This morning Jumberi suggested that we walk to the mineral
water spring near my school. One of the dogs came with us, and I pet it while
Jumberi stopped to talk to some friends. He pointed to the ruin of a house with
a red relief trailer in front of it. I’d passed it before, and Eka had
explained that the owner lived in the trailer because she has no money. Jumberi
added new information: the woman didn’t want to fix her house for some reason
or another, and the woman was Eka’s German teacher when Eka was in school. A
man passed us on the street and Jumberi explained that he’s an architect.
Pointing to a new house just down the block, Jumberi said that this is one of
the man’s buildings. He tapped his head and grunted approvingly. I could hear
the unsaid Dzalian nitchierie katsia,
“He’s a very clever man.”
We talked about the beauty of the mountains and about the
amount of snow. We talked about the dog and about the river. I learned that he
has an orchard on the side of one of the mountains I can see from my school and
that he can’t wait to take me swimming in the river in the summer. Then he
started coughing his missing-half-a-lung cough. He asked for the 100th
time if my father smokes. When I said no, he asked if my grandfather smokes. I
answered that I have two grandfathers and that neither smokes. We walked in
silence for a minute, and then he asked if I had understood that Maguala’s
brother was having an operation. I answered that I had guessed as much, and I
asked how the surgery went. He said that it went well and so Eka would be home
tomorrow. I told him that my dad had a heart problem and had had surgery when I
was younger. He furrowed his brows and asked why this was so. For as often as I
find myself frustrated with people here for not working to figure out why and
how things work, I also find myself amazed by how often they ask “Why?” If you
say you don’t like a food, they ask why. If you don’t speak Russian, they ask
why. If you leave America to teach for a low salary in Oni, they ask why. And
if you tell them that your dad has a heart problem, they ask why. Often, I just
shake my head and say that I don’t know why but this is how things are.
Jumberi pointed to one of the mountains and said that when
my sisters visit we can go hike that mountain together. I laughed and told him
that my sisters probably wouldn’t visit here. He asked why, and I found myself
trying to explain. Georgia is far from America. Plane tickets are expensive.
Getting to Oni from Tbilisi is neither easy nor comfortable. My sisters aren’t
particularly adventurous and they can’t just leave school to come hike
mountains with me. He became sad. Wouldn’t my mother come? I laughed again and
said that my mother doesn’t like travelling. Wouldn’t my dad come? I hesitated…I
could see my dad flying to Tbilisi, but somehow I couldn’t picture him enduring
the 5-7 hour marshutka ride to Oni. Jumberi watched me think. Finally I
answered maybe. He smiled, probably as he imagined my father tasting his wine
for the first time.
We saw one of my students at the mineral water spring.
Mamuka was filling up bottles at the spring while three men stood next to him
smoking. Jumberi joined the smoking men and I joined Mamuka, who smiled shyly
but didn’t greet me in any language. I filled up our three bottles, and then
Jumberi and I headed home.
We ate lunch together, read for a while, and then I went out
hiking with Michael. We walked farther than I had thought. At one point, two
children came up and told us that we shouldn’t go farther because there were
wolf tracks in the snow. We said that we would be ok, and they thought we
didn’t understand them. We appreciated their warning, but we saw the footprints
and cow tracks in the snow and decided that if the cows weren’t scared then we
weren’t either.
The walk was nice. I mentioned that there were times in
Berlin when I felt myself changing into someone I wasn’t sure that I liked. At
the time, I noticed that most of my problems could have been avoided if I had
trusted my instincts and had been more willing to stand up for myself. I became
more pragmatic and self-assured, perhaps to the point of being cold and
arrogant at times…but I could never tell because I didn’t have old friends
around to keep me in check. I spent much of the summer worrying about this (and
then worrying if worrying was making me self-absorbed as well). Michael
mentioned that he sometimes feels as if he’s becoming more impatient as he
lives here. I can see how that would happen. Coming from a different culture to
a place where you’re constantly petted, fondled, and force-fed (all this if
they like you…imagine if they didn’t!) requires a great deal of patience.
