March? Already?

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 1^st and 3^rd 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 1^st 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 5^th 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. 

Lamproba

So the celebration that happened the day when I had just gotten back to Georgia has a name. I cannot currently recall it but I will write it down in the very near future and put it here. We had another similar but more elaborate festival on Saturday evening, on a day Americans and the West reserve for the frivolity of Valentine’s Day. Nato spent the day cooking furiously, I tutored the kids and got Nika to read English without the threat of violence. In fact he did so willingly. The children’s treasury I brought is coming in handy already. We set up the supra for the dead at home, but I personally decided to take part in the other side of the ritual.

St George's Cemetery

Round about 7 Gocha, Manana Bidzola (an aunt) Ani Nika Saba Nini myself and Tiko (host sister studying in Tbilisi but home on holiday) piled into the car and drove to the cemetery next to St George’s church—my favorite one. Gocha’s parents, brother and a couple other clan members are buried in the churchyard. Lasha had brought wood over earlier. We carried qubdari, khachapuri, ghomi (the consistency of grits but made of rice, with cheese added) cake, wine and beer. Another clan member brought mandarins, one chacha, and one a whole pig’s head in a pot. The fire had already been lit in the Kakhberidze plot and the snow tamped down so we could walk. Our clan had at least 20 people there, between men women and children. In the whole cemetery there were at least 250 people and a dozen fires. All of the clan members knew me at least by sight, and most by name and to talk to as well. I teach all the school age kids in the clan do they’ve at least heard of Hannah Mas. I was certainly readily accepted as someone who should be there with them, not just some tourist brought along for cultural gawking. We toasted ate and talked. I pulled out my limited Svan and any final skepticism of my presence among the older men converted into wide smiles. Men and women stayed to their own sides of the platforms carved of snow for the feasts. People moved about, some greeting friends and neighbors, but always returning to their clan plot, their kin. I chatted with Tiko who speaks fluent English. Selfies were taken. We had a mid-winter picnic in the cemetery.

And it has to have been one of the most beautiful spectacles I’ve ever witnessed. In the depths of winter, in the dark of night, the city of the dead was transformed into the center of the community. Kids played in the snow and threw more wood on the fires. Adults were solemn, but laughed and joked with one another, particularly as the evening wore on and the various bottles emptied. Everyone was included. The fires in the snow and our veins kept up warm. My fifth grader Monica informed me that she likes beer as she chugged a glass like a champ. I kept thinking how if you were to carry out this commemoration in the US someone would call the cops. But there’s nothing sacrilegious about it, quite the contrary. But why not remember those we’ve lost, those we love, not by sitting around moping and being sad but getting out of the house, getting together with family and friends and having some fun? When I’m dead I’d rather people remember me that way. Lamproba is a tradition only followed in Svaneti and only certain parts of it at that. On a sketch comedy show here in Georgia, I saw it ridiculed. Other Georgians sometimes view Svans as idiots, but also as old-fashioned, even backwards. I hope this tradition stays alive; to lose it is to lose something beautiful both physically and spiritually. We’ll see if it can survive.

 

The kids at Lamproba L to R Saba, Nini, Bidzina, little brother who isn't my student, Bendo, Nika

The other big news from up here in Svaneti is that Skylar managed to have a bit of a health crisis while visiting us. He felt unwell one morning, which we assumed was just a hangover. He felt pretty bad the whole day, and then around 9pm we heard a thump from upstairs. I went up and found him semiconscious on the floor. Gocha and Nato proceeded to yell at me, assuming I had lied to them about his state of health, while also getting him back to bed, giving him medicine, hot water bottles and calling the ambulance. This arrived promptly and the various neighbors/relatives who had bene milling about carried him in and then drove with Gocha in the car so they could move him into the clinic here in Mestia. I spent the remainder of Sunday, all of Monday and Tuesday morning at the clinic with him, feeding, moving, helping, cajoling, entertaining and translating for him.

 I discovered that health care in Georgia is dirt cheap (total cost of ambulance ride, 2 nights in clinic, treatments there, 4 types of pills to take home, an x-ray and a blood test? Less than 100 USD) but also feels quite haphazard by US standards. For example there is no patient chart. Each new nurse or doctor who arrives just asks the patient what’s going on. Treatments are essentially bought at the pharmacy and then transported down the hall to be administered. The nursing staff can be difficult to find, so at one point I had to turn off an IV to prevent air from going into Skylar’s bloodstream. They didn’t have a sharps container, which frankly scared me half to death. They allowed me to stay in the room while he had his x-ray which I’m fairly certain in a big no no in the US. We had to bring our own food (and bedding), which blessedly Nato was willing to do. The khachapuri tasted delicious. Check-out consisted of packing up our stuff, Gocha turning up and us peacing out. No paperwork. No final check, just off you go. We never got an official diagnosis, or one that we understood since frankly my hospital vocab consists of the body parts, pain, better, worse, and pill. It doesn’t help that our new insurance cards haven’t arrived yet (apparently they’re coming from Tbilisi, on the back of a tortoise considering how long it’s taken thus far) so I had to run to the ATM Monday morning to get cash to pay for everything.

