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Published: December 7th 2011
Friday is a good day. I go to school with my bags packed for the weekend and, miracle of miracles, the radiators are on! It’s the first time in weeks I’ve taught without hat, scarf, coat and gloves on and it’s wonderful. Plus I have the fifth grade first and I (almost) always enjoy their lessons. I have no lesson during the second period but three classes after that. I’m in the teachers’ room with Maia when the director comes in. Her, Maia and one of the other teachers spend five minutes talking about how beautiful and wonderful I am – ‘Anna, you are best volunteer!’ and then our director asks me when I’m going to Borjomi. I say I am teaching until 13.30 and then I will take a marshrutka into town and then see when the marshrutkas run to Borjomi. So she says (through Maia), ‘Go now if you like.’ Well, you don’t have to tell me twice! Actually, she does. I spend a good five minutes asking if they’re sure and generally trying to reduce the guilt I’m feeling about the fact that Eka will be teaching the next three classes by herself. But then I’m free! It’s 10am. I go into Zugdidi and swing by the library to exchange my book and I’m thrilled to find The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on the shelves; it’s one of my favourites. I head to the bus station and I’m told there’s no direct bus to Borjomi and that I have to go to Kutaisi. I still haven’t made any firm plans with anyone but I figure this is kind of perfect – if I end up going to Borjomi then Kutaisi’s where I need to go from and if not it’s where Ara and Clare will be anyway. I call Jane to double check her plans and it turns out she’s decided to go to Batumi to see Will (it’s harder to stay home for a weekend than you can possibly imagine!). It seems that many of the volunteers aren’t quite as taken with Georgia as my friends and I are and some people are taking the opportunity to go home as soon as they can, which is December 10. This is only three weeks away so I guess there’s going to be some frantic scrabbling over the next couple of weeks to spend time with people who are leaving shortly, which is why Jane was heading for Batumi. Ally calls me when he finishes school and tells me he’s going to grab some lunch at home and then start hitching in the general direction of Borjomi. Personally I think it makes more sense for him to come to Kutaisi so we can try hitching together but it’s kind of the wrong direction for him and the little Scottish shitbag doesn’t want to wait for me so I say I will catch up with him at some point. The trip to Kutaisi is generally uneventful, except that when I arrive I realise I’ve left my book on the bus. I’m devastated. Not only because I was really enjoying it, but now I will have to explain to the library that I’ve lost their book. God knows how much it’s going to cost me to replace. On the upside though I check my account and it’s not nearly as depleted as I was expecting after last weekend. God knows how but I’m not complaining. I call Ally and, surprise surprise, he’s still in Terjola. He tells me to get a marshrutka to Zestaponi so I ask someone where I can get a marshrutka from and I am sent to the next ‘station’, where I’m sent to the next one. Basically there are three places around the main bus station in Kutaisi where the marshrutkas leave from to various destinations and, thanks to Ally, I spend the next 20 minutes wondering between them. At the third one I’m told there is a marshrutka to Zestaponi but it doesn’t leave for 40 minutes. This is, apparently, unacceptable to Ally, who is already there. He tells me to go to Khashuri instead. I ask about this and I’m sent to the second ‘station’, where I’m sent back to the first. When I ask a guy there about a bus to Khashuri he points to the one beside him which is literally pulling away, grabs from me what I later realise is an obscene amount of money for this journey, and begins to bundle me aboard. At this point Jane appears behind me, having also had to come to Kutaisi to change for Batumi. I just have time to say hello and give her a quick hug before I am pushed onto the moving marshrutka and we set off. Now, every marshrutka ride is different and it’s sheer luck which sort you get. Sometimes they’re great fun. People will try to make friends with you and share food and drink and the time flies by. This one was silent as the grave. I am seated up front between the driver and another guy and no one says anything to each other, or me, for pretty much the entire journey. Still, I don’t mind too much because we’re taking the road towards Tbilisi and the scenery is stunning. I tell Ally I’m on my way to Khashuri and the race is on (although what I don’t realise is that his town is about two minutes from Zestaponi so he’s got one hell of a head start). We exchange messages as the journey progresses, mostly about the crashes we’re passing along the way, which are plentiful. Even in this comparatively pleasant weather the road over the mountain is treacherous. When I arrive in Khashuri, having lost the race by quite some way, Ally pops out of a little café to meet me. We head back inside and, in typical Ally style, he’s made friends with the owners and they’re showing him pictures of their children. They also take some pics of us while we have a beer and force down some extremely pungent cheese and bread. Ally’s Georgian is really starting to put mine to shame and I make a mental note to study harder (or at all for that matter). Eventually we make our excuses and leave – we want to get to Borjomi before night falls. We try hitch hiking and are actually picked up by the first car that passes, an extremely swanky 4x4 being driven by a Georgian guy who speaks enough English to carry on a conversation. His passenger is a Lithuanian girl. He also tells us his wife is in Tbilisi. Slightly odd situation. He’s turning off just before Borjomi but he’s nice enough to drive us into the centre. It’s a pretty little town on the banks of a river. For those of you who don’t know the name (that’s all of you not in