Abkhazia is my pain too...

I believe that homeland is always a special part in everyone's life. That's why I am with those IDPs from Abkhazia who live next to me and say that "locals" will never understand the pain they experienced by losing everything because of the war. When I hear these words, I try to recall everything that I have in my mind on conflict in Abkhazia.

... I was born in Kutaisi, I was brought up in Kutaisi and now I live in Kutaisi. In this town, next to me live my contemporaries who can not simply say: “I was born in Abkhazia, I was brought up in Abkhazia and now I live in Abkhazia”. Why? Because the terrible war made them leave their native land when they were very little.
The severity of this war was also reflected on my family's life.

I was just ten years old then. My father worked for the Red Cross Society in the Rescue Team. I remember very well a day when I was playing with other children in the yard. Suddenly my father came running and told us that he had to go to Chuberi, to help the people escaping from Abkhazia. My mother’s and grandmother’s eyes filled with tears but they could not say anything.

For several weeks we had not heard anything from my father. It was impossible to contact him. I was a child, but I felt how my family members worried. At last, my father returned, but I saw a quite different person standing in front of me, with bearded and sorrowful face, older. Time by time, he was recalling stories that were very difficult to listen to.
I could not imagine that war might bring so much damage: frozen, hungry, impoverished children, elderly, women and men with nothing to keep them warm... My father’s eyes were filled with tears, when looking at my sister and me, since we reminded him the children of our age, who had unfairly been punished by the war and, with inconsiderable courage, struggled for survival...

I was a child then and I understood everything in my way... Now I am an adult, I was brought up in my native town – Kutaisi. Next to me children have been brought up who underwent great fear and terror from the war; the children who, with frozen hands and feet in rainy and snowy days and sad eyes, were asking my father to save them. That time, I – a child of their age – was sitting at home, dressed warmly, under my mother’s care and could not imagine their trouble. But everything was not finished with this.

Already three years I have been with the people, who are called internally displaced persons. These three years have brought me so close to them, and helped me understand that their problems and trouble is my problem and trouble. Thanks to them I have learnt the most important thing in our lives - the value of peace, one who have not passed through war can not simply get at the root of peace...

That’s why I say without exaggeration - Abkhazia is my pain too...