Georgia

Like everywhere I’ve visited, it took me a little bit of time to adjust to Georgia. From when I left Delhi, it was almost 24 hours before I got to a bed in Georgia. There was lots of time in between on planes without sleep, and in the Istanbul airport without money, food or sleep. Note: if you travel around the world, always have some American money in your carry-on. I was smart enough to have some, but not smart enough not to pull it out of my duffel before I checked it for my long flight.

I arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capitol city, at 2:30 in the morning. I was pleasantly surprised that Qatar Airways followed through with their assurances, and my bag that had been checked for three flights and on two different airlines reached Tbilisi the same time I did. So I met up with Nicholas and his friend Ryan, who were patiently waiting for me at the exit, and off we went. Nicholas has been in Georgia for nine months now, and he is full of practicality and pride for his new home. We rode through the streets at 3:15 a.m., and he pointed out the freshly-cleaned streets and the packs of wild dogs that would tear us alive if we got out of the car. Welcome. We got to the nika, a guesthouse that often serves as the weekend home for Peace Corps Volunteers in Georgia, and passed out within the hour. But not for long. Neither of us could sleep, so after about four hours we were up and heading out again.

We took care of uninteresting things for a bit, then we headed to my first marshutka, which I learned is a minivan used in most post-Soviet country as a way to get a lot of people from one space to another without taking up a lot of space. There were nine or ten of us crammed inside the van, and for my first experience we chose poorly. The marshutka had a slow start and had to stop about every twenty minutes to fix something in the engine or dump water in as a coolant. But we finally made it to Telavi, a town two hours northeast of Tbilisi. We stayed with Nicholas’ friend Ariana and her host family for the weekend, and I got my first taste of fairly well-off Georgian life.

Georgians have a few traditions that I learned immediately. The first was drinking wine and toasting. This country was the pioneer of wine, and they drink it at all festivities. We were Ariana’s guests, so her host mom had food on the table quickly. We sat to eat some dishes that I would be seeing a lot during my stay. With the food came a bit of wine, and I had my first toasting experience. They don’t drink unless someone toasts, and I was thirsty. So after the first toast, I drink a few sips. Nicholas and Ariana didn’t notice, but Ariana’s host mom did. So she politely said, “let’s have another toast” and looked at my glass. Ariana and Nicholas quickly explained the protocol, and I never again took sip out of turn.

Not only are you not supposed to drink out of turn, if you make the toasts you need to follow a good bit of structure. The toasts talk about God, family, ancestors, parents, kids, women, men, friendship, peace, the reason for the party (or supra in Georgian), and some other pretty major ideas. At a supra, there are toasters and there are pour-ers. There may be a toastmaster who does all the toasts, or it may go round-robin with everyone participating. After everyone drinks following a toast, pour-ers are supposed to keep an eye on people’s glasses to refill as necessary. Men are pressured to drink a lot, women are pressured symbolically but are supposed to drink lightly. At most supras I attended, the men participated in all of the drinking and drank heavily; women paid attention to the kids and the food and drank when they could. Sometimes men giving a toast would ask other men to stand up as they toasted, but women were always supposed to stay seated.

My first toasting experience was at a snack-time meal, with only about eight dishes. Bread, pickled sprouts, cabbage stuffed with meat and rice, beets and some chicken. It was a small meal with a bit of wine. But full-out supras are where it’s at. At a supra, there is a huge spread in honor of an occasion, a holiday or a person. I came during their most important holiday time, and I was a guest from America. So we did some supra-ing.

We spent Easter Sunday with Ariana’s family in their village. We hiked up to the church and met up with many families who had the same idea. Cars, trucks, carts, horses, mules and people were milling about everywhere. A man was using a tree trunk beside the church as a slaughter block to kill the chickens for the feasts. Nearby, a group of men were working together to carve up a lamb that was hanging from a tree. And beside the church, a pile of dead lamb lay slaughtered as sacrifice. Happy Easter. Or, as you say in Georgian, “Christ has risen.” (response) “He has risen, indeed.”

