Only Hemingway

My friends Natalie, Adam, Eli, Aly and I are sitting at a small round table at Café Press. The café looks out over a wide road running parallel to where the Black Sea meets the rocky shores of Batumi. It is Sunday morning and we have spent the past two nights in this historic resort town. I am sipping an Americano, a cup of coffee someone actually had to brew, and we have just ordered what promises to be an incredibly satisfying brunch of pizza and club sandwiches when Adam, lounging in his chair in the late morning heat, says, “Only Hemingway could have had a better weekend in Batumi.”

Tequila Mr. President?

I leave school slightly early Friday afternoon to catch the two o’clock marshutka from Chkhorotsku to Zugdidi, where I will join Natalie and Adam on another marshutka to Batumi. Crammed into a van designed to hold fifteen people but holding about twenty-five, I marvel at how quickly and easily this excursion came together after I received a phone call from my friend Nic at around 9pm Thursday night.

“I don’t know. I’m pretty broke, but I guess I could call Natalie and see how much it is to get there.” I said, my host sister eyeing me across our abandoned English lesson.

“Yeah! Call Natalie. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Nic said, just before hanging up the phone.

When Adam, Natalie, and I arrive in Batumi, Nic informs us that he has found a hotel room for 70 Lari that will sleep five people. We are thrilled by this bargain, and quickly drop off our things before heading to a local bar for 2.50 Lari beer.

Adam has ingratiated himself with some people in the peace corps who are also enjoying cheap beer at the bar. He accompanies them when they leave for a party at a nearby apartment, and they invite us all to join them later at a bar called The Quite Lady.

After beer, we find a restaurant on the beach and enjoy some kabob and French fries. It’s not the most Georgian meal we’ve eaten, but it’s delicious.

Toward the end of the meal Natalie pulls out her phone and says, “Adam says he’s doing shots of tequila with the president.”

If you received this text message in The States, you would simply assume that your friend had consumed an egregious amount of alcohol, and was probably making some kind of scene. However, this wouldn’t be the first TLG volunteer to meet president Saakashvili. Only a few days before, one of the other volunteers in our training group was visited by the president at his school, shook the president’s hand, and made the evening news.

Having finished eating, we decide to try and make our way to The Quiet Lady, where we would supposedly be able to enter unquestioned into the same room as the president of the country. And that is exactly what happened.

Though we became thoroughly lost on the way to the bar (we were taking directions from someone with multiple rounds of tequila under his belt), we arrived at The Quite Lady to find a smattering of army guards and men in jackets with plastic earpieces popping out of their collars. No one tried to stop us, or even took a second look at us as we took a table right next to Mr. President himself. His table was littered with glasses, his shirt slightly un-tucked in the back, and he was leaning slightly sideways to address a rather lovely woman seated next to him.

We are not there long before President Saakashvili collects his entourage and leaves.

The next day we spend some time at the beach before eating a large afternoon meal at a small restaurant near our hotel. Our numbers have increased, our friend Mushood having arrived late the night before, and Kristine and Elie are fresh off the noon marshutka from Zugdidi. I am sitting at the far end of the two tables we placed together to accommodate everyone when my phone rings. It’s Nikole, another TLGer and friend stationed in Kutaisi.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you in Batumi tomorrow,” She says.

I’m not sure how to respond. I want to say a combination of, “don’t bother we’re leaving tomorrow,” “what made you want to come so late?” and “huh?” I manage a hesitant, “What” as I try to shake off the confusion.

Nikole explains that she just received a call from one of the TLG representatives who informed her that all of the TLG volunteers living in west Georgia have been invited by the president to attend the premier of an opera Sunday night. The opera is a famous Georgian story called Keto and Kote, and hotel and transportation will be provided though, in true TLG fashion, no details are available as to where we will be staying or how we will get there. 

“You guys should get a call soon,” Nikole finished.

The next half hour was a round of musical chairs as our phones begin to ring and invitations are accepted. It was during the barrage of phone calls that one of us was told that the invitations to the opera had only come into TLG an hour before. What could have made the president decided to bring us all down on such short notice?

It Half Works

Having accepted invitations to a free night in Georgia’s premier resort city, we pay the bill for our meal and head back to our hotel. Some of the group wants to go shopping for opera clothes. I, however, am tired and much too poor for new clothing. I remain behind with Elie for what he dubs a “pre-party nap.”

A flimsy wall with an arched glass door divides the hotel room. Kristine and Adam have also decided to stay at the hotel and are talking in the other room. When I get up to shut the door in order to muffle the sounds of their conversation, it moves haltingly and lacks a latch to keep from swinging part way open. Elie laughs a little at my struggle with what should be a simple task.

“Everything in this country half works,” he says, as I use a shoe to wedge the door closed.

This is actually an amendment to something that Elie told me during our orientation in Tbilisi. We were walking back from a bakery at lunch when a large truck rumbled past. It looked so old it was surprising that parts weren’t dropping off as it bounced along the uneven road. “Nothing in this country should work, but it does,” Elie had said then.

It’s true that most of the systems that this country takes for granted would sound absolutely ludicrous in the states. For example, lets take a look at the marshutka: mini buses running routes within and between cities. As far as I know, they have no set schedule, nor do you have to have any kind of special license or permit to drive one. All you need are willing passengers. But this system works; most of my travel within Georgia has been via Marshutka.

However, this system seems less appealing when something goes wrong. On his way to Batumi, our friend Mushood ran into some trouble with his marshutka. Road work prevented the driver from taking his usual route, and as a result the driver got lost, adding a couple of hours to Mushood’s trip.

