Saturday, December 15, 2012

Out of the Village


Well...what can I say? I travelled 9,000 kilometers, I spent four months, that’s 123 days or 2952 hours in The Republic of Georgia.
            Georgia is perhaps the most interesting country that I have ever had the opportunity to visit. It is a country of contrast, a country of duplicity, and one of contradiction.
            I’ve spent the last few days on the cobbled streets of Tbilisi with its clean and stylish middle class. Young couples sneak kisses under Christmas-lighted trees. Dignified older men and women laugh, it trickles into your ears as they vanish around the corners of trendy restaurants, leaving nothing but a cloud of expensive perfume in your nose.
            I’ve spent the better part of my time in the village, with the lovely, semi-nomadic farmer class, scraping sustenance out of the generous earth with muddied fingers, they smile with open hearts and offer to you everything that they own, which never seems to be enough to them, but always seems too much for you.
            Georgia is a love story, we just don’t know how it’s going to end. Sought after, courted by superpowers, scorned, abandoned, and revered, Georgia now sits on a precipice between Russia and the U.S. with a pro-Russian Prime Minister beginning his first term and a pro-American President ending his last. Do the people want us here? Do they want to westernize, join NATO and the EU and speak English and embrace capitalism? Or do they want to go back to Russia, trickle back down into the notorious days of gangsterism and corruption when life was difficult but the choices were unbelievably easy? Unfortunately, most Georgians that I have spoken to have little sense of history, they simultaneously love the West and Russia, despite what Russia has done to them, despite what we'll do to them. Like I said, we just don’t know how it’s going to end, yet.

            My last days in the village were the easiest that I spent there because my emotions were buoyed by the prospect of finally seeing my family again, but I was torn between the thought of a Canadian Christmas and the reality of forever leaving my new family, my Georgian family.
            “I’m doing the right thing by leaving, right?”
            “Don’t worry too much about it, mate. It’s time to go home.”
            “If I stayed another week it would just be that much harder, right? If I stayed another year it would be just that much harder, right?”
            Oh Dali, Giga and Rusiko.
            Dali grew fonder of me as the fateful day approached. She was constantly jabbering at me in Kartuli, convinced that I was just being modest when I told her I wasn’t fluent yet. She grabbed me in a giant bear-hug and shook me around like a rag doll, she threatened me with a wooden spoon, and she took it as a personal affront when I lost my appetite for a few days. She almost cried when I told her “Shen aris chemi Kartveli deda”, you are my Georgian mother. She has a lovely soul.

            I was amazed by how much Rusiko opened up to me during my time in the village. When I arrived in August, she wouldn’t say a word to me, instead she would sit in the corner of the room, carefully tracking my movements with her big green eyes. By December I had to forcibly keep her away from me: “Russo, stop touching my hair” “Russo, stop going through my journal” “Russo stop trying to light my shoes on fire.” She was convinced that she could fit in my backpack and that I could sneak her into Canada, her mother was even more convinced that I could find her a “kargia Canadelli bitchi,” a nice Canadian boy. When the time came and I pulled open the drawstrings of my pack, telling Russo to hop on in, she had a sudden change of heart, and told me that she’s going to Russia instead. That didn’t stop the tears from running down her face.
            Giga was a man about it. He was uncomfortable with the prospect of me leaving, but he made me shake his hand and promise to come back one day. The kid is fifteen-years-old.

            My Canadelli Deda went on a shopping spree before I left. She bought dozens of pens, pencils, crayons, glue sticks, sheets of paper etc. I used as much of the supplies as I could during school but everything that was left I collected on a table in my room. I added to it all of my novels, some electronics and a few silly Canadian toys. When I showed the family that I was leaving them with all of this, they completely flipped out. Russiko started bouncing around, Giga’s smile could have melted a snowman and Dali gave me a big hug. It was probably the most touching thing I have ever witnessed, thanks Canadian mom, your thoughtfulness went a long way.
            The last day of school was interesting. A few of the teachers that I had made friends with didn’t want me to leave, they truly are nice people that made me feel welcome. It was the kids that were the hard part. I gave a little speech to each class, telling them that they were wonderful students and a lot of fun. Some of them cried, some of them begged me not to go and some of them gave me a look of utter abandonment. I was crushed.

            A few of the older girls gave me love notes written in wonderfully questionable English. The gesture was immense, it must have taken them a long time to write them.
            Rusiko saw all of this and wasn’t about to be outdone. We walked home from school together and she immediately locked herself in her room while I started packing. An hour later she handed me a note that says she has two brothers, Giga and Zach. I finally lost it at that point and had to look away, convinced that I suddenly had something in my eye.

            I did not know how to feel on the morning that I left. I didn’t want to leave those two kids that had become my brother and sister, but I was and still am unbelievably excited for the next chapter in my life, wherever and whenever that occurs.