Before eating, we walked around the church twice, went inside the to light a candle at the entrance and the interior, some of us made a short prayer, then we finished with a last circle around the church… as is the Orthodox tradition. Then we ate. Barbequed meats, potatoes, cheese bread and more wine. We promenaded around the church and watched the festivities. Teenagers were hanging out, flirting and eyeing each other. Little kids were playing with toy guns and gnawing off meat bones. At one point, we walked back to the church for more pictures. We three Americans got stopped by a family of Georgians who were very curious. There was a young girl who fancied Nicholas, or fancied a ticket to America. They formed a group for us to take a picture of them. They asked us to be in pictures with them. At one point, Natia (Nicholas’ new girlfriend) got in a picture with the three of us. Nicholas put his arm around Natia and said under his breath, “I’m just trying to be a gentleman”. Natia heard and understood, and she responded happily, “And you are…”. With her father’s urging, she boldly asked for Nicholas’ number. Within a day he had been texted. A few days later, he got a poem about life and her affections and questions about why he hadn’t responded to her first attempt. Nicholas said he wanted to have fun with it, but I don’t know if anything ever developed.

The other two nights in Telavi we supra-ed with a Georgian friend named Nick that all the volunteers loved. Nick voluntarily attended an English meeting at some point, and everyone immediately recognized how eager he was to befriend Americans who spoke a lot of English and wanted to make positive change in Georgia. He continues to practice English with the volunteers, but he has become more involved. This summer, he’s going to be a camp counselor with a boys’ leadership camp that Nicholas is helping organize.

The first night a group of ten of us met at Ariana’s school director’s sister’s restaurant to feast. I had my first taste of kenkali, which are dumplings twisted at the top and stuffed with ground beef or potatoes or cheese. It’s a dish that is easy to find in restaurants but rare at home. Georgians like to eat a lot, so to show their record they eat everything but the top of the dumpling and count the total number of tops at the end of the night as a competition. I ate the tops and don’t think I did that well anyway, but I enjoyed the dumplings a lot. The second supra night, which happened the night after our Easter hilltop celebration, was much of the same with beer instead of wine.

Telavi was my first experience with cold Georgian weather, but Nicholas and Ariana were happy that it had finally warmed up. They finally didn’t have to wear thermal underwear all of the time. Coming from the 90+° heat of India, though, I was wearing four shirts every day, and I was still cold all over. At night we used thick wool blankets, and I still woke up from the cold.

Nicholas and Ariana were telling me stories of a few months ago when it was much, much colder. Nicholas’ school didn’t have any heat, and the cement walls served as a refrigerator. Students stopped coming in December and only started to re-attend in April. It would rain and freeze and mud is everywhere. Many houses here don’t have heat. I really wouldn’t be able to handle Georgia. I don’t think I would be able to get out of bed for four of five months out of the year. I have the highest respect for these volunteers who got up during the week to teach in an icy room to students who either didn’t want to be there and acted like it or didn’t show up at all.

A few days into my stay, I started to get used to the change. We left Telavi and headed to Kareli, the town where Nicholas lives and works. Nicholas had anxiety about coming back home because I think I came at the most dramatic part of his stay.

Let me provide some background. As part of the Peace Corp program, all volunteers arrive to the country and live with host families for a total of nine months. They live for three months with a training host family, and they spend a minimum of six months with a family at their actual working site. After those nine months, they are allowed to move into an apartment if they are at a site where apartments are available.

Nicholas had a great training host family. They loved him, and in proper Georgian tradition they took great care of him as their honored guest. Then he moved to Kareli for his permanent post and moved in with a new family. In many ways, this new house defied the idea of a traditional Georgian family. While lots of people lived together in one big house – the kids, parents and grandparents – they host mom was divorced and clinically depressed. So from the beginning, there was some tension about Nicholas coming into the house. By the time I arrived, though, things were just bad. The week before I arrived (we had planned my visit two or three months out with approval from the host mother), the host mother went a little crazy. She came into Nicholas’ room the day before he left for Tbilisi to pick me up and explained that I could not stay at the house. To refuse a guest – especially the American volunteer’s American guest – is pretty much unheard of in these parts.

So Nicholas was baffled. He told Maria his situation, and she quickly arranged for us to stay with her and her host family when I arrived. In Tbilisi, Nicholas went to the main Peace Corps office to talk to the staff about the situation. A staff member called Nicholas’ host mom, and the host mom had a new announcement: Nicholas was no longer welcome in her home. What?! This is pretty much unheard of in Georgia, and when I finally arrived Nicholas was full of anxiety. Kareli is a significantly smaller town than Telavi, and finding apartments can be slow and unsuccessful. He told his teachers and Maria’s host family (this is a town where everyone knows everyone), and they all conceded that the situation was ridiculous, embarrassing as a reflection of Georgia, and all due to the depression of the mother.