Two Aunts and Ani

Asmat, my Svan tutor’s Mom works at the hospital thank goodness so she shepherded me around to various offices to pay for stuff, get drugs, and to explain in slow and easy Georgian, when and how many of everything Skylar should take and watched as I wrote everything down for him on the packages. After we brought him home for the afternoon and night I took care of laundry, some food and getting his room cleaned up. I will say, at least the clinic here didn’t have that disinfectant smell that hospitals in the US always have and that sets my flesh crawling. I was still very glad to get back to school on Wednesday, even if I was physically dragging myself through the day. All my teachers asked how my friend was, as did two of my senior boys. I’ve realized that probably a big part of why people here stay home from school work etc with small illnesses is that it is imperative to keep them from becoming crises. In the US, exceptionally high quality medical care is never that far away (I’m not saying that everyone has access to it, I’m saying in purely geographic terms it exists). Here, the nearest actual hospital is 3+ hours by car on terrible roads. The Mestia clinic has the absolute basics, but not much more. It’s not worth risking an emergency, because it might just cost you your life.

I also tried my hand at skiing for the first time and miraculously managed to not kill myself. I actually had quite a fun time, despite running into an inordinate number of my students while wiped out and trying to determine how to get up from my heap on the snow. Another reminder that while I have many skills in the US few of them transfer here. My plan for getting home from Hatsvali, the ski resort, consisted of finding a ride with someone else going to Mestia, since that’s the only place to go. While this might sound a little haphazard it worked perfectly. Three young Svan men from Tbilisi were going back into town which they were visiting and offered me a lift (I was with my friend Skylar so don’t worry for my safety). We spoke in a strange combination of Georgian and English and they were surprised to learn that I was an English teacher and not a tourist. This broke the ice and they asked where I taught. When I said Mestia their eyes grew wide in the way that Georgian’s usually do when you say you willingly live in Svaneti, and even more surprising, that you love it there. They absolutely floored me with their next statement: “You are heroes”.

So it's cold in Svaneti...

But what else has happened since my return to Georgia, you might ask. Oh, many things. My return to school was good; my students seemed genuinely pleased to have me back as did the other teachers. As it turns out I only missed 6 days of school so I still now pretty well where my kids were. I was really excited to get back to my Access kids, who are between 13 and 17 years old and hail from both Mestia and the nearby village of Lenjeri. I have a ton of freedom teaching them (3-7 M,W,F but the hours are a little different right now because of the cold and dark). I can try different activities, do group work, make jokes that the students will understand have listening activities etc. The longer classes mean we get a lot more done and there seems to be a bigger focus on oral and aural comprehension which is how I’ve been taught languages so I’m better at replicating those techniques. I think the kids were pleased to see me back too. I have 2 session, the first can be anywhere from 8 to 15 students and the second is 7-9, most of them from Lenjeri.

                I’ve also decided to worry less this semester. If my 2^nd graders act up, well then, they do. They’re 7 years old. It’s not a personal insult to my teaching abilities. Its kids being kids. If the 6^th graders get under my skin, welcome to the club. They made the Russian teacher cry the other day , so it’s hardly just me. And if someone makes a comment about my Georgian, or so and so other foreigner who spoke perfect Georgian, bite me. I never said I was a linguist. I have the tendency to hide my emotions but then I remember that this is Georgia. Let it all hang out, everybody else does. If I’m angry I can be angry, tired, frustrated ditto. If I’m sad it’s not a character failing to cry. Life is often an emotional rollercoaster here; I may as well put my hands up and scream.

                 We also, the Thursday I got back, celebrated my host brother Lasha’s 22^nd birthday. We spent a large chunk of Wednesday evening preparing (though when I say we I wasn’t really terribly useful) and then when I got back from school on Thursday I found Nato, Teona (an aunt) Manana (another aunt) the neighbor and a 5^th woman I’d never met before in our kitchen getting ready for the evening. Upstairs a couple guys were there already and the table was laid for 15 or so. My usefulness consisted of doing some dishes and carrying stuff upstairs. On one trip Nini, who was playing backgammon with them called me over “Hannah, this boy is interested in what your name is”. And so the evening began. On one of my frequent trips upstairs the kids (Nini, Ani, Saba, Nika and a girl called Mari) followed me around giggling the whole time. They aahed to explain that they were my bodyguard for the evening, here to protect my honor from all the various young men who would be here that might want to steal it. Or something to that effect. They then followed me into my room (I sleep on the 2^nd floor and the birthday supra was to ne in the room/hallway outside my door) and pantomimed ‘if a boy drags you in here and onto the bed we’ll beat him up’. It’s good to know that they kids of the house have your back.  Not that I would ever have been worried about anything of the kids, all of the other guys at the party would have already taken it out of the offender pretty well by then. They were also all good kind sweet young men and being a young professional as I am here (please don’t laugh) I seem to hold a certain place of respect in their eyes.

