Apologies to Shakespeare, if only a little, for borrowing the phrase and twisting it far out of context. But it fitted well.
A new playground set is being put together in the yard of Etseri school. This is a gift from an organization called akhalgazrda miznit in Georgian, coming up here all the way from the other side of Tbilisi. It had sat there in pieces waiting for someone to want it, with a few potentially interested parties taking too long to decide, and I jumped at the chance when I heard it was still available. Even the truck transport price of 1000 GEL for it was paid by a friend of mine. The driver, an Azeri in Svaneti for his first time, asked me, “What on earth brought you up here?” To which I spread out my arms and simply said, “The beauty.”
All the labor to clean and install it, too, comes free, courtesy of a young, enthusiastic volunteer group from the USA, here for a few days mostly for this very purpose. In short, all the pieces have come together most wonderfully.
There were a large number of metal and tough plastic pieces (all sortable for a winter in Minnesota, USA, not known for its mild winters) which greeted us when the truck door was opened, drawing gasps from the curious schoolchildren waiting. By this point, the rumor of its imminent arrival had spread, so anticipation was high; and not disappointed.
A last hurdle had been overcome when the school director called her boss in Mestia. “Is it a gift?” “Yes.” “Then we don’t need any paperwork at all; plus, Tony’s one of us, so open all doors!” Most gratifying. We agreed on a location for the roughly 8 by 12 m set with the school director and village mayor, and it was time to unload.
Some people set to cleaning all the pieces, which had been plastic-wrapped some years earlier, but were nonetheless a bit worse for weather, with rags and water. The main engineer in charge of putting the whole complex thing together laid out all the pieces in their proper places, and then spray-painted hole locations right on the ground.
I had organized a digger, which showed up the next morning right on time and made short work of all the holes with its narrowest bucket, plus some leveling of the ground afterwards, in about half a day. The location is a bit prone to getting wet with all the spring snow-melt runoff, so a channel to divert this water is also planned for the summer holidays, which will start at the end of next week.
Then it was time to start carefully setting up the large metal posts in the holes, in sets of 3 or 4, align them to all be vertical with painstaking micro-adjustments of rocks underneath and a sledgehammer, temporarily fix each set with planks, then concrete each set into place. I had done my best to organize a mixer, but it fell through at the last minute due to some faulty electrical parts, so the young men learned how to mix concrete with shovels on a large sheet of steel. (Gravel, sand, cement powder in the right proportions; mix well; make a crater in the middle of the cone; add water, and mix carefully so the water permeated through it and doesn’t run out. Quite a skill, though now they’re becoming masters at it).
There’s a spiraling slide; swings; things to climb and crawl all over. It’s a bit much for kindergarten-age children alone, so we ruled out putting it on their territory, as well as on private land. Here, it will serve all ages. They are already looking longingly at it: but we’ve warned them that they must wait until the last bit of cement is dry, or they run the risk of knocking something out of true and having it stick that way!
There are also the cows to keep out, a practice which is bringing a certain amount of chaos to their routine, which bothers me not at all. They only wander around and leave manure here and there, and I would keep them out permanently if it was up to me. But wiring the large and small gates shut, plus chasing them out when pupils forget this rule, is working fine.
A few more days and the magnificent thing will be complete, ready to bring many years of enjoyment to the whole village, we hope. Really glad to be the recipients of this fine gift. Play on!
BLOG by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
