Where's a Dutch Boy When You Need One?

Tuesday 20th March 2012

The tap in the sink in the shower room has refused to turn off.  Unfortunately this is the hot tap and although the water only runs twice a day for 3 hours we can’t really leave it like that, running the boiler, so we have had to turn the boiler off.  This means that when we do want to actually use hot water we have to turn the boiler on again but now there is a reduced water pressure and as the tap is running which means that the SHOWER is a drip!  Actually the switch on the shower that takes it from a shower to a tap is also broken so the shower really is now a little spray whist your knees and feet are run under the tap.

We texted the owner on Sunday evening and he sent a man round that night which was very efficient.  However he prodded and poked and then told Martin that he would have to buy new taps on Monday and sort it out himself.  Really? I don’t think so.  I get on the phone to our co-ordinator who speaks to the owner.  He confirms that we have to sort it out as he bought new taps before we moved in and he ain’t gonna buy any more.  Hmmm I am sure there is a logic to this somewhere but it bypassed me.   So the co-ordinator now gets on the phone to our school Director who sends my 2 co-teachers round after school with the school handy man.  Zaza is a good bloke and takes the taps off, makes lots of noises and says we need new taps.  I would just like to give him the money and say get on with it but no, Zaza, me and my 2 co-teachers go down to the shops and hunt around the 3 builders merchants (you know I mean little shops with an assortment of boxes ? Like a crushed Jarvo’s) for a single tap as the decision is that we block the hot tap and just have a cold tap.

Against the odds we are successful and back we go.  I am sure Zaza was saying “This is a pile of shit” when he was trying to attach the newly acquired tap but my Georgian isn’t good enough yet to know for sure.  The upshot is that the water pipes themselves are no good.  The building is not in very good condition as you may recall and it is this that is the problem.  What is the answer? Just block off the pipes and take the tap back to the shop for a refund.

They were trimming back trees round the corner and so Zaza forages for the perfect pipe sized branch and hammers it into the foresaid water pipes.  At 7.30 when the water returns they hold out, a wooden version of the little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dyke.

The Family come to Kaspi

Tuesday 20th March 2012

Our village family are coming to Kaspi for a traditional roast dinner.  I feel like a newly married wife who are hosting “the family” for the first time.  We don’t really know what this means.  We know that there are 10 people coming and this includes my old teachers and there will be men there as well. We think this means that Martin will have to go to a restaurant and buy them wine and food.  Apparently when I issued invites I invited everyone and told them that was what we would do.  I was drunk and therefore do not remember this at all.  Blame the cha-cha that’s what I say!

There was quite a bit of preparation as you probably realise.  First, the cleaning, which other than the obvious, no-one notices or appreciates.  Martin had a thing about the curtains so we washed, dried and ironed the curtains!  It was a windy day and so this wasn’t the usual 4 day turnaround for clothes-drying.  I shouldn’t complain really – when I think of the work in running a home with 3 children this is nothing, but well, it’s what you get used to, isn’t it? 

We were going for roast beef, Yorkshire pudding (Aunt Bessie’s generosity has meant I haven’t made this since 1998), roast potatoes, carrots, peas, runner beans and cauliflower cheese.  For dessert there is a choice of apple crumble and custard, bread pudding and my newly traditional chocolate rice pudding, plus my old traditional coconut pyramids.  Much discussion was had about this menu, not all things are possible in Georgia.  Carrots and potatoes are plentiful but I forgot to buy the frozen veg in Tbilisi (you can’t buy it everywhere) so we had to make do with the little we had left in the freezer.  I found 2 cauliflowers but the price!  I paid 5 lari for 2 small cauliflowers.  That’s the equivalent of 5 kilo of potatoes or my return bus ride to Tbilisi.  Never one for economy I now think in Georgian money and not sterling and so £1 each – eek!   The cheese is another concern – the village cheese is salty rather than cheesy and I have no idea what the cheese on the market stall tastes like but I take a chance and buy a small round of cheese.  This is a big event inviting them round – like Christmas so we bite the bullet.  This is only the second time we have bought meat in Georgia. 

