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
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