Sunday, December 2, 2012

Midnight Khachapuri



            Don’t you hate it when you’re brushing your teeth out in the yard, shivering in the cold mountain air, when you accidently spit toothpaste onto the family axe? Then you have to scramble to clean it in the dark because that’s the type of thing that embarrasses you now?
            No?      
            It has been a day of firsts.
            Today was my first shower in eight days and my second in twenty-three days.
            A rat keeps gaining entry into my room through a hole in the ceiling. Sometimes he brings me early Christmas presents and leaves them on the floor by my bed; a piece of chewed firewood, bits of string etc. Today was the first time he brought me a red pepper.
            Tonight was my first English lesson of the week. I tutor my host kids in the English language, everything from conversational to grammar, three times a week. The content of these lessons depends entirely on how hung-over the villagers have made me that day. Today the hangover was surprisingly mild, so I decided we should brush up on our verbs. We went over the basics like ‘carry’ ‘catch’ and ‘cut.’ When we got to ‘clean,’ Rusiko (the thirteen-year-old giggle monster that she is) informed me that she ‘cleans the house’ and that she ‘cleans her room’.
            ‘Very good, Ruso.’
            Then Giga, my fifteen-year-old Georgian prodigy, said: ‘I clean my grandmother, who is one-hundred-and-fifty-years-old.’
            ‘...that’s very good of you, Giga.’
            We moved on to ‘pick-up.’ Rusiko told me that she picks up her pencil. I told her that I pick up my telephone sometimes. Then, for some reason, I looked at Giga, dead in the eyes, and told him that I like to go to the bar and pick-up women.
            ‘Yes,’ he said, a knowing glint in his eyes, ‘I also like this process.’
            Today was the first time I heard him use the word ‘process.’
            Tonight was the first time my host-mom has made midnight khachapuri. We were sitting on the couch, watching the highlights from this week’s episode of Georgian Dancing with the Stars (somehow better than the American version) when Giga got a nosebleed. He tilted his head back to stem the small stream of blood that was dripping down to his chin, and kept stuffing the cheesy-bread into his mouth. This kid is my new hero.
            Honestly, if any wealthy readers out there want a good investment, buy this kid a plane ticket and give him a few years of university at a western school. This family lives on 300 lari a month, the equivalent of about $180 CAD, and though they live better than most in this village, I don’t see how Giga is going to afford the 3000 lari-per-year tuition to study political science at Batumi University. In the four months that I’ve been here, he has remembered every single thing that I have taught him. He has gone from no English to semi-fluent in the same amount of time that it has taken me to gain ten pounds and grow a moustache. He gets top marks at school and I don’t doubt for a moment that he could be president of Georgia one day.  
            6 days left in the village, 14 left in-country.
Kargad!
-Zacho

Thursday, November 29, 2012

It Was the Complete Opposite of Disneyland


I have to start off the post with an apology over my serious lack of entries over the past couple of weeks. Wait, what am I talking about? This is Georgia; the fact that I’m still alive after the past two weeks is apology enough.

            I sit in my living room on a broken, Soviet-era sofa. The television spits out Mexican soap operas that I travelled ten-thousand kilometers to watch. Sweetened Turkish coffee sits in my lap, the fire roars to my immediate left, and my host mom, Dali, is all sorts of up in my face.
            My sickness carried over into the weekend but I’m feeling much better now. Dali heard me coughing this morning when I was spending a few blissful moments in bed before my body hit the frigid air of my room (the product of a rat chewing a hole into the yard) and she’s on a mission to get me healthy again. She towers over me from where I sit, one hand on her hip, the other clutching a gigantic spoon filled with an insane amount of dripping honey, the remnants of the blackened hive still crushed into it.
            “Dali, I’m not putting that spoon into my mouth.”
            “Tchame, bitcho!” (Eat, boy)
            “Meh ar var bitchi, Dali. Meh var katsi” (I’m not a boy, Dali. I’m a man)
            “Oi shen, shen, shen! Tchame!” (Oh you, you, you! Eat!)
            “Dali, even if consuming that amount of honey at one time wouldn’t choke me, I’m not interested.”
            “Grippe! Grippe! Tchame!” (Sick! Sick! Eat!)
            “No.”
            She gives me that certain look of hers. This look tells me that her family has lived in this valley for hundreds of years. It tells me that the Persians, the Mongolians, the Turks and even the Russians couldn’t subjugate her people. It tells me that despite being a single mother in the desolate, unforgiving mountains of Adjara, she raised her two kids whilst chopping firewood and scratching potatoes out of the thin topsoil.
            “Okay Dali, momei puri da meh tchame es.” (Get me bread and I’ll eat this)
            “Kai bitcho” she says with the flash of smile as she moves away. I’m a good boy.