The butcher’s is like the old, old days kind of butcher.  I don’t recognise the cuts of meat and I ask “How much?” and point to what looks like a very large, thick steak and a man (there are 5 of them in the shop huddled round a bottle of cha-cha and a bowl of little fish) traces 12 on the glass cabinet with his finger.  I confirm that the meat is beef by making little horn gestures with my fingers and saying “Droghes” (cow – but if you don’t say it perfectly they don’t seem to be able to work it out, hence the gestures) The total is 27 lari about £10 – that is expensive! (A teacher here earns 200 lari a month)

Martin prepped the veg – 1 bucket of potatoes and carrots while I make the desserts.  The oven is temperamental and my skills uncertain and so burnt food is a serious option so I try to be careful.  Also I have no weighing scales and an irregular sized tablespoon so accuracy is but a distant dream I’m afraid.  However, I didn’t do too badly!  The coconut pyramids were a bit dry and the bottoms burnt – and it has to be said that they are less appealing visually without the glace cherry on top but the crumble was a delight as was the rice pudding a-la-choclat!  The bread pudding was too sweet but nicely spiced.  The Yorkshire Pudding – after much on-line consultation with Kim Bower (aka the cake lady) did rise on one side.

So we are ready and waiting.  ETA 2.00 but that may or may not mean anything to the Georgians.  I have also invited my new co-teachers and they arrive on the dot at the expected hour bringing delicious chocolates and home-made wine. They arrive shortly after in a mini-bus laden with bags of food and alcohol streaming through the door “Hallo Jenni-fair, Mart-een – ee” Kiss, Kiss, Kiss.  They get to work unloading their food (yes you heard right) onto the table and making themselves at home.  I stick the roast potatoes in the oven.  Hmmm.  They have brought with them cha-cha, litres of wine, soft drinks made from fresh fruit, 6 large khachapuri, rice salads, vegetable salads, 1 huge jar of pickled tomatoes and peppers, 20 hard boiled eggs, roast chickens, about 12 of those rolls that are filled with rice I think I have covered it.  “I hope they have room for my roast dinner” I say to my new co-teachers who are helping me in the kitchen.  Suddenly they pour into the kitchen and pick up the kitchen table – they need more room – and in it goes.  There is a rugby match between Russia and Georgia on at 3 and so there is a lot of fiddling and tuning of the TV to get it to the right channel.

How fantastic they just made themselves at home just happy to be together with us and laughing and drinking and eating.  The ladies (Manana, Eka (family), Julieta, Katy (my old co-teachers), Jana and Tamriko (teacher friends) and little Rusadan) had a good look around the apartment nodding approvingly – “It’s just you here? You have a lot of space!” The men, 3 husbands, my old school director and the driver Dato sat and drank and ate.

By now my expectations for my perfectly timed roast beef dinner for 16 were very low!  The food came out in bowls on the table and they tried it, but were not impressed.  They loved the meat but didn’t see the point of the gravy and weren’t really hungry enough to eat much else also they did eat a little of the vegetables that I put onto their plates so that at least they tried them.  Georgians eat from side plates with just a fork and use bread to push the food onto their forks.  So they used the Yorkshire pudding in the same way – but who am I to argue?  In the same way, because the English eat from big plates we take a bit of meat and potato and veg on the same forkful to get a blend of the flavours but they don’t do that.  So it is a whole different way of doing it.  But the reality is, they are not actually interested in trying anything new.  It’s a bit like when package holidays first opened up in Spain and Brits would go there and want to eat fish and chips (they still do haha) and not that foreign muck. 

They liked the bread pudding but were not too sure about the apple crumble or the chocolate rice pudding  both of which were proved in the eating and were delicious by my standards!

The Georgians won the rugby so much jubilation.  My old teachers told my new teachers how wonderful me and Martin are and asked if I still arrived late for the 1^st lesson. Rather embarrassingly I am late once a week at least and arrive as the lesson is starting.  When I think that in England I had an hour’s journey and would get in an hour early and now I have a 7 minute walk and get there at 9. (See I have it timed to the minute).   Julieta tells me they have now found another host family and I am to tell the co-ordinator that I want to go back to the village next semester. (Oh dear) At 6 they left as they arrived, packed their bags and streamed out with kisses and goodbyes and piled back into the mini-bus.

We had a delicious roast dinner the next evening with the leftovers (there wasn’t much left over in the end)  but we still have a week of rice pudding and crumble ahead of us!

