Gori, Georgia
Blue Eyes at Gori Bazaar
Scale at Gori Bazari
Spice Seller at Gori Bazari
One Little Piggy Went to Market
Tomato Seller with the Smile
The Lady with the Pillar of Salt
And Then There Are Certain Peculiarities...
Handsome Soldier
A Sign of the Times...And the Place
Home Near Mine, Gori
Clearly a Message Important Enough to Write All Over a Front Door
Tbilisi Meanderings II: Sameba
The Georgian Flag over Sameba
Wedding Party at Sameba
Sameba
Chapel at Sameba
Tbilisi Meanderings I: Old Town
Gorgeous Tbilisi: Fortress, Sunni Mosque, Turkish Baths & Azeri Tbilisi
Little Church Above the Turkish Baths
Another Shot of Old Town from the River Side
Two Old Friends Prop Each Other Up - Old Tbilisi
Old Town Courtyard - Tbilisi, Georgia
Old TownMetekhi Church
Cold, cold ground…
I remember last winter very well. I remember how the cold never died; how I never shed my layers, not even indoors. How I wore all I could to bed. How my water bottles froze by my bed. The wind rushing into my room through the broken window. How water froze in the pipes, and for three months it didn’t run. How a trip into the capital came to mean “shower” to me. How the word “bathe” became part of my vocabulary and how this came to mean using baby wipes. The smell of burned wood in my clothes, in my hair, in my nostrils. Choosing what to do and when based on heat. Hovering over wood stoves and gas heaters when they were in a room. Making Turkish coffee on heaters. Burning my legs against them, so close did one have to be to feel the dissipating warmth in non-insulated rooms. The outhouse smells changed. My standards of cleanliness. I remember that winter well.
I remember it now as I sit warm in my apartment. As I marvel at my tank-top in December. At how I shed layers. How I shower. Everything is different. Everything. I can’t complain of the heat in the building. I can’t complain at all.
How we live is so different from how the world lives. How ignorant we are of it. How blissfully unaware. Blind.
I read books sometimes that are set in other periods. Maybe Victorian England, for example. And I can imagine the cold indoors. I can imagine the closeness of space. No… I can remember it. Times have changed, and times have not…
So when people ask me now, two weeks away, what do I want for my birthday…how can I answer seriously? What on earth do I want for? Don’t I have it all? Yes, yes, it can be snatched up in a moment and turned to cinder and less. We’re more ephemeral than dust, for dust at least keeps its shape over time. But that’s true of every living thing. Every one of us wriggling in a moment, our own, special, significant and aware moment.
Yeah, I’ll appreciate the kindness of family and friends, but I can’t possibly use the words “I want” and speak of things, without feeling awfully blind to all I already have…
Besides, I just started working on a birthday present to myself. And it’s a fine one.
There’s something someone once said…and I paraphrase and lose part of its power, I’m sure. But the gist of it is: “If you haven’t done something today that’s frightened you, that’s unknown and bigger than anything you’ve ever done before, then you haven’t lived today yet.”
When I started writing, that was my new, frightening unknown. But now, in the lead-up to my birthday, after getting all those “what do you want” questions…I’m doing something rather different, too. More on that as it solidifies; I’ve signed up to do something that I think has worth, and that will require its weight in work, too. But basically it has to do with “giving” rather than “getting” for my birthday. Wish me luck!!
Happy Holidays, everyone! Any good plans?
Greater Caucasus
In the Beginning, there was the Word. And the Word was…
“Come and translate for me,” he said, and my gut sank. It’s one thing to translate, you know, unofficially and with only your personal pride at stake. I lost that a long time ago, linguistically speaking, at least. But to actually translate at what amounted to an official meeting between representatives of two governments…
Let’s just say I was not thrilled. Or, if we must cleave to honesty, I was set against it with all of my heart, and made this clear.
He wheedled and pled. I stood firm. He pulled puppy dog eyes. I stood firmer. He said, “Really, just come there and if I make a mistake, you’ll step in to help.”
Mmph. I stared him. Tried to discern his honesty.
“You can speak Russian, you know,” I groused. He nodded. “Better than me,” I added. I cut off his objection with a cold glare.
“Will you come?” he asked.
“You will speak. And only if I think it would be helpful will I add a word here or there.” He nodded. “And I am not responsible for any international disasters,” I added firmly. He nodded again.
So the date was set.