So we stayed with Maria’s family, who is awesome. Maria lives on a compound of three houses, and the place is full of energy. There are usually between five and seven young people running around full of attitude, and the women were strong and full of life. The men, when we saw them, were full of good cheer and hospitality. The first day everyone cheered when we finally arrived – both Nicholas and Maria had spent the weekend away. There were hugs and hellos all around. They immediately said we could stay as long as we wanted, and they asked Nicholas if the crazy lady had come around at all. We took a grand tour to see the houses, the fresh garden, the dogs and puppies, the fields and the uncles in other rooms who had been sleeping off hangovers.

We were called back to the main house for supra, and my formal introduction to the house began. Five men – friends and relatives – Nicholas, Maria and I sat down to feast. Much of the same good food was brought out, and the toasting began immediately. The men got pretty well drunk pretty quickly, and Nicholas was no exception. They took a lot of toasts “to the death of the glass” where they finished the glass in one shot out of respect for the toast. At some point, linked-arm toasting began and it wasn’t long before Nicholas and I drank our whole glasses linked through each other’s arms. At some point after Nicholas should have stopped drinking, they brought out the horns for drinking. He refused, saying he was a small guy, but they got the best of him and he had to finish. A large uncle next to me was enchanted with both Maria and me and kept asking questions about America or going off in Georgian about culture and life. I had to thank many toasts in honor of me as a guest, women in general and Georgian-American relations (brotherhood). By the time we got to bed, my stomach was absolutely full of food and my face hurt from laughing. The other nights at the house we didn’t supra; instead we played Uno, Phase 10, Jokeri (a game I still don’t understand) and watched TV. The kids were a lot of fun. I taught Vakho, the youngest son in the house, how to play hot hands and table hockey. He studies German in school, but he knew some English and we had no problems having fun and making fun of each other the whole time I was there.

During the days, though, I left Vakho at home (he didn’t really ever go to school), and I went with Nicholas to school to be stared at, questioned and included. Every class began with my introduction, an explanation of where I was traveling, and an explanation that the mehendi on my hands was from India and was not permanent. The sixth graders were scared of the red all over my palms the first day, so they were pretty quiet, but by the second day the class had doubled in size and they felt more comfortable. The eleventh graders asked me a lot of questions about travel and food and language. The fifth graders didn’t ask me many questions, but glanced and laughed at themselves and me anytime they could. They were funny and full of chaotic energy. As they worked, they would look up at me and rattle off a question in Georgian then laugh when they remembered or realized I had no idea what they were saying. They yelled over each other and competed to do the best job in the quickest amount of time. Some things are the same between Georgian and American kids.

By the end of my first school day, I was freezing. We finished our lessons, and I was shivering. We walked to the cafeteria with Nicholas’ two Georgian English-teacher counterparts for coffee, but were quickly invited to another office to drink the coffee. Zura, the P.E. teacher who was the only Georgian male on staff, ushered us into his office for tea and a mini-supra. We took a shot of strong vodka to make us warm, and we snacked on leftover Easter dishes. Teachers came and went as they had class, and we all talked about the differences between American and Georgian schools in structure, timelines and pay. The teachers seemed shocked that American teachers usually got to school at seven in the morning and were expected to stay until at least three in the afternoon. Here, teachers arrived around nine or nine thirty, and they were gone anywhere between noon and one thirty. They don’t make a lot of money from their job, so the compensate through a booked schedule of afternoon- and weekend-tutoring. Students have tutoring for everything, and they often opt to do tutoring and homework rather than attend class. So classes never have a consistent number of students, and there is no way to have a weekly schedule or progression with activities. Georgian teachers expect this as a norm, but the volunteers here are wringing their hands as they try to make change with the system. Once again, I have the utmost respect for volunteers in this country for not just giving up and going home.

One Georgian teacher who defies the norm is Manana, counterpart of Katherine – a third volunteer that lives near Kareli. Manana is a converted Evangelical Christian who gives all of her energy to the projects to which she is committed. She vowed to help Nicholas with his housing problem, she supports all of the volunteers as they work in Kareli and she is happy and excited to take guidance and assistance from Peace Corps educational programs. So Peace Corps has gotten quite close to Manana.

So on our third day in Kareli, it was only natural that she invite us to a supra in her home village. I think this was my favorite supra because it had so many of the traditional elements but had a twist on things as well. We got there in the late afternoon and got a tour of the house. Manana and her sisters and mother were happy to show the bread-baking oven, the other cooking stoves and the wine cellar. Everything we ate was from the garden and homemade, so it was delicious. There were many, many dishes out. As we went in, Nicholas and Maria reminded me that, “it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon”. There was freshly-baked bread (plain and stuffed with cheese and potato), homemade pastries, stuffed cabbage, chicken, beef, olives, oranges, grape paste, small crepes stuffed with ground beef, salad, almond and chestnut paste, spinach and almond paste, chocolates and Turkish coffee.