Wash Day Blues

Thursday 9th March 2012

Today is International Women’s Day and we have a day off school.  Hoorah!  How am I going to celebrate this wonderful day?  Doing the washing!  Martin bless him has been doing the laundry because I have not been able to wring out clothes but I discovered last week that I can now do this when without thinking wrung out socks because they were dripping all over the lounge floor.  So with great gusto I organised an assembly line of hot water bucket filling and cold water bottle filling to maximise the amount of water we could store before the water cut off at 10.30.  But you know what?  Because it was a special day they let us lady folk have an extra ½ hour of water time.  Who ever said that women have a hard time of it here in Georgia?!

Because it is freezing cold in the shower room as soon as you turn on the shower it is like a steam room. 
We started panicking that the water would run out so we started to fill buckets while the twin-tub-without-the-twin chug-chugged.

It was the first properly sunny day for two centuries and so Martin peeled back the plastic double glazing so that we could access the washing lines from inside the apartment through the window. We were working as a tag team, hanging out the washing from both windows at the same time and Martin – as enthusiastic as ever – thought he could treat the lines as if they were on pulleys and not manky old rope strung round two rusty old metal pipes.  Consequently, the barely held together washing line broke dramatically under the strain of our PJs and fell to the floor. I was rendered speechless but my face said “What on earth possessed you to imagine for one brief moment that you could tug a Georgian washing line with 500 weight of wet washing on it without it giving up the will to live????”  Actually speech returned fairly quickly after the initial shock and my face was no longer required. 

Martin fixed the rope by tying many, many scout knots which has in fact stood the test of time – well at least until the next time.   Look! I am a proper Georgian Housewife!

Doctor Doctor

Wednesday 7^th March 2012

My family doctor is in Tbilisi which is over an hour’s journey away and involves a marshutka, metro, a bus and a 10 minute walk. I had arranged to go on Monday this week which involved taking the day off and because we were in Tbilisi on Sunday, I stayed over at a fellow TLGer’s to make it easier.  This is the first night in Georgia I have spent without Martin and only about the 3^rd time since we have been married.  So it felt a little odd!  I was 3 minutes with the family doctor. “Come back tomorrow at 5, the rheumatologist is better than the one you are meant to see today.”  Who am I to argue?  So after school on Tuesday I return to the city and arrive early for the appointment having had a mooch around both the market at Didube and the one at Station Square. 

I have to say that this was very nice as Martin (Gawd luv im) is a hopeless shopping companion when you are looking for a mooch.  He is great when there is a specific purchase to be had but otherwise he just stands there waiting when I want to peruse and it is very off-putting. Even worse though is when I ask him for his opinion about some casual bauble and he just ignores me.   I bought a big bag of sweets, 3 more alien balls with the flashing lights and a wallet for Martin’s birthday.  I popped into the Goodwill supermarket to get a ready-made filled roll for lunch (these are not easily found) and interestingly, the meat filled delights had been replaced by vegetarian options.  Lenten fasting is taken pretty seriously here – eat as much cakes and sweets as you like but no meat, fish or dairy.  So I had a delicious sesame seeded roll with a slice of fried potato and mushrooms in mayonnaise.  It was a lucky surprise though as it was labelled chicken Caesar. 

Anyway, I arrived 20 minutes early for the appointment as I was warned that the Rheumatologist had many patients and I was being slotted in at the last minute and if a Georgian emphasises the need to be on time then I knew it was serious.  Waiting, waiting, waiting.  “She is going to be half an hour late” I am reliably informed.  Or unreliably as it turned out as she didn’t come at all.  For those who know me well, do you remember the old days when I used to be a somewhat impatient kind of person??!!  Well Georgia is doing its best to eradicate this delightful tendency by putting me in situations where I am forced to confront it on a daily basis.  “Come back tomorrow and see the Rheumatologist that you were booked to see on Monday.” Then I am dismissed and told that a car will be taking me to the Marshutka station so that I can catch the last one home at 7 and that it will be there in 5 minutes.  I ring the insurance company after 15 minutes of waiting in the cold.  “Ah you are finished and want the driver to collect you now?”  Should’ve rung straight away and not trusted what the doctor said, but ever the optimist that  I am I thought they knew what they were talking about.  I made it in time for the last Marshutka but a drunk kept falling on me as he slept.  Still it makes a change, it’s normally me who falls asleep on everyone else.

