Spring is coming! At least I really hope it is. I’m writing
this while home alone (I just had to take a break, when I looked over at the
wood stove and noticed it was conspicuously dark. While I am getting better
with it my natural tendency towards absent minded professor makes it
occasionally difficult). Nato and Gocha are out visiting Gocha’s aunt who is
ill and Nini is…somewhere. Unfortunately illness and death seem to be in vogue
here in Mestia.
My host sister Nini
is on the mend after terrible stomach pains requiring a visit to Tbilisi to see
doctors there. I myself made 8 visits to the clinic here in Mestia in less than
2 weeks after I was bit by a neighbor’s dog on the leg and developed an
unrelated bad infection on my face. It was a minor bite, but getting the rabies
vaccine and the scrapes from the canines cleaned seemed like a good idea. After
3 weeks the bruises are almost gone but it feels like I will have a lump under
my skin for a while still. For those of you who enjoy irony, I was bitten by Lassie.
The rabies vaccine consisted of 3 shots given over the course of a week. But
now I’ve got that vaccine at least. The infection on my face was more nasty
than anything else. A pore on my face got infected to the point where my entire
jawline was swollen. The surgeon at the clinic gave me a local anesthetic and
then drained the infection. I had to go back every day the clinic was open for
a week to get the dressing changed. I took a bunch of antibiotics and at this
point it’s almost completely healed. I had an infected tear duct on my eye at
the same time, but the antibiotics killed that pretty quick as well. A bigger
worry was my insurance card not being here. Luckily my Svan tutor Lasha’s
mother works at the clinic so at her urging the clinic staff forged the
paperwork to prevent me from having to pay for my procedure and aftercare. If
you want to know if your community values you, I would suggest seeing if they
will lie for you without you yourself suggesting it.
Then last week, two teachers at my school lost one of their
parents. One of them was related to Nato as well so she is currently observing
the 40 day fast (vegan food only) following the death. The first funeral was on
Thursday and I went with the rest of the teachers. It was held in St George’s
Church and presided over by Bap Giorgi, my priest. Funerals are short services
here and most of the mourners don’t go inside the church, but instead mill
around outside for the half an hour or so. Then everyone goes to an empty
building on the main square for a supra of fast approved food. I realized that
I’ve adjusted to Georgia when I looked around the room and figured it was a
medium sized supra, and then did a quick estimation and discovered it was 300
to 350 people. Friday I was invited to an ormotsi, the supra 40 days after a
death, but I was teaching at the time so I was unable to attend. Saturday Nato
and Gocha went to another funeral.
Sunday was the funeral for Nato’s relative. I went to church
that morning and then went to the deceased’s home. Nato had been going every
day to sit with the body, which is apparently a requirement for close
relatives. As I approached the home I saw the yard was swollen with people, and
some of the men had started singing a polyphonic, making it sound mournful and heavy.
The sun was shining brightly and the swell of male voices echoed off the other
side of the valley. As I approached I noticed that at funerals traditions of
gender segregation seem to be more closely observed. There were no women in the
yard. I asked where they were and was directed inside. An inner and outer room
were both lined around with benches, full of women dressed in black, relatives,
neighbors, mourners. I wasn’t sure about going to the inner room, since I had
never met the woman when she was alive and I didn’t want to intrude on people’s
genuine grief. Lasha’s mom saw me and motioned for her to sit with me. I was
probably the youngest woman there by 10 years or so and I knew at least half of
the women in the room They then of course moved on to the topic of who I’m
going to marry in Svaneti. Because, you know, life goes on, and you gotta get
your matchmaking in while you can.
Perhaps half an hour
after I got there an ancient woman moving with a cane came out of the inner
room and we stood up as one. We started moving out, the swarm of men outside
the door parting like the Red Sea for the stream of women to pass. Nato caught
site of me in the crowd and asked why I hadn’t gone inside and found her. We
started down the muddy street towards the church and stopped when we reached
the bank and turned around. First came a few men carrying a wooden lid, then
two teens, one carrying a portrait of the woman, the other with a bundle of
flowers in her hands. Four men passed eventually with the open bare board
coffin on their shoulders. Following the pallbearers was a cluster of perhaps a
dozen men with their arms linked. Their voices were raised in a dirge, the
multiple melodies blending perfectly. We followed the coffin to the church,
walking more slowly than I ever have, an untidy column of 300 or 400 people,
dressed primarily in black, voices muted. The pallbearers changed periodically
and when we reached the church carried the coffin into the church. This time I
waited outside and listened to further discussion of my marriage prospects.
Asmat (Lasha’s mom) assured everyone that I am a very xocha dina (good girl).
After a very short while the close family emerged from the
miniscule church and the women headed over for the supra. It seems that for the
burial itself only men are allowed in the cemetery, so the women are allowed to
tuck in. The same empty building was set up. The feast was strictly segregated,
two tables for women, five for men. A delicious variety of dishes had been
prepared, beans, bread, eggplant, mushrooms, salad, stew, halva, rice, spinach,
pickled vegetables. The wine and chacha flowed freely because the lack of
sunlight in the room with its bare concrete floors and walls froze its sitting
victims. The men came in after a bit and the tamada started his toasts, but as
women we were allowed to largely ignore him and so as we pleased. I chatted and
laughed with the women around me, I’m finally feeling confident enough in my
Georgian and Svan to move about without an English speaker. I looked over and
spotted a cluster of my younger male friends and nodded my greetings. We didn’t
stay long and Asmat and I walked home arm in arm, full to bursting, aware of
the tasks awaiting us at home, comfortable in quiet companionship. These were
my first two funerals here in Georgia, but I’m glad that I went. I am glad that
I was able to show the respect of my presence to my fellow teachers in their
time of mourning, and I’m glad that I have been accepted to the extent in my
community that I was admired rather than derided for attending, that I was seen
as making the effort of coming rather than encroaching on the neighborhood’s
shared grief. I appreciated the pace and the sense of finality that I found at
the funerals, the final walk to church with everyone who knew you surrounding
you.
It hasn’t been all death the past couple week though. My
kids provide me with endless sources of amusement. One day I left school at the
same time as my fifth grade class and they broke into the omnipresent Georgian
cheer ‘Hannah’s Gau-mar-jos [cheers to Hannah!]’. That this was the same day as
I broke out the scratch and sniff stickers is entirely beside the point. It was
endearing, cute and just the lift I needed before another 2 hours of teaching
that afternoon. Then one day my 1st and 3rd grade classes
were combined (what was a special kind of hell, what with their having
completely different levels of English) and Gio asked me “Hannah, are you a
teacher?”. In Georgian of course, if I get any full sentences out of my 1st
graders this year I will weep with joy. His older brother Kakha proceeded to
chastise him, “Of course she’s a teacher, she teaches us” “But she only plays
games with us” “That’s because she’s fun”. I hated to break in, but it was time
to keep the lesson moving. We had a song to sing. Lastly, Georgia celebrated
Mother’s Day on March 3 and then International Women’s Day (Happy Intl Women’s
Day to all the women in my life!) on March 8. We had Mother’s Day off and the
next day in class Luka, a 5th grader, wished my co-teacher a Happy
Mother’s Day. He then turned to me, “Hannah Mas, do you have a child?” My co
helpfully explained that I am unmarried and that he could wish me a Happy
Women’s Day later that week, while I doubled over in laughter. Because kids are
adorable and pretty much the same everywhere, and I find that a very comforting
fact in this very confusing and ever-changing world.
