“GABAHOLA” OR WHATEVER!
WELCOME
We all arrived to a little town – Kobuletti, in Georgia. Green painted hotel called Pyramid, hosted us. It was 16th of September 2009, and the next 10 days promised to be unforgetable. The town was colorful and calm, and almost all the shops and cafes were closed: “Summer time” was over. 8 young people from each participant country – Armenia, Belgium, Georgia and Spain, got together in a seaside town to discuss migration problems. Youth Exchange International Project was called “Spacing Migration, Sizing Conflict: The Think Thing”. The first day was not so busy so we had a lot of time for walking, knowing each other, finding out who is who, what there was interesting and special in our countries. The most interesting and funny part of the first day was memorizing the names – Joost, Tsotne, Agar, Tamuna, Gocha… and a lot of new anusual names. And that day every participant got a name of his Secret Friend. It meant that the person had to do many interesting, pleasant, creative, “sweet” things for his secret friend, trying to stay unknown untill the end of the project.

MIGRATION

Next days were full of discussions, sessions, definitions and a city game. The later was the most impressive. When we were presenting our trip to Kobuletti there were so many interesting outcomes: “The nuts and walnuts are the same for albatrosses in the rain”… Each participant country had to prepare a 15-minute film about the migration issue in their country. For Armenians and Georgians the problem was the emigration and refugees, for Belgium and Spain it was hard to host migrants from other countries, in another ward, the problem was “inmigration”. All participants agreed that the films made by young people were professional and gave the main understanding of the problem in their country.

According to groups, “The migration is a movement from one place to another because of economical, political, social, personal and other positive or negative reasons”. Trying to understand the reasons of conflicts related to migration, Belgium team organized a role-play in which each hero had to solve his problems and to integrate him/herself into the new society. We also knew about the pyramid of conflicts, the steps and phases of its developments, the ways of regulations and many other useful things. It was pointed that in many cases sides of conflicts forgot about the conflict subject and just got into the struggle for a principle. Spanish young people discussed migration problems related to identity. The groups had to find decisions for real situations and cases. The decisions were liberal and fair: the participants tried to do their best for collaboration, tolerance and social integration of each personage. During these games there were a real discovery: we had so many actors and actresses in our groups. Varduhi from Armenia was a unique “gipsy” with a lot of improvises. “I didn’t give money to anyone, I usually take money”. Manuel from Spain embodied a teacher with not usual sexual orientation, and Frank (Spain) was unforgettable in his “nurse skirt”. Migration problems and conflict management issues were discussed also with professionals who observed the situation and tried to find some solutions for migration problems. The participants of youth exchange visited Zugdidi (a frontier town), met with representatives of UN/ EUMM and Association Atinati. The professionals gave a very useful information about migrants, conflicts and related problems in Georgia. Participants avoided the discussion of Russian-Georgian conflist. Georgian team leader Giorgi Kakulia explained that they would be subjective and not fair if they presented the problem only from their point of view, and if we hadn’t opportunity to listen to another side.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xun-jx1Z7v0&feature=player_embedded

INTERCULTURAL LEARNING

It was very important for organizers to have a global understanding of cultures that were presented in Youth Exchange project. Armenians were responsible for that part of the programm. So all the groups had tasks to mix the toasts of all participant countries, greetings. “Gabahola” was the common greeting for whole the participants; “Gabahalo” was the answer. Cultural nights were the most unforgettable, colorful, bright and tasty part of the project: country presentations, films, national clothes, music, dances, songs, meals and drinks… Armenians tought all the others how to dance Qochari – Armenian national dance, Spanish people brought a lot of fish. Georgians sugessted to make khinkali – Georgian traditional meal, by themselves, Belgiums did the same with the waffle, and also prepared a quiz about Belgium, and now we all know that Belgiums favoutite word is “whatever”. Two days later every national team had to discribe the other nations according their new knowledge, understanding and impressions. After that each nation had to discribe itself to make more clear who they are and where they were coming from. Cultural evenings were organized to present the countries, their culture, main customs, meals, arts and so on. According to participants, Georgia was famous for ist wine, Chacha (alcohol), crazy drivers, black clothes, caws in the street, Osetian conflict, and Armenians also mentioned Mimino. Belgium was famous for its bear, chockolate, crazy people, fun, 3 language country, mixed cultures and Jack Brell. They remembered Armenia as a country of Noah, Charles Aznavour, SOAD, Genocide, Ararat, brandy-cognac, lavash, sujukh and basturma. We all described Spain as a land of corrida, bulls, sun, dances, gitar, Goya, Dali, flamenco, summerfeelling. Every country was unique and doesn’t matter what you have and how rich you are: it’s more interesting how you present what you have, trying to raise an interest in other people. All people were so happy to taste a piece of cake on the Armenian Independance Day, 23th of September. The hymn of Armenia, champaign, cake and congtratulations made the atmosphere really festively.

FUN

Nights were the real time when people got together and discovered each other: dancing, funny games, drink and endless conversations in the balcons were so interesting that in the mornings it was really hard to wake up! The weather was rainy, cloudy so the swimming or barbeque in the mountains was not as possible as all wanted. But it made people more creative and they managed their time in the best way: Social committee managed a lot of interesting activities with games, tasks, dances, music, drinks and more drinks. The theme party in a memory of Michael Jackson brought together almost all historical and famous people from Jesus Christ and Adolph Hitler to Mahmud Ahmadinejade and Peris Hilton . Two days later, on September 23, we had an excursion to Batumy, walked in the rainy streets, take photos of old-fasioned town, in the evening we enjoyed the Traditional Georgian Dinner in a restaurant – Tamada Tsotne (Georgia), his translator Beso (Georgia) and Vice Tamada Bert (Belgium)!

SEE YOU SOON

All the projects have a very bad feature: one day they just finish. “Spacing Migration, Sizing Conflict: The Think Thing” project was almost over. All the participants from Armenia, Belgium, Georgia and Spain gave the outlines of follow-up projects. Then the organizers asked us to evaluate the project. It was „very nice“, „grate“, „we are looking for the continuation“…. We went again through all the fears we had before coming to the project and found out that the only one that came true, was about the weather. Whatever, we all are waiting for the moment to say again „GABAHOLA“!!!

yeritac.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/the-think-thing/