I started the evening downstairs eating with the women. The kids were given gubdari and scampered back upstairs to watch the guys. It was discussed when I should join the young people upstairs and decided that when the other females arrived I would be sent up. I protested, it wasn’t necessary, but you don’t mess with Svan women. We did a few of our own toasts downstairs. Women seem to have different traditions than men. A toast would be introduced and each person would elaborate on the theme, in this case the first toast was to Lasha. Each woman, including myself added our good wishes to his future health and happiness and then drank our glass. The girls arrived (3 of Lasha’s old classmates, plus myself) and I was dragged upstairs by Manana to hang out with the young people. Misha had been chosen as the tamada, or toastmaster and he did a good job of it. He was stationed at the head of the table with Lasha on his right. I was at the other end next to a quiet Georgian girl called Mari. The kanchi, or hollowed out horns from a sheep or goat that are used as drinking vessels at supras, were being passed around the table. They have their own special rules and regulations. At formal supras they are only offered to men. They are filled typically with wine, occasionally with liquor, and the man who has either requested or been given the kanchi stands and gives a toast to the gathering. He then drinks the full horn, turning it as he goes so he doesn’t dump anything down his shirtfront and holds it upside down at the end to show that it’s empty. Since this supra was less formal, everyone was expected to toast with the kanchi at least once and so Mari and I toasted and ended up following another Georgian tradition whereby you link arms at the elbow and then drink together, still holding your own container. I apparently acquitted myself well enough to earn some praise from around the table. The terrifying experience of having to give a toast over, the evening continued. There was dancing, mainly to American and Russian pop and some singing (in Georgian, all male, polyphonic and impressively good considering how far into the evening we were at this point). And then some more dancing, some more drinking, and more eating. I escaped less than half an hour before the party broke up at about 4:30am after help from my host brother. The excuse of “I have to go to school tomorrow” didn’t convince anyone much. And I did go to school the next day, slightly tired but clear headed and free from any aftereffects of the night.

                And most recently, on the 3^rd of February, I got to take place in another intersecting tradition, one that apparently exists only for two families in Mestia. I attended with my host family the litbli, or clan supra for the Kakhberidze’s and Xergiani’s. One of my first graders, Kakha, belongs to the same clan as my family and made sure to invite me to the supra 3 times during class. It made my co-teacher laugh since he rather pointedly only invited me to join. Nini and Ani went with me quite early in the afternoon, round about 2 to the home where the litbli was being hosted. I did my best to help in the preparations but I quickly discovered that my most useful attribute was keeping the kids occupied, so I did for at least an hour and a half. There was quite the brood there, Nini, Ani, Saba, Nika, Keso, Monika, Bidzina and Kakha and two more boys who aren’t my students. Little Kakha was thrilled that I had taken up his offer to come and the kids wanted to sing the songs I’ve taught them in class, play duck duck goose and then we went to the park in Lanchvali, the neighborhood up the road from me. I escaped and got a couple minutes to sit and rest before the supra began at around 4:30. This was a much more formal affair. Two long tables were set up—men at one and women at the other. The men were putting it away in a determined manner, with the toasts, largely in Svan, coming fast and furious. The tamada held up jars of raki, a liquor similar to schnapps, and used them to toast. For most of these, every man got to his feet and removed his headgear. The women were not required to drink for the toasts, and largely didn’t pay much attention to them. Instead every so often a chunk of the table would offer a toast and drink as a unit. A couple of times we got shushed by the men since they were wishing the best for the future of the families and we were having a good chat. The food was delicious and I ate far too much and enjoyed listening to the conversations around me and understand a great deal of it. A couple of the people at the surpa didn’t know me, but soon ascertained who I was and I was welcomed and accepted as an honorary member of the clan, who should of course, celebrate its future. I had a lovely evening and was glad to have been made a part of this very specific tradition.

Back in Georgia!

Well folks, I’m back in Georgia, back to work and back to trying to update you as to the goings on in this gorgeous place called Mestia. I had a lovely time on my break at home, getting a chance to see you all and catch up and bore you all to death with stories that start with “Well, in Svaneti…”

My return wasn’t overly eventful, other than that getting my ticket was a little suspenseful. I got them though and got to try another airline for the trans-Atlantic trip. Polish, Qatar and now Turkish. I also got an 8 hour layover in Istanbul, one of my favorite places in the entire world, and I got to show a fellow teacher around a bit, which made the stop even more enjoyable. Then a quick jaunt to Tbilisi. I had decided that I wanted to get back to my life here in Georgia as soon as I could so I went from the airport, a short stop at the hostel where the other teachers were staying (as in about half an hour) and then onto my mashrutka to Svaneti. This ride took a bit longer than the one down, total about 9 hours, but everyone on the marsh was very kind, one guy bought me a khachapuri to eat and everyone was quite curious as to who the heck I was since most of them weren't from Mestia. Eventually in the mountains one of them broke the ice by asking if I was Czech or Slovak. I had to laugh and told them that actually I was the American English teacher which met with great approval. I made it to Mestia about 4 o’clock in the afternoon after some exciting fishtailing on the roads up here. The cliff on one side added to the adventure. The roads aren’t really plowed, the snow is just tamped down in the center of the road so that they’re drivable, so the only road up to where I live is now 1 lane. But I couldn’t stop smiling on that trip because I was going back to my Georgian home and a place that I feel so at ease in.

