Homecoming

On my last day of school, my host teacher, Nino, brings three litres of wine: one for me to take back to America, and two for toasting before I leave. So, when I make my way home from school that day, I’m at least a little tipsy, and I really need the bathroom.

The power is out, but only at our house, a lovely going away present from the Georgian utility provider. I’m washing my hair under an icy tap, still blushing from the wine, when my host grandmother bursts through the bathroom door (you have to burst through this door because it sticks so badly) and says, “Sachmeli ar ginda!? Modi, tchame, tchame.” (Don’t you want food? Come. Eat, eat.)

She has been following me from room to room as I finish packing, repeating this same command, and since – between the wine, the frantic walk home, and the painfully cold water – I’m feeling a little dizzy, I follow her into the kitchen.

I hoover down my borsch, though it’s one of my favorite meals, because I’m taking the two o’clock marshutka to Zugdidi, where Elie and I will catch the night train to Tbilisi. Aly and Adam are already there, and the plan is to spend a few days in the deda kalaki (capitol city) before flying out.

In Zugdidi, Elie meets me at the Educational Resource Center where I stop to sign my contract for the spring semester. Our train doesn’t leave for around six hours and we have planned to spend the evening with his host family, since they can then drive us to the train station.

“OK,” Elie says as we make our way to his host families market, “How do you feel about going to a supra?”

Apparently it’s Elie’s host father’s sister’s birthday. Their house sits at the end of long neighborhood road just outside the city. The kitchen, where we eat, is painted sky blue and there is a dark red cloth covering the large oval table. Shorena, the birthday girl, is an energetic hostess, and seats me between her two children Tiko and Tedo. Tiko, the girl, has long dark hair piled messily on top of her head, and hardly stops smiling the entire time we are there. She and her brother help us navigate the excited conversation Elie’s host father is trying to carry on with us, which ranges in topic from the order of America’s presidents to the quality of Dato’s (Shorena’s husband) shotgun. The evening reaches it’s high point when Dato produces said firearm and assembles it at the dinner table.

Supras follow a familiar pattern: we eat and drink too much. It’s twenty minutes after our train was meant to depart and I’m beginning to worry despite the reassurance of our hosts that we are going to a nearby station which is further down the line, and that we have plenty of time. Elie seems less concerned, though he has also had slightly more to drink than me, and I have to drag him away from the game of nardi he has begun with his host mother.

The night train from Zugdidi to Tbilisi is a dark narrow hallway lined on one side with dirty, opaque windows and on the other with a row of sliding doors. The doors open onto cramped sleeping compartments. Two beds, stacked one on the other, hang from either side of the compartment with a narrow isle and a tall window between them. Niether Elie or I is perfectly comfortable with the fact that we are sharing the compartment with two strangers and I fall asleep sitting next to him on one of the bottom bunks surrounded by our luggage.

When I wake I find myself using my purse as a pillow with my feet propped on Elie’s backpack. The compartment is dark now, and I’m a little afraid until Elie waves down at me from the bunk that is lofted across from mine.  The train sways back and forth with a rickety, lumbering kind of forward motion, and rather than putting me to sleep, the rocking drives away the warmth remaining from the supra and the wine. I watch out the window as the bleak winter countryside rolls by: the skeleton trees dancing naked in the moonlight and the wind.

We arrive in Tbilisi a little after six in the morning and catch a cab from the train station to the hostel, but the driver has no idea where he is going. We stop for directions three times and spend at least half an hour wandering around the neighborhood he has been directed to. It is hilly and muddy and the car skids and slides down the narrow streets. “No numbers,” the driver continues to tell us, explaining why the address we have given him is of no help. Actually many of the buildings in this neighborhood are marked with addresses, and admittedly rare occurrence in Georgia, but he is too near sighted or just plain stupid to see them. We finally get out and find the hostel on foot. The driver holds our luggage hostage as he bargains for a fee that we find incredibly exorbitant considering he is the one who got us lost.

At the hostel we find not only Aly and Adam, but also our friends Jack and Sofia, who live in Zugdidi, and a Polish Australian named Kat, who was part of our orientation group. Though it is early, especially by Georgian standards, the hostel is busy. All of the beds are booked for the weekend, and there is a constant stream of TLG volunteers circulating through on their way out of the country.

We spend the weekend walking the city bargaining for Christmas presents and drinking at Chaplin’s. We also discover the best Shwarma (kind of like a Turkish burrito with only meat) we have had yet. They even sell several sizes, the largest of which is called the Gargantuan. It costs eight lari and is about a foot and a half long. I don’t have it in me to brave this particular gastrointestinal adventure, but it is the only thing Elie eats the day he and Adam depart.

