Yuta of Batumi

Quick side note: There is a new post before this that i wrote before i left khasuri-check that one out first!

ok...now moving on to my new entry...

I don’t know if I will have time to write up a meaningful and fun blog entry at the moment because my time may be limited on the computer. A lot of things have happened since my last entry, but the most significant and important event that happened was on Friday when we finally found out where our permanent sites are! It was a “big” event when they told us where we were going to go, and tensions were running high. Everyone was at hub-day in Khasuri and we all piled into an old, soviet-era, run down, dirty, and, quite honestly, smelly park gym. On the floor of the basketball court was a map of ROG done with masking tape, and we were all told to line up in a certain order. We were given numbers (1-44), and we were told to line up numerically. We soon found out that this meant that we were lining up in order from east to west, and I found myself at one end of the spectrum. Lots of things crossed through my mind: “I hope I don’t get stuck in some small village,” “omg I would die if I had to go to the bathroom everyday in a hole,” “please let me have hot-running water,” “will the place I live in have electricity in the winter?!,” and “will I live in a place where I have to worry about malaria?” In an instant before I had much time to think about anything else, music started to blare from speakers that were well-hidden in the gym.

::enter Ray Charles::

“Georgia, Georgia,
the whole day through ,
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind …”

In an instant everyone was told to step forward into the map of ROG that was sketched out on the gym floor like a country had just been murdered there. All of us—hungry for all the information that we could get—rabidly tore open the envelopes given to us. Clapping, screaming, and sighs of relief were heard throughout the gym. I—busy taking pictures of everything—was the last to open mine, and looked down at my envelope. “Georgia, Georgia…” the song kept playing and I was nervous about where I’d go for two years and what would happen if it was somewhere I just couldn’t cope with. I tore open the package.

“Batumi! We’re in Batumi!”

A fellow PCT standing next to me screamed at me that I would be in the same city as him. I was shocked, happy, and scared—as usual—but I thought about why I was even scared. I haven’t seen the place, and I have only heard great things about the city so it was illogical to be scared of anything. After all, I am a superhero and I can’t be scared of a city! Trying to take all of this in at once, I went to talk to the other PCT’s to see where they were placed. Everyone shared information, hugs, and pats on the back and we went to a map of ROG to put a tac at the city we would be for the next two years. TEFL volunteers were mostly placed in rural villages while NGO volunteers were mostly in cities, but everyone was satisfied with their site placement. Also, it seems that a lot of people were placed out west since it just recently opened up to the Peace Corps.

First, though, let me give a brief description of the city of Batumi and the region that it is in. Batumi is said to be the second largest city in ROG and has a population of about 200,000 people (take THAT PC stereotype! I’m in the PC and I have a cell phone AND I’m going to live in a city!). It is a city that is 20 km north of the ROG/Turkish border, and is a summer hotspot. The city is right on the black sea, and its main economic activities include tourism, its seaport, customs operations, and citrus fruits and vegetables in the summer. A couple of years back it was a dictatorship (or an autonomous state) run by a military man. I think I even heard that the region—or in this case mainly the leader of the region—was even trying to create Adjara (the region) into its own country, but had little success in doing so. Kind of reminds you of pre-civil war south huh? The region has five districts and has both sea and mountain. It is famous for adjarian khachapuri-a spin-off on the khachapuri famously served at every meal-and the city itself has lots of stores with a wide array of goods and services (yay!). Anyway, the weather here is tropical (yes, I’m writing from Batumi), and my host family has a home in the “old town” district in the city center. I am two blocks from the main park (famous throughout ROG for being beautiful and is filled with a wide range of flora) and two blocks from the sea/beach. It is incredibly hot and humid, but my new host family’s home and NGO office has a large selection of amenities. A/C, hot-running water, electricity, a new renovated home, seated toilet, and a western style washing machine. An interesting thing to note is that I find myself always living in a sea-town/city whenever I go live abroad. In Japan I lived on an island and had a view of the ocean from my room. In Aberystwyth I lived in a seaside town and lived a block from the seaside. Now, I find myself again in a seaside town that, despite some evident soviet-era relics standing about, is beautiful. Yesterday I didn’t have to go to work because my counterpart was ill, so I spent the day with my host brothers and their friends. They took me with their friends to the Green Cape (an interesting story in itself) and we swam in the sea all day and they caught fish and other sea creatures to barbecue on the beach—it was awesome.

