I recently took a trip up a road once described as the “most dangerous road in Europe”. It is the road that leads into the mountain region of Tusheti in the Georgian Caucasus. The road is a rough track with many hairpin bends and sheer drops, rising up from the Georgian plains to a pass at 2450m. Only four-wheel drive vehicles are suitable for this road.
Along the road are many shrines to those who have died on the road. We stopped at one, where our local guide spent a moment to remember lost friends. Other locals stopped at the same shrine. I noticed that, like all the other shrines on the road, the dead were men – I did not see any that marked the spot where women died. We toasted the dead with a few drinks (a Georgian custom) and drove on.
My guide explained that the accidents normally happened after celebrations, when very drunk local men drive down the road (which they are familiar with) and make a mistake. The reason I did not see any shrines to women was because they were not involved in the drinking. Naturally, men who stop to remember those who died while drunk driving make a few toasts to them with strong spirits, before driving on. This was on a road I would hesitate to drive on myself, despite my own experience of dirt roads and high passes in Africa. Everyone knew that drinking caused the accidents, yet they kept happening.
I wondered if machismo contributed to this situation. Traditionally, men of Georgia set great store by drinking, perhaps as a way to let off steam and manage how they feel about a life that is often hard and where death can be sudden. Certainly the people of Tusheti, mostly shepherds, lived a difficult life in the mountains. The men went out to the pastures, the women stayed at home. This traditional gender pattern did not seem to serve the men well, not if the Tusheti road was any way to judge.
I don’t know how the women coped with the difficulties of their life, as the public arena was filled with men. The men appeared to cope and celebrate and deny death by drinking. There will be many complex reasons, some multi-generational and habitual, as factors in the way alcohol is used and how it exacted its toll of death on that road. I do know that problematic alcohol use is often symptomatic of deeper issues.
I wonder if it is possible for a nation, or a part of a nation, to express its anguish through a habitual cultural pattern. Certainly modern Georgia has a difficult history, right up to its recent war with Russia. If it is, then how much more difficult it is for each individual within that culture to avoid a fate driven by the past. Those dying on the Tusheti road might be considered victims of culture; but they made individual choices, and carried personal responsibility for their fates. I think this is true for us all, it was simply more apparent on the Tusheti road. We are both moulded by our culture and its history and have individual choice and responsibility about what we do with our heritage, and if we allow it to drive us.