Cannot face yet another trip to Tbilisi and so have arranged to try again next Tuesday with the Rheumatologist that I saw in the very first place who is the best one.  The trouble is, I don’t really know if she is the better or not.  She could be the family doctor’s friend or she could be getting a kick back if she passes on patients to them.  It’s in the hands of the Gods!

""Making Lessons Fun!"

Thursday 8^th March 2012

The next day I had been asked to speak at the 3^rd TESOL conference in Tbilisi and share my experience of “Making Lessons Fun!”  The journey to the conference was yet again part of the excitement.  Marshutka from Kaspi to Station Square, Tbilisi, where the driver would not accept our pre-paid tickets and we had to give him cash, so we paid twice.  Grrrr! and then the plan was taxi to the university.  I had fortunately printed a map from google clearly showing the road the University was in both Georgian and English and so it should have been quite straight-forward to jump in the taxi and get to the conference in time for registration and coffee.  But no, the driver didn’t know where this road was.  School girl error.  Note to self – print another map showing said road in situ of many other roads. Breathe sigh of frustration at this point. 

He goes off for a group consultation with the other taxi drivers none of whom can identify where this street is.  Tbilisi is the size of Upminster (slight exaggeration) but no-one knows where anywhere is.  A girl aged about 16 is dragged into the furore and she says to him and the crowd of helpful taxi drivers “It’s so and so street” reading from the map where the little pink pin is.  Wanting to keep face the taxi driver makes a lot of “Oh of course” noises but doesn’t actually have a clue, as we stop in a road after driving for 20 minutes because he is hopelessly lost.  I find a Georgian on my phone and hand it to him and with fresh hope in our hearts we zoom off at high speed and are dropped outside a building with a sign that says Ilia State University and crucially, 3.

It looked surprisingly dead but the address on our program says 3 to 5 and so we get out, pay 7 lari (should have been 5, in fact take that back – free, but we were too stressed to argue) we go into the building, past security, up in the lift to the 5^th floor and find room 505 only to find that there is a large, padlocked metal gate over the door.  We sense we are in the wrong building.  Out we come again this time looking for a 5 and a sign of life.  Eventually we find it but we had to go through another wrong building, out the back again and into the correct building through the back entrance.  For crying out loud!!!! There is no lift and so we run up 5 floors to our destination.  We were in time for the first speaker but not for coffee. Sigh! Sigh! Sigh! 

Teachers looking excited by my presentation

As I have already more than hinted at, Georgian lessons could never be described as fun and even with the somewhat cheerful MacMillan books they still only raise a slight grimace.  I was told there were going to be between 40 and 70 people at the conference but this was a slight exaggeration or eternal optimism as there were 25 and this included the speakers and organisers!  But it did include some classroom teachers as well as those who train teachers so what the hell! I think they were a little overwhelmed by my energy levels which are in complete contrast to a typical Georgian teacher.  I threw my alien ball with the flashing light at them, exposed them to plastic apples and aubergines and my home made flashcards of life size fruit, vegetables and 68 essential food items including of course, life-sized coloured laminated photos of marmite, Branston pickle and baked  beans.  I talked about how I used them in the classroom and then how the students when they become fully engaged in lessons and are interacting with each other tend to be even noisier than Georgian teachers are accustomed to and so they need different behaviour management techniques.  I talked about rules and expectations and what the consequences were if they didn’t follow the rules (for the students in class ha ha not the people at the conference!)  It went down very well anyway and one of the teachers asked if I would speak at her school to the teachers.

Two Village Orphanages

Thursday 8^th March 2012

The next day was Saturday and Martin and I plus a friend Danielle went to visit two orphanages in villages just outside Tbilisi with our favourite Nebraskan.  Originally in that area, there was a large house with 42 children living there.  They didn’t have much to do with the outside world as they went to school there as well.  The government now has a policy of integrating children into the local community and moving away from the large institution style houses. 

Not all of the children are orphans, sometimes the parents cannot afford to or unable for one reason or another to look after the children.  The government put out tenders to run smaller houses and the Divine Child Foundation which is a US charity was successful in bidding for 2 houses. 