Anyway, back to the week that has passed since I last updated. After finding out where our permanent site placements were, the NGO volunteers and their LCFs were whisked away to Bakuriani (a ski resort in the winter and hiking/horseback riding resort in the summer) to have our NGO supervisor conference. Driving through ROG I realized a couple of things. I have never seen an ugly place here. Sure there are some random things lying around (aptly named Large Abandoned Objects or LAO) in the countryside or in the city, but the large mountains with clouds hovering over the peaks, and the valleys that have their blankets of wheat, corn, sunflowers are just beautiful. Riding on a marshutka (a minibus that is the main mode of transportation from place-to-place), dodging cows in the road as if flying through a cow filled asteroid field, and zooming around cliff-corners hoping that the car has new, rubbery, ultra-grip tires while holding the hand of the person next to you who is praying is always exhilarating, but when you have the rare moment of driving over a newly paved road, you get to look out the window and take in the scenery that looks like a Van Gogh or Monet painting. Hay stacks scattered about a golden field; tall, skinny, lush green trees lining streets and standing naked in the field; it’s a lot to take in, and all the PCTs in the marshutka just stare out and are silenced by the beauty of it all.

We finally arrive in Bakuriani and stayed in a nice soviet-era resort hotel with a ::gasp:: heated pool and lots of loud, screaming, and scary kids. At the conference we finally met our NGO supervisors and found out more about the NGO we are assigned to work for the next two years. My NGO is called the International Student Advising Center (ISAC) and is a branch of the Soros Foundation. Their main duties are to advise students and professionals interested in going abroad or to expand their skills or education. There was a huge educational reform in ROG recently, and it seems that I will also be working with universities here developing new curriculum (modeled after the US) and try to help make the transition smooth. I am excited that I got chosen for this organization because they are very organized, well-funded, and have a lot of great projects going. It seems they need help with developing a new charter, budgeting, organizational development, and project planning—among other things—and I am pumped to do all that work for them. John, another volunteer that will be in Batumi with me, and I will hopefully be able to find some great secondary projects to work on too, but it will probably be hard to find because we are in a pretty big city. First things first, must community map!

Anyway, getting back on track, we spent three days in Bakuriani and then my counterpart and I headed off to Batumi to see my NGO and host family. It is, from what I am told, about 320 km from Tbilisi, but it takes about 5-7 hours to get from Batumi to Tbilisi because the infrastructure (roads) are so unreliable. Likewise, it took about 4-5 hours from Bakuriani to get to Batumi (I will post another entry just about the drive and various things I saw). I return to Khasuri this Thursday, and I will return here after swearing in.

So this is the basic update of how things have been here. Other news might be that I took my first LPI (language test) and did fairly well, but I want to do better by the end so I will need to study more. I will try and upload pictures the next time I am here—August 18th—and you can see what my life has been like for the last couple of weeks.

Ok, hope all is well and drop me an email!

No wife and evil places

“why no wife yuta, why no wife?”

I get this question ALL the time from many, many people. It seems that it is tradition to marry at around 21-22 in ROG, and they have a hard time understanding me when I tell them that “I never want to get married.” “No,” they say, “don't you want a wife and kisd?! Kids are gifts from God and you should have as many as you can.” I usually respond by saying “I’m sorry I don’t understand” to stop the conversation from going further, but I always wish I had enough guts and glory to say “I am at the top of my game and I cant be brought down by the ‘man,’ let alone a bunch of kids!” Recently I have thought about the hoopla surrounding weddings, marriage, and family. Why is everyone so adamant on getting married already (even in America)? Personally—and really this is just my opinion—I feel that I have just started my life, and at the very least I need to live it up a little bit before I even think about settling down (if that ever does happen). A neighbor of my host family married when she was just 15 and her husband was 25—interesting no? My host sister-in-law and host brother eloped when they were 20 and they now have two children. Crazy, it’s all just crazy.