Nato and Gocha were waiting for me at home with food, smiles and hugs and I was bundled upstairs for a couple hours of sleep since I had hit hour 45 of my trip. That I did, but I forgot how many layers you need to wear for sleep here so I was a touch cold. I went back downstairs in time for a rather fascinating tradition. Nato had obviously been cooking up a storm all day, but it was still the holiday season so I didn’t think anything of it. Upon my return downstairs the table was set up for guests, but I didn’t see any. A trio of candles were lit and placed on the plates of various food items (all of them fast approved, so vegan). Glasses of wine were poured and put around, but no one sat. Nini opened the door and left it ajar, which I was little annoyed about because as I said, it’s cold in Svaneti. Gocha picked up a glass and Nato motioned for all of us women to stand behind him. He held the glass and half toasted and half prayed, pouring some wine of the floor when he finished. Nato went and did the same, and then I was invited to. I had finally figured out what was going on. We were having a supra for the dead. And so I toasted those in my life who I’ve lost, remembering them, enjoying the memories and thinking of how much they would like to see me here, happy fulfilled and being invited to the party. We waited a few moments and then joined the empty spaces at the table and ate. My host brother Lasha was at the cemetery for other commemorations. I discovered that kissing while we had our guests was prohibited. After we had finished eating we cleared the table and then re-laid it with fresh plates and fresh helpings of food. We repeated this three times, each time opening and closing the door, toasting, praying, pouring, kneeling. Nato told me that this was a scary, creepy day but that only the Svans knew it. I thought that this was an interesting way of viewing the situation; that the knowledge had been lost by the rest of the world, but was retained here in the mountains. Nato Gocha and Nini went over to the grandparents and Lasha stayed home with me, working on getting meat ready while I collapsed on the couch for some more sleep. I woke up ever so often to see him, Ani and various other family members coming through. Preparations picked up again at 11pm, because at midnight we repeated the ritual one last time, but with meat and milk, for the fast had been broken. This time Gocha, Lasha and Uncle Gari shared the responsibility of toasting the dead first and then the women and children were invited to participate. We ate drank and laughed at our supra and I thought of what a wonderful way to remember the dead this was. It had its quiet somber and even religious moments, but really it was about being together and celebrating the visit of guests, whether dead or living. Supras are an interesting tradition, a way to celebrate the visit of guests but also to simply enjoy the company of one another. Why not use them as a way to enjoy the company of people who aren’t here any more? I have very little doubt that everyone who I’ve lost would enjoy a feast of food, drink, laughter and good company. Perhaps this tradition has been lost in the rest of the world, and it seems a shame. Next January 18^th you may find my door open and me inviting the wraiths of my loved ones in. Those that you’ve lost are welcome too though.

Some old stuff I found in my journal today

I firmly believe that I ended up with a better host family than I could have asked for. The love and care they show for me is beyond description. I suppose the best way to put it is that I don’t feel like part of the family. I am part of the family. My host mother has stopped using the qualifier ‘American’ in her introduction of me. I am her daughter. The degree to which I am accepted by the family is matched only by how the community has reached out and embraced me. I physically cannot walk down the street without a neighbor asking me over. I haven’t walked more than 5 minutes without running into a student for months. Since I always stop to chat my walks take far longer than might be expected. Today is perhaps a perfect example of my life.

