In the Sokhumi area, in Abkhazia, an NGO called AMRA (“sun” in Abkhaz) carries out the HAP (Health Access Program) project with MSF funding. AMRA provides assistance to poor elderly people. The project includes regular home visits, provision of drugs and dry food, and firewood in winter. The program officially closed at the end of 2016 with the termination of its funding. However, the NGO director Inga Gagulia, keeps visiting the most vulnerable among the beneficiaries. She brings them some food and a lot of moral support.

Inga takes me to Tomasyin Gayane, one of the program beneficiaries. Tomasyin is of Armenian origin and lives alone in her small house in the suburbs of Sokhumi.

Tomasyin Ganaya’s house in the suburbs of Sokhumi

Tomasyin was diagnosed with polio when she was 5 month old, and despite several surgery attempts as a child, she has been since then paralyzed in both legs. I don’t see any wheelchair and realize she uses her arms to get around. Her house has seen better days but is neat and tidy.

Tomasyin at home

Tomasyin is 83 and she never got married. She finds it amusing to receive the visit of a photographer. It reminds her of another photographer who took her portrait when she was 18. She asks Inga to fetch the pictures. Tomasyin tells us, with some coquetry, that when she went to the studio to pick up the photos, she caught the photographer as he was giving copies of her portrait to two men. They must have found her beautiful. It was in the early 50s but she still has vivid memories of the event. 

Photos of Tomasyin at 18

Tomasyin has long lived with a dog and she also has a cat now. Inga worries because she knows Tomasyin must deprive herself to feed the pets. She also has a doll. Tomasyin explains she is not senile nor falling back into childhood, but she talks to the doll and treats her like her daughter. It is an antidote to her solitude. She asks me to take a portrait of them together.

Tomasyin and her doll

Tomasyin has quite a sense of humor. She points at her slippers, both oddly burned on the top. “It’s because I put them under the wood-burning stove to keep my feet warm. This time, I left them a little too long.”

She lets me take  a picture of her hands, a little deformed by polio.

Tomasyin’s hands

Tomasyin worries about her grandniece who has decided to get married with a young man she chats with on the internet but has met only once. He is in a rush to marry her but in the Armenian tradition (which diaspora has been in Abkhazia for generations) a young woman should not get married before she turns 19. Her grandniece will be 19 on February 25th and the two want to get married on her birthday. Tomasyin feels it is a little hasty…

Her cat wakes up. He leaves his spot next to the stove and walks to Tomasyin. It reminds me of ‘The Rabbi’s cat’, a French comic book with a cat who speaks, and I imagine the conversations the two will have after we are gone.

Tomasyin and her cat

Tomasyin Gayane receives 150 rubles (less than 3 US$) per month as a disability pension and another 1,600 rubles (about 29 US$) as governmental support. Now that AMRA’s program is terminated, she faces the dilemma between buying food or medication. She can’t afford both. AMRA was taking care of about 40 elderly persons. The program closed last December. A month later, two patients have passed away. 

Update (Feb. 7th): Tomasyin’s grandniece could not wait and got married on January 31st.

More photos about my short trip to Abkhazia

The web site of AMRA

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