They wanted to take all the children but could only take 20 and their priority when choosing children was to keep siblings together.  One boy, now 9, was found in the streets of Tbilisi when he was aged about 3 years old.  Naturally he did not have any official documentation and the new orphanage had to fight long and hard to get him placed as red tape being what it is in Georgia, the authorities were reluctant to release him.  The homes are beautiful and the standard far exceeds the usual village house. 

The houses are run on a Polish model where there are 5 house mothers who work in shifts and each house mother has responsibility for 2 children in particular, making sure they are working at school and kept clean and tidy.  We didn’t know what to expect and took sweets and some nail varnishes for the girls.  We did feel a bit awkward, like watching monkeys at the zoo and as we couldn’t really speak very much  (we tried and someone translated for us) we felt a bit redundant.  It would be a good idea if there were some games we could have played that didn’t require speaking like Jenga or 4 in a row but there wasn’t.  Something to think about for next time.

Back to the Family

Thursday 8^th March 2012

Friday night we went to see the family back in the village and stayed over.

The journey, as always in Georgia, is an event in itself.  We let the train take the strain (Who can remember that 1970’s advert?!)  The station at Kaspi is interesting – no activity in that you never really see people just lines and lines of rolling stock.  There are very few trains that stop at Kaspi and there is one at about 5.30 at night.  I have no idea of where it goes or where it stops.  It doesn’t appear to be part of the timetable that can be found on the internet (only those with doors you open yourself can be found there) and there are no station maps or signs at the actual stations. 

These trains have automatic doors and like all trains very Soviet style – lots of metal and no attempt at comfort or aesthetics.  We asked in our best Georgian “Where is this?” but were only met with I-don’t-know shrugs.  Well there are no signs after all.  There is no smoking in the carriages so the smokers stand in the spaces at the end of the carriage where both the connecting carriage doors and the doors to the outside world meet.  A string of vendors walk up and down the carriages continually, selling a variety of goods calling out along the way “Buka buja, khachapuri, chocco-lat-eee, cooking oil, buka buja”.  Buka Buja is what unknown words in Georgian sound like.  They sell drinks, sweets, knicker elastic, metal objects of unknown use, crisps and those things like cheesy wotsits that are 3 times the size and REALLY have no flavour and REALLY taste just like polystyrene. 

Unperturbed by the packed train, they march through every carriage and back again the whole time, dragging chequered bags and very large buckets used for paint behind them.  We were unfortunately standing in front of the connecting doors and so had to move every 6 minutes to allow vendor plus bags to sell their wares, as well as those handing out religious cards with a written message asking for a donation for their well-being and not forgetting those strange beasts “Carriage Roamers” who, just for the hell of it walk through the train.  This was not easy as Martin was also sporting a rucksack and there were about 10 of us in a space 3 foot by 10 foot.  We plan to be cartographers for the day where we ride up and down on the train to see where it goes and at what time.  Kind of like following in Shackleton’s footsteps but with no shortage of food and no fears regarding the consequences of underwear failure.

                                                                 

Snow fell yet again as we arrived in the village; (Oh how we missed that!) and we couldn’t help but notice that the family had had installed an interesting little gas fire to top up heat given by the little wood stove.  The gas was pumped through a hose that snaked around the room as the fire was moved to warm whoever claimed it first.  It was a bloody dangerous beast! It was really nice to see them all and we had a simple family meal of chicken and tomato casserole, hard boiled eggs, fried liver and onions (but not as we know it), khachapuri, cheese and bread.  I showed off as to how well I can drink cha-cha and downed 3 without flinching plus 2 glasses of wine.  You know the saying “pride before a fall” well for me it was “vomit before you fall”  This of course was no mean feat to execute when the outside squat toilet is a 20 minute walk from the bedroom and it’s snowing.   

The funny story of the night was when we told them that there was a woman in Kaspi who walked up and down the streets calling out “Martin-eee” and we wanted to know what she was selling.  I said I had seen her on my way to school and she carried a chequered bag inside which was a cardboard box. “What was she doing?” I asked.  They had a think and then burst out laughing and said she was calling out “Matson-eee” which is like greek yoghurt!  This was the joke of the evening – they thought it was hilarious and so did we at the time – their laughter was infectious.