Nini, Saba and Banguriani in the background

I woke late (rolling out of bed at 9:30 and came downstairs for a meal with Gocha Nato and Nini in a home smelling deliciously of incense. They’ve started lighting some almost every morning in the buildup to Christmas, which also includes a 40 day vegan fast. Nato is taking part, the rest of us are vegan on Wednesday and Fridays. I’ve added a couple of extra days to that, but the thought of adding more carbs to my life, plus the fact that Nato has disallowed me means that I’m not fully fasting. We joked and laughed while eating potatoes and bread (remember the carbs?). I packed a bag and went to find wifi in town. I caught a ride to the center and chatted with the driver, whose wife I know well. Then at the museum (the only wifi in town it turns out) I sat and got comfy for as long as I wanted since when the guard found out I was the English teacher I could have moved in and he wouldn’t have minded. Nini called and Saba her and I had a lovely khinkali (meat dumplings, google them, they’re delicious) lunch with chips and chocolate after. We got stared at since one of these things was not like the others (read: me) by the Georgian tourists in the restaurant. Nini and Saba were beautifully oblivious so I was too. I suppose to them at this point, I belong, so why should anyone stare at a local? We slid on the ice and caught a ride home with the neighbors who found my Svan both hilarious and endearing. I did a couple of dishes some laundry and lesson planning and then we watched nichieri (the Georgian X-factor) together. My 5^th graders asked if I watched so now I do to keep up with the kids. A couple neighbros came over and we chatted (Nato Gocha and I). I went for a quick walk because the weather was indescribably lovely (and warm!!!) and ran into my friend/tutor Lasha so we had a nice chat as well. And planned my residency permit application since my rule is always BYOG. Bring your own Georgian. Then home. Nato and Gocha ran out for a sec, so I gave Nika (7) an English lesson, which was incredibly rewarding to see him sound out the words he wrote. I kept the stove burning since Gocha had jokingly told me to do that (and make bread khachapuri and gubdari while I was at it). The kids had bought fireworks so we almost killed ourselves with those and I chatted with Manana, her sister and Gari about my upcoming trip home. Then we and the kids played cards (Gocha helped me), Simon says and learned the English words for body parts, followed by me and Gocha helping Nato prepare for her trip to Tbilisi in the morning. Me Gocha and the kids had a quick devotional as well in front of the wall of icons complete with candles and incense (wardrobe change required).

Almost the same view from when I arrived in Mestia. Happy winter!

It was so fascinating to watch Gocha, who frankly can be a little terrifying, prayer book in hand, getting the incense ready reading in his strong gentle and often passionate (Georgians are kind of the Italians of the Eastern bloc) voice words that I didn’t entirely comprehend but which on a different level I understood. He took the burning incense when Nini began reading and held it out before each icon, as if giving them a chance to smell. We finished reading, prayed and kissed the two largest paintings. Then back to games for the kids, and a meal for Gocha and I. The past week I’ve found my groove with my host father. We had both been pretty stand-offish not sure what to make of the other, dancing around fear avoidance and bewilderment. Now we’ve moved on to care and joking. He made sure that I ate what he viewed as enough and insisted I sit when we needed something, getting it himself instead. I feel as though I’ve finally earned his respect, through the work I do and my relationship with the kids, as the bar he sets has everything to do with devotion to the family. Tiko and Lasha call him often from Tbilisi.

Gocha and Nato went searching for winter clothes upstairs while I cleaned up the meal, watched the bread in the wood stove, fed it and kept an eye on the stew . Now Nato is kneading bread dough while Nini and Gocha watch the news and I curl up to write this. It’s a quiet Saturday night here in Mestia, but at this point, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Nine of my 17 Seniors. They are alternatively my favorite class and the bane of my existence. 

So yesterday two of my male seniors clearly skipped class. Well, I mean, they all skip class all the time but this time they were a little more in my face about it. They were out at the spring behind the school, which is where the older boys hang out for break and the next 10-15 minutes until of the teachers sticks their head out the window and yells at them to get inside and go to class (a skill I am rapidly becoming proficient at I might add “Metormete—Inglisuri [12^th grade—English]!”) I saw the boys Lasha and Roma today and asked them where they wandered off to after leaving the spring, because it sure as heck wasn’t class. They never appeared in the whole 45 minutes, which I was kind of pissed about. Their response? “We went to the library”. I feel like this must be the Georgian equivalent of “Oh Halloween? I was at Bible Study”. If I wasn’t so annoyed it would have been hilarious!

We do laugh a lot though

Gilotsavt Barbaroba! It’s another Saint’s Day here in Mestia (what else is new?) but due to her being the patron saint of children the school was essentially empty. From the 5^th, 6^th and 12^th grades (theoretically 39) I had 2 students.  So I went to church instead. I’ve never seen that place as full as it was. It was lovely to see so many kids and young adults. I ended up standing in a cloud of my 1^st-7^th graders all of us holding single candles alight surrounded by the smell of incense and the undeniable feeling of mutual love. I think my students remain taken aback to see me in church but my teachers are still pleased as punch. I was a little annoyed because at one point I was told I needed to remove myself from the church proper because they were having a special prayer for Orthodox only and Manana Mas kept telling me how I needed to get baptized. I squelched the urge to tell her that I was already baptized, thank you very much. But the other teachers all said a special prayer for me and my mom. I told Tamuna Mas yesterday that my mom’s name is Barbara and when she told Murtaz Mas he apparently INSISTED that she say a special prayer for the women who bore and raised me since I turned out such a polite and warm hearted (her words, not mine) woman. Which is wonderfully sweet and adorable and almost made me cry and made up for my feeling a little annoyed earlier. I’m glad that she told me this since I was feeling super emotional all day and then I could channel happy overly-emotional crazy.

The cows in front of the house. Please note that dirt roads turn into ice roads. It is inevitable that I will wipe out one of the these days. It is just a question of whether I will be more humiliated to do it in front of the 1st or 12th graders.

Internet is Hard

So this post is a little old, and it hasn't made it to you yet due to internet issues, but it's here for you now!

