ოჯახი

I’m sitting in the kitchen of my host family’s house. It’s a wood building with two rooms and an attic that you can only access by a very precarious looking ladder. I’m sitting at the small round table where we eat all of our meals, in the chair closest to the window (I sit here because it is the most out of the way).  I’m surrounded by my host family; not just the seven that I have been living with for the past few days, but a swarm of cousins, an aunt, and even a neighbor (I think). My host mother’s sister has come to visit from Tbilisi because it is the anniversary of her husband’s death. They buzz around me, pecking me on the cheek in greeting, reaching over me for cheese or grapes from the table, or practicing the one or two English phrases they know on me.

This is the fifth-ish meal we have had today. Usually my family has breakfast between 8:30 and 9am, super between 2:30 and 3:30 pm, and then a small dinner or tea with bread anywhere from 7pm to 10pm. I like this system so far, though it might become a problem when I can no longer snack off of the numerous fruit trees goring in our yard. Today however, all we have done is sit down to meals. Every time another family member arrives or returns home from running and errand, we eat. We stop by a neighbor’s house to say a quick hello, and we eat. My host aunt remembers some other treat she brought for us all to share, we eat.  It’s actually pretty surprising how much and for how many reasons a person can eat.

The women in the room, there are rarely any men in the kitchen, are all talking over each other, laughing and eating and teasing their children or younger siblings.  My host grandmother (the mother of my host father, that is) is sitting on the sofa/bed next the door with two live chickens under her arm. Suddenly the oldest cousin sitting next to me begins singing. I immediately recognize the song and finish the line with her.

“Crazy for feeling so lonely,” we sing together. Her voice is sweet and low.

She looks over at me surprised. I have found that my host family is usually equal parts pleased and surprised when I can sing part of a song they are listening to. Georgians, in general, enjoy singing. This is the stereotype anyway, and they do have a rather rich culture of folk music.

Later that evening we all pile into my host father’s car and head to Khabume, a neighboring village and the temporary home of my friend Natalie. My host mother’s parents live there in the house where she and her sister grew up, and where Salome and her cousins spent a great deal of their time as children. Since her parents had no sons, they live alone, their two daughters having moved in with their respective husbands’ family when they married. I feel sad for Larisa’s parents when she explains this to me using some very creative pantomime. Though it is not uncommon for elderly couples to live alone in the US, the situation here seems somewhat more desperate. 

Larisa’s father was a chess master, as in he won trophies for it. Which explains why eleven year old Saba doesn’t even have to try very hard to hand me my ass the two times we have played. Nonetheless, he sits down across from me as one of the cousins sets up a huge chess bored in front of us. I know that my family means well by offering to play with me, but I can’t help feel I’m being made a spectacle of. They know my skill level by now, but continue to want to play me, and then talk about how the game is going in Georgian. In any case, this game is quickly over. The things that this old man can do with a pawn; it was illuminating, to say the least.

Part of my hasty loss on this occasion (a very small part) was due to the arrival of yet another meal part way through our game. Larisa’s mother made Khachapuri, and the whole family was raving about how it was absolutely the best Khachapuri there ever was. You will hear no argument from me. I was made to eat at least three pieces of this. The third I used to chase my first glass of chacha, a Georgian moonshine somewhere between vodka and whisky. One of my host cousins toasted to me and I took the rather large shot she had poured from an old plastic water bottle. It burned but not in the way whiskey or vodka usually burns. It was more like what I imagine a shot of gasoline would feel like. (Later my host mother gave me a cotton ball soaked in this to treat my mosquito bites.)

During the car ride home I was drowsy from the chacha and the four dinners I had just eaten. I drifted in and out of sleep as we made our way back to Lesichine and was happy to arrive home.