I am a performing monkey

Friday 2^nd December

Sometimes I feel like a performing monkey but then again am I a performing monkey if my audience doesn’t think of me as a performing monkey? Yesterday, the 4^th years (primary) performed a show for parents, teachers and any other pupils that were hanging around.  It was on the theme of “Is there another Georgian here?” but I think the true meaning got lost in translation.  It was a patriotic endeavour anyhow, with students stepping forward and reciting from memory texts military style.  This was followed by a rendition of the national anthem and then traditional Georgian dancing.  For some reason I am called up (completely sober) to dance with the children doing Georgian dancing.  Why?  I can twirl my hands and move about “Georgian style” but to the trained eye this does not resemble the real thing; I merely mimic what I can see.  This is an occasion I feel like a performing monkey.  Is it just a case of “Let’s get the foreigner up and have a laugh at her trying to be like us”? or is it something else?  It’s like when they deliberately force pints of wine in a variety of receptacles down Martin’s throat – “Let’s get the foreigner pissed so that he can fall over and vomit”?  Is it like that for them or do they see it differently?  I don’t know.  Everyone claps and cheers and enjoys me up there floating around like a nitwit but is it at my expense or do they think that it is great that I can let my hair down and don’t take myself seriously?  There was another supra in the staffroom this afternoon with khachapuri, stuffed chillies, boiled squash, red and white wine and a lovely syrupy juice made from redcurrants.  I ate a little and went off to class and on my return on opening the door to the staffroom I was greeted by claps from everyone and Georgian music playing.  So I had to put my bag down and dance again, presumably for those who missed my performance earlier!

When I went home I played connect 4 and cards with the host granddaughter Rusadan who is 8 years old and cheats at cards.  Eka, the daughter-in-law, wanted me to listen to her read in English and tell her the words on my flashcards.  I had given her an English lesson when we arrived there but she didn’t want to continue and she wanted our 3 hours of English lessons to be given to the children instead.  However, she obviously doesn’t consider this an English lesson. She then wanted me to give her a shoulder massage.  Manana (Host mother aged 59) came and sat with me when I went on the internet and shadowed me while I made some “Good Work in English” certificates because she wants me to teach her Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint.  She seemed satisfied to just watch which was ok by me.  Eka’s shoulders were too painful for me to work on as I had given her a massage on power-cut night for something to do so I could delay that request.  Rusadan clings to me (literally) at times.  There were a lot of demands made on me last night.  Oh and then Manana sees me as a drinking buddy as well.  I ate dinner with her in the kitchen and we gave me 3 glasses of red wine to be getting on with.  She then asks me questions about “first husband” “Martin’s first wife”  “is first husband dead?” “Do I see Martin’s first wife?”  She does this using 3 words and many gestures.  She tells me that Koba (her son and Eka’s husband) likes the women; much to Eka’s chagrin and she was told off.  3 glasses of wine loosens the tongue.

The thing is when you live with a family is that you cannot hide anything.  You can keep up a front for a little while, all smiles and sweetness, but the real dynamics of a family force their way through. Manana is a bit of a girl, a good laugh who gets on with the job and is quite earthy. Now that the kids have learned the word banana, she is now known as Manana the Banana.  She quite happily tells me I need to wash my lady bits and armpits and this morning was explaining that she has some problem with her waterworks.  I assumed cystitis but the dictionary said “diuretic” so I am none the wiser.  I left her today emptying the kitchen and pulling out the kitchen cupboards as it would seem that the floor in the kitchen is to be laid with tiles. (It would have been nice to have got the bathroom finished first but what the hell!) Last night she went out to milk the cows and laughing, showed me the hat she was going to wear.  A pair of girls knitted tights with stripy legs.  The body goes on the head and then the legs wrap around the head and are tied in a knot.  It looked quite good actually.  Eka is 26 and wears trousers.  This is unusual in the village as nearly all wear skirts or dresses.  She is mother to Rusadan 8 and Nico 6.  She is a great cook and works really hard cleaning, washing, cooking and also has responsibility of looking after the newly hatched chicks on the family chicken farm.  She is intelligent and can read English very well which she has seemly taught herself which is impressive as even the kids with trained teachers can’t read as well in the village! 