The schools are another good example. Many of the people I have met here, are well educated. My school however, lacks usable toilets, running water, backs to about half of the chairs, and has floorboards that shift under my weight when I cross the room. Though all the TLG volunteers received training with an English textbook that was to be provided at no cost by the government to teachers and volunteers, we have yet to receive our books and have no curriculum for grades 1-3 since this is the first year those grades are participating in English classes. It works…kinda.

In any case, this fact of life of Georgia can be endearing when my host sister laughs at me trying to figure out how to hand wash my laundry, frustrating when a hotel can’t figure what room you’ve been booked to because they don’t know how middle names work, and frightening when the flimsy panel on the floor of your bus that separates you from the engine is forced open by a gust of wind.

However, recognizing this fact has been cathartic and for the past few days I have found a new mantra. When it seems that things have gone wrong, or something is off just a little, I remind myself, “It half works.”

Singing in the Rain

After our nap and the return of some of our comrades to the hotel, we decide it is time to venture again into Batumi nightlife. The cheap-beer-bar we visited the night before is overcrowded due to a musical performance that will start there soon. Someone suggests we buy beer at one of the local shops for cheap and stand at the back of the crowd gathered outside the bar to watch the show. But why take beer to a bar, when you can take beer to the beach?

Not long after this we are sitting in a circle on the beach taking significant swallows of beer that seem to have little to no effect on the 2.5 liter bottles we purchased. I have just laid back against the smooth rocks of the beach when an unforgivingly large raindrop lands precisely on my eye. Soon we are running for cover, the rain stretching out into the sea where it seemed a moment ago the skies were clear.

By the time we reach the hotel again, we are soaked. We begin draping our clothing over the small television and wardrobe doors. When the rest of the group returns we are forced to reconcile the fact that our five-person room will now be sleeping ten. By the end of the night, it seems the room is hung in equal parts with clothing and bodies. We are hanging off the edges of the beds and sprawled across the floor. Bottles of champagne, beer, and chacha (Georgian vodka) pepper the scene. It is this scene that inspires Adam’s comment the next morning, something about that room and the whole weekend is significantly Hemingway-esque.

Night at the Opera

Sunday morning begins with some helpful advice from Elie. “Be sure to check your shoes,” he says.

“Why?” says Natalie.

“You know those holes in the bathroom ceiling?” he says.

“Yes.”

“That’s a scorpion nest.”

It had clearly been fumigated, and a close inspection revealed pincers protruding from some of the holes. I had told myself that they only looked like giant nasty bug parts, but were probably harmless. Well, they were mostly harmless, though Elie does also point out a very small live scorpion on the wall. The room had seemed pretty nice for how cheap it was. The bathroom alone is a huge step up from where I am living, but there were scorpions.

It half works.

After our meal at Café Press, we make our way to the beach. We swim in the Black Sea while our clothes finish drying in the sun. In the afternoon we receive a call from another TLG volunteer looking for her hotel roommate. The fact that they have selected a hotel is news to us and we rush there straight from the beach and dripping wet.

It’s a short walk. We have been put up in one of the nicest hotels in the city, just a few minutes walk from the water. From the hotel we are taken to dinner in buses with no air-conditioning. It was sort of like riding in a large moving greenhouse: hot and sticky. At dinner we wrinkle our noses over glasses of green soda and nibble khachapuri (it's good, but it's also everywhere).

The Batumi Arts Center is a large building made mostly of glass. When we are finally allowed inside (we rushed through dinner in order to wait outside the center for about an hour) it feels as though we have walked into a crystal palace. The glass is strategically lit from the inside and sparkles further in the orange sunset. Our seats are in the third row and when the president enters with his guest of honor, the Prince of Monaco, he catches Adam’s eye and gives him a slight wave.

Keto Da Kote is as surreal an experience as any of the rest of the weekend. The costumes are surprising and whimsical in a Dr. Seuss kind of way. There is a large digital screen on the back of the stage that is used to set the scene several times, but only portrays an awkward kind of digital animation. Finally, though English subtitles are projected for our benefit, the translation is lacking and the transition from one plot point to another alarming. It feels a little like being in someone else’s dream. At the end of the performance the volunteers look around suspiciously as the Georgian crowd applauds in time with one another to the beat of the song playing over the bows.

When we return to the hotel we are disappointed to find that someone has cleverly cleared the mini-bars while we were gone. We are soon off however and arrive at the beach carrying more large bottles of beer as well as a few bottles of wine. One brave group of people has even bought more chacha.

There must be fifteen of us now, most of our orientation group having been brought in for the opera. We sit in a large circle on the beach. We talk and drink, sing and swim naked in the Black Sea. Sometime after 3am we trek back to the hotel and assign ourselves to the beds most convenient for us; some people sleeping in their assigned rooms, others simply sleeping where ever there is space.

In the morning we say goodbye in front of our respective buses as we are shipped back to our various regions of the country. Lesichine and my host family’s house feels a world away, and it takes a good part of the day to get there since our bus requires several stops for maintenance.

As I get out of the car TLG hired to return me to my village, my host mother emerges from the house and yells, “Hannah! Batumshi!”

In Georgian, postposition “shi” can mean both “in” and “to.” I’m still not sure what she meant when she called this to me but it seemed appropriate as a simple but sweeping synopsis of the past few days. The combination of “to” and “in” seeming to imply that the city had collected us, drawing us to it and folding us inside it.