, you are greeted by a recently renovated train station. It is an empty building with three little rooms for administration, tickets, and the watchman in a waiting hall. The floor is bare concrete and the walls are whitewash. Dogs and cats roam in and out more frequently than people and the smell from a nearby public restroom sometimes catches the wind and comes drifting in. Outside the train station men sit and wait. And wait. And wait. There is no work in Supsa, so the most predominant image is groups of men of all ages sitting and waiting. Waiting for the day to end, for the next bottle of wine, vodka or chichi (Georgian vodka made from the skins of grapes, a by-product from the wine making process). Waiting and watching.

Upon exiting the train station, you are in the center of town. There is a palm tree, a circle of grass and a group of decrepit empty buildings. There is some sign of life, however - a small store selling everything from fake Russian chocolate to children's boots has moved into one of the buildings and an old man, Chulia, operates a shoe repair shop in a small metal kiosk. He laughs and sighs when he talks about the lines of people who used to gather at his window and wait for his services. Now groups of men spend their time talking and drinking in his shop, while he, gazing out the window, refashions the Turkish boots his few clients bring in for repair.

Further down the main road is a liquor shop, what is left of the market place, two little kiosks, the new church, and the empty shell of the old 'palace of culture.' The marketplace is run by one family. It is for old women what the random corners and empty benches are for the men: a place to sit and wait. Wait for customers to buy their beans or homemade cheese or freshly picked peppers. They talk, gossip, watch and wait. There is no real work in Supsa and those who work receive meager salaries at best. People borrow money from each other based on nonexistent pensions of 14 lari - $7 US - which are rarely paid or salaries ($32 for teachers) and slowly acquire debt from their neighbors. Sonpico, a young woman of 27 who operates a kiosk with her mother, tells of a circle of debt - debt to open the kiosk, debt to buy the wares and debt from customers who must eat but have no money to buy the goods. When asked about taxes, she laughed: no one pays taxes and no one receives services from the government.

If you cut through one of the fields that feed the livestock of Supsa and, therefore, the people of Supsa, the oil terminal Supsa is about a mile from the village's borders. A two-year building project, around 2,000 men from the area were employed for construction and as watchmen. For two years they were paid reportedly decent salaries and had work. But now construction is over. The terminal runs independently of the town and no one in the town can name any major contribution that has come from it. There are few jobs and those are, for the most part, not held by anyone from Supsa. When I asked if they applied for work, looked for ways to be employed, most shrugged. By themselves they feel - perhaps rightly - that they can do nothing. Georgia is a country still run by a network of acquaintances and if you don't have anyone on your side in the inside, common wisdom goes, you don't stand a chance. The youth I spoke to call it 'neftoland'-'oil-land'-a play on words off our Disney-Land.

There is no light in Supsa. No electricity to speak of. If they are lucky, there is electricity for a few hours in the morning and a few hours at night, but during my last two weeks there, that only occurred a handful of times. As the days grow shorter, they say, the prospect of light grows smaller. But the terminal has light. It glows through the darkness like a beacon from the West. A glaring example of how wealth and aid is not trickling through the Georgian economy.

Most people blame Shevardnadze. Most hate him. Some can't even mention his name without first firing off a tirade of criticism and thinly veiled threats. Others don't blame him. Some see him as a victim to corruption too wide spread to overcome.

I sit and watch and want them to like me. Want them to trust me. Want them to let me in, so I can see. So I can photograph. So I can understand. I think, as I eat the food they always offer me, drink the wine they present with such pride, that the camera in my hands is worth more money than most have ever seen. That my socks, wet and drying next to theirs, cost as much as a month's pension. Wonder what I think I am doing there, what I possibly can offer them other than the novelty of an American sitting at their table and a couple free photos when I come back. Then I let myself get lost in their generosity, although it makes me uncomfortable. Try and lose myself in their openness, their kindness, their poverty and their strength. And I make a picture of a loving mother. A tired mother-in-law. A proud father. A collapsing school and a resigned teacher. Make pictures and miss pictures and try and convince myself that eventually, eventually-piece by piece-I will tell their story and in the end, someone will care. And maybe that will somehow make up for all the meals, all the wine and be worth more than all the token picture-gifts that got me into their lives.

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Posted February 2, 2002 © Eurasianet
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