Georgia) it’s famous for its spring water and a lot of the mineral water here comes from the region. We wander across one of the bridges and up a hill, walking to nowhere in particular. Ally has found somewhere we can stay on the Coach Surfing website – a German guy whose host family has a spare room they rent out – but we’re not meeting him til 8pm so once it gets dark we look for somewhere to grab a drink. Apparently there are no bars in Borjomi but a taxi driver points us in the direction of a cluster of restaurants and we pop into the first one we come to. It’s a strange little set up but I like it immediately. It’s basically one fairly empty room with a small bar at one end and a couple of tables scattered around. Or maybe it just looks empty because most of the tables have been pushed together to accommodate a large party of Georgian women who are enjoying a supra. There’s also anther area partitioned off at the far end of the room where some Georgian teenagers are hanging out. The live music is loud enough to make it difficult to talk but fortunately the singer only feels the need to take to the ‘stage’ at ten minute intervals and, when he does, it’s fun to watch both the women and the teenagers take to the floor. Neither of us is particularly hungry but drinking without food isn’t really done here and the place is cheap enough so we order a dish of mushrooms and herbs cooked in a clay pot with Georgian bread and a litre of local wine. Unfortunately, because Georgians as a rule only drink when they’re eating, the wine doesn’t arrive until the food does so by the time it reaches the table we have about 25 mins to eat and drink before we meet our host for the night. Still, the food and wine are delicious and the atmosphere is warm and friendly so we’re happy. We head back out into the cold and walk to the main bridge where Ally had arranged to meet Gabrielle. It’s at this point that Ally decides to tell me that the guy doesn’t know I’m coming so it should be interesting to see what happens – given the Georgian outlook on friends of the opposite sex sharing rooms it could be interesting. It transpires Gabrielle actually lives with his Slovakian girlfriend so I figure it’s probably ok. They work for an NGO helping refugees from Abhazia to find work, although they’re in a similar position to us in questioning the value of their presence since they work with exactly two women. The women in question make gloves and slippers out of felt and from what I can tell Gabrielle and his girlfriend help to sell them to tourists and I think they’re also trying to set up a website but I confess I proceeded to drink a lot more wine so things are a little hazy from this point. The others haven’t eaten so we head to another restaurant where they order food and we order wine and we sit and chat for a couple of hours before making our way up a winding hill to their house in a village called Papa which sits above Borjomi. They’ve got a pretty nice set up – their own entrance, bathroom and kitchen so they can pretty much come and go as they please, although they tell us they try to spend a couple of nights a week with their host family. They show us the spare room and how everything works in the bathroom and then bid us goodnight. The bed’s about the most uncomfortable I’ve ever encountered and I end up on the floor but, with that much wine inside me, who cares?
We’re up and about in time to have breakfast with our hosts the next morning. They’re heading to the train station for a day trip somewhere and on the way point out the office for the (
khaveskevi) national park where we have to register before we can go. When we get there we’re simply handed a business card by the man on duty with a guy called Levani’s number on it so we call him. Levani speaks English and will apparently be there at midday so we walk into town in search of coffee. We can’t find a café but we do find a vending machine and spend an amusing ten minutes completely failing to work out how to use it. When we arrive back at the office it’s full of school kids watching a presentation in Georgian so I wander around the small information centre while Ally registers our visit and gets some useful information (including a map) from Levani. When we get back outside Ally tells me that, whilst there’s an hour’s walk that begins just behind the information centre there’s also a three hour one that begins from one of the other park’s entrances, by a village about 12 miles down the road and we agree that that sounds like much more fun. We try hitching, unsuccessfully, until a bus shows up. It’s ridiculously busy so we’re lucky it stopped at all and I’m given a small wooden stool to sit on. This is another of those innumerable times in Georgia when I wish I had a camera because the scenery is unbelievable. Beautiful scenery is a common sight in Georgia but what isn’t common is to see it unblighted (or unadorned depending on your viewpoint) by buildings. This is nature in its rawest state and it’s dramatic and stunning. We’re dropped off outside
khaveskevi and, due to a rather menacing hangover forming somewhere in the depths of my being I decide I want to try to find a shop to stock up on supplies before we start out on a three hour trek, so we walk down the road for about a mile until it becomes increasingly clear we’re not going the right way. I’m glad we did though because on our way we pass a hydro dam straddling the river and go in for a closer look. As we get nearer a dog starts barking and a man starts shouting and I’m not entirely clear whether he’s shouting at the dog or at us. Still, what has slowly become clear to me over the past couple of months is that, whilst most Georgians look incredibly stern and unsociable, they are invariably warm and friendly once you start talking to them and this guy was no exception. We go over and introduce ourselves and ask if we can take a closer look at the dam and he’s happy to let us. Well, it’s just wonderful. We climb up a ladder that clings to the outside of the building and, luckily, proves to be a lot sturdier than it looks. Inside the building that