            My weekend started off the only way it possibly could, with a five-hour marshrutka ride out of the mountains. It was a holiday Friday, a religious day commemorating Saint Giorgi (George), the bro who killed a dragon from the back of a horse with nothing but a pointy stick. I arrived in Batumi in one piece, met up with my friends Jon from Delaware and Chris from jolly old, and we hopped right back into another marshrutka.
Just a perfect photo-op
            Our destination was Zugdidi, which translates to ‘big hill’, a medium-sized town three hours to the northwest. There we met up with fellow English teachers Derek from ‘Murica, Corey from Vancouver, Brent also from ‘Murica, Jess from Australia and Michelle from Kiwi-land. Why did I travel eight hours with a head-cold? Did I do it for some divine archeological ruins? Did I do it for a girl? Did I do it for an once-in-a-lifetime experience, never again to be replicated no matter how hard I try until my body fails me and my spirit roams the earth as a dissatisfied ghost for all of eternity? No…I did it for a cheeseburger.
            My friends and I have been in Georgia for just over three months. We all left a number of things behind and we all truly feel the absence of certain people in our day-to-day. Jon misses his girlfriend, Derek misses his boyfriend, Chris misses his mother and father, Corey misses his wife. Those people are all thousands of miles away from us, scattered about the world in small pockets of civilization and preserved in our memories like amber. We can’t do anything about that at the moment. But what we can do is put a little bit of cow between a couple slices of bread, wash it down with some beer, and feel content with the people we do have around us.
            A night of too much beer directly preceded a morning with too little water. Us boys got ourselves together and headed out for some shwarma. The Turkish treat took the brunt of the hangover, the carbonation of a soft drink took another sizeable portion of it, and the crisp autumn air took the rest. We stumbled around the town like neglected shadows, shells of the men that we were three months ago, and we had a lot of fun bullshitting; finally speaking English with really nothing at all to say.
Did I mention how far away our wives and girlfriends were?
            John, Chris and I said our goodbyes and headed for the marshrutka stand outside of the town’s dilapidated train station. We had a of couple hours to kill so we found some steps, busted out some sunflower seeds and pretzels, and enjoyed the warmth of the failing sunlight. We soon felt our bladders begin to fill, which is never a good sensation in a country with little in the way of public facilities. The train station? No, there won’t be a toilet in there. A tree? No, there are too many people around. Hold it? No, the bus journey could take up to three hours.
            Chris and I found ourselves in desperation mode. We started walking, stopped an old Russian bloke, and in broken Georgian implored him as to where we could void ourselves. He vaguely gestured and we set off, hoping against hope that he didn’t send us to a portal to hell.
            We found ourselves in front of a decrepit concrete building. Six spires reached towards the heavens from each side of a curved dome. Inside were vaulted ceilings, fecal-matter splayed at eye-level, and a suspicious red liquid pooled on the floor. A man stood behind a counter, his face completely hidden by a wooden screen. He gestured but he did not speak. I handed over forty-tetri, double the price, and had the scariest, most satisfying moment of my life.
Took us 3 hours to realize one of our group members
was an old Georgian lady
            It was not until Chris and I found ourselves back on the marshrutka that we realized we were in the presence of Beelzebub. We were shaken. It had been the complete opposite of Disneyland. Every kilometer that separated us from that place gave us a little more hope in the world; restored a little more beauty in our eyes.
            Jon hopped off the bus early, leaving Chris and I to bro-out hard in Batumi for the night. We checked into our hostel, had a much needed wash (separately), and set off into the monsoon in search of some food and some beer.
            Half-way through a pastry, hastily consumed in an entranceway to a block of flats, I realized the solution to our money woes. I remembered a lively little Georgian restaurant; we could drink 1.50 beers and eat 80-tetri kinkali, converting to about 1 dollar and 30 cents Canadian respectively.   
                 We were there for about a half hour, watching football on T.V. and talking about how truly ridiculous life is sometimes, when a rowdy table of big Georgian men invited us over. We were downing shots of vodka and eating khachapuri when I thought to ask them about their current employment situation. One man was in the coast guard, one was in the army, one was a border guard and the other was Georgian search and rescue. I jokingly said, “you are very good friends to have!” and one of them replied, “yes, very good friends,” whilst showing me a pistol under the table.
            I sought out Chris’s eyes, mimed the international signal for ‘holy shit this guy has a gun’ but it was too late. One man had Chris standing on a chair, pointing a stern finger in his face and yelling at him because Chris hesitated when asked if he loved England. We planned our escape and just before we jumped up to run out the door, one man paid our bill for us. We ran down the street, laughing about our good fortune and the day we had had. The rest of the night was a blur: I think I bought an Iranian man some fruit juice and picked his brain about politics while Chris was busy teleporting about the city.
            I have 8 days left in the village and 16 days left in-country. Pray for me.
Kargad!
- Zacho

