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