Maybe you thought I lost my phone in the middle of no where and had some problem. But no- it was the most beautiful part of Abkhazia, high in the mountains where cars could hardly go because there is no way but where people live without much thinking of the things like mobile phones. And I was too busy to remember every time where I have put my mobile phone, in my bag's front pocket, or side pocket, or another side pocket, or inside pocket, or just in it, or maybe not in it at all. Consider that I received tens of phone calls in this day when I should have been consentrating on the field work of my firms first research. I had to search for my phone for minutes while trying to answer a question of my interviewers, or see the beatiful country flowing from the window of the minibus we were in.
I wanted - really wanted to have no mobile phone at all. Back in the old days when there were only landlines, researchers would make a call to the local administrator, or the single market of the village to send the word that they will be arriving on a specific day and related people should be waiting. Since there was no way to call on a mobile and cancel in the last minute they would be there. However, what we had to do was call the exact same persons over and over again. Many times they were not reachable, there was no network where we are, they did not have money on the phone, or when we talked we were asking the same questions of where, when, how, which, what to eachother and when we could finally make it we would have talked over the phone so many times that there will be repeated conversations, things that we talked mobile-to-mobile minutes, hours and days ago many times...
But, those places we had been, needed silence. Silence divided only by smiles and dreams of "congenial" people... The silent blue skies got colored only by flying birds... The green grass lost only by being eaten by goats. The trees singing out of silence only by a warm wind that reminds you of how simple life was once.
We have been to rural Abkhazia today. In the middle of nowhere for many of you. For me where life exists. With all its people regardless of their ethnic origin or education or even their level of awareness of the fast flowing life outside of their beautiful surrounding... With all those questions to ask, all those details to see, all those realities to understand, all those forgotten stories to remember... We were in places many of you have never been. Many of you will never be... Where I wish I didn't have no phone... Where I wish...
I lost my phone in my bag (or out of my bag) so many times today. Maybe, it is I did not want to share those moments over the phone with someone who would not understand because they have never been there. They have never seen the things I saw as I saw at that moment.