Manana presented this supra as an international supra because her family was from all over the Caucasus. In addition to Americans and Georgians, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Greece and Osetia were represented. We had thirty people at the table(s) at one point. Manana explained that the doors to the house were open to anyone in the village, and people trickled in throughout the meal. There was a drama star who sat across from me, and after a few glasses of wine he was serenading us with nice Georgian music. He said if someone would fund him, he would perform at La Scala. He then pleaded that we respond with American music. Maria finally sang some Lou Reed for them, and everyone was happy. It was the first time I captured video with my camera, and they loved it. The singer continued to sing, and other joined in. I took a video of everyone smiling making introductions, and when we finally got up to leave no one wanted us to go. It took us over half an hour to say our goodbyes because everyone wanted hugs and kisses on the cheeks, the old men who had the most wine wanted longer hugs and more kisses on the cheek. They wanted us to take a lot of pictures. They wanted to sing more for us. They wanted us to stay. At one point, a neighbor got word that we liked music and wanted to hear guitar, so he came with his instrument and serenaded us in the driveway as we tried to make our getaway. But, unlike most supras, there were people who stayed sober. Some of the men didn’t drink at all, and our glasses of pear soda were refilled more quickly than our wine glasses. Manana and her children don’t drink, so we were off the hook. We got a ride back from a nephew who hadn’t had a drop of alcohol during the whole meal. It was refreshing and lots and lots of fun.

After our time in Kareli, we headed back to the capitol and then headed west to spend time with another volunteer friend in another village. We went to Chiatura, which is known as the former Proletariat Paradise. This town, situated in the mountains west of Tbilisi, used to be a bustling mining town with 50,000 people and smooth efficiency. Today the population has dropped 80%, and it is one of the poorest places in Georgia. Once the Soviet system collapsed, residents either left the country or headed to Tbilisi. We stayed with Heidi, a volunteer from California, and met up with Jenn and Seth. This was an “American in Georgia” weekend. Heidi had recently moved into her own apartment – she pays $30 a month for a five-room apartment that used to be owned by a police officer. The family who was there before left everything – there was a piano, bookshelves, dishes and silverware, chests and bureaus, and lots and lots of kitsch. The family wanted to get out of Georgia immediately, so they took what they could carry and headed west to Greece to resettle.

In Chiatura, the apartment was much easier to arrange because of the abundance of abandoned Soviety block apartments. They were everywhere. The town is built into a gorge, and we took skyline buckets to get from the main part of town to Heidi’s apartment. It’s a beautiful place. All the buildings were terraced, and just above the town you can see the mining site where many men still work today. We visited the abandoned Young Pioneers house, which was the Communist equivalent of the Boy Scouts. We checked out the skyline, with its Hollywood-esque sign reading “Chiatura My Pride” (unfortunately, the hammer and sickle that originally adorned the sign had been removed). I asked about a metal billboard in the rock face that looked like it had numbers; Heidi said that used to read out the time to alert all of the workers when they should head to work. Nearby the clock, Seth pointed some columns where a picture of Lenin used to be – everyone in the town could see it, and it changed colors depending on the time of day. We took the free skyline bucket up to the mines and took the long walk back down, and throughout the walk we were brainstorming how to market Soviet Disneyland to jumpstart the tourism industry. The first step would be to fix the roads that wound through the mountains to the town (even Georgians were throwing up into small plastic bags from the curves and bumps), and then they could reinstate the signage, thrown in a ski resort and market supras at $30-a-head. Talk about a getaway weekend. Before sunset each night, we made our way back up to Heidi’s apartment and cooked makeshift international meals (curried meatloaf with sort-of Persian rice and curried cabbage) and played cards. It was quite the weekend.

Chiatura was my last Georgian trip. We headed back to Kareli for my last two days, and left at just the right time – it was snowing the morning we left Chiatura, and the mountains had two inches before we left the area. We went back to Kareli on the day of Maria’s host dad’s birthday, so we supra-ed for him and for my departure. Again, lots of food, lots of wine and this time some dancing, piano playing and singing. I needed to be back to take the 13-hour bus from Kareli to Trabzon, so it was only proper that I leave from the place that had become my home. I had to assure the family that f I am back in Europe before Nicholas’ service ends, I will be back in Georgia to visit. We’ll have to see whether my future holds more supras or not.