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