And because it was Georgia, it was postponed. Mind you, for any international development nuts out there, particularly those prone to laughing off all delays on other countries’ cultural foibles, I’ll tell you this was AT LEAST as much due to the expat as it was a local cultural phenomenon. Let us not cast stones…
Anyway, the day did come. I was summoned, and I went to the meeting.
“Please let me not cause an international catastrophe,” I prayed to the same God who saw fit for me to freeze during that winter like most of earth’s population.
So the meeting began, and to my surprise and gratitude, the man who’d asked for my help did indeed lead the conversation without expecting me to serve as a real translator. I began to relax.
Pff. Never begin to relax. That is PRECISELY when international catastrophes sense a crack in your armor.
He was describing something and I’d drifted off somewhat. He turned to me with a frown, his hand gesturing like he was sifting sand through his fingers. I knew that mildly desperate look in his eyes and leaned forward to hear what word he needed.
“Forestry?” he asked.
Forestry? FORESTRY? What, he couldn’t pick a simple word? FORESTRY? Who KNOWS that word in a foreign language? Dude, I don’t even know what that means in ENGLISH.
I looked at him poisonously.
That was the only thing he asked of me. I shrugged helplessly. I didn’t cause an international scandal.
That night, however, I did look up forestry in the dictionary. Learnt two different words for it.
I have never used those two words since.
New York
What Sort of Person Would I Be?
If I kept the most exciting find of the day from you? That’s right, the worst sort! The very worst. And so, enough bombast. Onwards–
I was on Wikipedia. I blame Ralfast. And the fact that I had a quick jot of research to do for a plot point.
Then I fell into what I will now term a “Wiki Hole.” Namely, one second I was looking up astronomical awareness in the mid 1500s, and the next, BOOM, I was shot at warp speed into other realms of information. Landing in the vicinity of Cheapside.
Ever wondered about Cheapside, London? Well, I have. Why? Because I’m American.
And more specifically, when Pride and Prejudice heroine Elizabeth Bennet’s relatives are snubbed for their Cheapside address by the rich Miss Bingley, pretender to Mr Darcy’s affections (or affectations), well…the name struck me as odd. Was this the rich naming streets to “put people in their place,” so to speak, or was Ms Austen being a mite creative and overdoing it? (Yes, I had that uncharitable and ignorant a thought. I own it.)
Well, today, world, I have the answer to not just this, but a million other questions I never thought to ask.
Ready?
In Olde English–extra “e” added courtesy of me–céapmann meant “dealer” or “seller.” Especially the itinerant kind. Céap meant “deal” or “barter” or “business” or “market.”
Today’s “cheap” comes from this, or as Wiki informs, from the olde phrase “a good cheap,” which meant “a good deal.” Cheapside, by inference, stems from what the neighborhood was known for. Trade. John Milton was born there, Chaucer nearby. Who knew, other than every Brit, probably? Not me. :)
And the word “chap” which we still use today? Just as “goodbye” became “bye,” so did “chapman” become just “chap.” A buyer or a seller. Chap. Someone one might do business with.
If your last name is Chapman, somewhere along the line, one of your ancestors was a trader. Kauffman is apparently the German equivalent.
I swear, I feel breathless learning this! :) Another lovely Wiki Stroll.
Now I must repair to the 16th century again. A history of astronomy and magic await. (For yes, universities offered degrees in this subject back then. Oh, joyousness!)
Drive through the Caucasus
Thwarted: A tale of pathos and Georgian swat teams, but no Thai food
Yes, it became common knowledge rather rapidly in Georgia that I would do just about anything for Thai food. If I could swing a meeting in the capital, which boasted exactly one great Thai place, I would be pretty sure to time it such that a meal was in order.
Even when I had dysentery I managed to squeak in a visit to the Thai place. At that time, I could barely even handle the scent of food, and plain rice was all I could stomach. Still, I was there.
When I returned to my site–the name Peace Corps gives the village, town or city in which a volunteer resides–my host mother asked me if I’d really gone for Thai, sick as I was. I sheepishly admitted that I had.
“But what could you eat?” she asked, shaking her head.
“Rice with dry bread,” I thought I said. ”Rice with joy,” I actually said. She collapsed in mirth and I left her for the facilities.
The only problem with my Thai addiction, other than the dearth of Thai food in Georgia, was that half the time I was there, the country managed to be politically unstable.
As a result, volunteers were pretty much told to steer clear of the capital for the most part. Tragic. So beautiful a capital, so ancient, and so beneficent in Thai food.
Finally the day came when we were allowed in Tbilisi (with restrictions.) I stormed the city. By this I mean I climbed into a shattered yet miraculously moving minibus and hurtled down the potholed highway to Tbilisi, where I fell out shaking and breathless about 45 minutes later.
