A generation in transition

“Thinking about what is happening around the word, I say to myself, my God, how can you ever give birth to child in this world?!” Lisa says. Photo by: Marta Ardashelia

Lisa and David  

“The front door has not been installed yet, but they promise to do it soon,” says David, a young, tall man with an earring in his left ear and curly hair. He invites me to his new apartment. It is a small housing facility, the construction of which was completed less than a month ago. David and his wife, Lisa, moved in as soon as it was possible, they were waiting patiently for almost five years. Lisa is pregnant, so the young couple’s main concern is to make sure the workers complete the finishing touches. They would like to have time to prepare the apartment before the arrival of their new baby.

“Thinking about what is happening around the word, I say to myself, my God, how can you ever give a birth to a child in this world?!” Lisa says to me, once inside the apartment. “But my parents remind me that we also grew up in challenging times and nevertheless we were happy children.”

David and Lisa grew up during the most unfortunate 1990s, when Georgia was torn apart by civil war, confrontation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia with the participation of mercenaries loyal to the Kremlin along with economic crisis and famine. People lived without electricity and heating was scarce during the winter months. Many went abroad in search of work and a better life.

Lisa and David’s parents remained in Georgia. Like them, they do not plan to leave the country either, although they complain it is difficult in Georgia. The future is uncertain, especially for a couple about to start a family. David, who is 27 years old, considers himself to be pragmatic and is not giving up. The young couple took out a mortgage from a bank in order to pay for the new apartment. The interest on the mortgage loan is quite high in Georgia – 12 per cent – but David believes it is worth it. “You need to take risks,” he says.

Of course he shows concern, adding: “There is no country where it is possible to predict the certainty of a mortgage loan. Nobody knows what will happen. Do you remember what happened in the United States in 2008? I always plan everything, since my childhood. For five years we only managed to save a small amount. Without a bank loan, nothing would have been possible. Our income is only enough for food and clothing, so we could hardly afford an apartment with our own money.”

“While I just go with the flow,” Lisa adds. “There is no stability. So, there is no point in planning.”

Lisa and David work professionally. The total monthly family income, on average, is around 1,000 US dollars, which is not bad for Georgian standards. Yet, finding a job can be quite challenging. The high unemployment rate is one of Georgia’s biggest problems. According to official statistics, the unemployment rate was 11.8 per cent in 2016. The situation for the youth is much worse. The unemployment rate for those aged between 25 and 29 is 21.6 per cent – nearly twice the national average.

First born blues

Another important obstacle in the way of Georgia’s economic growth is the demographic crisis. For the first time this year, the mortality rate exceeded the birth rate. Despite being a conservative society, people prefer not to have more than two children. For the older generation, it is hard for them to understand why Lisa and David waited so long to have their first child. Their parents, who insisted that the couple think about starting a family, openly expressed their discontent.

Lisa describes a story which exemplifies the situation: “Imagine the scene. I am sitting in a beauty salon, doing a manicure. An unfamiliar person sees that I am wearing a wedding ring and starts a conversation. ‘Do you have a child?’ she asks, and when you answer ‘no’, she automatically consoles you, like, ‘it is okay, don’t worry, everything will be managed and your health problems will be solved’. In this case, please note that no one discussed this issue with my husband, because if there are no children, it means it is the ‘fault’ of the wife. Perhaps, she has health problems, but not her husband. When strangers learn that I just do not plan to have a child yet, the question that follows is: ‘so, you’ve had an abortion?!’”

Lisa laughs while telling the story, but at the same time she gives you a sense of the tragic comedy. Lisa admits that both sets of parents were constantly nagging her and her husband. However, instead of a child, they decided to get a cat to become the newest member of the family. Once they felt more secure, they decided to have a child. The couple already knows they will have a girl. In Georgia, many still think it is preferable to have a son first – to be the successor of the family. This has led to a problem of selective abortions in Georgia, which has the highest rate of all the South Caucasus states. In Georgian clinics, doctors try to discourage this practice and often they do not disclose the sex of the child for up to 4-5 months in order to deter abortions.

It is quite common for strangers to ask pregnant women what is the sex of the child. But Lisa admits this is perhaps her favourite question. Despite social pressure, she has always dreamed of having a daughter. “And they also say that I’m so beautiful I should be pregnant every year,” she laughs.

Last year, the EU finally decided to allow Georgian citizens to travel to the EU visa free. Many Georgians like to joke that the current generation, unlike their parents, take weekend getaways in Berlin, not Moscow. The visa-free deal has not helped David and Lisa much. The young couple has never managed to leave the country. For them, traveling to Europe is an expensive pleasure.

“Our generation is in a worse situation than the generation of our parents,” laments David. “Our parents were part of that ‘Great Country’, called the Soviet Union. Whether they believed in it or not, that’s another question. My generation has a hard time understanding they are citizens of a state called Georgia. Geographically, we are in Asia, but here we are all alone, we are the only Europeans in the region.”

“I am 27 years old, but I have never left Georgia’s borders. I was only able to do this through literature and cinema. Art develops my imagination. Unfortunately, the visa-free regime is mostly for the elite.” He starts to get physically upset as he continues. “We are so much absorbed by the daily economic problems that we cannot even imagine another life. That is why the people around us are so evil, they are only interested in who sleeps with whom, who is gay and who is not …”

“I have many gay friends,” Lisa chimes in. “Even those who managed to come out. I do not see this as a problem.” But she does admit that she would not want her son to live in Georgia if he was gay.