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Sick as a Dzagli

The only dzagli in Georgia I wouldn't mind
getting rabies from
 To those of you who are irregularly checking the blog from both here and around the world, I'm not dead yet. I've been taken down by yet another sickness, my sixth in four months, and I have been unable to do anything other than read and cough. I tried updating this blog a few days ago but writing when you're sick is like playing solitaire when you're drunk, its lonely and you often miss the point. It's a brutal existence here when you feel like crap, I sit on the couch with a book and a cup of tea and my Georgian mother yells at me for being sick...this has gone on for four days.
        Here are the top 5 reasons, no joke, that my host mother has given me for my current illness:
1. I read too much
2. I'm on the computer too much
3. I have cold hands
4. My socks aren't thick enough
5. I went outside without my slippers on...once
   Of course, it has nothing to do with the schools communal water cup. Now before this trip I had never been around children much before, but did you know that they are always sick? They constantly cough and sneeze and drool and put everything within an arm-length in their mouths. That's all well and fine, some people back home have told me that this is completely natural, but never, ever have I ever heard of a communal water cup.
   There are perhaps 100 students in my school, plus ten or so teachers give or take. At the front of the school there is one hose jutting from a concrete slab and on top of this slab sits the cup. During each break, children of all ages come to slurp greedily from this little wooden chalice. This is either the most foolhardy, ridiculous thing that I have ever seen in my life, or it is genius in its archaicness. One child in the village gets sick, they all get sick. One child builds up the antibodies to a certain virus, so must all the rest.
  The only problem is when a fragile little Canadian comes over, touches a book or a pencil, and then accidentally sticks his finger in his mouth like a complete jackass...six times. 
Kargad!

Monday, November 12, 2012

Zacho Wants You to Figure Your Shit Out


What do you want out of life?
What lengths are you willing to go in order to achieve it?
            Our families are models for us, whether we want to admit that or not.
As far as I can tell, each member of my family wants something different out of life. My wonderful Mother, with her deep intellect and capacity for understanding, I think she wants to put her spirit in the right place. My rolling stone Father, who puts down countries like the rest of us put down beer bottles, I think he wants insight into the human condition. My dear Sister, tugging along a backpack full of textbooks 7 years out of college, I think she wants enlightenment.
            What am I supposed to do with that?
            I think the most compassionate thing that we can do as human beings is to accept that everybody wants something different out of their 81.4 years. I think we lose that. I think that hurts us.
            As for me, I have no idea. I guess I jump face first into new experiences and hope that something will grab me.
            Currently, it takes me four or five hours to get to civilization, depending on how drunk the marshrutka driver is (they drive faster when they’re plastered).
            That’s the equivalent of driving from Vancouver to Kelowna for wifi. That's like flying from Calgary to Montreal just to sit down when you go to the bathroom.
            Did I find whatever it was that I was looking for? Does putting the mind in seclusion open up the soul?
            I have less than five weeks left and so far, nothing yet.
            Maybe it’s an epiphany that will hit me as soon as I step off the plane and into that fresh B.C. air. Maybe I’ll find it during my next adventure. Maybe I’ll be a bitter old man, cheating another bitter old man at chess, when it will hit me like a sack of Georgian potatoes. Maybe I’ll never find it.
            I guess the point in all of this is that it’s never too late to try and figure it out. Opportunities may pass us, but we can always make new ones. We gotta love those around us, hope for a little love back, and keep on truckin’ till we figure it all out.
            Wow, introspective posts sure make me hungry, what’s for dinner?

            
 Maybe its khachapuri night! One of the national dishes of Georgia, its literally just bread filled with cheese. This is a North American stomach's wet dream...if only it wasn't filled with Georgian cheese...


Oooh maybe we're having khinkali! This is Georgia's other national dish: dumplings filled with spiced meat. The trick is never to eat the little nub at the end, this shows that you aren't an impoverished little girl. No complaints here.


It's still autumn and everybody knows what that means...weird white pumpkin/squash-thing season! They crack these babies open, toss them on the fire, and scoop out their warm innards by hand. Oddly enough, the only thing that Georgians don't put salt on.


What's that? You've put on 10 pounds in 3 months by eating nothing but bread and potatoes? Not getting enough protein in your diet? One of the many benefits of living with a Muslim family is that just when you think you'd strangle Ronald Mcdonald for the chance to lick the grease off of a cheeseburger wrapper, your village slaughters 15 cows in one night!


So far, this has been my favourite dish. Beef (nuggets?) fried up in an unspeakable amount of oil, accompanied by salad that I'm pretty sure host Mom stored in the cupboard for a week.


One week later...I've eaten so much beef that I think I'm starting to go blind. In this incarnation, we have stewed beef, complete will all the bones and gristle you can choke on. For garnish, we have borano! Borano is sharp, oily melted cheese, fried in even more oil and placed in front of your whilst still boiling. It's like fondue...without all of the things that make fondue delicious.


How about some grape juice to wash it all down? My family takes grapes right off of the vine and makes their own (fuck you, food hipsters) and yes...that is an inch of sugar at the bottom of the jar.


