Marshutka Friends and Other Thoughts

I am going to update my blog a day early because tomorrow is bringing a real treat: I’ve been asked to be on television! Yes, that’s right. A news crew is coming to my school tomorrow to tape me teaching, and they are coming back to my house tomorrow afternoon to film me at home, interacting with my host family. I don’t know why they picked me, but I OBVIOUSLY agreed. I will let you all know how it goes and will send you a link to the segment if it airs.

This week brought with it many adventures, namely a hilarious trip to a suburb of the city. Last Tuesday, my friends and I went on a trip to Rustavi, a city about 30 minutes outside of Tbilisi. We picked up our marshutka on the outskirts of Tbilisi, in the town in which my friend Amanda lives. We thought we were really suave because we were able to read the marshutka sign that said “Rustavi” in Georgian script, and we piled onto a smelly bus whose upholstery resembled a grandmother’s living room. To make a long story short, we obviously got on the wrong marshutka and ended up in the backroads of god only knows where, passing sheep, chickens, cows, and horses roaming in front of us. We passed village women with mounds of flour to bake their weekly food…and we were unable to ask about our whereabouts because no one spoke any English—and our Georgian is really not that great. We somehow made it into Rustavi, but definitely not the way we were supposed to. When the marshutka stopped at what appeared to be its final destination and all the passengers got out, we played charades (our favorite game here in Georgia) with our marshutka driver and his friend. They decided that they loved us, and then they took pictures with us and gave us fruits. They became our personal cab drivers for the next twenty minutes, communicating with our friend’s Georgian host brother until they dropped us off at the bar where we were meeting our fellow Rustavi teachers. What an experience. Needless to say, the ride home was much more normal, and we actually went on a highway without chickens.

On a serious note, one of the most difficult things that I am experiencing is the task of trying not to judge the people I meet as ignorant and prejudiced, specifically as racist, sexist, or homophobic. The other day, my host mom told me that TLG had initially offered her and Dato a black girl, and she told me that she “didn’t want a black girl living in my house.” When talking about attractive people, she told me that Caucasus people (the people living in the Caucasus region of the world…Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc) were very attractive, but that Chinese people were not because of their eyes. The racist nature of these remarks were difficult to swallow, as are the numerous instances I see and hear in which other Georgian people make known that they do not like those who are different. Stories of host families kicking their teachers out of their home because they are “too fat” or gay or “weird” abound here; and the gender binary is stronger here than I have ever seen it in the states. My host mother waits on my host father hand and foot—he doesn’t even put his dishes in the sink, never mind help around the house. Women are expected to be virgins until marriage, but men are expected to be experienced sexually before they wed---I’m still trying to figure out how that works out. These ideologies are germane to Georgia, and I can understand and try to respect that. But it is difficult to swallow comments that display a culture rooted in extreme dislike of the different. While I understand that it may not be “intolerance,” it often seems that way, such as when one of my students told me that it is bad that I am not Christian Orthodox, because that is the only way to live. The traditional nature of Georgia and its stark contrast to many things I believe in make for very frustrating interactions. Each time I hear a racially insensitive comment, I struggle to not judge the person as racist—and try to better understand the culture that created these racially/sexually/disability/etc-insensitive ideologies. But make no mistake, this task is not easy. I often find myself wanting to yell at the parents, the teachers, the taxi drivers who use the n-word, who talk about gay people as abominations, who dislike anyone who is not of their religion. But how do you explain to someone that these ideologies are exclusive to many wonderful people, that maintaining such ideologies prevents them and the rest of the world from attaining peace---when you can barely talk about what you had for lunch today?