This 9 Year Old Entrepreneur Speaks Five Languages
It’s morning in Murqmeli, one of four small villages that make up Ushguli, the highest inhabited community in Europe. The sun is just barely breaking over the peaks of Caucasus. The chickens may still be asleep but Giorgi is strapping on his boots, zipping his Adidas jacket, and hoisting his green sack of salt over his shoulder. The first rooster calls and Giorgi is out the door, running down the winding mountain road in search of coming cars to which he can sell his mother’s homemade “Svan salt”- a regional speciality made by combining the perfect proportion of Georgian spices with mountain salt. He works every day, rain or shine, to help his family build a better home in the village. It’s the summer season now, which means no school and a high flow of tourists coming up to see the untamed beauty of one of the most remote parts of the country.
Much of Murqmeli was destroyed after a devastating avalanche in 1987. As a result, many families like Giorgi’s migrated south to cities like Kutaisi, leaving behind their ancestral lands. The recent growth in tourism and improvement in the economy has allowed some families to return, and families like Giorgi’s are driving the reconstruction of the village.
The salt which Giorgi sells, called “Svanuri Marili” in Georgian, is treasured in the capital because the same quality cannot be easily reproduced and is difficult to find outside of a traditional Svan home. It can be made from many things, but in order to make it like the Svans you should keep it simple. No more than four to five spices. The salt Giorgi sells is made from a mixture of thick marili (mountain salt), utskho suneli (crushed blue fenugreek), roughly ground kotsakhuri (sumac), freshly ground kinsi (coriander), and garlic powder. The result is a fragrant, savory seasoning full of bold flavors which dance in your mouth.
I met Giorgi by accident, when I was making the four hour drive in a marshutka (a local mini bus), from Mestia to Ushguli. It was pouring rain and apart from myself and five other highly motivated (or completely insane) travelers, no one was taking the trek up that day. About three quarters of the way up, we were stopped by a little boy in a rain jacket and a green canvas bag slung over his shoulder. He walked up to the driver and told him something in Georgian. The driver asked us if we would be interested in buying Svan salt. Being the cynical travelers we were, we replied no and continued our journey. Giorgi stayed behind in the rain, waiting for other cars.
I later arrived in the small village of Murqmeli, the first you pass when entering the Ushguli district.
The most immediately striking feature of the village are the thirty meter tall towers, called “coshkis” in Georgian, which dot the village. They were built between the 9th and 13th centuries for defensive purposes. Villagers would climb into the towers and fend off any outsiders foolish enough to invade. It is because of these fortifications, and the remoteness of this village that Ushguli has remained “ubatono”, or lordless for millennia. It was only finally conquered in the 1930s, when the Soviet Union came in with dynamite to demolish the towers.
I receive odd looks from locals. Most tourists don’t stop in this village- they go on to upper Ushguli, where there is more tourism infrastructure: signs in English inviting visitors, alpine campsites, and wifi-cafes. If you don’t speak either Georgian or Russian, that may seem to be a more comfortable option. But Murqmeli had an ancient, undiscovered charm. The kind written about in Romantic era novels but seldom left to be experienced in modern life.
The village invites you to discover the stories it has hidden for centuries. Stories are built into the thousand year old towers, paved into the mud and rock streets, piled upon the stone tile-thatched roofs. Stories are hammered into the rough wooden picket fences outlining farm properties, they churn through the aggressive mountain river flowing beside the village. They are lost in the density of the surrounding forest. Eons of history sit patiently waiting to be unraveled by curious travelers.
A solitary goat watches me attentively as I walk towards my guesthouse. I am warmly greeted by my hosts, Megi Gabulgani and Gogi Gvachliani. They have three young children who energetically run around the house. As per tradition, they also live with Gogi’s mother and father, both of whom are over 80 and both of whom still work at the farm. Call it the fresh mountain air.
The next day I set off to explore the village. I wandered out of the ezo (yard) of Megi and Gogi’s home.