sits above the dam is a row of huge mechanisms (not being au fait with dam equipment I can’t tell you what it’s called) and round the outside of the building runs a balcony from which you can see the most amazing views of the river and the surrounding mountains. It’s hard to drag ourselves away and we linger for about twenty minutes, exploring the equipment and drinking in the views. The guy gives us some pretty detailed directions to the shop so we set off again in search of it. He tells us that if we head up a stony path to what he tells us is a little village then we will find a shop there and that we can continue through the village we will hit the entrance to the park, rather than coming back to the main road and this proves to be true. When we find the shop it’s closed but some kids run off to find the owner who opens up for us. We buy stale bread and sparkling water (which I can’t stand) but I empty the bottle out and refill it from a local well so it’s a lot better than nothing. Ally then asks the woman (whose name is Maga) if she knows of anywhere cheap we can stay and, as fate would have it (and you’ll see why I use that expression later) she says she has a room we can sleep in and a bathroom with hot water (she’s really selling it to us). Ally asks how much and she asks how much we want to pay. We offer her 10 lari each and she accepts. She only lives next door to the shop so we ask if we can leave our bags and she shows us where we’ll be sleeping before we set off for the park. Now, I’m not actually overly happy about this arrangement, partly because I wasn’t in any way consulted about it, and partly because I was quite looking forward to heading back to town and having a nice dinner somewhere in the evening before finding a nice warm comfortable guest house. I know that sounds precious but 10 lari isn’t actually much less than we would pay in a guest house and this village is tiny and in the middle of nowhere which means that we’re pretty much going to have to be back in our room by dark for want of anything else to do. Still, it never takes me very long to come round to an idea and after about five minutes I’ve decided it might actually be fun. We walk through the village, munching on our stale bread, until we reach the entrance to the park and my god it’s stunning. I know my adjectives must be getting a little old by now but there’s no other word for it. About every 200 yards or so we have to stop and look around us just to drink in the views. It’s so beautiful that I actually thank Ally for the idea of coming here, and I never credit Ally with anything. Not long after we enter the park a large truck comes towards us carrying firewood. On the front of it are two guys. And by the front I mean that bit where long distance lorry drivers tie soft toys (for reasons known only to themselves). They’re not even holding on, they’re just chilling up there. They give us a cheery wave as they pass by. We’ve gotten pretty lucky with the weather. It’s cold and there’s snow on the ground but the sun’s shining and fortunately only some of the paths are flooded. The route we’re taking isn’t circuitous so our plan was to walk for about an hour and a half and then turn back, but when do things ever go to plan in Georgia? We’ve been walking for about half an hour when, through the trees, we see three guys standing around a fire just on the other side of a little brook. Ally suggests we go and say hello but I don’t want to impose so we decide that we will if they’re still there on our way back, but then they call us over (modi!) so we traverse the stream and make our way over to the fire. There are three of them and they’re obviously taking a break from felling trees. We share a bottle of homemade wine and they give us bread and the biggest gherkin I’ve ever seen in my life. We chat until we finish the bottle and then climb up the hill into the woods and sit and watch them for an hour while they hitch these huge tree trunks to two cows and have them drag them down the hill back towards the path. One of the guys lodges his axe between the ground and a tree trunk for me to sit on while Ally tries to help and generally gets in the way. One of the guys cuts off a couple of bits of wood for us and sets fire to one of them. I’ve no idea what tree it was but both in its raw state and burning it smells amazing. Finally the last log is hauled down the hill and we spend a few minutes thawing out by the fire. We’ve been invited back to one of the guys’ houses to drink more wine and we think we will walk for an hour or so and then meet him there but he says they’re leaving now so we go with them, the oxen pulling one of the huge trunks behind them (I assume they will return for the others the following day). We ask if they sell the wood but no, it’s just to see them through the winter. As we walk Ally and I discuss how lucky we are to be in this situation – many people who visit Georgia see the cities, and some may see the national parks. Some may even see them in winter, but I doubt anybody gets to witness this little snippet of village life. So basically we’re very smug and self-congratulatory. We arrive at the guy’s house and his mother sits us down and starts laying food on the table. Everything is simple and beautiful. The other guys arrive from their houses and we drink more wine. And everything’s a bit hazy after that. The guy offers to let us stay at his house and we figure it’ll save us 20 lari so why not? So Ally goes to get our bags from the woman’s house and I’m not sure what happened to everyone else but the next thing I know I’m alone with the guy and his mother and the guy has his arm round me and is trying to kiss me. I don’t know if he meant any harm by it but it makes me really uncomfortable so I call Ally and tell him to come back immediately and, to his credit, he comes through the door about two minutes later and we thank them for their hospitality and leave. When we get back to Maga’s house it’s still early but I crawl into bed and fall asleep almost immediately. By Ally’s account he stayed up for another few hours, writing and chatting to