It is interesting how some cultural beliefs are so engrained into the people here. For instance, a fellow PCT described how her host-sister is very religious and modest, but every morning when she goes to the picture of St. Nino to pray in her home she goes in her underwear and bra—talk about decency and respect. Another thing is that they love Hollywood, American pop culture, and all things western. The funny thing, however, is that in ROG it is bad to wear tight and fitted clothing, but when you walk around town and look around, that is all that the girls are wearing. I was told by my host sister that “in ROG the divorce rate is 1% (umm…ok, whatever),” and that “American girls are bad girls because they live with a man before they are married.” “Not everyone does that, though,” I try to say in my stumbling and crippled Georgian language, but she just goes on to say that “here in ROG if a woman is divorced she cannot get married again because she is not a virgin, and non-virgins are bad-bad-bad girls and no one will ever marry them. Georgian men only want to marry virgins, and, as such, they will not even consider looking at a woman if she is rumored to have had a serious relationship with someone before.” Life here is strict. Strict for woman that is, because apparently it is ok for a boy/man to sleep around and still be considered a very eligible bachelor. Gender differences confuse me.

It may be that my family and the people I have come across think like this, but, obviously, their perception of western culture and their perception of their own culture here tend to be skewed or mistaken sometimes. Obviously I am not an expert on Georgian culture, so I guess I am still just trying to take all of this in, but, as a fellow PCT told me, gender issues in developing countries is a huge deal and need to be addressed. I agree with her, but all I can think of is “how?”

Another interesting topic of conversation happened with my host brother and host family whom I get along with very well. My host brother and I call each other “giji bitchis!” (crazy boys) because we are constantly joking and hanging out making a fool out of ourselves. Anyway, I was told by my host family that they like me very much and would like me to stay with them for the next two years-very flattering. The problem with this, however, is that I had no say in where I was going (PC decides), and they kept bothering me about it thinking I could make a difference. When asked about the possible places I could go, I listed a bunch of well-known towns and cities all throughout ROG.

“oh…Gori has bad and mean people, you don’t want to go there.” “Akhaltsike and Kutaisi has lost of crime, don’t go there.” “Poti and Rustavi? No, the weather in those places is nasty—avoid it at all costs.” My host brother even half-jokingly informed me about Borjormi by saying, “you may go to Borjormi? Well, there mineral water may be good, but the town is full of prostitutes!” All the advice was given with the ending “…evil places, all of them, but Khasuri is the best in ROG—stay here.” It was flattering but terrifying at the same time. After a couple of days when I had my LCF tell them that I had no say in where I was going to get the point across, they resigned from their negative propaganda and started to talk about how I could spend New Years, Christmas (Shoba), and other holidays and vacations with them. They told me how they would like to take me skiing and show me various parts of ROG, and how they would come visit me and pick me up whenever I wanted. Negative propaganda aside, I will definitely miss my host family when I finally have to move away. I get along with everyone very well, and even arduous chores like breaking wood to fire up the water heater have become entertaining and social.

My host brother and I usually get together to break wood into pieces after I get home from work: him—with his 95 lbs frame—would somehow be able to demolish 2 inch thick pieces of wood. “Amazing,” I said, “you are like the god of wood breaking!” He smiled and pointed at my still unbroken piece of wood that I had been trying to pound my foot on for the last 10 minutes and would say, “yes, the people in Khasuri can break the wood because we are good people in a good place. The people of other places, evil and bad places, they cannot break wood like me.” “Yes, but they have electric water heaters,” I said jokingly, and we resumed to make kung-fu noises and break the wood. I thought about how I’d like to avoid evil and bad places, but if you have a good place like Khasuri to go home to, it is easy to think about those evil places as temporary destinations on a long superhero adventure.

Lost in Translation

I have officially hit the three-week mark for my time here in ROG. The weather has gotten hotter, the language slightly more familiar, and some parts of the country/Khasuri even remind me a little of home now. Now, I know what everyone is thinking. Three-weeks is such a short amount of time, people study abroad for longer lengths than that so what can possibly happen in a span of three-weeks? Well, I’ll tell you what can happen in three-weeks. You learn a lot about the people you work with everyday, and I mean e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y. I didn't think that joining the PC I would be working so much, but even today (Sunday) I met with my group for a couple of hours to finish up some NGO work that we needed to present later this week. Training is really intense, and I don't know if it is just the language barrier, workload, type of work, or all of the above, but I feel like deadlines are always looming and we don't ever have enough time to complete everything (maybe this is just what the real world is like?). I’m also sure that it feels more drastic to me because I haven’t really ever held down a real job, or maybe it’s because being stuck in a place where no one speaks English except the people you work with so it makes you get to know them very, very well. Bowel movements are casual topics of conversation (“I have a stomach ache.” “oh, you have the BIG D?” “no, just a stomach ache.” “well, don't take the pepto because it makes you backed-up in regularity.” “ok, good to know”) and so are work/culture issues, mystery foods encountered during dinner, and conversations held with host-family members are also often recounted during our breaks.

