More postmodern bs in academia

Long live Zomia!

The Battle Over Zomia 

Escape from the USA

He was 20 years old, and dying to get the heck out of his country. His city was big, but the people seemed so disinterested in the rest of the world. And it was ugly – endless sprawling suburbs that made walking anywhere impossible.

He had a plan.

Save a little money, buy a motorcycle, ride it through Mexico to Belize, find any kind of employment near the water. While in Belize he could learn Spanish which would then widen the area of possible work to the surrounding countries.

Living in Javakheti

So, I have been living in Georgia for about two and a half months. I live in Javakheti, which is virtually completely Armenian ethnically. Saamstkhe-Javakheti is the region. But my town, Akhalkalaki, lies on the the very beginning of the great southern Plateau that extends to the Armenian border and beyond. This plateau also marks the boundary of Georgian- Aremnian culture. Akhalkalaki is over 90% Armenian. Follow the river Paravani through the mountains to the next large town of Akhalsikhe in Saamsklhe and the percentage drops to 40%, and the atmosphere is noticeably different.

Kreshka – the dreaded breakfast

Javakheti, Georgia, Armenian breakfasts

Ok – its not that bad. Some kind of boiled cracked grain – barley I think, and I am not sure of the spelling – can’t find a single Google hit under my spelling but that is how the Armenian sounds.

I actually like oatmeal and malt’o meal (cream of wheat I find a little more boring). But Kreshka is not like malt’o meal, although I think it is made with barley. It is not malted, so lacks that nice natural sweetness. Nor is milled into something smooth and cream. It instead is cracked whole grains, that are cooked in a way that they taste sort of burnt, with peeling husks clinging to mushy tasteless grainy interiors.

So, as usual as a guest in Georgia, you are served a giant mound of this, twice as big as everyone else, and when you (try) not to finish it all, they ask “what – you don’t like Kreshka?”. Even if I DID like it, I don’t want a kilo of boiled grain for breakfast!

Anyways, it is slightly salty and burnt tasting, not really breakfasty at all. They give me the nice homemade yogurt we have all the time, which put on the “pilaf” (semi-burnt thin noodles) is actually really good. But by itself it can’t even save Kreshka.

After several months of occasionally being served this I finally hit on an idea. One morning when I was really hungry, hoping for something good for breakfast, of course was a day I opened the pot and saw the dreaded boiled grain – somehow I knew this would be the case.

But this time I decided to fight back. First, I managed to limit the amount put on the plate – this to both reduce the total amount I would have to choke down, and also to strategically leave room for the flavor- struggle ahead.

I noticed a large slab of the nice local butter in the fridge. So step one – melt a big chunk of it into the Kreshka (this all has to be done surreptitiously – if the locals see you add things to their food they get pretty upset).

Next, put much more yogurt than usual – makes for a healthier, less carb overloaded breakfast as well. Finally – add something to the yogurt – they never add anything sweet to the yogurt here, which is strange, as they have superb cherries and other great fruit, they could make amazing fruit yogurts but for some reason never do. One time for our pilaf we did have Garlic yogurt, and it was delicious.

Anyway, being surrounded by high mountain valleys, they also have excellent local honey here. So, pretending like I was going to put it on my bread (permissible here) I actually drizzled a large amount of honey over my yogurt.

Once the butter had half melted, and the honey and yogurt mixed, it became like a grainy warm Muesli, and turned out to be excellent. I actually look forward to the next time I am served Kreshka – with some simple modifications it can be pretty tasty.

First Days in Akhalkalaki Georgia

Akhakalaki, Georgia, June 19^th

 

I have been in Georgia for about a week now. My flight over was uneventful. Very nice to be picked up at the airport and whisked to a hotel where we were already checked in. One of the more stressful times of traveling is arriving exhausted in a city you don’t know with a language you don’t know, and have to trudge around trying to find somewhere to stay.

Was kind of annoying that me and one other volunteer were flown over late, so the program had already began. This meant we had less time to see Tbilisi, get to know the others and try to learn some Georgian.

Then on the last day we were told the locations we would be sent to. This is a smaller group than many have been (15), and also since we arrived at the beginning of summer we will teach the first three months to police.

So, my town is Akhalkalaki. It is virtually entirely ethnically Armenian. The main problem here is that any Georgian I had learned is not useful here, and I did not study any Armenian, or have an Armenian phrasebook.

Two other volunteers, one from South Africa and the other from New Zealand, are in the next town about an hour closer to Tbilisi. So the three of us came down together to their town, I briefly saw their police station, and then I came on to my town.

The host family I am supposed to stay with has been out of town, so they put me up in a a little roadside motel on the outskirts of town on the road leading to the Armenian border. So up to now I have been whisked around and fed and stuff by the police. They are all very friendly and seem genuinely happy that a foreigner is here living.

I haven’t explored the town itself too much. The little motel I am at is a few miles out of town. I don’t mind though, as I think the host family lives in town, so I will see plenty of it I’m sure. Also, the countryside is nice here – we are in a huge valley – a volcanic kind of plateau with mountains in the distance in every direction. If I look to the southwest I can see Turkey, and to the southeast I can see Armenia. The mountain air is really nice, I think we are at somewhere around 5,700 thousand feet. I think it must be sort of like Idaho – in fact, the main crop all around is potatoes. So I have mainly, in my free time, walked around some, read out in the fields when I am not with the police eating or seeing the police station.

Shh…Don’t Tell Pooh

On the menu in central Tbilisi

Happiness is Hand Washed Clothes

There are few tasks that can be more annoying than hand washing clothes. You swear you will keep up when you are on the road backpacking by washing one or two things everyday. Then you get behind, and one day realize your entire backpack is full of dirty clothes, really dirty clothes, from the day you hiked up the mountain or the wet clothes you left in a bag for too long and got mildewy and the muddy clothes from the unexpected rain… way to dirty to depend on the ‘magic backpack’ method – you know, where somehow you put dirty clothes in your backpack and a week later you dig the same shirt out of the bottom of the backpack and somehow it seems clean enough to wear.

One of the major reliefs when backpacking is having a completely clean set of clothes – either because miracle of miracles you end up somewhere with a machine (or in Asia, where getting laundry service is so common and cheap that there is seldom the need to hand wash) or after what seems like forever of scrubbing and squishing clothes in a bucket, trying to get powdered detergent to dissolve in cold water, watching in amazement as the water turns completely brown from your clothes, and in still more amazement as you rinse 5 times, and each time the water stays just as brown. My problem is I never know when to stop – I always think – ok, a tiny bit more squishing around in the buck/sink whatever, and I will that little bit less stinky next week – but at some point either your hands get so cold, or so tired from wringing out clothes that you say “*%#@” it – stinky or not I am done. Then the fun job of hanging soaking wet clothes, because wringing out clothes by hand is seldom efficient and a lot more work than it seems like.

Anyway, I had this experience recently, 2 weeks of clothes all completely dirty, and although I will have a washing machine at my disposal here in Georgia eventually, it is for the moment kaput.

But I had this thought when bent over the cold bucket one evening (and by the way – the next day I had all the clothes almost dry hanging in the sun, and while I was away, a huge storm came, completely soaked them all again):

– no matter how annoying the task, I find that if I am doing something in my life that requires me to be somewhere in an environment where I have to hand wash clothes, I am generally doing something in a pretty interesting place with pretty interesting people, and find myself far more content with my life than when I am at home with all the modern luxuries.

Happiness is hand washed clothes