I couldn’t say whether or not the Tbilisi airport even has a departure bored. Aly and I simply listen attentively to the PA announcements echoing through the small terminal, “The Lufthansa flight from Tbilisi to Munich is now boarding at gate 1A. All passengers please proceed to security checkpoint.”

“That’s my flight,” I say.

Aly gets up and steps over the broken duffle bag she has just paid three lari to have wrapped in plastic to give me a hug. Watching her awkwardly navigate the small mine field of luggage our things form strewn across the airport floor I realize that I won’t see her for over a month. It suddenly becomes real, I’m going back.

I fly first from Tbilisi to Munich and get the only forty-five minutes of sleep I will have for my entire twenty-four hour journey; my head drooping over the remains of my waffle with cheery sauce. From Munich it’s a quick hop to Frankfurt, where I have just enough time to pass through passport control twice, before boarding my flight. I can’t help but notice the group of tall, well built young men gathered outside the gate. On the plane, they fill in the seats around me. One, seated on the opposite end of my center row, turns to the others sitting behind him and says, “OK, guys. If I can’t sleep, I’m getting drunk.”

Americans! Thank god.

In Denver I may or may not tell several bald faced lies to the customs agent:

            No, I have not been in contact with any livestock.

            No, I have not spent any time on a farm.

            No, I am not carrying any food items or alcohol.

The next month is all cookie baking, present wrapping, and champagne drinking. I can’t get enough hot showers, uncooked vegetables, or kisses on the cheeks of my baby siblings (who are all enormous, when I was a kid I did not grow that fast). Our nanny gets a huge kick out of the morning I remember that our refrigerator has an icemaker. “Look at all this ice!” I can’t stop saying.

It’s called “reverse culture shock.” For me, it mostly manifests in a nagging panic every time I get behind the wheel of my car and hanging out on the back porch in a tank top and shorts in December. I can’t handle all the central heating. But there is also a sense of restlessness that is difficult to shake. Most of my friends are busy with their families, with the lives that they lead everyday, and I have little to do, and nowhere to go. It is like becoming a guest in my own life. Everything is pretty much how I remember it, but I don’t quite fit anymore.

I try not to let this slow me down, however. I spend Christmas at home and the mountains of debris from my twin siblings first Christmas is truly alarming. I follow this up with New Years in Fort Collins with my good friend Sarah, and then it’s off to St. Louis for more family time. When I return I have only a little more than a week at home. Though the time seemed to fly by, it was pretty easy to settle into old routines, and even make some new friends.

“I could still stay. I could not get on the plane,” I say to my mom standing in line at the airport.

“But I already bought you all those vitamins,” She says. My early birthday present was a 500 count Costco bottle of multi vitamins meant to counteract the general lack of nutrition my Georgian diet provides.

A few days after Christmas, I receive an email from TLG. The title reads “Host Family Placement.”  I open the following email.

Hello Hannah,

As you request we have found you a new host family located in Zugdidi. It is already approved and on your way back you can move to new host family in Zugdidi…

Sending you details of your new host family. In the family there are five members: Grandmother, mother and father and they have 2 children… Girl 12 years old and Boy 11 years old… The host mother is working in Zugdidi School N 5 and her children also study in this school, you will also work in this school.. Every day they go by car to school and if you wish they will take you as well…

The name of the host mother is Shorena Gugushvili, at her brother’s house lives our volunteer Elliot.

The host family is very nice…  

If you will have any question, please free to contact me any time…

How this happened, I can’t really say. I did inquire about the possibility of switching host families toward the beginning of October. I had been in the village about a month at the time and had not quite developed coping mechanisms for the isolation and the rustic toilet. However, I had completely written it off when I didn’t receive any kind of definitive response. The fact that I serendipitously spent my last night in Samegrelo at the very house TLG was now looking to place me in takes the cake for ridiculous coincidences.

Though I have come to enjoy village life, my host family, and the neighbors and co-workers I have befriended, I decide to take the placement. Shorena, Dato, and their family were incredibly welcoming, and definitely seemed like a group I could integrate into. Also, I do not at all mind the idea of having a city within walking distance, and an indoor toilet.

So after a ten hour flight from Denver to Frankfurt, a nine hour layover in Munich, and a frigid eight hour train ride from Tbilisi to Zugdidi, I can’t help the huge smile of relief that spreads across my face when Shorena and the kids meet me at the train station.

“Tsavedit (let’s go),” says Shorena, “Salkshi (home).”