I applied to attend the meeting of the World Abkhaz-Abaza People's Assembly and said I will stay only for three days. At the airport, to see the joy and excitement of all those people, made me change my mind and I said, I will stay for a week together with the long term group. IT was a good decision. On the second and last day of the meeting, the had prepared a dinner. There I was walking around the tables and stopped by a table full of young people where joyful laughs was heard. I asked if anyone spoke English, and found out these people were the employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia and all spoke English. One of them was very kind and friendly and asked me to the table. I explained to him that I was a sociologist and I would like to know his opinion and feelings about the event. (Than my Russian was really poor, I had no practice at all so I could only communicate with English speakers). This young boy, with glowing look in his eyes, told me how he was happy to see his people smiling, first time since the war. He told me how it was important that Abkhaz should return to their homeland... I said I was interested very much in the topic of return... Than my focus was more on Adygeya though... He said we need sociologists in Abkhazia and I said "will you help me if I come?". "Anything I can do..." Before I get up from that table (a few hours later) I promised him I will come back to stay and work on the topic of return migration/repatriation and any other topic that will be usefull for them. He on the other hand promised to help me with the language school at the university, accommodation, connections and job if I wish. He did everything he could as he promised. Wrote for me many letters, made many calls. Even one year after I came to Abkhazia, I told I will take the job he offered me a year ago, and I am still working in that centre... That boy was Maxim Gunjia, my first friend in Abkhazia, now the Minister of Foriegn Affairs, back than Vice Minister. A person who can be happy with a smile on his people's face. A person who can keep his promises. I was lucky to know him. Because thanks to him, I came to Abkhazia.
Anyway, working with migrant communities is always hard. In the case of Abkhazia, where people have "many others" and always feel the sense of "being the other" it was also hard. There has been moments that I wanted to give up on this topic and leave or live but away from the return migrants. However, there has been always people motivating me for the study of this topic, as many as there were people trying to de-motivate me.
Still my first country wide field work experience came with a position I took in an NGO in 2008. They asked me to do a survey and I said there is no sociology department and I need to educate young people so that what we do will be of good quality.
I organized 4 parallel trainings on field research methodology, with more than 40 people but only 15 of them could complete the training. The second group was 4 months later and just before I was starting the field work on the countrywide political participation and pre-election survey. Though I was a stranger in the field, and my team was unexperienced, we managed to do 1130 Questionnaire interviews- anonym (since the topic was sensitive) in all over Abkhazia. I used the voting regions (36 of them but the last three was combined into 1 since I did not have the full list) as stratas and the team did at least 30 interviews with random people in all stratas.
Anyway, less than a year after the first country wide survey, I established a firm for Social and Market Research (research.bazala.net) and realized a second wide survey- a beneficiary asessment about a development project. The third project came just after that, and we have just recently finished the fieldwork since we had many reasons to delay our work, including elections in December (and pre-election period) which was stressfull though our topic was non political; New Year Celebrations that last about a month (Christmas, New Year, Old New Year, New-old New year, etc....) when people were all drunk; the exams in the university, since many of the team members are students at the university; holiday after the exams, since we all needed a rest; than the loss of Abkhazia's first president Ardzynba...
However, it was hard to work due to these big events, in general it is hard to find the right day and time for interviewing in Abkhazia. Every friday, saturday and sunday are filled with marriages. Many days people are busy with funerals and memorial feasts of their extended families and friends' families. Weekdays, people go to the cities to do some jobs they need to, to shop, and even to work and come back "home" in the village for weekends.
Most team members are enrolled at the university in the weekdays. So we had to work in the weekends which was hard due to social responsibilities of possible respondents. But we managed, by leaving the city as early as 8-8.30 and arriving to the villages just when people are finishing their breakfasts and before they leave their houses.
To be continued
