After the success of my retirement blogs reminiscing about our American and Irish experiences over the years, I thought I would try somewhere very different. The clue is in the image above and at end. In case you didn’t know this is a book of Georgian poetry*. And no that’s not Georgia the American state. As I say I’ve moved on from that. Well if going back to 2008 is moving on.
There’s definitely a cautionary tale in this retirement blog. It’s the one about getting overly nostalgic about one’s working days. That slight hankering to be a working person full of purpose and a sense of importance if only self-importance.
Ironically this period of my working life was in some ways just about as important as I ever got. Certainly before I began this chapter of my life I thought that I’d achieved my long-time goal. This was to be an international consultant and fly to exciting places. The reality was a bit different and reading back thorough my diary (the keeping of which allows me to write this retirement blog and recall the facts with reasonable accuracy) of that time reminds me of the painful reality of this experience. Reading it made me think maybe retirement’s not so bad after all.
So the Georgia in question was the country. Originally not a country at all but a part of the USSR. Until 1991 I think when it became a country when the USSR broke up and became plain old Russia and all the separated countries of which Georgia was one. This was where Stalin was born by the way, some recommendation.
I digress. My experience of this country was when I was working for UNICEF. We’d worked in Turkey before this but although Turkey thought it was willing to pay the price of Western interference in its education system to achieve membership of the EU, they decided we were too big a price and asked us to leave.
But not long before Georgia came into play the following year, as I say 2008. We went twice in that year. In March, May and we were due to return in September. I was in some ways (not others which I’ll explain later) looking forward to this third visit because we were, as well as more work in Tblisi, going up country to the beautiful mountains. But the Russians buggered that up by re-invading that part of the country that they believed really was theirs.
The result was that all the people who didn’t want to be Russian again were relocated to Tblisi and housed in the schools in which we had been planning to work. The people who wished to be Russian remained and carried on with their lives. Call it being flexible, which is something you need if you live in poor countries.
Of course I did not think too much about any hardship caused by the invasion (not the word the Russians would have used of course, I expect they would have called it liberation or some such), I was slightly miffed because I didn’t get to see beautiful Georgia.
When I say slightly miffed the reason was that in some ways I had actually had enough of being an international consultant. I wasn’t totally convinced I wanted to continue working for my ‘boss’ at UNICEF. That was the problem he thought he was my ‘boss’. After years of pretty much doing as I liked here was somebody telling me what to do. He knew more about the contract I accept that but I knew more about the product we were offering. A violence audit for schools if you want to know.
Anyway it sort of ended badly with me telling him he could fuck right off if he thought he was going to manage me when I knew far more than him about our product. I agree, can’t see anything wrong with that even after all these years. So we parted, at the end of the second week, on luke-warm terms. Whether I would have worked with him again (or him with me) I don’t know and the Russians ensured it would never be put to the test. I am sad that I didn’t get to see that part of Georgia though.
So that was the end of that for me and he and I didn’t work together again. He went on to work in ‘the Stans’ as UNICEF people called them. Seven countries in central Asia Google reminds me – Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Again very mixed feelings that I didn’t visit these places. They sound quite exotic with the possible exception of the last two.*
Regrets, I’ve had a few, but on the whole this probably wasn’t one of them. But I do look back of parts of this ‘consultancy’ phase of my career with some affection. One very fond memory which I’d completely forgotten about until Mrs Summerhouse reminded me was my security / health and safety check required by UNICEF for anybody working in dangerous parts of the world (I did rather hope that Georgia wasn’t dangerous – it was but only when crossing the road). I wonder if they still have it.
My boss, he of managerial ambitions (he was a head of a large secondary school before taking on this contract), had gone out to either Turkey and / or Georgia and had taken the test before. He told us about it on his return. Especially we laughed at one question which asked the taker of the test ‘what should you do if you are kidnapped at gun-point and bundled into the boot of a car and driven off?’ How we laughed. The correct answer, in case you are either asked or worse still find yourself in this situation, is to kick out the tail lights and stick your hand out and wave. Yeah, right.
Anyway I thought not much more about it until just before flying out it was my turn to take the test. You had to score 25 points or you failed. If you failed you had to wait a month before taking the test again. If I failed this would have meant my part in the trip was cancelled. And at that time I wanted to go.
You could see your score accumulating as you went through the test. Believe it or believe it not, by the time I got to the very last question I had scored 24 points. In other words if I didn’t get the last question right the trip was off. And what was the last question? Well, obviously you’re ahead of me. Correct. What should you do … wave out of broken tail light.
I passed and set off to Georgia. I’ve now written over 1200 words and the retirement blog I thought would be brief with photos, just a short Friday retirement blog, has turned into a full one with only one photo at the top (and bottom) of the book. So as with the American saga I shall return to this reminisce. It was hard to write but brought back some fun memories but not a wish to come out of retirement and start working again.
*Bought from a flea market in Tblisi. I bought the book, my ‘boss’ bought a spanner. What does this tell us?