Euphoria

Irina is 28 and is a child psychologist by profession. She worked in her field for almost seven years before quitting in order to search for something new. Together with Anna – her friend of 12 years who was also sick of working in a dead-end job at a state institution – she started a company called Euphoria, which is slowly conquering the Georgian cosmetic industry.

“We spent six months developing our product. We wanted it to be perfect,” says Anna, who is 26 years old. “I also have an education in business and the Georgian market is still developing which means there are a lot opportunities.” Anna is also a professional photographer and she has not abandoned her camera. She also picks up wedding photography gigs on the side and is quite successful in that field.

The two women say they have invested a lot of their own energy into the business, but they enjoy it. Euphoria is a brand of natural cosmetics, the first of its kind to appear in Georgia. Irina and Anna believe this is both their main advantage and biggest challenge. They have struggled with promotion and targeting customers but they have been successful with the help of friends and contacts, despite the fact many of them did not take the idea seriously at first.

“There was some concern our cosmetics could harm someone, so we first gave it to friends and family members so they could check the quality themselves,” Irina says. The two women are now profiting from the product but scepticism was not just limited to those close to them. “At first no one was really interested in our brand. No one believed our products could sell. When we went to the shopping centre at first, to find a place for our cosmetic stand, many said we had no chance,” Irina recalls. She thinks the business community in Georgia does very little to support each other. “There is no solidarity in the business environment,” she says. “No one will help you with advice or even a kind word.”   

But the two young women have proved the critics wrong. Euphoria has recently opened its second stand in the largest shopping centre of the Georgian capital. There are six people now working for the company. All of them are women. Irina and Anna are ready to keep a gender balance, yet men are not in a hurry to start working for them, they admit.

According to Anna and Irina, gender prejudice remains a main problem in Georgia. “We live in a very sexist environment,” Anna says. “I cannot just blame men. Many women allow these conditions to flourish as well.”

Irina adds that women cannot be liberated from the legacy of the past. “They are convinced that life is over if you do not get married at 25. We are under pressure because of these stereotypes. There are a lot of panicked and frightened women. Social pressure is to blame.” Irina is the mother of a nine-year-old daughter. She says she does not want her daughter to become a victim of this pressure.

The right to orientation

“There is no place here for homophobia, transphobia, racism,” reads the words scrawled on the wall at the Kiwi vegan café. I am here waiting for a young writer named Zura Abashidze. In Tbilisi, Kiwi has become a symbol opposing everything old in Georgia. This is a place where people who, despite their place of residence, see themselves as citizens of a free world. Kiwi is also the place where Georgian nationalists broke in and attacked visitors and staff several years ago. This was the way the local “Ultras” decided to fight for the preservation of Georgian traditions.

Zura is one of the few openly gay public figures in Georgia. In a country that has high rates of homophobia, his coming out is tantamount to heroism. It took place two years ago. Zura wrote an open letter to the public (although his close family and friends had long known about his orientation). Zura aims to change the world around him and he does not hide from this goal. Until he was 18, Zura lived in Kutaisi, Georgia’s third largest city, but then he continued his studies in Tbilisi. When he first moved to Tbilisi, he was overwhelmed by its size, but he saw many opportunities.

“My parents always told me to be happy,” he says. “Perhaps someone will read this article I wrote and think I’m a terrible person, but you should know that my mother is behind me, and she will stab the eyes of anyone who offends me,” he says with a laugh.

Zura recalls how he discussed his sexuality with his parents. “When I first fell in love with a guy, I was very confused. But my parents calmed me down. They told me that they love me the way I am. When I decided to come out, they were right there by my side and they helped me get through it. We never sat together and cried, ‘oh God, why did this happen to us.’”

Zura and his family faced a wave of aggression after his coming out. Many blamed his parents for a poor upbringing. He admits that it was not until recently – since receiving the prestigious Saba award for literature – that the public has started to come around. “If you accomplish something in music or literature, it does not matter, nobody cares about your sexuality. In my work, I show that if a guy likes another guy, it’s the same love as all other loves. I often use this technique when I do not specify the gender of the hero in a narrative. The Georgian language, which doesn’t have grammatically expressed categories of gender, allows such an opportunity. In the end, it turns out that this is a story about two guys.”

However, there is still resistance to this kind of thinking. On May 17th 2013 there was unrest in the centre of Tbilisi. The clergy and so-called protectors of Georgian traditions went out to the streets to defend the honour of the nation. This resulted in large-scale riots and pogroms.  Zura was a high school student at that time. When the May events are mentioned, he winces. Zura says it is painful for him to remember what happened back then.

“The violence is terrible. Especially in the middle of the city, when one beats the other for no reason. It was hard for me, they beat me. But the homophobes are the victims themselves. If in the country one person is ready to kill another only for the fact that this person is somehow different, this is a great danger,” Zura concludes.

Translated by Yulia Oreshina

Marta Ardashelia is a Georgian journalist with TV Imedi.

Georgia, Youth