Georgian war cancels classes for thousands

Kindergartens designated to house refugees

Tristan Chachapuridze, a South Ossetian refugee, with granddaughter Tamari, 2, while her mother, Natia Kasradze, tended to infant Rusudan last week in a kindergarten in Tbilisi. (George Abdaladze/ Associated Press)

TBILISI, Georgia - Before Georgia's war with Russia, the parents of Salome Lomadze, a lively 3-year-old with curly dark hair, were planning to walk her up the street to school every morning, starting this month.

But Salome is one of 50,000 Georgian children, government officials say, who won't be attending classes this fall because their schools - mostly kindergartens - now shelter tens of thousands of people who fled the fighting.

Abroad, Russia's crushing defeat of Georgia's military in August severely damaged relations between Moscow and the West. In Georgia, a struggling Caucasus Mountains nation of 4.4 million, it has created a slow-motion humanitarian crisis, with repercussions far beyond the former battlegrounds.

In Georgia, as in most of the former Soviet Union, government-supported kindergartens are considered an essential service, providing universal day care for children between ages 2 and 7 for parents who are typically forced to work to make ends meet.

Iraklii Todua of the Education Ministry, said at least 50,000 children in Tbilisi and the bomb-damaged city of Gori won't attend kindergarten until at least Christmas. "All kindergartens have been designated for refugees," she said.

As a result, Salome's parents are juggling their schedules to care for their daughter, whose Kindergarten No. 123 is now home to 17 displaced families, totaling 109 people.

"We can't afford a private kindergarten," said the girl's father, David Lomadze, who normally pays a monthly fee of less than $10 in Kindergarten No. 123, a short walk from his apartment building. The Lomadzes are struggling, they say, because they have a "giant" mortgage on their three-bedroom flat.

The United Nations said at least 100,000 people have been uprooted by the conflict, which erupted Aug. 7 in the separatist territory of South Ossetia. Many of those who fled to Georgia were given shelter in schools. Aid workers said that as of mid-September, at least 100 elementary and secondary schools in Tbilisi were occupied by displaced families.

Faced with relocating them or postponing classes, officials here chose to delay the start of the school year for thousands of children. Kindergartens proved most readily adaptable as emergency housing, officials said, because they were equipped with beds and kitchens.

Todua said that, in addition to the kindergartens, 20 primary and secondary schools in Tbilisi - or about 10 percent of all schools in the city of 1.5 million - have been partially or fully occupied by refugees. Classes in these schools, which normally start in mid-September, have been delayed until Oct. 1, he said.

Suliko Kakhiashvili, a 50-year-old electrician from the South Ossetian village of Kekhvi, fled to Tbilisi with his wife and mother, and found shelter in Kindergarten No. 27. They were living in a small room with green paint peeling off the walls, a large yellow stain on the leaking roof and tiny chairs and wardrobes built for toddlers and children. Cheap sausages fried on a small stove in one corner.

The Kakhiashvilis said they were taken from their home at gunpoint and spent 10 days in the basement of the South Ossetian Interior Ministry in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. He said authorities forced him to clean the streets and bury corpses.

Kakhiashvili's mother, Liliya, 72, said she longed to return to their home. "What a great harvest of tomatoes and fruit we left there," she said through tears.

Other refugees in Kindergarten No. 27 wandered through unlit corridors covered with paintings of animals from fairy tales and cartoons, chatted in the canteen smelling of rancid food, or sat in the courtyard playing backgammon and cards.

"This is our penniless Las Vegas," said Giya Mardanashvili, a plump truck driver from Tskhinvali with a three-day stubble on his face, throwing dice and taking quick puffs at his cheap cigarette.

Many complained of few showers, no hot water, and the rations of macaroni, red beans, and bread they receive from the government and foreign aid agencies. Several men say they cannot find jobs and are frustrated by their idleness.

"Sometimes men get drunk and start bickering," said the kindergarten's director, Nino Cherkezishvili.

She said her staffers were at first worried about hosting refugees in their concrete building designed for 350 children. Now, though, they have come to view the displaced families as their charges.

"These tired and scared adults wandered about our kindergarten where everything was designed for children," said Cherkezishvili. "Now they have become our small kids."

Many refugees fear they may spend months or years in shelters because they have nowhere to go.

"Authorities offered us $20,000 if we find a house," said Tamara Patashvili, 62, who lives in Lomadze's Kindergarten No. 123 with 10 relatives. "But even the most modest houses are much more expensive."