An interesting conversation that was lost in translation recently happened during a conversation with my host-mom. During brunch today she brought the dictionary and explained to me that she was in “abstinence.” I have to be honest when I say I was a little shocked at how open she was with that kind of stuff—after all we were told the culture here in ROG was extremely conservative—but when the host-sister-in-law interjected and explained that she was in “abstinence” from any animal products for religious reasons I knew that what she meant to say was that she was, in fact, fasting. There are lots of instances like this with my host-family and other PCT host-families, and of course they provide for entertaining topics of conversation, but I think sometimes we all wish we were just fluent already. Oftentimes we leave class feeling very confident with the lesson, but when we get home and the family doesn't talk according to the script learned in class (i.e. “where will you be going?” “I will be going to school in the morning.”) we lose all confidence and get frustrated. I mean, we learn the script for a reason, why don't they just follow it?! No, just kidding. Some things about the Georgian language that I find particularly difficult are the verbs. Forget the different cases they have, the verbs are difficult enough. There are two systems of verbs, and they each have specific characteristics, so you would think that knowing these characteristics it would be easy to learn the two types of verbs. All lies. There are a ton of irregular verbs that just ignore all rules, and this makes things incredibly difficult in the end. Anyway, with mid-evaluations coming up I am worried that I will not do that well on my language exam.

I try to go running everyday because the food here is very fatty. By fatty I mean lots of bread (and I do mean LOTS of bread), beans, things cooked in TONS of oil (they say it is because they don't have Teflon pans, but last time I checked my soups weren’t cooked in Teflon pots/pans and they sure didn't look like an oil tanker crashed in the soup.), and lots of walnut type sauces (so lots of fats). My friend Susan (another NGO volunteer) also runs everyday and we compare notes of what we see during our runs because we live in different parts of the town. She tends to go running more through the neighborhoods while I go running next to the “highway” or countryside. This is a small list of things we have seen during our runs in the past three weeks:
-kids/adults swimming in the water canals that go to the town as drinking water
-people throwing away their trash in the water canals (also going to the city as drinking water)
-cows mounting each other—nuff said
-people constantly stopping to see if we need rides (I think seeing someone running here for exercise is a foreign concept)
-I was chased by a goat—yes, a goat. I am glad to say I outran a goat though, take THAT nature!

The scenery that I see reminds me a lot of how my parents described their childhood scene-scapes to be. Rough urban landscapes mixed with nature all around. It doesn't seem like a city belongs where here, but rather it seems like the city just fell out of the sky in this lush valley and the city is slowly taking over kind of like a tree spreading its roots or ivy climbing all over trees. I also think about how the roads must have looked after the war in Japan. Were they as bad as these? I’m sure that when it rained back then in post-war Japan that the roads weren’t built well enough to drain the water off the road like here in ROG.

Speaking of rain when it rains here it rains hard and fast. The problem with the rain and culture is that men are not really allowed to carry umbrellas (or if they do—like me—they are considered to be less of a man…uh, whatever), so this leads to a lot of PCVs being stranded in some store until the heavy rain subsides. Anyway, as mentioned earlier with the pothole/pavement problems in ROG it is no surprise that after 10 minutes of heavy rain the roads are dotted with little lakes (about a foot deep), and it makes walking on unpaved roads even more difficult. Skip-hop-bounce-dive, walking home with dry feet after a heavy downpour is getting increasingly difficult, but I suppose it adds to the adventure of a PC superhero so I cant really complain. On my walk home two days ago after a heavy downpour I wondered about the possibility of malaria, I mean the miniature lakes stick around for about a week after some heavy rain, so that should technically make it possible for some breeding action right? Either way I’ve gotten so many shots the past three weeks I feel like a pincushion, so I’m sure I have covered all the bases.