I can’t explain why it is but Kvemo Khvedureti feels like our Georgian childhood home while Kaspi feels like our leaving-home-as-young-adults kind of grown-up home.  We do fun things in Kaspi, go to work and look after ourselves and lead our own lives living like adults but when we go back to the village we regress back to being children again, feeling at home and doing things that we used to when we were first introduced to Georgian society.  It’s like the ‘good old days’ where we appreciate and warmly remember times past but would not want to exchange it for the times present!

We have invited them to dinner at ours in 2 weeks time and we have promised them a roast dinner.  The things we say when we are drunk.  I don’t know how many or which people are coming and all I remember saying is that anyone who wants to come can as we have many chairs and many forks.

Scouting for Georgians

Wednesday 7^th March 2012

The first time we went back to mass this year there was a new guy with a lovely tenor voice singing in the choir.  Del, from Nebraska, USA, was really friendly and was going to be here until June working with the Universities on behalf of the Georgian Government.  I felt a bit sorry for him and assumed he was probably a bit lonely and didn’t know very many people, invited him for dinner at our place and very nearly invited him to a pancake / cookie bake out that was occurring in ‘Friends Hostel’ the following week to celebrate pancake day (albeit a little late!). 

However it turned out that I was completely wrong and that he has a very busy schedule and in fact was introducing Martin and I into his community of friends and acquaintances.  We were invited to three events in the same week. 

On the Saturday after the pancake do (it would have not been the place to invite him lol) we went to his place and he had cooked a range of delicious curry dishes for some Georgian friends and another visiting American working with the Government to implement health policies regarding non-communicable diseases, particularly cancer.  In Georgia, while the rate of cancer is not higher than other countries, the mortality rate is extremely high.  This is because detection is too late for treatment.  For men, lung cancer is the killer – due to heavy smoking and industrial pollution and for women it is breast cancer.  There is little in the way of health education here or prevention here and no after-care.  Women are not educated about examining their breasts and if they do find a lump, they don’t come forward because of cost and also are afraid that if they lose a breast their husbands will leave them for another woman.  There is no reconstruction surgery either and little in the way of prosthesis so that women can have a normal shape when wearing clothes.  Women tend to stay at home and not socialise because of this and the sense of shame they feel about their situation.  There is of course no money to be made in health prevention and the health service here is not government funded. 

After this we went to a Scout meeting.  Del is a link up kind of guy and has a big interest in the youth of the country and so at 10 o’clock that night the scouts of the Tbilisi Pack were linked up with the Scouts in Lincoln University Nebraska for a mutual sharing of information.  “What do you like to do?”  “What do you want to do when you leave school?”  “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”  It is worth mentioning again about the Soviet mind-set which doesn’t question or use initiative.  In truth, maybe it is too late to change the way many of the adults think in Georgia but by teaching children leadership skills and giving them the opportunity to see that other parts of the world really do exist with real people not just something that is seen in movies this will help them to expand their horizons.  The Scouting movement (boys and girls) is one small part of this process.

In the same vein I attended another event last week which was celebrating civic activities with students in Tbilisi schools.  This is another program which encourages students to think about the needs of the community, to plan a course of action and to carry it out.  There is no culture of volunteering in Georgia and the people have been trained to be passive and to follow instructions and not think so again this is an important part of training young people to actually start thinking and questioning for themselves.  Students had set up displays of the activities they were involved in which included helping at an orphanage and also an investigation into the problems that wheelchair users face in trying to get around in Tbilisi.  While they may not solve the problem the fact that they are even thinking is a huge step forward.  The highlight of the event was as a finale, a young girl sang “I care” by Beyonce.  It brought several tears to my eye.

French Toast, Hawkeye Pierce and the Georgian Education System

Thursday 23^rd  February 2012

So I was sitting on the marshutka on my way to Tblisi admiring the beauty of the landscape and letting thoughts drift in and out of my head when a very old episode of MASH came to mind.  It must be about 20 years ago that I saw this but I remembered an episode where Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) was discussing the merits of the breakfast that was offered with his fellow doctors and getting quite heated about it and finally decided to speak to the chef to discuss how he could improve the quality of the French Toast they were producing.  “You see you have to put this ingredient in and just a little bit of this – not too much and of course you just do this” He was giving instructions to the stressed out chef.  “Well you come and supervise breakfast then!” says the chef.  Hawkeye Pierce takes up the challenge and starts off well but only to find that the demands of the hoard who want breakfast and want it now means that speed is the issue and even though he knows how to make the perfect French toast, breakfast in the army hospital in a war zone was not the place to demonstrate his art.  How clever the brain it!  I thought it kind of summed up my experience of the education system in Georgia nicely.

