”Everyone is required to take leave - by order!” is not something that you hear from your employer too often. But this is a Mission, and mission life is quite different as I’ve come to learn in the past year. And on top of it we have Corona, which as we all know has turned the world upside down. It’s like we’ve been at the school disco, playing freeze-dance, and everyone’s frozen on the spot they were in when the music stopped. I found myself stuck in Tbilisi (not a bad place to be stranded at all if I might say) working diligently, or quite amazingly actually. Gold stars to my great team!
And now, when ordered to take leave, my little team had to coordinate dates and here I am with two weeks of holiday in July before I get to go home and see my boys in August. So what does one plan to do in these Corona times? It’s not like I can take a plane out of the country, or have a friend visit. So, drive and see more than half of this amazing country – that’s what!! My newly acquired partner in crime, Medea (a Mercedes-Benz GLK350 thank you very much) and I hit the road, planning to see the sea, mountains and forest. There are no tourists in the country (thank you Corona), so make way, here we come!
And how amazing it’s been! I had some lovely company from amazing colleagues for certain stretches (and even timed a rendezvous with friends who were freed from their 14-day quarantine), I learned more about Georgian history and culture, I ate too much and sipped on many wines of the gods (the homemade chacha received plenty of attention too). Everything has been perfect; especially sitting for 5 hours at an Israeli restaurant in Batumi reading a book that I’ve been desperate to consume, and an 8-hour hike in Mestia resulting in views that will forever be with me, and a "small lunch" that turned into a drunken sack-punching with the local boys.
So my second last stopover is up in the hills of Imereti, a family guest house recommended to me by our resident-amazing-security-trainer-hiker (Mr. “Believe you me!”). I’m in the middle of nowhere and I feel like I’ve been transported to Africa. The other guests are from Latvia and Chad (including the son of the president who occupies the room next to mine) who are doing a one-month airforce pilot training (they're all wearing Top Gun uniforms in different colours OMG?!). It’s just so random. I haven’t seen hardly any foreigners during my travels because of Corona, but here I’m in the midst of something quite unexpected.
Trying to fall asleep was instead a massive dejavu to Africa; my room’s AC was out of order and the 42 degrees heat of the day wasn’t really decreasing resulting in wet sheets, killing the massive insects fluttering around me (Georgia, bednets are a great thing!) increased my cortisol levels rather than melatonin hormones, and I heard laughter and banter in deep voices that brought me back to the continent where I’ve had so many adventures. I may have thought I was taking a holiday in Georgia, but the universe decided I needed a little detour. So I got sea, mountains, forests and Africa. Didi madloba. Asante.
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