My children have been very good students; my daughter studied medicine, and my son is studying Business and Administration. I gave them the best opportunities I could give to them by migrating and working in Greece but if you were to ask my kids, perhaps they would say it wasn’t worth it… having to live separately from me.
Currently, I have my papers in order and my situation is no longer irregular. In 2017, the bilateral Association Agreement between Georgia and the EU entered into force which eased the possibility for Georgians to visit the EU. [AS1] But my story starts much earlier than that.
After high school, I passed stomatology exams but shortly after that my mother’s breast cancer deteriorated. Although she urged me to continue university, I felt a moral obligation to take care of her as I was the only one of my siblings in a position to do so. I cared for my mother for 5 years. She died when I was 20 years old. During her treatment, my brother was diagnosed with skin cancer; he died in 1999 aged 34, when I was just 23. Five years later, I would lose my father to a stroke.
In my early 20s, I met my husband. He was from the Sukhumi district in Abkhazia and we got married in August 2000. Within our first three years of marriage, we had two children, both born in Georgia which was in a terrible state at this time.
There was no proper infrastructure after the conflict, and no social security schemes. When I was going to give birth, I had to go to the hospital 3 days before because we didn’t know if there would be public transport to take me. I gave birth by caesarean section, and it was an outrageous situation. My husband had to pay to the electrical company, so that the hospital would have electricity for 1 hour to finish my surgery. This is something I will truly never forget.
We were young and truly loved each other, and I cherished being with this man. While we lived in a village and could still grow our own fruits and vegetables, there were no stable jobs and the future for our young family looked very uncertain.
For me, the most important factor was for my kids to be able to go to school and to have an education. My priority was to give the best possible education to my kids, and for my family to be able to do that, we needed to be well-financed. My children were 3 and 4 years old, so I thought why not go to Greece?
Perhaps by the time they were 5 or 6, we could return to Georgia. There were a lot of technicalities regarding my visa and after six months, there was still no progress so I decided to come here irregularly. On my own.
I had a cousin in Athens, and she offered to host me for some time until I had settled. I arrived here on February 5th 2008 after travelling for 10 days through Turkey. The trip was very difficult. There were 12 of us. I could see death in front of my eyes. The smugglers took our passports while we stayed in a hotel in Istanbul. From there, we crossed the sea and we arrived the river Evros – a popular entry point for a lot of refugees. There were a lot of cars waiting for people like me. We entered a car and spent the night in Evros in a little farmhouse away from the border guards. The next morning, we arrived by separate cars in Alexandroupoli around 30km inside the Greek border. There, I saw a Church and I felt relief. It was a feeling of familiarity, and it felt supportive.
I made it to my cousin’s place in Athens and life in Greece started with great difficulty. I opened the dictionary, and I started to teach myself – trying to grasp the letters and words. Due to the language barrier, the only work I could find was in housekeeping. I continued trying to learn the language on my own, I thought I was only going to stay for one year so I didn’t enroll in education or language courses. I got a job as a live-in domestic worker.
The original agreement with the smugglers was to get me to Greece for €3,500. But when we arrived, other men approached me, and they told me I had to pay an additional €150 per month. As I say, this was not something that we had originally agreed. It was two years before I could pay them everything they were demanding of me. By then, my eldest child was already in the 1st grade, and my youngest was due to start school the following year. I was sure I was going to be back in Georgia soon and I continued to work and send money to my husband to care for them. I was sure I would see them soon.
In 2012 my husband died. I would see my children again for the first time since leaving for their father’s funeral. I didn’t have papers to go back to Georgia as I was still irregular. In the end, I made it to Georgia and had to pay a fine. I stayed in Georgia for three months receiving emotional support from friends and family. Again, I was faced with a decision.
“Do I go back to Greece or stay with my children in Georgia? I didn’t know what to do.”
To take my children to Greece, I would again have to go through irregular routes. And if we did make it back to Athens, I would have to rent a house, as they could not live with me in my workplace. It would be impossible to economically support my family as a domestic worker in Athens. I only had a high-school education and no formal qualification. If they stayed in Georgia with my sister, they could stay in their school and I could continue to send money back to them. So I left again. Again, on my own.
I returned to the household and resumed my job as a domestic worker, continuing to send my earnings back to Georgia. It has been 10 years.
[AS1]For closer people-to-people contacts and mobility, visa free travel to the Schengen area for Georgian citizens is in place since 28 March 2017.