his friend on the phone. We left this other guy’s house pretty abruptly and it’s a small village so he didn’t know whether or not to expect trouble. At about 10.30pm I wake up and it’s dark and there’s a man looming over me. I’m confused and scared and then next thing I know he reaches down and, not wanting to go into too much detail, ‘fondles’ me on ‘the chest area’. I push him away and wake up Ally who’s asleep next to me. He also sees this guy standing over us and pushes him, considerably harder. The guy falls backwards over a coffee table, slapstick style, and rolls more or less out of the doorway. Ally follows him briefly but the next thing I know he’s back and the table is pushed against the door. Now, obviously we no longer want to stay there, but it’s night time and we’re in the middle of a tiny village in the middle of nowhere so Ally calls his regional TLG representative to ask for help. We ask if maybe she can arrange a taxi to pick us up or something. What she actually does is call the police. There follows a series of phone calls, first from Tamara from training and then from her boss. I’m pretty shaken but I’m also getting a little pissed off that everybody’s talking to Ally and nobody’s talking me to. But anyway, we tell TLG we will walk out of the village and down to the main road. We think the police are coming to pick us up but at this point everything’s unclear and we’re still not sure if it will be the police or a taxi. Nor do we care; we just want to get out of that house and out of the village. As we’re preparing to leave Maga returns (turns out she’s been at a wedding). We don’t tell her what’s happened, we just say we have a problem and we have to leave. She gives us our money back and, as we’re leaving, we see the guy sleeping on the sofa. What the fuck?! We make our way by the torches on our phones down to the main road and stand in the cold waiting. For what, we’re still not sure. On a complete side note the night sky is the clearest I’ve ever seen it and the stars are incredible; I’ve never seen anything like it. Eventually it’s the police that arrive and I’m very grateful to get out of the cold and into the car. The guy who’s driving even speaks pretty good English so we’re not kept completely in the dark about what’s going on. I think they’re just going to drive us back to town but instead we head back into the village and to the guy’s house. Then I think they’re just going to have a word with him but the next thing I know they’re dragging him outside. One of the policemen gets in the back with us and we all drive back into town together! Now I can categorically say I didn’t want any of this. In particular one of the things I didn’t want was to sit in the police station for the next five hours. Later I try to explain this to them via the translator that was brought it. I tell the nice policeman who picked us up that, whilst it wasn’t a nice thing to happen, it wasn’t a big problem and I didn’t want all that fuss. He’s apologetic but he says that once the call’s been made it’s official and they have to follow it through to the end. When we arrive at the police station the guy is taken off somewhere and we’re in the lobby. There are about 10 policemen just standing around and I am forced to explain what happened in this room full of men, which makes me exceptionally uncomfortable. The nice policeman says they’re going to wait for a translator and I go and hide in the toilets for ten minutes, just to get away from it all. Apart from anything else the wine is taking its toll and I’m feeling pretty awful. It’s not long until the interpreter arrives and, thankfully, once he does Ally and I are taken upstairs to a separate room and it’s just the four of us. The interpreter is a really nice guy called Levani who also happens to run a guest house (translation – has a spare room) just behind the police station. Ally has called Gabrielle who says it’s fine for us to stay at theirs again but at this point the police make it clear to us that we’re going to be there for a long time so we tell them to go to bed and they say they’ll leave the door open for us. Again, I don’t know how it took so long to make the report, except that they had to take all our details and then we had to tell them everything from the beginning. The policeman made two reports, one for Ally and one for me which Levani read for us and which we then signed. I have to say, apart from getting groped, fleeing the village and being hung over and insanely tired it wasn’t a bad night. There was football on the TV and they were nice guys. At one point Ally went out and came back with tea and snickers bars. They asked me if I wanted to press charges and I said no. My co-teacher’s brother is serving 15 years for handling stolen goods so who knows what would have happened to this guy and I’ve heard what the prisons are like here. As I said before, I wouldn’t have called the police in the first place. To be honest I’m not convinced the guy wasn’t a bit simple. Who in their right mind would do what he did when there was a guy sleeping next to me? Anyway, by the time we leave the police station it’s about 4.30am. We’re told we need to return the following day ‘for ten minutes’ to get a copy of the report. I’m sceptical about this ‘ten minutes’ business. Can’t think why. Anyway, the nice policeman (wish I knew his name) drives us up to Papa but all the streets look the same and nothing really looks familiar. We don’t want to call Gabrielle at that time so I call Levani and ask if we can stay there. Consequently, after half an hour of driving around, we end up about 20 yards from the police station. Levani’s parents are there making up the bed when we come in and Levani offers us tea. Afterwards I throw up in the bathroom. I only mention this because it’s very strange for me. I can count the number of times I’ve thrown up in my entire life practically on one hand. Afterwards I feel better. I leave the big couple bed for Ally and curl up on the couch. It’s honestly the most comfortable I think I’ve ever been. It’s been a really long day and I fall into a blissful sleep.