My 2nd Grade Class

Happy Thanksgiving! Well, what to say. First of all, that internet has been heck of hard to find recently up here in Mestia which is one of the reasons I have fallen off of the face of the earth for a couple of weeks. Sorry about that. I have also been working like a fiend on my graduate school applications which are due in the scarily-quick-approaching-future so that has eaten up my internet time quite well too. But, those deadlines are almost past, I’m feeling like I’m in a good place for the apps, and I miss talking to you all about this amazing place, so it’s time for an update.

Instead of doing anything for Thanksgiving I left training which we had for 4 days in Ureki Guria and sat on a mashrutka for way too many hours on my way home to Svaneti. I could have stayed down south and gotten together with people I suppose, but I missed my Georgian home, bed and family. I’ve grown incredibly attached to the people here. My host mother has stopped qualifying my daughter status with ‘American’ so I am now just her daughter. My Svan is coming along so that means that I have been even further absorbed by the community. My future happy marriage and children (here in Svaneti, spoken in Svan) have become a regular toast at supras at my home. I’ve moved from a kargi gogo to a xocha dina, which is only a language shift but to be embraced by Svans seems to take a bit. I’m not just liked for being a guest anymore, I think I’ve earned the respect of people around me for the work that I’ve done in and out of the classroom, my attempts at their languages (not just the rarely found national language but the dying indigenous one) and my simply having stuck around for this long. It’s starting to get cold and snowy so I think future chances to earn respect are rapidly approaching.A couple more vignettes to illustrate my point.

My 6th Grade Class, Note male to female ratio resulting in much discipline 

My students have started giving me little presents. One day it was a clay flower made by one of my seventh grade girls. My fifth and sixth graders tend to stick to fruit; either clementines or apples. My younger kids draw pictures for me. My co-teachers have given me delicious sweets and a great list of Svan vocab and a pair of hand-knitted mittens respectively. After being gone for 4 days my kids, even the 6^th grade boys who occasionally make our 45 minutes together a foretaste of hell, seemed genuinely excited to see me back at school today. My teachers welcomed me back with open arms and my older boys all gave me awkward happy smiles. Pictionary was a revelation to my 8^th graders, one of whom remarked in Georgian that they loved this game. People ask me how my life is going way the heck up in the mountains, but I have to reply in all seriousness that all is well. I’ve been to three weddings and a baptism supra, with more sure to come. I haven’t been to a funeral yet, but I feel like that might just be that my family doesn’t want to bring me down by taking me to one. I have no doubt that I will be to one before the semester is over. I can catch rides from pretty much anyone in Mestia since they all know who I am and I feel exceptionally safe in this place. Anywhere else I’ve lived if a man who I vaguely recognized pulled over, opened the door and said to get in, he’d take me home, I’d probably yell and leg it out of there. Here, I climb aboard and have a nice chat before I get to my door.  It’s just the nature of the place to feel completely at ease with anyone in the community. This is not to say that I have thrown caution to the wind but the level of intimacy here, with everyone knowing everyone else means that you have to worry far less.

My seniors, or 9/17 of them which is a huge victory

Young cousin Gio took quite the shine to me on Giorgoba (St George's Day on the 23rd of November), so much so that I couldn't escape to pack for training the next day until he left.  I also discovered just how much friggin work slaughtering an ox is. Every clan or samxub (everyone with the same last name, my samxub up in Mestia is both Kakhberidze and Gvarliani, one from my host dad and one from my host mom) gets together to celebrate the day and slaughters a bull or ox for the event.  It seems to have some deliciously pagan roots, and is also a great way to get enough meat for the next couple of months. I missed part of the slaughtering due to being at Church, but I came home to a headless animal in the yard and the men of the clan working on dividing it into pieces. I saw the neighbors get started the day before, they stunned it with the blunt side of an ax and then slit the throat with a hunting knife. I didn't break my stride walking past. Everybody spent the day dealing with chunks of dead animal. Since I know absolutely nothing about how to process dead animal, I was put in charge of Gio, coffee and eventually some dishes, because really, it was the best division of everyone’s labor. I found the head in the storage room the next morning, and then got fed it after training. It tasted ok, but the brain texture was too weird to each much. 

Banguriani in the snow. Gorgeous, right?