Everyone wants to give us Georgian products to take home to England!  I have been given a big jar of honey (it is VERY GOOD) and some chuchrellas.  These are home-made and consist of nuts threaded onto a string.  This is then dipped a few times into a thick mixture made from grapes and then left hanging up to dry.  It looks like a cross between a salami and a filled prophylactic and we all had a good giggle when we first saw them and were invited to eat them.  These are actually very delicious and you break off bits to eat and it is a mixture of fruit and nut.  My co-teacher has offered me a bottle of her cha-cha and I have had several offers of black wine.  This is very, very good and you would pay a lot of money for this wine in England as it is made just from the grape without sugar.  I think we are going to have to take a suitcase back with us rather than just our rucksacks as planned.

Nico is very intelligent and is a bundle of energy.  He is totally loved by all the family and is cuddled and kissed constantly by everyone.  Martin and I are told all the time that “Nico is Kargi, Yes” (good) and we feel awkward because they do not say the same thing about the girl, Rusadan, even when they have been doing the same task.  In fact, she doesn’t get praised at all, or shown affection in the same way as they do to Nico (maybe they are doing it in a different way only I can’t see it) and this makes me sad for her.  She is a stunningly beautiful girl in my opinion and although she is not so obviously quick and bright as the boy she is still clever.  But whenever she gets the chance, she will give the golden boy a little shove, and when we were playing cards she did a bit of attention seeking and kept taking the coins off the Kings in Newmarket to the point that I said she couldn’t play if she carried on.  So I have been making a particular effort to spend time with her.  It is not difficult as we are all confined to the same room and there is not a lot to do other than watch very bad Brazilian soap operas dubbed into Georgian.  (They really are very, very bad)  As a result this has led to her putting her arms around my neck and clinging to me very tightly a lot of the time.

What about the men?  They are quiet and keep themselves to themselves.  I think the old boy, Soso is not very healthy and has a bad chest.  He works on the chicken farm but also sits a lot around the house and gets drunk sometimes and Manana sends him to bed rather than sit in the lounge.  I like him. He is friendly and caring and seems to understand what we are saying, haha, always a bonus.  Koba goes out at night with his friends.  Not every night but he is out a fair bit and spends a lot of time on the computer playing games when he is in.  He has had some lessons in English but he is quietish and stays out of the way.  However, Martin has more access to him as a man and gets taken off to the kitchen to sup pints of wine every now and then.

After a drunken afternoon at school, Soso asks me and Martin if we want to go round his cousins for a bit of a piss-up and some more food.  “Ok” we cry and so we are taken to someone’s house after a precarious walk in the ice and snow through the village with no torch.  These people are amazing.  You could never turn up on spec with a couple of mates in England and get the service and respect that we do here in Georgia.  They rearrange tables and bring out food on little plates with serviettes and a number of glasses for cha-cha, lemonade and wine.  Nothing but the best for you and they propose toasts and make you feel so very welcome.  Martin fell off his chair being over-exuberant rather than over-intoxicated and out of courtesy to me, I guess, I was escorted to the neighbour’s outside loo 3 doors along through the snow and ice via the back gardens and holes in fences where they used a used exercise book as toilet paper.  I can only assume that they were embarrassed by their own lack of facilities and took me to the best available in the near vicinity.  Martin just peed under the tree.

Saturday brought its own challenges.  I hadn’t washed my hair since Wednesday and it was pretty nasty and I asked if we could use the neighbour’s shower.  Unfortunately we couldn’t until the next day so we went back to bed and stayed there until 3 o’clock reading and sleeping with the heat of our electric blanket to keep us going.  Shower-time wasn’t until 4 o’clock the next day and so we did the same thing on Sunday, finished the book and got up at 3:30 to eat and go for a nice wash.  I don’t think I have ever felt so rank in my life and I felt like a princess when I came home.  We had been invited to another supra that night which was very enjoyable – no dancing but good food and someone who could speak English!