Big Problems for a Small Village

Nobody gets surprised at goiter and various intestine diseases in the village of Enteli in the Adigeni district. It is a real story of a poor village. (photo: Avtandil Lomidze)

The village of Enterli is ten kilometers away from Adigeni and is located on a high hill. Villagers are mostly farmers and they look after their cattle. They are cultivating land without tractors and the main working tools for them are hoe and spade.

One hundred and forty families live in the village. There are no clubs, libraries and nursery schools in the village. The villagers joke that the only office that functions in the area are a school and a mill.

Stories of the Office ‘Mill’ and the Miller

“Local people were settled in the area in 1944 from the Sachkhere district. I was three years old at that time and cannot remember anything. My father used to tell me how difficult was for them to leave their homeland,” said Avtandil Lomidze.

He is a miller for the village mill now. “Who works now? I am a rear exception,” smiled the old man.

Lomidze can guess the level of poverty in the village according to the weight of corn flour. “Who was weighing the corn in the past? They were putting the sack and left the mill. Now they do not waste even one seed of the corn. The life has become too difficult,” said the miller.

The general poverty is aggravated by the lack of drinking water.

“Salted water is flowing three kilometres away from the village. That water causes goitre. My poor mother also had the disease, she was operated on, but…” scratches his forehead with floured hand.

Office ‘School’

Children are given lessons at two buildings in the village. One of them is a former building of the nursery school and another is the former collective farm’s administration’s office. 

There are one hundred pupils in the school and most of them say that having left school they are not going to stay in the village.

“What shall I do here? Where should I work here?” Tornike Obolashvili, a pupil of the eleventh grade asked.

Teachers and pupils dream about computers. “I have seen a computer on TV,” said Teona Kharaishvili, a pupil of the eleventh grade.

Nobody is employed in the village and unemployment is a big problem for them.

“The youth spends the whole day in the street and I am sorry for them,” said a villager, Tsiala Katamadze.

The villagers say that 99 % of the village children have goitre. Nobody gets surprised at it and at various intestine diseases. The problem is caused by drinking water.

“Six years ago doctors arrived at school to test teachers and children on goitre. 99 % of children had the disease. Those doctors gave them some tablets for single use and nobody has remembered about us since that time,” said school teacher, Marine Nozadze.

“Children need treatment but their parents are poor and cannot afford medical assistance. Drinking water in the village does not have I enough iodine and we think the disease is caused by that factor. Intestine diseases are widely spread as well as eruption on the skin. The water is full of worms and broods,” said Elene Chkhitunidze, a teacher.

  Gulo Kokhodze, Adigeni