As a volunteer teacher in Georgia it takes a little while to get an understanding of the Georgian education system.  The inherent problems are mentioned briefly in orientation but are discussed in an historical context recognising that it is flawed and outdated but that it is moving on and changing at all levels; a process that we are part of.  However I did not really grasp the enormous, fundamental differences between the systems.  I believed that education is education is education all over the world and the difference were more a matter of quality and depth than the principle itself.  It is this failure of comprehension that causes confusion and distress among volunteers regardless of their level of teaching experience in their home country.  Maybe for EFL teachers who have taught around the world this is not such a problem but I can only speak from personal observation.

Initially, the differences in the classroom experience in Georgia and home are amusing, for example the constant calling out “Mas, Mas” (Teacher, teacher) from students of all ages to indicate that they know the answers.  The lack of resources and poor conditions the students work under may elicit compassion and the desire to improve the look of the classroom to make it more cheerful.  There is frustration when for example the students all cheat and copy each other’s answers without even trying to work it out for themselves and you make a mental note to do something about that in the future.  Many of the children do not have the pupil’s book and workbook to work in and it is confusing when the teacher doesn’t even think it’s an issue and so you go round the class making sure that students without a book are sitting next to someone who does have a book so they can at least follow what’s happening.  The absence of electricity in the classroom, the bits of wooden flooring that jump up at you with the wrong turn of a foot, the peeling paint and missing plaster and the wooden stove burners with the ill-fitting chimneys that send forth a smoky haze into the atmosphere command a kind of respect towards them for endurance.  To sit there with their hats and coats on all day and to still be cold is a lot to ask I reasoned.

Many TLGers I knew began to express their concerns about their role and that their expertise was not being taken advantage of.  Experienced teachers were not being listened to and inexperienced teachers were not being encouraged to take part in the lesson. Many TLGers found that they were not being particularly active in the classroom.  The local English teacher did not involve them automatically or give enthusiastic encouragement when they did attempt to do something such as sing a song or play a game tending to see this as an interruption to the real business of the lesson. My view was that perhaps those with little experience other than their own recent education to draw upon did not have the confidence or expertise to suggest ideas and put themselves forward. It seemed to me at the time that maybe those with experience in the classroom were perhaps not being sympathetic to the environment they were in and were possibly being too pushy with their ideas and it was their unrealistic expectations of what they could achieve that was making them miserable.  Maybe their own desire to make an impact in a short time was actually impeding their progress?

The problems in the classroom became evident. Maybe the problem did not lie with the attitude or limitations of the volunteer but with the English teachers themselves?  Despite the new text books for the younger students the mind-set of the teachers has not changed and they do not adhere to the lesson plans as set out in the teacher’s book but instead continue to work systematically through the text book, exercise by exercise, regardless of whether the students have understood the work or not.  Exercises are set as homework before the topic has been properly covered in the lesson thus missing the whole point of the homework as reinforcement.  The lesson focusses on the 4 or 5 of the students who can keep up with the pace of the teaching (who decided on what the pace should be?  No-one knows) and left the remaining 20 students to continue to fall behind.  Tests and homework are frequent but do not test ability or understanding as the teacher helps the students and allows them to copy from each other.  What is actually important is that students pass the exam not that they have learnt anything.  Teachers’ and their director’s jobs depend on this.  How can we volunteers compete with this deeply entrenched system?  What is the point of us being here if we cannot penetrate this way of thinking?  It is simply not enough to sing songs, draw pictures, make jokes, encourage all students to take part in the lesson, look after the ones who do not even know the alphabet but are expected to stand up and be humiliated when they try to read.  It is too much to fight against.

