The Helpless Traveler

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This is a story about helplessness.

I keep meaning to write more fun and exciting stories about hiking in the Andes or trekking around the Amazon or busing through Greece, but instead this is the story that keeps rattling around in my head. It's not very happy. 

I lived with a host family in the country of Georgia. They spoke Georgian. I spoke English. Misunderstandings and frustrations abounded - but they were kind and patient with me, fed me well, gave me gifts and were hospitable and polite to a fault. In Georgia hospitality is very important and so is family. Married couples often live with the husband's parents (something a co-teacher of mine complained about). My host family had a grandmother who lived with us. I was forever unsure if she was my host dad's mom or his grandma or maybe a great-aunt, but it didn't really matter. She lived with us and they were terrible to her. She had her own little stove outside in the garage, instead of being able to use our kitchen. Her room, as far as I could tell, was a cot in the dining room where clothing was stored and the kids would often bust in, shouting. She either was not allowed to sit on the regular chairs or chose not to for some reason. She sat on tiny wooden stools. She was never offered the coffee or treats I or other guests were. She was ignored completely in fact, except when she was sometimes shouted at. I couldn't fathom what was happening - my host family was so kind to me, so hospitable with their neighbors, even the cane-hitting older neighbor was always being offered chocolates and coffee. Why would they treat this grandmotherly relation this way? 

A friend suggested maybe she had been a really evil person before and now no one wanted her. Scrooge without the revelatory ghosts and life change.

One weekend I stayed home, sick with strep throat, when my host family went to a baby baptism. Many Georgians don't believe in germs, and my family was no exception, so it took tears and pleading and calling up a translator to get them to allow me to stay home in bed. Finally, the house was quiet. I dragged myself to the kitchen to eat some of the kinkalli my host mom had left and there was my host grandma, sneaking bread. Did they not feed her, ever? How did she get food?

She looked worried about me. She went off to her little stove in the garage and brought me her tiny pan of fried potatoes. She would come up to my bed and check on me a few times a day. She got our neighbor to check on me too. For the first time since I met her, she was moving around more and speaking and seemed so happy to be doing anything. When my family returned, she went back to being silent.

I made a point to offer her my seat or a bit of whatever snack I was eating. My family only spoke to her angrily, even my host sister. 

 How do you protest something like this, that you don't understand? I was the foreigner, a guest (even if I paid rent). I didn't know what was going on - it not only seemed to go against my family's nature, but against Georgian culture. All I knew was that I couldn't stand to keep seeing the grandmother so sad.

So I thought, I will buy her a chair and see how my family reacts. I could just imagine it - trouble would certainly erupt, but I felt like it was worth it. Although all my anthropology training told me to stay out of what I didn't understand, I did understand pain. And I wasn't going to (literally) sit by quietly in my nice warm corner of the sofa while a lady of 70 had to steal bread and sit in a stool in the corner. 

Then one day after I formulated this plan, a sister of my host dad appeared, smiling and quiet, and took the grandma away. No one said goodbye to her. They continued steadily ignoring her presence to the end. 

I hope she went somewhere better. 

My family continued to be unfailingly kind, patient and inclusive of me. We parted ways with sadness, and a promise to come to my wedding supra. I miss them still.

What would you have done in a situation like this? 

First Week in Georgia

Georgian Insights from Training Week

I am currently at my host family's home, spreading American culture by introducing one of my host brothers to The Jackson 5. The kids like to observe me. I feel bad that I'm not more interesting. At least the fact I could do one pull up on their pull up bar seemed to impress the youngest boy. The fact I could only eat two khinkali (meat dumplings) did not.

Join us in our jam session as you read about my first week in Georgia! 

(And here's the post I should have put up a few days ago.)

Learning Georgian is hard. I read one article that said the U.S. State Department (What up, DC!) rates it as a category 4. Wikibooks rates it as a 2...not sure who is right (and I can't find my way back to the first article for some reason). But the point is, Georgian is hard, and languages are hurricanes and thus rated in the same manner. Hurricanes that blow through your mind, leaving it forever changed and probably muddied. In Wikibooks, category 3 is the hardest (this rating is based on "hardest languages for native English speakers to learn", fyi) and includes Chinese and Japanese. Category 2 includes Georgian and probably other languages without a gorgeous alphabet and terribly difficult and strange throat hacking noises.

Not knowing how to communicate AT ALL in a country is very frustrating and difficult. I am five years old. I've never been in this position before, since in Peru I could always speak enough Spanish to get around, if not to catch all the nuances of the situation.

As I wrote the above, it was Tuesday night.  Well, actually Wednesday morning. Georgian karaoke or maybe a band was going crazy around 1 am at the restaurant next door . Then it switched to Party Rock. I saw some young girls shuffling to the same song at the ancient fortress overlooking the city. That moment sort of defined the Georgia I have seen thus far - old meeting new.

Other random insights/thoughts:

1. Sycamore trees line nearly every street here in Tbilisi. It's gorgeous.

2. My training group includes people from all over the western world. I am kept busy spreading my gospel of Southern amazingness. Meaning, explaining why I don't have a "redneck" accent, live on a farm, and don't fit the misguided stereotype of the South.

3. I really want to watch Dr. Who on netflix.

4. The doctor I went to had an American Motown song as her ring tone. Yes, she answered her cell during our consultation. It's the norm here.

5. There are a lot of good looking Georgian men I can't smile at in case they think I am flirting. C'est la vie.

I'll try to post soon about the hilarious awkwardness that was yesterday!

There is no word in Spanish for Awkward.

When I first arrived at my host family's house, I was so awkward.

I mean, I'm usually somewhat awkward, but compound that times 5 when I am in a foreign country and foreign language trying to make this new place my home.

I unpacked my stuff in my room and sat, awkwardly, on my bed. Alone. My host dad popped his head in and said (and I'm translating here) "You don't have to sit in there! Come! You can be out here too!" And he lead me into the breakfast room and showed me all the magazines and sat with me, for an hour, reading Peruvian celebrity gossip magazines.

It was one of the sweetest things anyone has done for me.

He didn't want to read those magazines and had no interest in who was dating who. But he so badly wanted me to be comfortable, my kind, quiet Peruvian Dad, that he sat with me and read about how Jorge was caught with Jessica in the bar the other night.

I hope I will be that welcoming for anyone I run into who is alone and awkward and confused.

In other news, I just returned from Trujillo, which I adored! It looked like this and it was beautiful:

Fiestas Patrias are coming soon (the big holidays of Peru)!

{I leave in 13 days}

Mixed Feelings.

Right now, fear of stopping, of not getting back on a bus, of not traveling.

In two seconds, it will likely change.

At least I can write my paper in English...

Little Peruvian favorites:

- Having a Peruvian friend send me wall posts from her US American love interest's Facebook page so I can translate them. Translating jokes made about American history is hard. Harder yet is figuring out the jokes center around the fact that this guy might have rabies. Say what?!

- Hearing the sound of a dentist drill at all hours (as in, right now). My host sister's dentist office is in our small apartment. It's not as bad as it sounds, (haha pun!) the noise no longer fills me with fear, but feels kinda like home....

Our breakfast room and the dentist office. From the door of my bedroom.

- Green tea out of a Teletubbies mug.

Hydration is key!

(this was when I was sick. But I am using the same mug right now)

- Everyone complaining about the "lluvia" (rain) which is actually just a mist....

Unfavorites:

STILL working on this same paper.

The strange case of the disappearing socks. ALL of my socks.

Saying goodbyes.

PS. One month exactly until I arrive in the United States of America.