“Come,” I said, and began the march from the river up through Old Town to the Thai place. ”Nothing can keep me from Thai food now! Nothing!”
My companion said nothing as we saw the first signs of a noticeable police presence. I too maintained a prudent silence. He might have cleared his throat as we ran past a barricade. I may have glared back at him, but my memory’s hazy on that.
“Nothing,” I repeated firmly, and stalked forth. We told ourselves everything was normal.
Old Town was pretty desolate. We walked those tiny alleys and gorgeous balconied roads, finally emerging just a few streets down from the restaurant. My internal soundtrack was almost back in happy gear. Thai food was so close, so tantalizingly, deliciously, irresistibly close. And everything had been calm and normal. We’d been overly sensitive to the sight of the police. I relaxed my shoulders.
Then we passed a huge swath of dark buses filled to the brim with soldiers. I frowned, but we sallied onwards.
“I guess you really meant it when you said nothing would stop you,” my companion remarked. I nodded silently, but I was beginning to feel perturbed. I know: late.
We turned the corner. We had arrived. It should have been the most joyous of moments.
But opposite us, across from the Thai place, were two huge groups of swat forces, dressed head to foot in black gear, including such bullet-proof vests as I’d only ever seen on Batman. Huge truncheons, machine guns, glass barricades, the whole shebang.
We looked at them. They looked at us. My companion raised his hand to knock at the door.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
“It’s locked,” he answered, as if we weren’t gazing at two hundred deaths’ worth of men in black.
“Gah!” I responded reasonably. And grabbed his arm and began pulling us down the street and away.
“But I thought nothing would stop you–!” he protested.
“Nothing but swat teams,” I answered irritably, “Swat teams will stop me.”
We broke into a desperate jog. No Thai food for us. Not for weeks.
Foiled again.
What would you do, opposite a door with this painted on it? (That's what I did, too.) ;)
The Night the Russians Attacked
I was conked out, an overdose of Nyquil.
Yes, this is already old hat to you. You already know, I was serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Georgia, blah blah. But maybe what you didn’t know, is that when I finally got there, all trussed up with enthusiasm and ready for the job, they managed to find the most mosquito-ridden place in the country to place me. (I thought not.) In a land known for majestic mountains and lush greenery, they found a malaria zone for me.
I jest not.
I took this in stride. I find that the only way to take things; it helps avert nasty stumbles.
And from this day forth I became an avid user of all the bug repellents and itch ointments in our trusty Peace Corps medical kits, which resembled the kind of sturdy med kit Chekhov must have lugged through the backwoods in days of yore.
Well, the day came when my ship came in. All of them, actually. Namely, a group of volunteers left the country, and returned their unused medical supplies to the Peace Corps office. To say I leapt on these supplies with the crazed frenzy of an addict would be…well, to ever-so-slightly belabor the point. But you get it.
I scrambled madly among the left-over med kits, wholesale grabbing everything that looked like it ought salvage my poor bitten body from my mortal enemies. What I neglected to check for was—expiration dates.
Yeah. It turns out they’re relevant.
I was stunned, gobsmacked and completely confounded the next day, when my skin broke out in the hugest rash I’d ever seen.
“Gah!” I said profoundly. And applied more anti-itch ointment. Yeah…
I’d never seen the doctor’s eyebrows go up like that before. Well, fine, I had. This is Peace Corps, after all. We had all sorts of everything plaguing us. And the docs are great. Anyway, they easily discovered the source of my rash: my stupidity.
As we all know, the cure for Ruth’s Stupidity is a massive dose of Nyquil. Which brings us back to the beginning of our tale. Namely, my stupor.
I wake up after a night of much thunder and lightning. I stretch. I see I have a text from J in New York. I chuckle. She’s going on about some scuffles at the border with South Ossetia. She thinks it’s getting worse–could it mean…war? I smile. Dear girl, she’s yet to learn that there’s always scuffles at borders. Honestly…
I leave the village I’m temporarily at to attend a Peace Corps meeting in Khashuri, a nearby town. And apparently 30 minutes afterwards, the village was bombed. I was the only one without any questions about the night before; everyone else had seen the lights and heard the artillery. I was the only one who’d attached a weather forecast to my lists of reasons for the noise.
“Thunderstorms without rain?” they asked me, unimpressed.
Hm. And of course within an hour all hell broke loose. But that’s another tale. And maybe not for the blog…
Wintery Bank in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia
Silver Linings, or Winter Evening Conversations in a Small Caucasus Town
We were sitting huddled around the fire in the kitchen.
