On a rainy evening in Tbilisi, I’m sitting in an outdoor café in the city centre, with my friend Richard and some friends of his from Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire. Since July, Richard and I have been meeting in this café nearly every week, when he comes into town from the reception centre 40 km away. He is one of the around 300 people who place asylum claims each year in Georgia.

I went to visit the centre in July, accompanied by an employee of the Ministry of Refugees, but my subsequent unaccompanied and unannounced visit in September met with closed doors. Richard keeps me up to date with events. Whilst he’s been living in the centre, the 60 places have been variously occupied by people from Kazakstan, Russia, Iran, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Cameroon and elsewhere. The people who live in the modern, well-equipped building are free to come and go as they please and also to undertake paid employment to supplement their monthly allowance of 40 euros.

The entrance to the Martkopi reception centre for asylum seekers and refugees

 

However, like most of the other migrants housed in the Martkopi centre for asylum seekers, Richard first had to experience the Georgian prison system before being given the chance to file an asylum claim. Arriving with a fake French passport, Richard was arrested and imprisoned for 6 months before paying a 375 euro fine for his release and finally filing his claim for asylum. He was lucky: another man he knows from Cameroon was not offered the possibility to pay a fine and is currently serving a 7-year prison term for possessing falsified documents.

Richard’s detention was tough but it gave him one unexpected advantage: a grasp of Georgian. He had no choice but to learn to speak it in prison, since no-one knew English or French. Now as we sit at the table with some of his friends, who have been here for up to two years, Richard orders easily and chats with the waitress. Although his original plan was to join friends in Belgium, he’s thinking of staying in Tbilisi to open up a pool-room and bar which he hopes could be a focal point for the small, but growing, African community in the city

The café we are sitting in is one of the few places in the city where Africans get together. Some come to Georgia as students, and some in the hope of starting a soccer career. We’re sitting with two of Richard’s footballer friends and Adama, who used to manage a team in Tbilisi but has since moved to Batumi on the Black Sea coast. Adama tells me there might be around one hundred African footballers in Tbilisi. William, who came here eight months ago, wears a constantly worried expression on his face. “On s’est fait arnaqué”[1] he tells me: he paid € 2,500 euros in Cameroon to arrange the deal with the club in Georgia. Now he’s here he realises chances of promotion to Europe, or even a contract with a Georgian club are practically non-existent. Adama tells me that in the two years he’s been here, he’s heard of just one guy who managed to get a contract with a Turkish club, which paid 15,000 dollars for the transfer.

So if football won’t get him to Europe, William reasons, the only option is to try to cross into Turkey. The others admonish him like a child and wear a condescending smile as they speak to him. “Everything’s twice the price in Turkey,” says Richard, “you’ll have no money left after a month and nowhere to go”. Adama tried his chances in Turkey last year but decided to return to Georgia. “Getting into Turkey’s not easy,” he says. He’s heard of deaths on the border; people who tried to avoid the check-point and got lost in the mountains.

As we talk about surprised reactions and all-out racism frequently directed at Black people in Georgia, Adama jokes that when he spent some months in Zugdidi (Western Georgia) there were so few of them they were treated like kings. If a taxi drove past, it would stop and take him where he was going for free. Even when faced with racism, Adama retains impressive calm and a sense of humour. “When a guy sits down opposite you in the bus and starts reeling off all the insults he knows, just let him finish,” he advises Richard, who unlike his friend is deeply offended by this type of abuse. “When he gets to the end, then you pick up your phone and start speaking in Georgian. The man will look stupid in front of everyone because they’ll realise you’ve understood all he was saying. Then, most likely, an old lady next to you will ask in surprise ‘Kartuli veetsee?’ [2] And you’ll start a conversation with her”.

Getting on a minibus can lead to stares at best, insults at worst

Adama seems skilled in diffusing this kind of situation, and it’s no surprise since he’s been facing racism almost daily for two years. Just then, I witness one of these very situations first-hand. Sitting next to me, Richard suddenly starts shouting angrily in French “He spat on me! He looked at me right in the eyes and spat on me!”. I turn around to the table next to us, where a group of ten adolescent boys are sitting. They are all looking the other way and I can’t see who Richard is talking about.

Adama is on his feet straight away and standing at the table, trying to get the boys’ attention. He tries speaking to them in English; they don’t understand or don’t want to, and keep turning their heads away, despite Adama’s energetic attempts to engage some kind of dialogue. Richard is still fuming in his seat, shouting in French. I tell him to try to speak to the boys in Georgian, to ask them to apologise, but his anger and frustration seem to prevent him from speaking anything but his native French. Not expecting the young boys to speak Russian, I try addressing them anyway and discover it works. One boy tells me they are sorry and that their friend, who is Azeri, is drunk. He seems barely able to sit straight in his seat and despite our attempts, he can’t be convinced to apologize to Richard. Meanwhile, a Georgian woman and the café waitress come to help with the mediation; they tell the boys off in Georgian, and the waitress offers to move us to another table.

Richard is visibly hurt for the rest of the evening. “I’d prefer if he hit me than spat on me,” he says, then adds angrily “did he pass some kind of test to have his white skin?”. Being black in Georgia still means daily stares and abuse, but it has to be hoped that as people like Adama and Richard integrate themselves into the country, these attitudes will begin to change.

[1] “We got ripped off”

[2] “Do you know Georgian?”