I don’t feel that I’m becoming more impatient, but I do feel
that I’m becoming more cynical. An old teacher-friend once told me that she’s
fascinated by Eastern Europe but that she has to leave every-so-often in order
to maintain her sanity. Otherwise, she said, watching so many people who felt
neither responsible for nor motivated towards changing their society made her
depressed. Perhaps the social apathy is a survival mechanism: when the big
community repeatedly fails a group of people they withdraw into smaller
communities. They identify with their regions or their villages or their
families; they complain about the government and the state of their streets,
but they don’t bother trying to change things. Maybe this is because they don’t
know how to start such huge changes. Maybe they worry that change isn’t
possible, or that things will get worse and then they will be to blame. Maybe
they’re still scared to challenge authority…they carry a social mentality
traumatized by its history as a person’s mind may be traumatized by the events
in his or her past. I wouldn’t characterize the Georgians I’ve met as
apathetic, but their passion doesn’t seem to be focused into anything
productive. They love their country and its traditions, but their strange
relationship with their government has lead to a strange relationship with
their government-run education system. So as much as students may like my
school or my lessons, most of them don’t feel that my assignments or my
language are worth extra effort on their part. Both stem from the current
government…they’ve learned from history that it is safest to play along with
the government but also that if they get too involved the next government might
decide that they need re-education. People keep asking if I think the Georgians
are lazy. I don’t. As always, some people are smarter than others and some are
harder workers…Maybe history has taught people here that the best way to
protect their culture, language and lives is to make sure they never commit so
fully to something that they can be help responsible for it when the winds
change. They’ve been taught not to question, not to analyze, not to look for
innovations or alternatives. This doesn’t make them bad students; it just makes
them difficult students for an American teacher to work with.
I watch the news on the president’s sponsored channel.
There’s a segment on Putin making anti-Georgian comments. His Russian speech is
dubbed into Georgian for the segment…I can’t help thinking that such editing
was unnecessary. As I watch footage of Putin at a supra-like table drinking
beer from a huge mug, I think two things: obviously the news station choose
footage of Putin drinking beer intentionally, and why isn’t it obvious to them
that people would learn more English if they aired programs in English from
time to time. Regarding the beer, Georgians have a long history of holding beer
suspect. Until recently, one only toasted to one’s enemies with beer. What
changed? The patriarch decided to bless beer. Why, I don’t know. Nevertheless,
Putin couldn’t be shown drinking wine, so beer it was. Regarding the dubbing,
my family watches hours of Russian-language television every day. They watch
hours of Georgian television, too, and it’s helped me learn. But I think they’d
learn English a little faster if they replaced half of the Russian shows they
watch with English ones.
The television is on almost constantly here. It would surely
be maddening if I still noticed it. During the day, there are dubbed versions
of tella novellas, concerts of
Russian singers (lots of re-runs of those), and old Georgian films (I like
those). I’ve walked in on Jumberi watching both the Hillary Duff movie and
Hannah Montana, dubbed into Georgian. I don’t think he suspected that these are
usually watched by pre-teen girls in the US. On weekends, there are shows on
which Georgian children in costumes sing and dance. In evenings, we watch some
combination of our soap opera, a comedy show, a talk-show, a sitcom (that I
actually enjoy now that I understand the dialogue), or a new reality show
called Maestro in which conductors
compete against each other for the honor of conducting the [national?]
orchestra. For most of the rest of the day, someone or another is watching (or
listening to) the news. The news is on almost constantly. It gives me many
opportunities to watch for themes in the content. Ironically, we watched a
special tonight on internet addiction. Of course people here spend a lot of
time on the internet. There’s no cinema or roller rink or ice cream parlor or
coffee house…but young people have access to computers. There’s a house here
where a clever family bought 5 Play Stations and they charge visitors by hour
of play. The guests are almost exclusively boys and young men; grown men seem
to prefer online gambling and shooting games that they can play at home or at
relatives’ homes. After the special, Maguala made a few more comments than
usual about how much time I spend at my computer. I wanted to say that I am
reading and writing for homework. I wanted to say that spending hours in front
of the television isn’t any healthier. Instead I shrugged. Then Jumberi grunted
disapprovingly at a news segment about young people giving “free hugs” in
Tbilisi. I narrowed my eyes at a series of join-the-military commercials and
then a news special about the rising popularity of plastic surgery in Georgia. I guess we have different sensitivities…
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