Urbnisi

            As of now I’m residing in a small village in the Shida Kartli region of Georgia.  To be more specific it is part of the municipality of the city of K’areli and is called Urbnisi.  It is actually closer to Gori, the home of the infamous Ioseb Dzhugashvili, aka Stalin.  Yes, Stalin was a Georgian and while after some debate that he was part Ossetian it has been held pretty firmly that he was indeed Kartveli.  So far I haven’t tried to bring the topic up but somehow it always seems to surface and it is a 50/50 gamble of encountering someone here who likes him.  This is just a matter on how you view history.

The View From My Balcony/Entrance

            Regardless, Urbnisi, after asking around is a village with a population of 500 families.  That’s about as accurate as it gets.  Most websites don’t have the population number so I just have to accept the local’s testimonies.  A typical family here is somewhere between 3 and 8 people.  So let’s just settle for around 2,500 – 3,000.  I guess it is easier to say 500 families. 

            We have the works.  Satellite TV.  Fig trees.  Hundreds of grape vines.  Chickens.  A teasing internet connection.  Electricity.  Mineral water that comes from the well.  Cows.  Sheep.  Several congresses of dogs.  Volley ball, sans net.  Turkish toilets.  Practically every kind of mutated fruit that exists.  We even have a tona/toona, where we make our bread.  Our roads are more like paths and every morning brings new gifts from cows that have escaped.

In The Far Left Corner Is This Stone and Steel Oven Where We
Make Our Bread.  A Fire Is Set In the Center and Rests About A
Meter Below.  The Dough Is Slapped On The Sides and Cooks.

            Urbnisi hosts a church built in 600 A.D.  The village rests along the banks of the river Mtkvari or Kura (the Russian name) which apparently, after some rather recent investigation runs from around Kars, Turkey to Baku on the Caspian Sea, thereby dividing Georgia (Sakartvelo) into two.  The fact that it originates from a lake in Kars does not quite make sense to me, but oh well.  Essentially it would have to flow northeast then just east for the rest of the way until heading slightly south.  In Urbnisi there is a bridge, and while that seems to be a generous word for what it actually is I experienced something far cruder and suicidal in Borjomi (just wait for that post, its coming, I promise), that you can cross to get to the other side.  There after about a kilometer you get to some train tracks and a stop that the train doesn’t stop for but certainly continually toots its horn around 3,00am just to let you know you’ve missed it.  The train itself is the Tbilisi-Gori-Batumi Train and as its name suggests those are its only stops.  Which leads me to wonder why there is a platform complete with office near my village on the train tracks.  I haven’t made it across the tracks but desire to, for across it is the Trialeti Mountain Range.  

            There is no actual postage system here probably because there are no street signs of any kind, nor addresses yet alone any form of a mail box.  Perhaps an even bigger issue is that there are no roads, but once again just our humble, cow explored paths.  This is how the mail system works:  a mshrutka (I may have spelt that wrong) pulls over as someone hails it (which they do by sticking their arm out, pointing towards the ground).  The deathtrap on wheels pulls over quickly, dodging whatever is in its way and the driver, who may be either on the left or right side, sticks his head out the nonfunctioning window and they start talking.  Then the driver turns down the music and they start talking again.  The person hands them a package and some money which can either go to another stop or a postal office.  When the bus of thrills encounters its stop it just pulls over and gives it to someone who is waiting for it.  It works, I’ve personally been witness to it.

            My host father/dad Shamil (Shamyl) works in the fields with the other men all day while his wife takes care of the two boys.  There is an elder woman who lives with us, well actually possibly two but I’m not positive and then there is a girl who comes by and occasionally stays the night but I think she lives a few streets over.  Although I guess she could be living here and just stays there a few nights out of the weeks.  Not quite sure…

            No matter, they buy about two kilos of tomatoes a week, make their own wine in enormous batches and we just have a ton of food.  But no refrigerator.  That too might also be a mistake.  I think there is one (it looks like one of those that 7/11 sells ice cream out of) but I’ve never seen anything in it but the occasional water melon.  Our staples are bread (p’uri), tomatoes (pomidori), and salt.  After that it changes.  For instance two days ago we had something that went along like this:  8 eggs beaten and mixed with flour.  A few zucchini’s that were shaved, mixed together with the batter only to be friend on the stove in sun flower oil and created a pan cake like thing that was awesome.      

            This week my host mother’s sister, Nino, came from Italy.  She speaks Russian, Georgian, Italian, Spanish and French although you wouldn’t know any of this because she only permits herself to speak Italian which really doesn’t help anyone at all.  The two boys, Amirani and Vejikko (whom Shamil calls “terrorist”) can speak some English but they refuse out of fear of making a mistake, a cultural thing.  Finally Irma (whose name I undoubtedly typed wrong) speaks some English, native Georgian and Russian.  Shamil speaks both Russian and Georgian and knows some English.  As you may or may not know after 2008 the Russians are not particularly well liked here so speaking Russian is a no-no.  However after exhausting ourselves with charades and bumping our heads in the language barrier too many times sometimes we revert to language of the great bear up north.

            Naturally since Nino has been here evening and morning tea has turned into multiple rounds of espresso, all sorts of Italian sausage and cured meats, cookies etc. 

            We have a few neighbors but two in particular stand out.  There is Batcho, who gives me grapes and constantly asks me to drink.  Then there is this one guy, who is quite older and only talks to me in Armenian, sometimes a word or two in Russian.  I’ve asked around and apparently he’s not Armenian so I have no idea as to what triggers this.  The only thing he’s ever said to me in English is “trashy” and that accompanies with hand gestures towards my crude facial hair.   

            Whenever I go east, perhaps to Gori, Tbilisi or to wherever looks interesting on a map, I pass at least three installments of refugee camps for those who fled the 2008 August War out of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  These were built by the US.  I haven’t any photos of them currently but I’ll get some soon.  But that’s a topic for another time…I'll put up more photos of things soon but be patient, it took 3 hours to upload 4 photos.