I wake up at about 7am on Sunday morning and can’t get back to sleep. Two hours isn’t enough to sleep off my hangover so I’m still feeling pretty ropey. I am, as I always am on Sundays, conscious of the time. But I figure as long as we leave Borjomi by midday I should be ok to get home in time for the last bus back to Koki. Somehow the weekend has proved to be really expensive and I could do without the taxi fare. But we can’t leave until we’ve had breakfast and this takes up a good chunk of time and then of course we have to go back to the police station. We wait an hour, chatting with the nice policeman, who as far as we can tell hasn’t been to bed. From what I can gather all his boss wants to do is make sure we haven’t had any more problems. This somehow takes an hour. In the end we don’t even get a copy of the report, which is the reason they gave us for needed us to return in the first place. Eventually we say our goodbyes. The policeman tells us to pop in a see him if ever we’re in Borjomi again. We collect our stuff from Levani’s and he walks with us to the bus station. I’m still hopeful at this point but we wait forever for the marshrutka to Khashuri to leave. Turns out we missed a direct one to Kutaisi by five minutes! Eventually we set off and the marshrutka drops us at the cross roads in Khashuri and carries on to Tbilisi. We chat to a couple of elderly Georgian women who ply us with sweets and we ask them to flag down a marshrutka going to Kutaisi. Plenty of them pass, but unfortunately none of them stop. We’re on a busy road and they’re all full. Finally one does stop and we squeeze on. The journey’s not too bad but I’d have rather done it without the hangover and sleep deprivation. We can’t sit together so I sit quietly by myself, concentrating on not throwing up. It’s a good group though and we manage to make some friends. I am force fed bread by the guy sitting next to me (which I think actually helped) and nuts by the driver’s assistant. Vodka is passed round but for once I decline. I know it’s either going to make me feel better or make me puke and I can’t risk the latter. There are even a couple of guys on the bus who speak English; I let the conversation wash over me but I don’t say much. Ally explains to everyone that we drank far too much wine the night before but I think it’s more lack of sleep than anything else. Ally jumps out at Terjola and I carry on to Kutaisi, fully aware that I have another two hours of this waiting for me. I also know from experience that the marshrutka I end up getting from Kutaisi will get me to Zugdidi about five minutes after the bus leaves. I text Eka and tell her to expect me home about 7pm. I even practice the Georgian for, ‘Do you know where I can buy an adapter’ but by the time I arrive the bizarre has shut up for the day. I find a taxi and tell the driver where I want to go. I’m too tired to haggle over the price but we manage to chat a little on the way home. I’m looking forward to my usual Sunday evening ritual of coming home, telling Eka all about my weekend, being fed and having a hot shower before bed but it’s not to be. When I get back I actually think everyone’s out because the house is in darkness but Eka tells me they have had no electricity all day. Levani has gone to Abhazia with his mother so the house is quiet. For how long I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking all day about whether or not to tell Eka about what happened. On the one hand I don’t want her to worry the next time I go away but in the end I decide I need to tell her if only to explain why I’m so fucking tired and in need of my bed. She seems a bit shocked but at the same time doesn’t really respond in the way I thought she would. Maybe it’s because it’s vaguely related to sex and this just isn’t a topic of conversation in Georgia. It’s still nice to be home. Eventually the electricity comes back on and I help Mari with her homework before thankfully crawling into my own bed.
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