Inessa and Eka

One of the joys about my job is meeting and working with local experts, and forming friendships with them. Two such people are Inessa and Eka, who worked with me on the Kura Basin project in Tbilisi between 2002 and 2004. Inessa was the Country Manager and Eka was the office administrator.

Since that time I haven’t been back to Georgia until now, but I have kept in touch with them through emails and Christmas cards, and I couldn’t possibly go back to Georgia without trying to meet them.

And so it was that old colleagues met up for some supper together and to talk about the old times and what we have been doing since. Eka has just become a mother, which for somebody of her talents seems no big deal; she is combining this with running an eco-tourism NGO and being a project officer for a German charitable foundation. Inessa has just completed a two-year assignment on another EU project for my employer Mott MacDonald and so is getting some well-earned rest.

We ate delicious khatchapouri and shashlik on a terrace overlooking the monumentally ugly new Presidential Palace by the side of “our” river Kura and talked about things. They told me about the events of last August and how tragic it was; Eka’s mother and sister briefly became refugees when the Russians bombed their home village. Even now, Eka must make a 5-hour detour to get to the village because the route through South Ossetia is no longer open to Georgians.

It was a strange evening because personally these two lovely ladies are thriving on their chosen path in life, whilst they grieve for their country.