 I couldn't eat another bite. What's that? Why are you yelling at me? Oh...you made me cake and Turkish coffee. Well, as an honoured guest in the land of hospitality, surely I can't decline.

Kargad!
- Zacho

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Zacho Gets All Spiritual and Stuff


            I was talking to a friend of mine today, British Chris, about Dostoyevsky, a writer I both hate and admire and hate to admire. Dostoyevsky says that ‘it is not miracles that incline a realist towards faith...in the realist it is not faith that is born of miracles, but miracles of faith.’ As a realist, I tend to agree with Papa Fyodor, I mean the man was a true Russian badass: his writing got him sentenced to death, reprieved, put into a Gulag, released, and made him wealthy before he gambled it all away. So what happens when a realist is presented with something so awe-inspiring, so humbling, and so deeply spiritual that it appears as an undeniable miracle to their eyes? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Vardzia.

            Perhaps it’s a place you have to see with your own eyes, but I’ve trekked to Machu Picchu and I’ve been to the Mayan temples at Chichen Itza, I’ve seen places like Stonehenge and Notre Dame de Paris and countless other sites where faith meets ingenuity and the human character triumphs...but I’ve never felt as strong of a spiritual connection to the world as I did at Vardzia. I swear it wasn’t the chacha.
            Vardzia was built sometime in the 12th century, an entire monastery built within a mountain in order to protect the monks from the weather, Mongols, Persians and Turks. The Persians and Turks ended up sacking the place, driving the monks away for a final time back in the late 16th century. The human spirit persists, however, and the monks have started coming back to live and pray in the caves.  
            I do not know what it was that really struck me about this place in particular. It was visually stunning, sometimes eerily quiet, and placed in a perfect green valley with a trickling blue river. I don’t believe it was the physical nature of the place. I think it was the fact Vardzia illustrates the lengths that people will go to protect something that they believe in; and as I’m not a religious person, the metaphor appeared even stronger to me. If we, as the present incarnation of the human race, could stand by our convictions to such an extent that we would excavate a goddamned mountain by hand to preserve them, what are we truly capable of?
            Vardzia was just one stop in a weekend full of adventures, however. It was a dear friend’s birthday, the name of whom I can’t quite recall, but we assembled in Borjomi, a little town in the Lesser Caucasus, to celebrate. We walked through a forest that was so calm and peaceful that we forgot we were in Georgia. We explored a castle, swam in a hot spring reputed for its ‘healing powers,’ and we crossed a river on a log and built a fire on the far shore. We also drank a lot of terrible Georgian wine.          
             All in all it was a terrific weekend, a much needed reprieve from the village life. I doubt I can stretch another 25 days straight here without going insane but I’ll just have to wait and see; the 10 hour round-trip out of the mountains in the most horrible form of transportation imaginable, the marshrutka, is a heavy price to pay just to stop myself from talking to the livestock. I’m going to finish off this post with some pictures of last weekend, I hope everyone that is reading this back home and around the world gets a chance to find something that gives them a little faith, even if it’s simply a little faith in humanity.
Kargad!



