winter nights are long
The weather has been great since I wrote you last. It’s much colder than I remember last December being (there’s frost every night), but we’ve had a stretch of remarkably clear weather across the country. Today I could see the Greater Caucasus across the Black Sea and the Kackar Mountains over the border in Turkey.
I’ve been feasting on clementines, and the few kiwis on our kiwi tree are just ripening. It’s also the time of year for another delicacy in my house: baked sardines with cornbread. Yummy. Speaking of unusual treats, I had probably my grossest food experience in Georgia last weekend. I was up in the mountains of Adjara, at another volunteer’s site, when, as we were making our way home, his neighbor, a scruffy, gruff, bloodshot-eyed, store owner, offered us a shot of chacha (70%+ home brew, like vodka but stronger and harsher, even better when it comes from a plastic gas can) and something resembling pickled eggs as a chaser. I took the shot and stuck the hunk of jiggling white mystery substance in my mouth, because I figured nothing could be worse than the taste of that particular brand of Georgian hillbilly moonshine. But it was. It was awful. With watery eyes, and through my gagging coughs, I managed to ask this man what it was I had just ingested. He laughed and told me it was pig fat, raw pig lard. Thanks, buddy. I still gag a little bit when I think about it.
Another element of the Georgian winter that I don’t remember from last year is the dense petchi haze that settles over Batumi in the evenings. Petchis are the wood stoves that most villagers use to heat their houses. In the cities, most people have gas or radiators, but Batumi is a petchi city. Apparently, after the fall (of the USSR, that is) everybody sold their radiators as scrap. So now almost the entire city heats their apartments with wood, and the smoke from those thousands of petchis burning every night, when trapped in the mountains surrounding the city, creates a smog that is, at times, unbearable. It's like walking around inside a forest fire. I think I have some idea now how it must have felt to live in 19th century London. In fact, I have come to see the PCV experience in general as a way to get in touch with the past. It’s like now I, you know, get The Depression, man. I understand how people survived. I see these movies about pre-war America or Europe and I feel like I have something in common with the characters: the laundry drying in the windows, the livestock running around in the yard, the apartments stuffed with 3 or 4 generations. I’m like “hey, my family has that same heater!” or “yo, American’s ate that, too?!” Of course, having the farm in Indiana occasionally provided the same kind of feeling and imparted some special knowledge, like the fact that roosters crow all day, for example, not just in the morning, and goats bite. I remember explaining to my study abroad group in Chile what, exactly, asparagus is (“is it from, like, a… tree?”).
Despite the sunny weather, it’s been a dark couple of weeks for us Georgia volunteers, because the administration forced our friend and fellow volunteer, John, to quit. They are being really ridiculous. It’s made us a bit disillusioned about the whole Peace Corps thing, for sure. Luckily, John has decided to hang around for a few more weeks of Georgia fun.
Yesterday was Austin's birthday supra, and the weekend before was Erin's b-day party, so I have been dutifully partying. Next weekend: to the MOUNTAINS for skiing and x-mas/hannuka celebrations! gilotsav shobas da akhal tsels (merry christmas and happy new year)
I’ve been feasting on clementines, and the few kiwis on our kiwi tree are just ripening. It’s also the time of year for another delicacy in my house: baked sardines with cornbread. Yummy. Speaking of unusual treats, I had probably my grossest food experience in Georgia last weekend. I was up in the mountains of Adjara, at another volunteer’s site, when, as we were making our way home, his neighbor, a scruffy, gruff, bloodshot-eyed, store owner, offered us a shot of chacha (70%+ home brew, like vodka but stronger and harsher, even better when it comes from a plastic gas can) and something resembling pickled eggs as a chaser. I took the shot and stuck the hunk of jiggling white mystery substance in my mouth, because I figured nothing could be worse than the taste of that particular brand of Georgian hillbilly moonshine. But it was. It was awful. With watery eyes, and through my gagging coughs, I managed to ask this man what it was I had just ingested. He laughed and told me it was pig fat, raw pig lard. Thanks, buddy. I still gag a little bit when I think about it.
Another element of the Georgian winter that I don’t remember from last year is the dense petchi haze that settles over Batumi in the evenings. Petchis are the wood stoves that most villagers use to heat their houses. In the cities, most people have gas or radiators, but Batumi is a petchi city. Apparently, after the fall (of the USSR, that is) everybody sold their radiators as scrap. So now almost the entire city heats their apartments with wood, and the smoke from those thousands of petchis burning every night, when trapped in the mountains surrounding the city, creates a smog that is, at times, unbearable. It's like walking around inside a forest fire. I think I have some idea now how it must have felt to live in 19th century London. In fact, I have come to see the PCV experience in general as a way to get in touch with the past. It’s like now I, you know, get The Depression, man. I understand how people survived. I see these movies about pre-war America or Europe and I feel like I have something in common with the characters: the laundry drying in the windows, the livestock running around in the yard, the apartments stuffed with 3 or 4 generations. I’m like “hey, my family has that same heater!” or “yo, American’s ate that, too?!” Of course, having the farm in Indiana occasionally provided the same kind of feeling and imparted some special knowledge, like the fact that roosters crow all day, for example, not just in the morning, and goats bite. I remember explaining to my study abroad group in Chile what, exactly, asparagus is (“is it from, like, a… tree?”).
Despite the sunny weather, it’s been a dark couple of weeks for us Georgia volunteers, because the administration forced our friend and fellow volunteer, John, to quit. They are being really ridiculous. It’s made us a bit disillusioned about the whole Peace Corps thing, for sure. Luckily, John has decided to hang around for a few more weeks of Georgia fun.
Yesterday was Austin's birthday supra, and the weekend before was Erin's b-day party, so I have been dutifully partying. Next weekend: to the MOUNTAINS for skiing and x-mas/hannuka celebrations! gilotsav shobas da akhal tsels (merry christmas and happy new year)
posted by Paul Stephens at 10:22 PM
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