May 29th:
One of the great activities Peace Corps Georgia has set up
is the job shadowing of a current volunteer. I visited an awesome G12 volunteer
named Danae who lives in a town called Tchiatura. Tchiatura was the nicest and
seemingly largest town I’d been to thus far (but I think Khashuri is actually
larger). It has paved roads, a main street with tons of shops, a big bazaar for
clothing, a separate nice bazaar for fruits and veggies, a few nice looking
schools, and cable cars! The central heart of the town is nestled in bowl of
mountains. Through the town runs a river… and it’s black. The reason for the
color is that they have a manganese mine and factory uphill. The black
manganese colors the river a permanent black. The people still fish from this river,
which to me sounds quite questionable. (The general rule of thumb here amongst
volunteers is to seriously limit or entirely avoid the fish. You never know
what sort of river it’s coming from… but some is okay. Hopefully. One of the
guys in our G13 group actually got a pretty serious bacterial infection in his
stomach from what we think was fish he ate.)
Anywho, back to cable cars! When you take the cable car up
to the top of the mountain you can look down and see the main town with the
river twisting through it. Legend has it when Tchiatura was first discovered;
the discoverer looked down at the river twisting and turning and said, “Is it a
worm, or what?” And that ladies and gentlemen is what ‘Tchiatura’ means: ‘a
worm, or what?’ Okay end of useless history lesson.
Sign at the top of a mountain reads "Tchiatura, my love" (something like love or homeland):
The day I arrived was Georgian Independence Day so after
seeing the manganese factory, we got to see a dance and singing performance at
the cultural house (which pretty much every town and village has since pretty
much every child sings, dances, or does both). The talent here is seriously
impressive. The children are sent to dance lessons from early ages, and every
Georgian knows how to sing folk songs around the table. Most also dabble (or
kick ass) in an instrument or two.
I absolutely love the dancing and music here. Hopefully I will soon have
more to share on that.
Also notable experiences: I tried Adjaruli katchapuri for
the first time! This is the amazing dish that is essentially a bread bowl with
a raw egg (you stir the egg in to cook it) cracked on top of a pool of cheese
and butter… you know, just your standard, heavenly, congenital heart failure.
Luckily, I split this with Danae, so we both lived to tell the tale.
I also got to meet my first TLG volunteer, Crystal. TLG is
another organization put together (I think) by the Georgian government. It
brings volunteers from other countries (US included) to teach English. The
volunteers can commit to anywhere from 3 months to 2 years (maybe more) of
service. I give them props since they don’t receive the extensive language and
technical training and support we have in Peace Corps. There is some scrutiny
towards the program because of that, but that isn’t to say that there aren’t
great successes gained through it and I have heard some great things about TLG
volunteers. Not really my place to judge it either, so I’ll leave it at
that.
Day 2: I went to school with Danae, watched her classes, and
served as a mini interview activity (everyone wants to know the same things: Do
you like Georgia? Georgian food? Georgian people? Our town? Etc…). I also got
to see the projects she has implemented and is planning on taking on at her
school, and gain inspiration for when I’m at my permanent site.
After school we visited the neighboring town (Sachkhere) to
grab some ludi (beer) and the illusive vegetarian (mushroom) khinkhali!
Khinkhali are traditional Georgian dumplings that are generally made with meat,
but you can also find them with mushrooms, potatoes, cheese, and ONLY in
Tbilisi you can find them with lobio (beans)! Unfortunately, the gas was out at
the restaurant so khinkhali wasn’t an option, but there was good beer and
company to make up for it.
We also took the highest cable car up the mountain to get
some sweet views and see this neat dilapidated building. You can tell that in
it’s day, this building must have been magnificent. We can’t tell what it was
(maybe a school), but what looks like communist propaganda murals can be seen
on the walls. A very cool, and slightly eerie reminder of Georgia’s past.
Beautiful views from atop:
The rundown building:
Later that night we (but mainly Danae) baked chocolate chip
cookies!!! It’s pretty hard to recreate the ones in the states (especially
without measuring cups or brown sugar), but little cakes with chocolate chunks
in them can never disappoint.
Day 3: Saw the other classes I didn’t see the day before,
and then headed out to Kutaisi to meet up with some other volunteers and their
shadowing trainees. It was fun to hear about everyone’s experiences aaaaaand I
finally got to try mushroom AND potato khinkhali. Worth the wait. Oh, also
there is a McDonalds at the marshutka station, so we obviously indulged in some
good ol’ American ‘cuisine’.
Bird's eye view of Kutaisi:
Day 4: Just kind of hung out during the early day. Rather
than trekking up the hill to the marshutka station to catch my ONE marsh back
to Khashuri, we waited to flag it down at the bottom of the hill. In theory
this was a great plan. Little did we know, the marshutkha would be unmarked… So
we missed the ONE marsh going back to my village. The good thing about Georgia
is that since it is so small, and the larger cities are somewhat spread out,
you can usually use different marshes and switch off along the way to connect
to one going to where you need to go (or at least close to it). So I got on a
marsh going to Tbilisi and Danae communicated to the driver that I needed to go
to Khashuri so he said he’d let me know where to get off. So about one and a
half to two hours into my trip I was dropped off on the side of the road and
left to flag down a marshutkha on it’s way to Khashuri. This was a little
intimidating since I had to read the small Georgian script on a bus speeding
down the highway, but it somehow worked. I crawled into the front seat
(sardined in along with the driver and a third male passenger) and held on for
the ride. About 20 to 30 minutes into our ride, the guy next to me signaled to
get the seat belt. I thought this was strange, since usually marshutkhas don’t
have seatbelts and certainly don’t promote safe driving habits, but followed suit.
I found the belt, but was searching for the buckle when he just said “Ara” (no)
and grabbed the belt from me and proceeded to just hold it across my body. At
the time I thought this was a nice, yet essentially pointless gesture, but I
later found it that it is required by law for the front seat passenger and
driver to wear a belt… but only in the city limits. I guess that third person
in the middle seat doesn’t matter, or that driving in the country doesn’t call
for a seat belt (NOT.TRUE.) *There will probably be more marsh stories to come,
but the driving here is absolutely ridiculous to say the least.
After making it in Khashuri I had to catch the last marsh
back to little Kvishkheti. This was the day I found out what time the
Kvishkheti marsh leaves Khashuri… because I had to wait pretty much the full
hour for it to pick me up on the next hour.
It was a loooong day of travel, but definitely worth it. The
job-shadowing trip was one of the most helpful experiences in PST!
While we were at the top of the caves, we decided that we
had worked up an appetite. So in true (or what we thought was true) Georgian
fashion, we broke out our Supra! Fully equipped with fruit, cheese, bread,
sausage, cucumber, beer and cake – luckily, our friends’ host families didn’t
let them leave the house without a sufficient picnic packed. I’m not sure if it
was because it was a cultural faux pas or just because we’re Americans (the
usual reason) but we got stared down! We were such a spectacle. When we stopped
to set up our spread the area was clear of people and seemed convenient. Ten
minutes later we are in the middle of a huge Georgian crowd climbing down the
stairs and staring at us eating. We didn’t care enough to stop eating. We are
very used to being stared at by now. 