In the distance I hear foreigners speaking. Curious, I go to say hello. It’s a group of five travelers from the Czech Republic who are similarly intrigued by the unadvertised beauty of Murqmeli. They wandered over from the upper village. We walk together for a while.
Somewhere between a stone tower and the still observant goat sitting on the second floor of a barn, we run across Giorgi, touting his green bag.
I motion to introduce myself, thinking that there is no way that he could have possibly remembered me from our brief interaction on the road earlier. “Don’t you remember me?” He asks, bemused. I offer to translate for him but he is uninterested. He immediately begins speaking in English to the Czech travelers: “Do you want to buy some Svan salt? It is the best in Svaneti, it’s made by my mother. Four Lari for one bag, six Lari for two.”
They begin murmuring among themselves. I ask Giorgi how long he’s been selling salt. He quickly responds in Georgian: “Hey i’m kind of busy, can you just ask them if they want any salt?” The Czechs, amused by his professional demeanor, buy six bags. Giorgi thanks them and sets off.
— —
The next morning I ask Gogi if he knows anything about a young boy who sells Svan salt on the road. He laughs, “Of course I do! That’s my nephew, he lives right next door!”. He goes outside and calls him over and a few minutes later he’s here, dressed in his matching pajamas and slippers.
As I speak to him he is half distracted by the cartoons playing in the room. Life here in the remote mountains is hard, you have to grow up fast, it’s always been that way. But childhood is still childhood. I tell him about my project and that I’m writing about local people for an international audience. He looks over and, with Gogi still in the room, half jokingly offers me his own guesthouse to stay in, assuring me that his mother runs the most top notch, least expensive guest house in Ushguli. He also offers to find me a horse and a marshutka home, all with a dealmaker’s commision, of course.
He tells me that he can speak five languages- Svan (the local language of Svaneti), Georgian and English fluently, and that he is learning Russian and Turkish from TV. I ask him if I can come along to document him while he works. “Yes”, he responds as if people ask him this all the time, “let me get my work clothes on”.
He comes back sporting a blue jacket and shorts, and his emblematic green bag of Svan salt. Once we are out and ready to go he springs into action, leaping from edge to edge of the road to avoid the puddles which I clumsily stumble my way through in an effort to keep up. It was sunny that day and there were far more cars making the trek up than the day before. He ran up to one bus and started speaking in Russian, but to no avail- they were not interested. We continued running around the bumpy mountain road, stopping a few more cars, one full of English speakers, one full of Georgians, all without success.
I asked Giorgi if he had considered selling a bit up the road at the entrance to central Ushguli where the tourists get off. He hesitated for a moment, saying that his mother did not want him to go up into the village, but then agreed to come along. On the way up to the drop off spot, we encountered a girl named Mari Karkiashvili, also from Murqmeli. Giorgi paused and said “that’s my sister!”, and then proceeded to go up to the girl and tell her, in a hushed voice as if for me not to hear: “you’re my sister, right? Yeah, tell him you’re my sister”. She met him with a confused pause. Giorgi told me that she is planning to open the first cafe in the village.
When we arrive at the bus drop off area, Giorgi begins working his magic. Within ten minutes, he manages to sell almost fifteen bags of salt, pitching his product in English, Georgian, and Russian. On the rare occasion that he does not share a language in common with a traveler, as was the case for two French tourists, he improvises with hand and body signals. It doesn’t really matter what language Giorgi sells in. His charismatic confidence transcends language barriers.
Although the work he is doing may not result in any major economic changes, it is reflective of a refreshing optimism held by the people of this village. An optimism which pushes them to persevere in the face of hardship.
Just as their ancestors remained strong and persevered in the face of countless invasions, Giorgi, Mari, and their families all now remain strong in their resolve to reinvigorate Murqmeli and attract foreign visitors. Giorgi is doing what he can to help, one bag of salt at a time.
