View of the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region. Photo: Justin Cruanes

My cab driver was yelling something that sounded like "khows, khows!" I hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about until I saw the spotted figures in the distance and realized he was saying "cows."

I had asked the driver what people in the area do for a living. "Livestock agriculture," he said. We chatted a bit in what little words we had in common as I made my way to visit some Mercy Corps programs in the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region.

Sapara Monastery. Photo: Justin Cruanes

In Georgia, cows are something worth shouting about. Particularly in the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region, where agriculture is the main economic activity. However, 67 percent of the population lives in poverty and farmers struggle due to ethnic discrimination, small production capabilities, low quality goods and an inability to participate in market activities. Having 20 cows on hand makes little difference when you have no place to properly refrigerate the milk they produce. Furthermore, if farmers can’t store milk, they can’t age cheese, and fresh cheese is of much lower value than if let to age a bit.

The Mercy Corps programs train community leaders and small-scale livestock producers in improving business practices, animal care, food safety, hygiene and budgeting. Instead of supplying farmers with short-term solutions (such as handing them cattle and equipment), the projects are working to permanently improve weaker parts of the production chain — greasing the production chain without becoming a part of it. The programs are doing this through several means: improving accessibility and transport of goods, increasing the transparency of the market and creating an environment where these measures can eventually sustain themselves.

Sapara Barn. Photo: Justin Cruanes

My first order of business was to check out the Sapara Monastery, where the Mercy Corps is working with local community leaders to improve the capacity of the monks' barn. At the moment, the barn can only hold about five to seven cattle. The program is helping to double their barn’s capacity, enough to accommodate 12 to 14 cattle.

Most of the milk produced in the region is used to make cheese, but the farmers have been without a means to store it. Instead, they sell directly to the market for a low price. Mercy Corps has helped renovate a former Soviet cheese storage facility for local use. This new facility lets farmers allow their cheese to mature so it can be sold later for increased profits.

Tractor shop. Photo: Justin Cruanes

Afterwards, we made our way to the town’s tractor supplier, where the program has set up links between farmers and the shop. We arrived just in time to witness the purchase of a tractor by a local farmer. The program supplies farmers with about 30 percent of the funds needed to purchase tractors.

Eventually we made our way to the office, where Mercy Corps Program Director for Georgia, Davidson Highfill, highlighted the program's work to improve "market visibility" by feeding databases of price statistics to farmers.

The Mercy Corps programs in the Samtskhe-Javakheti Region are working from several different angles to improve the livelihood of many small-scale farmers. From the construction of milk storage facilities to access to important market information, these programs are supplying the means for long term improvements for the farming community and it's "khows."

View of Istanbul from Bogazici Universitesi. Photo: Cemnaz (flickr)

I'll be waking up at 3:30 tomorrow morning to begin my journey from Portland, Oregon, to Istanbul, Turkey, where I'll be based for the next several months while I embark on a trip of a lifetime.

My move to Istanbul is for a short-term study abroad program at Bosphorus University's school of International Relations and Political Science. Though I have traveled to Istanbul before, living there will be a completely new experience. I'm excited to live in the city that boasts being in both Europe and Asia.

I'll be taking advantage of Istanbul's central location and taking several side trips as part of an independent study on post-Soviet economies. My itinerary is pretty diverse -- everywhere from Estonia to Georgia is on the list.

My trips to these places will have an academic focus at the core, but I plan to interviewing people I meet along the way to get the local take on the state of affairs -- which is the part I'm most excited to bring to the blog.

Right now I'm preparing for the 20-hour fight, so I'm jamming my favorite books and snacks into the little space I have left in my carry on... That and a pocket Turkish dictionary, since at the moment my Turkish language skills are still very basic. Now it's back to packing and preparing for the early morning wake-up...

Evallah, or goodbye for now!

In the foreground stands the television news correspondent. He is describing the bombings and devastation being wreaked by Russian troops in a defiant Georgia. Crossing behind him unnoticed is a small group of people clearly fleeing the devastation with possibly everything they own on their backs or in the makeshift bags they are carrying. Where they are going is a mystery.

A known but little-noted result of the conflict in Georgia — and others around the world — is the displacement of people who have absolutely no control of the events going on around them. In Georgia alone, tens of thousands of refugees from the secessionist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been waiting for more than ten years for a chance to return home. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, as many as 247,000 people are displaced in Georgia as of February 2007. The current situation promises only to worsen an already terrible circumstance.

Indeed, according to a 2007 study published by the IDMC, the number of refugees created as a result of armed conflicts and violence in more than 50 countries is well over 26 million. In nearby Iraq, for example, nearly 3 million people were displaced by rising inter-community violence between February 2006 and March 2008, according to the UN. “If a similar percentage of the U.S. population were displaced," writes the Brookings Institute's Elizabeth Ferris in The Looming Crisis: Displacement and Security in Iraq,
"this would represent over 50 million Americans — the equivalent in displacement of those uprooted by 50 Hurricane Katrinas.”

Add these folks to the already staggering number of poor and poverty stricken people throughout the world — a World Bank report states that 2.8 billion of the world’s more than 6 billion people live on less than $2 a day and 1.2 billion on less than $1 a day — and one begins to get a sense of the enormous challenges facing the world’s decision makers.

(Editor's note: Mercy Corps is one of several organizations helping displaced people in Georgia.)