Last Sunday the PC planned a big Fourth of July picnic for all the PCTs and the host-families, but due to rain the event was canceled. It looked to be an exciting event because it was going to be held at a national park that was closed for the season and would be specially opened for us. Anyway, since the event was canceled my host-family took me to the neighboring village of Surami instead. It is only about 3-5km away, so we all piled into the car like clowns and headed there for a daytrip. Surami is where my host-brother and his wife married, and so the first stop was at the church they wed in at the top of a hill overlooking Surami. The sun was just beginning to set and the sky was all different shades of pink, red, and purple, and it was especially eerie because in the foreground of the natural beauty was a large and abandoned soviet-era factory. What they made in that factory I don't know, but I can guess that once it closed it left many people unemployed and impacted the town significantly. Surami is a very small town, and driving through the town’s “main roads” the poverty was evident. After drinking the infamous Surami “rust” tasting spring water we all headed back to the house. It was a short excursion, but also an invaluable and eye-opening one. The question that loomed in my mind during the drive home, and later that night, was how to economically develop a place that has no industry, and is perhaps even too small to attract any industry, into a town that will be sustained and employ at least a majority of the population. Tourism? Small businesses? Keynesian government intervention? I know that there is no panacea for this kind of problem because many things come into play at once with economic development, and this makes trying to find a “solution” very, very difficult. I wonder, though, if some things cultural, historical, geographical, human capital, sentimental, or all of the above play into the situation that the town faces. A fellow PCT commented on the need for the local/federal government to do a huge public education campaign on keeping the city and different areas clean from littering because she heard that ROG wanted to implement a tourism industry. My opinion on that is that it is a great idea, but what I cant help but wonder if people even have the luxury to think about how their waste should be managed. Maybe they are so desperate thinking about how to feed their families or how to find a job that waste management is not something they can consider at the moment. Difficult situations abound, I am still excited and pumped that I am here, but with every thing I learn and encounter I find that I have even more questions arising than I could ever hope to answer.

Anyway, I have blabbed on enough about something and nothing. I just wanted to update to let you guys know what has been going on. Mid-evaluations are coming up and I have been preparing myself for that by studying a lot of the language and going over the NGO stuff. I hope I do well because I want to outperform everyone—I MUST win! haha no, I just hope I do well. We got a list of all the NGOs that the volunteers will be assigned to and we get to pick our top three (no guarantees though), and it is interesting to see what the specializations of those NGOs are. I think everyone in the NGO group is excited about the prospect of which one they may be working for, but I might be the only one that is nervous about it. I feel like I am going through the college admissions process all over again with all this picking, waiting, and hearing back if it is a reject or approval. Last I heard we are being paired up with a NGOs needs and a PCTs “specialty”—or past experience—that are most compatible and beneficial to the NGO that has requested a PCV. This week is looking to be VERY busy which can be a good and bad thing. Ok, it’s midnight on Sunday and I am about done now. PEACE out.

Interesting happenings:
-PCT went to ride bumper cars and found out that in ROG they don't really bump bumper cars and people are very serious about it. What do they do? Apparently they shove and cut to get to the front of the line and then bribe the ticket person to go in. After all this corruption to get to the front of the line they go and practice their ROG driving skills by cutting off people and glaring at them while they drive—hilarious
-A PCT was recently bitten by a 1 year old. Thank god for our rabies vaccine. Whoever said kids weren’t evil?
-I am still showering once or twice a day, but I am increasingly feeling guilty about it. Maybe it’s time I just shower once a day or once every two days like other PCTs. Apparently one girl PCT went 5 days without showering to test her limits, but apparently broke down at the end of day 5 and took a nice, cold, bucket shower—you amaze me.
-I was told by a 12 y/o at one of the NGOs that Asian people are the most beautiful people in the world. Although this could just be a translation error, I choose to believe what this child told me.
-I had my first blackout while my host-brother was showing me his guns. Prior to the blackout he told me that he hid one of his guns under his mattress because he was afraid of being robbed in his home in the dark. I have never been more scared in my life. haha.

still alive

hey all i am still alive. there has been a lot going on, and i am keeping busy as usual. the language is going pretty well, and i am excited that i will be finding out where my permanent site is in about two weeks. anyway, just wanted to pop in and say that i am still alive. there has been some stomach sickness/pain, head cold, and some muscle aches, but other than that i am doing well health wise.

interesting thing that happened recently: a cow died of natural causes (i think it was a stroke or heart attack. that is my assessment of the situation) in front of my house. i did not have beef for dinner that night--thank god.

ok, hope all is well.