Coffee with Iconoclasts

Like I mentioned earlier, it feels like some of my best and closest connections with community members are happening now, which is lame, frankly, seeing as I have 27 days left in which to cultivate these relationships. Today I went to the house of a new friend of mine who helped me in a project I worked on. I expected the usual coffee, cookies, and bland conversation about soap operas and the exploits of neighbors. Tatia*, if you're reading this, I apologize!

Background information: ever since arrival, I've been inundated with so many stories about how great life was during the Soviet Union in Georgia that I was starting to believe it (though perhaps not, if the testimonial of two people is enough for me to reverse everything I've been told by everyone else). I heard about how everybody had cars and central heat, how the schools produced a highly literate and cultural crop of little Marxistettes, how those who wished could hop around the countries of the USSR on the cheap.

One of the first things Tatia and her sister told me that made me sit up straight was that their father was a Soviet dissident who was sentenced to prison time in Siberia. Apparently he contracted an illness there that killed him soon after, but his legacy lives on in their house full of forbidden books, including a 19th century Bible in Georgian that he had purchased. It also lives on in the off-beat thinking that both of his daughters exhibit.

Side note: I'm not implying that because they agree about some things that this makes them more intelligent than others. Some things we disagree about-- such as whether Chinese people should live in Georgia-- but it's really nice to meet people who will feed me something other than the party line.

Here's a selection of surprising things that Tatia and her sister expressed (disclaimer: these are their opinions and not necessarily mine):

- If they were in Peace Corps and they could choose any country to work in, it would be Kenya.

- Bile-filled criticism of the effectiveness and integrity of a certain local public servant

- The only people who prospered during Soviet times were thieves, especially in Georgia which was the most corrupt.

- Georgia is not ready for US-style democracy; what it really needs now is small business development.

- It would be better if more foreigners lived in Georgia.

Et cetera. It made for fascinating conversation that resulted in my arriving home 3 hours late, despite the fact that my host father is in town and he expects me to be a good Georgian daughter who stays home and fetches him forks and napkins and ash trays when he asks. He returns to Moscow the day after tomorrow.

In any case, the point of all this is that there were very interesting, English-speaking (what, did you think I would understand a conversation about political dissidence in Georgian?) people living literally five minutes away from me and I piddled away the opportunity to make friends with them by... by... well, I don't know what I was doing instead, but it wasn't actively searching out friends in the community. Shame on me. Shame on me forever.



* Tatia's name is not really Tatia, but I changed it because it seemed like the thing to do.