Before then; we also are hosting a final goodbye summer camp for the children of our town – sans formal English classes – and we are beginning to prep for those sweltering (but fun!) three days. If anyone out there in the e-cosmos has instructions on how to make a kite with rather limited materials, or some of those cool votive candle hot air balloons, we’d really appreciate it. It’s shocking to see how much the non-proximity of a target store hampers one’s creativity. One of our site mates, Josh, had a fantastic idea of using the materials around us by having the children collect trash near the river, and turning that frown upside-down by making boats out of the detritus and having a race (in the river.)
Early in the week, Josh, Martha and I, along with a small portion of Josh’s host family (his host brother Irakli is pictured here) decided to mount an assault on the local fortress which we’ve never actually been able to reach. Previous attempts have been mostly full of get
ting lost in the thick brush, losing the trail, then having to go cross country towards a ridge-line to get your bearings. This time, however, we were joined by another of Josh’s host brothers, Giorgi, who knew exactly how to turn a 1 hour adventure through the flora and fauna of Georgia, into a simple 25 minute hike along a rather well maintained trail. Once at the fortress however, we were met by a precipitous rocky crossing to get inside, which I did not feel like risking (even though Josh maintains it wasn’t a cliff, but actually just a steep hill.) I don’t know how one can capture cowardliness on camera, so you’ll notice there are no pictures of myself in this post.On the home front, the Satakashvili family has grown to 4 more, with the addition of – is it a “litter”? – of kittens, which have been the source of much confusion for Martha and I over the past few weeks, as our attempts to communicate to our host parents that the cat was obviously
pregnant was met with frequent “no’s.” Well, either our Georgian is terrible, or the word pregnancy doesn’t apply to cats, because at a lovely 4 in the morning on Wednesday, the cat’s belly tumor gave birth to 4 not-so-adorable mini-cats. Martha also wants me to mention how cute our small guard dog was in his concern over his moaning buddy throughout the morning. Yep, it’s a regular James Herriot-scape over here. By the way, Martha says hello, she’s too busy reading our Peace-Corps issued “Where there is no Doctor,” which is a really fantastic book for a couple of hypochondriacs and I recommend it to everyone.
Posing with myself and the cats in the picture is our host father Gia, who is a truly wonderful guy, and has been nothing but fantastic in our training phase of service. Although he’s currently stressed-out over an exam he has to take in order to keep his job at the local power company, he helped me get pictures of the kittens for this post. For those of you interested in the Georgian language, that request – in a truly awful and incorrect patois (but-it-got-the-point-across) of broken Georgian - sounds something like this:
“Gia, me mchirdeba potograpia internet-historiatwis chemi ojahritwis, kataze, tu sheidzleiba.”
In an earlier post I mentioned that we were involved in a practice school as part of our technical training. Well, during the last few days of that exercise, our class was joined by a very proficient student named Davidi. Almost too proficient: I created a lesson plan where the kiddies would
imagine their own country and create their own set of rules, then present their creation to the class. Davidi, instead of following his classmates and becoming president of such nascent micro-states as “Dream Country” and “The Republic of Roses”, decided that – if he could - he’d create a country called Abkhazia, where the first rule would be “no Russians on our soil”, and “territorial integrity for Georgia.” Hmmm, how does one handle such a downer? Well, to start; this statesman-to-be invited all of us to visit his grandfather’s house yesterday, and we all accepted.His grandfather lives up the road about a kilometer and a half from our house, and is the village scholar. He was the professor of history and law at three institutes in Gori, which he walked to and from everyday, and was also headmaster of the 1st public school of our town (and taught
our host father). The sad point of the visit was the fact that the 1st school in which he had so much pride sat derelict and closed at the edge of his orchard at the end of the yard. Mr. Vanishvili was also, for a time, the local police chief in the village in the 50’s and 60’s, and personally picked a couple peaches for old Joe when he came to visit. He also was, he told us, friends with Shevardnadze before he turned, and regularly hosted him in the same room where we ate and drank yesterday. Interestingly enough, he also told us that within this immense dinning room full of dusty Russian and Georgian books stacked to the ceiling, and paintings of Georgian writers (as well as Shakespeare and Byron), he had put a bed, where for 102 days and a couple of weeks respectively, slept a famous linguistics professor from Tokyo University who learned Georgian and danced at our host parents wedding, as well as the editor-in-chief of Punch magazine. Mr. Vanishvili now earns his living by bee keeping, and he served fresh honeycombs with Georgian white wine, and gave us as many honeycombs as we could handle in doggie-bags. He also quoted Shakesperian sonnets (in their entirety and in Georgian), as well as told us how destroyed he was when JFK was shot, and how his mother lit prayer candles for him after the shooting in Dallas.Well, that’s it for now, Martha and I are running late, and we’ve got a marshutka to catch.
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