-                    - Zacho
























Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Zacho Falls Off a House

           I woke up angry on Sunday, though I’m not quite sure why. Tomorrow will be 24 days in the village without a break; 24 days without speaking in complete sentences, 24 days of eating questionable food, and that’s 24 days with only two unsatisfying showers. I’m not complaining, this is what I signed up for, what I live for in a lot of ways, but I’d be lying if I said I was certain that it didn’t factor into how I felt.
            I think what mostly put me into a foul mood was the epitome I had the night before. I was staring off at the mountains, looking without seeing, when I realized that this is the first time in my life that I’ve lived in a state resembling poverty. I was fortunate enough to be born to loving parents that did (do) everything in their power to keep me fed and comfortable. That makes me the minority in this world. There are entire continents full people that are trying to eat, and I come from the only continent full of people that are trying to stop.
            And then I realized that I’m just visiting. In two months time I’ll go back to buying 5 dollar coffee and this unsteady world will persist into the twenty-first century. It was a cripplingly somber thought, but I vowed to forever be conscious of my actions.  
Up in the Mountains
            The next morning, I rolled off my bed, slouched over my morning chai, and was informed that today I was going on a ‘holiday’. I am by no means a veteran of this country, but I’ve been here long enough not to ask what they meant, the answer would only leave me more confused.
            There’s an expression with the expats in this country, when you ask somebody what time an event is at they always add the appendage GMT: Georgian Maybe Time. I sat on the roadside for over an hour waiting for my holiday to begin, just as I was about to leave the marshrutka (van) picked me up. I was heading deeper into the mountains.
            Along the way I peppered my fifteen-year-old host brother with questions, my eyes scanning the countryside for familiar landmarks so that I could walk home. A copy of The Brothers Karamazov was burning a hole in my bedside table; I desperately wanted to curl up.
            After an hour, we finally reached our destination high above the valley. I finally received some answers too: my holiday was to a sixteen-year-old girl’s first wedding anniversary. Go back and reread that last sentence.
            Zacho was going to his first supra.
            A supra is a Georgian feast, a celebratory event, instantly recognizable by its tables loaded with food, wine, and chacha. A supra always has a tamada, a toastmaster, who spends the night hanging onto the end of a table giving long, rambling speeches about every five minutes.
Party Central, the Bride in the Red
            Fifty of us silently filed into a room, I tried a few cheery gamarjobas (hellos) out on a couple of people, but I was met with faces of unwavering stone. We sat down at two long tables overflowing with beef, chicken, bread, vegetables and fruit. As soon as we took our places, people began to eat without speaking. At small intervals along the table were plastic Tupperware pitchers that I assumed were filled with water. Almost choking to death on a chicken bone, I asked the man beside me to fill my glass. When I put the cup to my lips, I choked again on the sickly-sweet taste of Georgian wine.
            As soon as the tamada took his place at the head of my table and gave his first speech, the party began in earnest. Georgians pride themselves on their speeches: long, confusing affairs that can last over ten minutes. When Georgians finish giving a speech, you cheers (gamarjos!) but only with your right hand, and only after the person giving the speech has drank. It doesn’t matter if you’re drinking beer, wine or moonshine, you always finish your drink in one gulp.
Talking Champagne Showers: Bubbly and Baklava for the Happy Couple
            I thank the almighty Allah that I was sitting in the wine section that night, because the speeches piled on, increasing in frequency and decreasing in length. At one point, the men around my table stood and took turns toasting the happy couple. On a whim I too stood up and thanked them, President Saakashvili, her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper and the Sedin twins. When I sat back down, a stupid, shit-eating grin on my face, I was met with wide eyes. Nobody in the room had understood a word that I had said but they sure were shocked that I had stood up. Almost imperceptibly, something changed and my table erupted in laughter, my back stung from the good-natured slaps it received. I had done exactly the right thing: I had returned the honor that they had given me.
            The clouds of bitter Russian tobacco smoke forced me to go outside, but not before I two-stepped in a sea of gorgeous women, egged on by the irritatingly high eyebrows and wide grins of their patroni’s (chaperones). A few mothers informed me that they had designs on me and I thought it best to slip outside before I woke up married.
            I reached a little wooden balcony, brought out my trusty Nokia, and called a friend to tell him to call the government if he didn’t hear from me for a couple of days. I held the phone to my ear with my shoulder, my arms fanned out in front of me in a casual manner, my hands gently sought the railing and I fell off the goddamned house.
                        It was only 6 feet, but it was onto rock, and the three extra summersaults I did down the slope sure didn’t help. When I later talked to my friend on the phone, he said he had heard a thud, followed by nothing but Georgian voices. I can’t believe he didn’t hear the sound of my pride shattering.
My Moonshine Bandage and My Awesome Georgian Slippers
              I picked myself up, found my phone, critically   weighed the pros and cons of crying, thought better of it,  and called Papa Corey, the grizzled Canadian leader of our group. I could not put any weight on my right knee, my hands and elbows were bleeding, and I honestly couldn’t tell if I had hit my head. Corey kept me calm, talked me through it, and gave me some pretty sound advice. By a small miracle, I crawled into the only marshrutka that was headed towards my village, somehow got back to my house, and crashed heavily onto the couch, laughing like an idiot the entire time. Host mom took one look at my knee, and went and grabbed a bottle of chacha. I cringed, the room was already spinning and I doubted that more moonshine was going to help, but she pulled out a rag, doused it with the clear liquid, and wrapped it around my knee. The pain was so great that I had no choice but to laugh even louder. What a spectacular holiday.

            At some point in this adventure I talked to my father on the phone. When I woke up, he had sent the following to me in an email:

"perhaps you should send along a couple of contacts there – just in case you take in the wrong combination of chacha, palinka, wine, beer, vodka, bad meat and schnapps, and decide to go live in the hills for a while, chasing small furry animals, and we have to track you down."

Too late, Dad.