However, moving into my second semester in Georgia and with both Martin and I at new schools, I now see things a little differently as I have gained a deeper appreciation of the education system. If there is any questioning of the situation, for example “Why are we teaching year 6 from the Green Book (book 4) when their level of English is more at the level of the Blue Book (book 2) the answer is along the lines of “The Ministry of Education has forbidden it.”  I say “Well I was at the TLG meeting with the Minister of Education and he said that students should work according to their level and not the number of years they have been studying English.” “Oh OK”   In fact, it is more the issue that parents have already purchased a green book for their children and cannot be asked to now buy another one. Any attempts to deviate from what are the perceived rules are met with this response.  At this same Ministerial meeting the question was asked: “Why are we waiting until 15^th November before heating is turned on in the schools when this is the coldest winter for 40 years in Georgia and has been minus and counting for the last month?” Because, sometime, somewhere by someone unknown, an announcement was made to this effect.  Despite the Ministry telling schools to turn their heating on, school directors continued to wait until November 15^th. A rule is a rule is a rule.  It is the Soviet mind-set.  This is really hard to stomach coming from a society where the question “Why?” is allowed to be asked and is even something to be encouraged on occasion.

How clever the brain is when we allow it to work things out!  While maybe not the perfect analogy, Hawkeye Pierce and his vision of French Toast does kind of work.  Like Hawkeye Pierce, TLGers have a vision of what the classroom should be like and like Hawkeye Pierce we discuss in detail this vision with our colleagues and maybe have unspoken misgivings about their opinions.  Like him we become full of purpose and take on the challenge with a gung-ho attitude.  But then suddenly the full implications of the situation hit us and it is then that we have to carefully rethink our position.  As I recall, Hawkeye Pierce threw down his ladle in defeat or maybe realisation of the absurdity of obsessing about a French toast recipe in the middle of a war zone in Korea.  But what is my stance to be?  There is a big part of me that wants to stand there with my ladle until the chef calls for end of service but know that I simply don’t have the energy levels. While not exactly a war zone, none-the-less the system is chaotic and disordered even among the “Rules” which no longer, if they ever did, make sense.  I can only do what I can do and I can only bring what I can bring and if in any way I make a difference to a teacher or a child then that has to be enough.  There is a beautiful quote that I have stolen from somewhere but is perfect for this time. “We plant trees that we will never sit under.”  I think that says it all. 

Thoughts on a Marshutka (1)

Monday 20^th February 2012

It was one of those times when you wish you had a camera but at the same time knowing that a camera would never capture the essence of what your eyes were seeing.  We were on the 8:30 marshukta from Kaspi to Tblisi to go to mass for the first time in over 2 months.  The sun was that delicate pale yellow, not a home-made custard kind of pale yellow but a mouth-watering citric acid kind of pale yellow. Enveloped in pale grey snow clouds illuminated by the morning sun, the sky was a beauty to behold.  The mountains were like giant black and white speckles.  Sitting in that marshutka, looking out on such wonders, I felt truly alive and connected to the universe with an intensity that I experienced as a physical tugging of every sinew in my body being pulled into the distant landscape.

I have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and I am scared.  I have never really been ill before and did not expect it to happen to me.  We all know people who are ill and while we care deeply about those who are close to us and are sympathetic to those who we are not close to, what really gets your attention is when it is personal and you are the one who is suffering.  I have been in pain most of the time since Christmas and my hands and feet don’t work the way they are meant to.  At times I can’t pull the duvet over me in the middle of the night and have to wake Martin and ask him to do it.  Sometimes I need help putting my coat on as I don’t have the strength to hold my coat. Sometimes I feel like I am taking advantage of Martin “Can you get me ..?”  “Will you make tea?”  “Do this, do that.” and then feel irritated and then ungrateful when he doesn’t do things exactly as I want them done.  I just feel twenty years older and I hate it.  I am scared that my life as I envisage it will just stop right now.  And then what?  What if this is long-term?  I try not to think about it as in reality I do not have a clue what it would be like to be in that situation. 

While I know that whatever cards I am dealt with, I will find a way to deal with, it’s just that until I know how bad it is going to be I just can’t work out what to do about it. So I remain in a kind of limbo, just getting on with it.  Life is just not predictable.

So sitting on the marshutka absorbed in the early morning sun and just thinking thoughts.  Today is a good day, my meds have kicked in and for the time being I am pain-free.  I am going to enjoy feeling alive while I can.