 With the help of a friend I discovered the upper foot path that mirrors the dirt road I live on, but further up the hill. I walked it alone a couple of Fridays ago as a treat after a long week (28 in classroom hours) and because I unexpectedly had the day off. Plus the weather was gorgeous and warm. I took the road out and the shortcut up to catch the path. I had forgotten, almost, how steep ‘hills’ can be here. Fall is largely over so the trees are bare but the grass remains the cows graze and small red berries dot any number of bushes, their color feeling fluorescent again the brown and gray background. The path itself is narrow, dirt winding and bounded on either side by ramshackle fences. The level of picturesque borders on the absurd. I took my earbuds out and walked, enjoying the silence but for cows in the brush. The level of silence you can find here is startling. After about 8, town shuts down, traffic grinds to a halt (such as it is during the day) and the only sounds are animals: cows horses pigs dogs. Once I saw a couple of my students racing down the road on horseback at 10pm. Georgians don’t bat an eyelid. You could hear the hoof falls well before the boys arrived because of the silence. I think adjusting to the noise of even a town again will be difficult because I am now so used to the silence and the darkness. The sun was setting already even though I was walking around 3:30, but the rays it casts here are devastatingly strong. It reflects off the snow on Banguriani like a mirror giving the valley a couple of extra minutes of light and warmth. Laghami is one of the small neighborhoods/villages that compromise Mestia. It is the furthest out with towers and sits almost directly above my home. Because it’s so far out of the center it doesn’t get the same number of tourists (especially in November) and feels deliciously untainted by the failings of capitalism. People acknowledge and accept my Svan with a grin and traditions of hospitality seem to remain strong. It might also be that people in Laghami know me as the English teacher rather than a passing tourist, and act accordingly.

The footpath to Laghami

On that next Sunday I visited the church in Laghami, which is one of the oldest in Mestia and is covered in beautiful frescoes of scenes from the bible, all of them hundreds of years old. A friend and I went and found the caretaker after church at Xalqis Iglesia and got him to let us in. He was a chatty older Svan gentleman with the most bizarre English vocab I’ve ever come across. We stuck to Svan and Georgian for the most part. The church itself is stone, built slightly up from ground level on a hill. It had a small anteroom and then the actual sanctuary, which has a tiny altar (inaccessible to me as a woman), a modern wooden stand holding icons and space for perhaps half a dozen parishioners comfortably. A dozen if everyone agrees not to breathe. It is indeed a small place, and some of the frescoes are impossible to see due to the layer of black grime covering their surfaces. But the high deep stone windows cast rays of pure light onto the floor and hit you with devastating intensity. They give the place a divine feel, and one of intense quiet and serenity. It is a stark place, but also rich in its own way. The combination of cold gray blocks with the lush colors, red and gold, of the byzantine costumes worn in the paintings is enough to bring a hush on its own. The power of small places is perhaps nowhere clearer. My Georgian friend went down to his knees and hands and kissed the floor upon entering, and I found myself doing the same for the simple, Holy atmosphere of the place made it seem the only reasonable reaction.  The palpable power of the spirituality of the sanctuary made me feel both a complete outsider, and utterly at home within its walls. I suppose I feel the same most of the time here in Mestia, an odd combination of looking in and out at the same time, a not unpleasant sensation of belonging and the logical realization that this is not where I am from, and that I have only been here for 3 months now. I am glad for the sensation though, especially on days like yesterday when I was so far from everything I know, but I at least could be surrounded by love.

My host siblings, managing to not kill themselves with fireworks

Potatoes and Weddings

It’s been another busy couple of weeks here in Mestia, which might seem surprising given how small a place this is, but there’s always work to be done. School was pretty quiet Wednesday Thursday and Friday last week because of the potato harvest. Potatoes are the main crop here in Svaneti and I’m not actually sure what the heck people ate before potatoes were introduced because they are an all day everyday experience. We were expecting a bad snow storm on Sunday night and after having the snow the second week of October people were super concerned that the crop would just freeze in the field resulting in either poverty (since food costs a fortune up here due to the remoteness of the area) or simply being hungry. Friday out of a total of 125 students at my school maybe 20 came at all. I had helped Nini and Gocha in the little garden in front of our house but I knew that we had other fields. So after school on Friday I ate lunch and headed out with Nini and Saba to join Gocha and his friends.

Sort of Blurry but this is Me with (from l to r) Nini, Saba, Nika and Ani my host sister and cousins

The field was up the hill that our home is built into and then down the road a bit. It is actually part of a larger field, but it seems like different family groups have divided it up. There are no fences or anything but everyone seems to know exactly where their crop ends and someone else’s begins. We arrived round about 1pm and there were three or four distinct groups working to get the potatoes dug. The harvest here is completely unmechanized, at least for people’s personal crops. Adults use pitchforks to dig the potatoes out and kids pick them up, make piles, sort and bag. A small field takes hours using this method just because it is so labor intensive, but here that’s how it’s done. I discovered that there is no comfortable position for harvesting potatoes. When they’re growing on a slope it’s at least a little less hard to reach them, but your legs and back will hurt if you are a newbie like me. I was provided with gloves being the weak foreigner but most everyone else worked without. Everyone had brought some food and water for their time in the fields, and this was pretty much the first time I’ve seen Georgians drink water. We took a nice break round about 3:30 or 4 and shared a picnic with the family at the bottom of the field. The kids are in my class so they addressed me as “Mas” (short for mastsavlebeli or teacher) and a bucket was found for me to sit on. They seemed surprised that I was there, but a sensed a certain respect that I was there and actually sort of contributing. Certainly I was putting in the effort. We had bread, salad, some sort of tomato stew, fruit, water, meat (that looked mostly like fat so I politely declined) and khachapuri or cheese bread. I pulled out some Svan at the picnic and one of my second graders actually gasped. Everyone talked about what a kargi gogo I am, which always makes me deeply uncomfortable.

