The Entrepreneur Who Left the City for his Home Village
“Someone has to carry on the family name, that’s why I came back. It’s just me and my grandparents living here. There used to be more than twenty families living in this village, now there are only seven. Here you have your own land, everything you need comes from your farm. Clean air, clean food- what else can you ask for? I worked in the city for a while. It payed better, but I was unhappy. I was working from early morning to late at night and going nowhere.”
All too often one hears about the rural flight of young people leaving their home towns and villages and moving to large cities in search of better opportunities. This is problematic not only because it causes overcrowding in urban areas, but because it leads to a loss of culture between generations, as there are less and less people to preserve local traditions.
Villages across Europe are becoming ageing relics of a bygone era, unable to adapt to the challenges of globalization. This appears to be unavoidable in developing countries, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Recent growth in Georgia’s tourism sector has made many people optimistic about the country’s future.
With tourism comes new economic potential, and some motivated entrepreneurs, like 24 year old Gia Charkviani, are seizing the opportunities emerging in their home villages.
Gia was born in Ushguli, the highest inhabited community in Europe. He lived and went to school there until fifth grade. He later moved to the town of Gardabani with his family, to live with his grandparents. Many families from Ushguli were relocated to Gardabani by the government after a devastating avalanche in 1987 and the several hard winters which followed.
Many other families chose to move in the 1990s and early 2000s because of the difficult economic situation in the Svaneti region, which experienced a serious drop in tourism and economic activity due to the unrest of the post-soviet period. There were few economic opportunities for Gia and his family during this time, and living closer to the capital offered hopes of a brighter future.
After finishing the local school system in Gardabani, Gia moved to the capital, Tbilisi, to attend university and find a job. His mother, father and brother moved to Ukraine to work. After graduating from the Georgian Technical University, he worked with his father and brother in Ukraine for a year as a mechanic.
He then returned to Georgia and worked with an online betting company for a year. “It may have payed better”, he told me, “but I was unhappy. I was working from early morning to late at night and going nowhere.”
This is the reality of life for many young people who leave their home villages to find work in bigger cities like Kutaisi or Tbilisi. Even with a university education, high competition and limited job opportunities means that many are left working in minimum wage jobs which provide just enough income for subsistence. Living costs are also higher in the capital, making daily life difficult.
“Here you have your own land, all you need comes from your farm. Clean air, healthy food- what else can you ask for?” Gia tells me. He now runs his own guesthouse in Ushguli, where he lives with his grandparents. He also offers tours for adventure-seeking travelers on horseback across mountain trails and through aggressive Caucasus rivers by the Shkara glacier.
He is able to do this largely due to a recent revitalization of tourism in the Svaneti region. I can’t blame him for wanting to come back- even in a country as profoundly beautiful as Georgia, I have found few places which rival Ushguli. The village is nestled in a valley between two virgin Caucasus ranges, which look much the same today as they did thousands of years ago.
I first meet Gia while trekking through the mountains towards the Shkara glacier. It was beginning to get dark and he offered me a ride back to the village on horse, free of charge, as he was going that way anyways. As we ride into the village, he points out the Svan Coshkis (towers) dotting the village.
These were built between the 10th-13th centuries and have protected the area from invasion for hundreds of years. While other regions in Georgia were conquered internally by various lords and externally by surrounding empires, Ushguli remained Ubatono, lordless.
Resilience runs in the blood of the people of Ushguli, Gia tells me with pride. The village was only finally conquered in 1930 when the Soviet Union began destroying its towers with dynamite, but it never quite accepted Soviet cultural pressure.
Recent history has had a substantial impact on this village, however. The 1992 war with Russia in Abkhazia resulted in the destabilization of much of Georgia as weapons flowed into the country. Svaneti was particularly affected because it neighbors the Abkhazia region in the north-west corner of the country. Many Svans living in Abkhazia were forced to abandon their homes, jobs, and lives, and flee to Svaneti, often unable to take anything more than the clothes they were wearing at the time, or as one woman described it- “the nails on our fingers”.
Criminal gangs were responsible for armed robberies of both internally displaced Georgians fleeing to other regions, as well as visitors to the region. This state of disorder persisted until 2004, when the government of the time organized a police crackdown in the region against the local crime lords. This was followed by an initiative to revitalize tourism in the region.
A new road was built connecting Zugdidi, the capital of the Samegrelo region, and Mestia, the capital of Svaneti. This allowed for a larger volume of tourists to flow into the region, which in turn allowed locals to open guesthouses and new restaurants.
The flow of capital also extended to villages like Ushguli, which has allowed Gia to earn a livelihood in the tourism industry with his guesthouse and horse tours. This revitalization is not happening everywhere in Georgia, however. In other rural areas such as Samegrelo, Lower Svaneti, Imereti and Kartli where there is a low flow of tourism, there are few financial opportunities for young people, forcing them to move towards large cities in order to support their families.
Gia’s story is not merely one of luck. He, like many others in rural Georgia, used his university education in the capital to seize the opportunity present in his home village. His decision to develop his family’s land comes from an ancestral feeling of attachment. “Someone has to carry on the family name, that’s why I came back.” He tells me.
“The towers here are passed down between generations, almost every family owns one.” He points to a wide stone tower in his backyard. “That one belongs to my family. I’d like to repair it and use it as a guesthouse for tourists one day, but the government doesn’t allow us to repair our own towers.”
Though the towers of Ushguli are UNESCO protected, no government or outside aid goes into their maintenance. The official UNESCO statement regarding Ushguli acknowledges the difficulty of maintaining the towers, citing “severe weather conditions that isolate the region in winter […], the lack of financial resources” as well as “insufficient conservation and management capacities” as the primary challenges to their preservation.
The government and UNESCO have concerns that locals do not have the necessary expertise to repair the structures without damaging them, putting the two parties at an impasse. In the meantime, however, the towers are slowly crumbling. “There used to be over 400 towers in Ushguli” Gia tells me, “now there are barely 60.”
One of the most striking issues present was the lack of barriers and limits on where tourists are allowed to go. There were virtually none. People were climbing up towers which were already cracking to pose for pictures, and there wasn’t a single sign asking them not to. As tourism in the area increases, measures must be taken by the local community as well as by the Georgian government to ensure responsible growth and to protect these historic towers.
Ushguli, much like the rest of Georgia, faces a curious contrast between old and new, reflecting the rapidity with which a pseudo-European appetite is entering the country.
I sense this while walking through the village’s central street. On one side there is a cafe which offers travelers WiFi and a place to meet and relax after a long day of hiking. On the other side, cows. Lots of them. And not just on the other side, actually. Everywhere. In the street, in peoples’ yards, on mountain ledges, by the river. There are more cows than people in Ushguli- there’s a refreshing authenticity to that. Sure, tourism may be adding non-traditional elements to the village, but these cows certainly aren’t going anywhere.
Many of the newer homes in the village are built from wood and metal, understandably. It’s much easier and faster to build a home from this material, as well as to renovate in order to add new amenities and rooms. It’s important to remember, however, that the stone buildings and towers have stood for over 1,000 years and are still used today. It is these buildings which preserve the legacy of this majestic village.
Gia is optimistic. He believes that as tourism steadily increases, the economic situation of Ushguli will become more appealing for young people to come back and start businesses. Those who do return should follow in Gia’s lead, developing tourism responsibly alongside the local community, rather than trying to change it. Inauthentic modern boutique hotels should stay far, far away from this place.