Kargad!
Zacho

Thursday, October 25, 2012

I Have Seen the Face of Dog


            The sickness that had met me with the weekend had all but vanished by Sunday. I woke up feeling chipper but anxious, outwardly calm yet wracked with inner turmoil. I needed something to do.
Bardnali shrouded with cloud
            Entering the third week of my month long self-banishment to the mountains, I’m starting to go a little crazy. Long periods of inactivity leave you restless, and any interaction with the people of Kvatia is often unsatisfying for both parties. Neither of us ever know what the hell the other person is talking about and even the sign-language of the Caucasus is as foreign to me as their tongue. When I say that I am the only person for miles and miles that speaks English, what I’m really saying is that I’m the only person for miles and miles that does not speak Georgian. You have to learn to be your own confidant, your own psychiatrist, and your own best friend.
            When Sunday morning crept around, it was time to climb that damned mountain that had been mean-mugging me since I first got here two months ago. I stuffed my face with melted cheese, slurped down a Turkish coffee and hit the road at the bleary-eyed hour of 12pm.
            My family did not want me to go on this little hike at all. One of the purposes of the TLG program is to facilitate a cultural exchange, yet this is entirely one-sided. My eyes widen when I learn of the intricacies of Georgian culture, my mind plays host to little debates as I argue with myself over the logic, historical context, and present-day consequences of getting drunk on moonshine at 10am or yelling at a person who is standing two feet away from you. When my family recognizes things that are important to my culture, such as maintaining a certain level of physical fitness, hygiene, and spending all of my money on useless gadgets, they just laugh in my face and shake their heads. They seriously could not understand what made me want to climb that mountain.
The range behind me curves across the border into Turkey
             I waited until they were collectively bent over a bucket of grapes and then I made my escape. I immediately felt better: the pent up frustration from work, the homesickness, the physical sickness, the confusion over my life and the lives of those around me, it was all expended in the sweat that dripped down my face or in the vapour of my warm breath as it hit the chilly autumn air.
            I made my way down through the village, tipping my ball cap to smiling young men and women, wrinkled old babushkas, and screaming children who kicked empty beer bottles around the street. I crossed the valley and began to climb for the next three hours. The meandering switchbacks of the dirt road gave way to narrow, snaking lanes of rock and gravel. Nothing but the stoutest of Russian jeeps would make it up here, a place the locals call Bardnali.
The valley
            An hour went steadily by. I broke up the climb with short water breaks or opportunities for self-portraits, remember what I said about being your own friend? I stumbled around sheep, danced around cows, and jumped over fallen logs, but there was one barrier that was not so eager to be conquered: a frightfully rabid dog.
            My route took me through a cheerful meadow, complete with a herd of lazy cows who were taking advantage of the pleasant afternoon the only way that they knew how: eating grass. If I didn’t have my headphones in and cranked to the new Mumford and Sons, I probably would have noticed the barking, but alas, I was jamming.
            The dog came flying around a disinterested bull and stopped before me, all teeth and matted fur, barring my way. Saliva dripped out of its fearsome jaws, its eyes mere slits filled with an unmistakable hunger: the hunger for Canadian flesh. I looked up towards the top of the mountain and then back down to the valley, I did not want to turn around; I wanted to keep this good feeling going.
            It was a Caucas dog, bred over thousands of years for one purpose: to fight wolves to the death. I pulled the headphones out of my ears and implored my bovine brethren for assistance but they politely refused to become involved. If I hadn’t been eating nothing but cheese for the past 8 weeks I probably would have messed myself. This was dire.
Almost there
            I am a great lover of dogs, I think they make terrific companions, and I’m always the first one to walk up to strange canines and give them a good scratch behind the ears. However, during our orientation in Tbilisi, the government informed us that a sizeable proportion of Georgian dogs have rabies. No big deal, rabies won’t kill you.
            Then they told us that after taking the rabies vaccine, you weren’t able to consume alcohol for six months.
            My right hand reached for my knife while my left searched the ground for a big enough rock to brain this beast. Dog lover or not, I’m not about to go down without a fight. You aren’t supposed to make eye contact with an angry dog but screw that, I thought, I’m gonna stare this thing down while I walk right on by it.
            I began a slow shuffle towards my fate, muscles tensed, arms locked, jaw set. Cerberus stood his ground, growling and snapping at the air, a strip of black hair on its back standing straight up. Five feet (more snapping), four feet (its weight shifting to its back paws), three feet (black eyes starting to roll back), two feet (I begin to shake). As I closed in, right when I was certain that the dog was about to spring towards my neck, a shrill whistle filled the crisp afternoon air. The dog sat back on its haunches, its tongue came out, and it blinked agreeably at me.
Finally made it
            Another blast and the dog jumped up and trotted away. I looked up towards my saviour and found an eight-year-old child, a student of mine, who was giggling while the dog was eagerly licking his face. The headphones went back in and I crushed the rest of the mountain, when the adrenaline wore off my pace slackened, but I made it home before nightfall in a state approaching bliss.
            My family later informed me that they could hear me talking in my sleep on Sunday night; I bet I was still thanking that boy.    
            On a side note, it has dawned on me that perhaps the readers of this blog would enjoy a perspective on Georgia other than my own. There are fifty-eight people in my intake and fifty-eight blogs to go with them, but I enjoy my friend Sanchez’s quite a bit. He has a down to earth, no-nonsense style that I believe contrasts quite nicely with my own, so you guys should check him out at http://sanchezjohnson.wordpress.com/, particularly his article entitled “I’m a Grown-Ass Man!”

