The Story of the Director of a Nursing Home Near the Occupation Line
Sixty-five-year-old Luda Salia is a native of Sukhumi, a medic by background. When the war began in Abkhazia in 1992, Luda worked as a nurse at the Agudzera hospital. She took care of the wounded throughout the 13 months and 13 days of the violent armed conflict. Luda remained in Abkhazia until the last moment – she left only in September 1993, after the fall of Sukhumi.
At that time she could hardly imagine that 30 years after the war she would have to live near barbed wire installed by Russian militaries in a completely different part of Georgia.
In 2016, with the support of German and American donors, Luda opened a nursing home in the village of Khurvaleti, Gori region, near the administrative border with South Ossetia. Presently she has 17 beneficiaries under her care, the oldest of whom is about 95 years old.
Luda does everything to create a safe and comfortable environment for them, despite the proximity of the Russian military base to Khurvaleti, regular abductions of local residents and many other problems in the conflict zone.
Although Luda is aware of the danger, she considers it her duty to protest against the “creeping occupation” and help people on both sides of the barbed wire.
“Everyone asks me whether I’m afraid or not. I always have one answer: what I feared most has already happened. We lost Sukhumi, we lost Abkhazia. We have nothing more to fear. Now we have to endure this too, we have to fight,” says Luda.
About the Author
Daria Kotova is a Tbilisi-based journalist with the Russian-language news agency News-Georgia. Her work focuses on covering internal news related to Georgia. Daria is also actively involved in online data visualization and immersive multimedia storytelling projects. Most notably, she received an award from the Women Reporters Academy for her articles featuring Luda Salia, who runs a home for the elderly in Khurvaleti, Georgia, a village near Abkhazia, an area occupied by Russian forces.