Gill had bought a witch’s hat from Asda (aka Wallmart) when we were in the UK and I wore this and all black clothes to school. I suppose I looked like Harry Potter’s teacher. The people I passed in the streets either didn’t notice or were somewhat confused. Halloween is a new holiday in Georgia, recently imported from America and many adults are unfamiliar with it. However, the children have taken to it. There was a “party” at #6 school. Balloons and other decorations were put up. Pumpkins had been carved and they were placed in a circle in the hallway.
My hat was temporarily adopted by Keti, the school’s director, and some of the children had made costumes – mostly the girls.

We went to a place where many Abkazian IDPs have been housed. These were IDPs from 1992 – not the ones from 2008 who have either returned to their homes or have been housed in many new houses recently built by the government. The place where the 1992 IDPs were housed was an old soviet “sanitorium” in Likani, just outside Borjomi proper. Borjomi and its surroundings have a number of these. They were rather grand in their day, albeit made in the fifties and sixties of ugly concrete – the favorite soviet building material. Essentially, the “middle-class” would come to “take the waters” and generally have a relaxing time with good food, massages and all the things we associate with a health spa. They are grand no more. The windows are broken, the concrete is crumbling, there are holes in the roof and the place is astonishingly cold and depressing. The scenery is nice. These people have been under these conditions for seventeen years. No child there remembers Abkhazia; they were all born in Likani. The government hasn’t done much for them and doesn’t seem to care about them. The recently built houses are for the recent IDPs. We were shocked and very depressed.

We returned to Georgia after visiting the US and the UK (twice). While we were away, we tried to raise money for Georgia, but our efforts were not very encouraging. People in the US were thinking mostly of the upcoming election and people in both the US and the UK were worried (almost terrified) about the sinking market and the banking crisis. It was not an ideal time to try to separate people from some of the little money they had left!