Diaspora

The lobby of the hotel is as full as I have seen it when I enter with Eteri after a short walk the morning of our last day in Tbilisi. We quickly recognize the small clusters of people gathered in the waiting area by the door and the front desk as families; the host families that we will be living with for the next several months, and they watch us make our way to our rooms with curiosity and trepidation.

“They’re here.” I inform Natalie, my roommate, as I begin to frantically toss my things about the room. In only five days, I have managed to completely unpack and I am sweating rather profusely by the time I am able to zip my large suitcase again.

We wheel our luggage into the lobby where most of the other volunteers have already gathered. It is a mess of suitcases and volunteers milling around nervously in small groups, much as the host families had done just a short time before. I’m not nervous at first, but it doesn’t take long for the waiting to take its toll. When I am approached by an elderly woman with a scarf tied over her hair and a small girl clinging to her skirts repeating the name of another volunteer, I feel the bottom drop out of stomach. This is really happening, right now.

The families are released from their informational meeting in shifts, and move through the volunteers reading names off of forms they have received only a few minutes before. I help several families pair up with their respective volunteers and even watch a few of my friends ushered away by their hosts before I am approached by a pair of very pretty girls and a stately looking older woman.

“Hannah?” They say, holding the “a” sound out like the Georgian letter *****

I nod nervously and shake each of their hands.

“I’m Tica,” says the girl closest to me.

“Salome,” says the other pointing to herself, “and this is my mother Larisa.”

Salome and Larisa have light brown hair that curls into tight ringlets and flairs out around Salome’s shoulders and on the sides of Larisa’s face where it is coming loose from her ponytail. We chat haltingly. Larisa is having a conversation with Natalie’s host father. Their two villages are close together, and it appears that Natalie will be coming with my family, for now, and meeting up with her host father again later. Although where he will meet us and how much later is hard for us to tell from the snatches of English we can make out as we are hurried out of the hotel.

In the taxi, they inform us that they are taking us to their flat in Tbilisi. I learn that Tica and Salome are cousins and that they are both studying at the university in Tbilisi. The apartment is further outside of the city than we have been before. The rolling hills are covered in huge cement apartment buildings adorned with whimsical arches, decorative balconies, and gazebos that blazingly out of place amid the see of rigid cement block towers.

When we arrive at the apartment building, I am embarrassed as my family helps me haul my enormous suitcase up three floors to their flat. Thank God they live on the third floor. Their building had at least twenty and hardly amenities enough for a light in the hallway – Salome fought to locate the correct key in the dark – let alone an elevator.

We share a meal at the apartment but they won’t let Natalie or me help prepare it. Instead, they sit us down in front of the computer to watch an English movie they have and bring a large bowl of plums white peaches for us to nibble on. When they call us into the kitchen we eat short hotdog-like sausages with Mayonnaise (it took us a while to reconcile the language barrier for this word; eventually, I just smelled it), crusty bread, tomatoes, fried eggplant filled with onions and garlic, watermelon, and instant coffee. The meal is simple, fresh, and satisfying. 

The journey from the apartment to the family house in Samegrelo is a long one. We catch a marshutka (a kind of mini-bus/van) at the train station in Tbilisi and ride crammed in the back with luggage piled on our laps for five hours. I lean over the person sitting in front of me occasionally to catch glimpses of mountains rolling in the distance, or lush farm land spreading out across the plains.

The whole family is waiting at the house. Salome has a younger brother named Saba, and a seventeen-year-old sister, Irma. Their cousin Oto also lives with them and is asleep on the couch when we arrive at about eleven. I am also greeted by her father and grandmother who kisses me on the cheek and nods approvingly.

I’m so tired the first night I don’t have energy for much after my tour of the house (my room is huge!) besides drinking a cup of tea and collapsing into my freshly made bed. Though I am tired, I am suddenly full of dread. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to live in this new and radically different home that has been so graciously offered to me. I feel alone and trapped, despite my welcome.

It is about three in the morning, when I finally give up and make the long trek to the outhouse, in the dark, twice. I remember all the times I have made similar treks on camping excursions with my friends holding a flashlight behind me, that I realize this is just a house, and the village just a village. And these are only people, living normal lives. There is nothing here to fear (except perhaps mosquitoes, I’m covered in bites).