I took the teacher from the first school shopping in downtown Mestia on Saturday afternoon. Well, I should say we took each other. He needed some winter clothes and I needed some retail therapy. There is a thriving secondhand clothes market here in Mestia, most of it totally under the table and probably technically illegal, but I don’t think anyone here gives a, so people do what they want. He speaks Russian and I speak some Georgian, so between us we were mostly comprehensible, until we were trying to ask for long johns and both went “uhhhh—long johns-i?” We also got asked at every single store we went to if we were married. One time we told the 2 older ladies running the place that we were just friends. They looked knowingly at us and said “And after friendship comes…”. No. I am literally being set up with everyone in my life, and I feel like people here must be so confused as to who I actually am married to/will be married if the assumption is that 1) you are seen with a man 2) there must be marriage and many babies in your future. However, it does provide amusing anecdotes to tell my friends and all of you so I will accept it and move on. I am starting to get worried about what will happen when I eventually go home shopping wise though. All the stores here are one room and frequently run low on supplies. We went into one that had just gotten a new shipment of the random food assortment they inevitably have and we were both completely overwhelmed. We bought chocolate wafers, chips, a jar of pickles and banana nectar. I dare not think what will happen when I go to a Sam’s Club in the US if a single room store that actually is stocked does that to my decision making capabilities.

Me Saba, Vanya (the other teacher in Mestia) and Skylar (the other teacher in Svaneti) 

That evening we went to a wedding in the nearby village of Mulaghi. It turned out that the bride was one of the teachers at my school, which everyone had failed to mention to me. I went with the other teachers from my school and we brought the teacher from the first school as well since he hadn’t been to a wedding yet. We left in typical Georgian style in a slightly decrepit mashrutka or minibus, very late. We kept waiting to try and figure out who exactly was coming. Then the deputy principal Nazo wanted to stop to pre-game. Which, if you’ve read any of my previous posts you know that pre-gaming a Georgian event is like bringing a freezer to Antarctica because you’re worried your food will spoil. But I have learned that here in Georgia, you just go with it. Everyone got to partake and Vanya and I were highly encouraged. We pulled over so the driver could have a shot too, which was at first worrying, but we later discovered that he is the slowest most careful driver in Svaneti. Interestingly enough, the idea of a DD does seem to have arrived here, I think because everyone acknowledges that the roads are super unsafe even if you’ve lived here your entire life. Driving them drunk would result in a great many unnecessary deaths of young people so it doesn’t happen nearly as often as you would think. My host father Gocha was stone cold sober the entire time because he was driving home. At the wedding party (held in a tent in a field) there were perhaps 300 guests already arrived, all of whom turned to stare at the obviously non-locals. I don’t exactly blend here. We were placed near the front of the tent and were served more food than I could eat in 5 years. Common plates were placed all down the long tables and over the course of the evening at least 2 dozen dishes were served. Also fruit, cake, and pitchers of wine and chacha. The tamada was an older Svan gentleman, who seemed to do an excellent job listening to the comments of my teachers. I couldn’t understand everything he said due to the poetry of the language used and the Svan, but I could get the gist of every toast, which I was very proud of. And of course, the dancing. It was an interesting combination of traditional Georgian and Svan songs which many of the young people danced to, and modern music. Unexpected contributions: the Macarena (I kid you not) and a techno version of Gangnam style. The bride threw the bouquet, but both young men and women are encouraged to try and catch it. My teachers and my 10 year old cousin Katya, who lives in Mulaghi were quite literally shoving me to the front of the pack, but a young dancer caught it instead. On the bus on the way back the teachers consoled me. They told me that since Meg (the bride) was married now, my wedding was next. I asked them who I would be marrying and the driver jokingly volunteered for the task. Because this is Mestia.

The whole Crew at home

Sunday morning I went to church, and this time I was determined to stay for the end of the service. As a result I kind of dawdled in the morning and didn’t leave until almost 10. I’m usually the only one from my household who goes and Gocha seems to find it almost funny that the non-orthodox member represents at the Xalqis Iglesia (People’s or Community Church).The priest, Mama Giorgi, is hilarious and was apparently an actor before he joined the priesthood. The older women, who make up the majority of the congregation, have taken me under their wing and quite like me. I did manage to stay the whole time, though there was a moment of confusion when one of the acolytes came over and asked if I wanted confession (I think?) he could tell that I didn’t quite understand so he asked if I knew Russian. When I replied that no I was the English teacher he stopped for a chat about what a kai gogo I am. I didn’t take communion of course which confused the younger acolytes a great deal, all of whom are my students. But the service was gorgeous and it was nice to share the community of Christ here in this beautiful place.