Kargad!
-Zacho

Pickniki, Kvatia behind my bag





Thursday, October 18, 2012

Giorgi Had a Squeeze Box


Hey all,
            I hope this post finds you well, the same can’t be said for me. Unfortunately, I’ve been hit by a debilitating case of “white boy syndrome”. This condition affects the countless middle-class suburbanites across the world who are foolish enough to travel to developing countries. Symptoms include, not being able to travel farther than 20 feet from the toilet (hole), severe gut-pain, and a visible loss of colour whenever the word ‘khachapuri’ is mentioned.
            This morning I rolled out of bed, put on a clean shirt and tie, tried to get my hair to flatten in the sink, and trudged to the kitchen. Host mom was there, making breakfast whilst chattering happily at me in Georgian. I usually talk right back to her in English, neither of us understand what we’re saying to each other, but it’s just nice to have someone to talk to. Today, while I was telling her that the Canucks are losing more than just money in this lockout, she placed before me a pot of red, oily water with bits of chicken gristle floating in it. I used my baby Georgian to tell her I just wanted bread that I can put my life-saving jar of peanut butter on, but she used her superior language skills to guilt me into spooning the wiggly chicken into my unhappy mouth.
            Here we are, not 12 hours later, grimacing in pain and regret. With anything resembling a pharmacy, doctor or clinic hours away by jeep, I am just happy I know what’s wrong with me. With morale at an all-time low, I decided to cheer myself up with a little mindless activity. Before I explain, here’s a picture:


             A couple of months ago, I spent a few nights even deeper in the mountains than I am now. After a long day of haying, a couple kids invited me to share their fire and their vodka with them. Even though it was late August, the mountains were chilly and the allure of heat was too strong to pass up. I was there for several minutes when this young man appeared, squeeze box in hand. This guy was the very definition of badass, between shots of Russian water he would roar out Georgian folk songs, his fingers fighting to keep up.
            Tonight, flipping through some photos to pass the time between trips out back, I came across this marvelous image again. I immediately decided that he had the power to make every moment a decidedly festive occasion, and I sought to re-write history.  


Somehow makes me look cooler?
The hills are alive with the sound of vodka
Boogie down in the Caucasus
The band Radiohead
Vancouver riots weren't all bad
Wouldn't be the first Georgian in Space

                      If my family is reading this and starting to get worried about my sanity, try not to worry too much, I’m still several weeks away from talking to the livestock.
Kargad!   




            

Brief Musings on Reality


            Every day, on my unsteady walk to school, I walk past the grave of my host-families father. He passed away two years ago from an illness and the family has all but recovered.
            Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have a real experience, a deep moment in which we feel truly alive. These instances are often derived from intense feeling; a burst of great pain or sorrow, an instant of deep anger or regret; a moment of careless love or vulnerability.
            I feel like in our innocuous 21st century lives, we don’t leave ourselves enough time for raw emotion. We are just too busy with our work, our families, our relationships, our hobbies, our telephones and our televisions and our telenovellas. We love the idea of a real moment, we can recognize them, yet we seldom experience them for ourselves.
            I’m a firm believer in few subjects, yet I enjoy a little semiotics now and then. I am also the first to admit that I seldom feel real. I have been in a few situations in life: break-ups, fist fights, deaths etc, where I had absolutely no idea how to behave. These occasions give you the opportunity to stop being a walking billboard, finally find your spine or your soul (or your balls) and start acting like a human being. What did I do in these moments? I recognized the familiar pattern (domain) around me, the signifiers and the signified, and I acted like the protagonist of the last goddamned movie I had happened to watch. What a tool.
            I would bet that you, reading these words right now, have had a similar experience. Maybe you didn’t act like Bogart in Casablanca (I certainly didn’t) but I’m sure you felt awkward, I’m sure you couldn’t believe a lot of the words coming out of your mouth, maybe you couldn’t even figure out what to do with your hands. These moments suck.
The solution?
Practice.
            Do whatever you need to do to get yourself back in the saddle: love again, go fight a bully, jump out of an airplane or some other cliché-ridden activity. The more awkward situations you put yourself in, the more opportunities you have to fight your way out of them. These moments define us, the memories of which keep us going when the clouds start to form, the legacy of which makes us all the more human.
            I took a chance, I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I am a part of some noble undertaking, but it was a chance nonetheless. Instead of stepping off an airplane at 10 thousand feet, I stepped off an airplane and into a developing country. Sometimes I think about the former, at least it wouldn’t have taken me 4 months to hit the ground, but that’s a different story.
            When I see that gravestone in the morning, when I see my host-mother clutching the portrait of her late husband, when I witness that fleeting moment of agony, I feel confounded and I feel awkward, but at least I feel real.
            Apparently the mouse I saw this morning while I was eating my breakfast khachapuri was a “family friend”. Oh yeah, those special moments can come from laughter as well.