Every few minutes one of us would kneel down before it to fan the flames, to increase the heat in the frigid room. It was the only source of heat and light at night.
All winter we lived our evenings around that fire. Sometimes we played the panduri, a Georgian national string instrument, and sang. Sometimes we tried to hit each other with the panduri. Most nights we did both. But always, always, as close to the fire as possible.
At first, it was…novel. An adventure. Exploration of a world beyond my previous experience. But after 3 months without water, electricity, gas and regular heat, it became…life. Not easy, no. But–life.
Raising my hand to turn on and off light switches ceased to be automatic. There was never a reason. Not washing, that was the hardest. Or maybe it was the cold nights, when water bottles froze solid next to my bed and I climbed in fully dressed. Then there was the lack of light in my room, which had a blanket hammered into the wall to block the hole in the window.
It was life. And really, not that uncommon for many people around the world. A great Peace Corps lesson.
One night, my adorable host mom turned to me, suddenly curious.
“Ruth,” she asked, “in America, what do you do when you don’t have electricity, gas and water?”
I paused. What would we do, if ever such a thing happened? We’d be in dire straights. We don’t know how to cope, for the most part, pushed up hard against the elements.
“I don’t know,” I answered slowly. ”It never happens.”
She looked into the darkness, pondering my answer. Then she shot me a mischievous grin.
“That’s what’s great about Georgia,” she announced. ”Everything can happen here.”
Bless her soul. :)
Kartulis Deda, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia
Last summer; or Life and Dreams in a Small Caucasus Town
Sighnaghi in the Mist
I served in Georgia, the Republic nestled in between the Greater and Lesser Caucasus Ranges, touching on Chechnya and Russia to the north and cradling the Black Sea to the West, with Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan neighboring in the south. I was to be there for two years and three months, only the Russian army had other ideas, and invaded after one year.
In a country famous for its dramatic mountain ranges and exquisite landscape, I had managed to be placed in one of the flattest areas, where the earth looked parched despite its great bounty of potatoes and tomatoes.
Hungry cattle wended their way through the town streets, leaving behind manure and a sense of fatigue and never-ending days. Sheep were slaughtered by butchers on the main street, tied up on the pavement where they could see their fate in the fates of necks chopped before theirs. Chickens were sold live, and carried home by their feet. Everything was bought amid the din of a huge, bustling bazaar which opened at 5am. Azeri music blared on stereos, together with Turkish, Russian and Georgian pop.
Schools ran on shoe-string budgets, with paint peeling from walls and the stench of the toilets pervading entire floors. The hospital was visited by stray dogs and cats, cobwebs hung throughout the dank grey corridors, and it felt a visceral shock to the system to actually see people coming there to get treated to feel better.
Unemployed men littered the streets, whiling away hours in teahouses that women were better off not even looking into for fear of appearing wanton. Women worked their fingers to the bone, slaving over troughs filled with laundry, preserves and dirty dishes. Hard working men and women in offices faced electrical outages, gas outages, internet outages and general scarcity to get their jobs done. The only fax machine in town was in the mayor’s office. Life was, in a word, hard.
I loved this town, and I didn’t, too.
But most of all, when the days were hard and long, and when I was reeling from the unforgiving and harsh beating the sun doled out every summer, night and day, I would look south, beyond the confines of town, out to the blue waves of the Armenian mountains, and I would drink in the sight and imagine the fresh, wet, cool smell of those beautiful mountains. And I would dream of going there.
Otar, my friend’s wonderful father, who took care of me as if I’d been adopted into the family, wondered at my fascination. When I announced to all and sundry that I would spend the upcoming Saturday walking to the border with Armenia, some 39 kilometers away, he was tickled pink but also curious.
“Why, Ruth?” he asked, finally, as he said goodbye to me (and my sitemate who I’d corralled to join me on the trek). ”Why do you want to walk to the Armenian border?”
I thought for a moment. ”Because it’s something I can’t do in America.”
Little did I know that one day I’d be on the other side of that self-same border, desperate to return over those now accursed Armenian crags back to my dusty little town from which war had torn me.
*** the photo is from the gorgeous town of Sighnaghi, which is to the east of Tbilisi. My town remains unnamed thus far in my blog, but was south of Tbilisi.
***I returned after the war was officially ended three weeks later, this time not as a Peace Corps Volunteer, but as an independent citizen, volunteering without the aegis of a sponsoring institution.
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