6 years ago
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17 Random Facts about my Peace Corps Service in Georgia

by Rawan / Her

Normally, I post a story or an experience on this blog. For this post, I thought I’d post some quick and dirty fun facts about my Peace Corps service. Some of these facts are mentioned in other posts.

  1. We had a pet rooster for about two months. Justin tried training our rooster like a dog.
  2. Cows are everywhere in Georgia and I’ve been obsessed with them lately.  Each time I see a cow while walking, I attempt to take a selfie with it.

    Cow Selfie
    This is technically a calf, but this still counts as a cow selfie
  3. In my office’s bathroom, there is a bathtub. This is because our office is actually a home converted into an office.
  4. I am the only foreigner at work. All my colleagues are Georgian and we speak Georgian at work.
  5. Georgians are obsessed with mayonnaise. They sell it in tubs and they also drizzle it on pizza.

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    Here is an entire section of mayo at the market.
  6. I’ve had food poisoning about half a dozen times during service.  I’m so well versed with the symptoms that I can predict the play-by-play by the hours.
  7. I strive to combat racism during service. In Peace Corps, I co-lead a diversity awareness summer camp, called DREAM Camp, for Georgian youth. At the end of my first camp, a teenage girl hugged me and told me that she has realized her biases and will strive to change for the better because of my session.
  8. Last year for Thanksgiving, the only way I was able to procure a turkey was to pick one out alive. My boss, Justin, and I went to a live poultry market and paid a grandmother a couple of dollars to kill it for me. I later cleaned the insides and baked it.  
  9. During Easter, Georgians only dye their eggs red. There are multiple shades of red. In America, we dye our eggs cute and various pastel colors. That is not a thing here.

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    At the bazaar during April 2018. You can see the different shades of red for the Easter eggs.
  10. I created a gender-equality committee in Peace Corps called Saqartvelo Smashes Stereotypes. I wrote about the committee on this blog and a prospective Peace Corps applicant read my blog and discussed the committee in her Peace Corps interview. Now, she is a volunteer here and is on the committee with me!
  11. During my Peace Corps Pre-Service Training (PST), I only used an outhouse that was located next to the pig stye and chicken coup. No one in my village had an indoor or western-style toilet.
  12. I currently live without a dishwasher, a dryer, a couch, a TV, a radio, or even an indoor toilet.
  13. I do not have a wide variety of food where I live. Thus, I currently make up my own recipes and I now I consider myself an amateur chef.

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    I made up this marinara pasta sauce that is incredibly healthy and delicious. No recipe here.
  14. In my first week of Peace Corps, I witnessed my host family’s pig give birth to her nine piglets. She immediately proceeded to murder most of the piglets by eating them and burying them in her feces. I helped my host family save the remaining piglets. Months later, my host family killed the mother pig and we ate her for dinner. I am still traumatized.
  15. The average price for a haircut for females is less than $4 USD. This includes wash, cut, and style. I have cut my hair in Georgia three or four times thus far.

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    My most recent haircut in the summer (2018). I only paid 10 GEL at this fancy place in town, which is equivalent to about 4 USD.
  16. My office is about a 15-minute walk from my home. I walk every day to and from work.
  17. Georgia sells Oreos, M&Ms, and Pringles. We buy them frequently and consider them great snacks during my long transportation rides to the capital.

Which fact surprised you the most? What else would you like to know?

8 years ago

Where is the Cow?

by Rawan / Her

My favorite line that I heard yesterday was, “სად არის ძროხა?! (saad arees zrokha)” Which means “Where is the cow?!” The woman who asked me this was genuinely perplexed. Another woman echoed behind her, “და ღორები?! (da ghorebee?!)” The other woman was equally confused as to when I would take care of the cows and pigs during my day. These two simple questions truly highlight the differences between the lives women lead in American cities and Georgian villages.

Yesterday, I conducted one of the Participatory Analysis for Community Action (PACA) tools, called the Daily Activities Calendar, with two members of my organization. What are PACA tools, you ask? In simple terms, this is one of the ways we actually accomplish “being one with the community.” We get to learn how the community functions and see how their life is set-up so that we can work alongside with them in a more efficient way.  The Daily Activities Calendar is a simple tool that is highly effective. Community participants are separated based on gender and they write down a typical day for the average woman/man in their community by hour/duration and by activity. It provides valuable insight on the different labor constraints that men and women have. It can raise awareness on the different contributions that each gender provides in the household.

Since it is still my first three months at my site, Peace Corps highly encourages conducting these assessments so that I can understand the community’s environment in which I’ll be serving in. Even though I live in a city, my organization conducts its activities in the surrounding villages. So along with my colleagues, we went to one of the beautiful villages we work in to conduct the Daily Activities Calendar PACA tool.

Persati Public School #1, where we held the Daily Activities PACA tool assessment

To increase understanding of the activity, I thought it would be best if I showed the 5 women and 5 men teachers in the room what a typical day is for a professional women working in a corporate environment in America. In essence, my previous life was summarized as such with the respective time blocks: wake up, take shower, eat breakfast, drive to work, go to work, eat lunch, make dinner, eat dinner, workout, write work e-mails and watch TV, then go to bed.

The second I was done showing them my old life’s daily activities, the infamous question was asked of “Where is the cow?!” It is because life in the village requires that the second you wake up, the women go and feed the cows and pigs before they even feed themselves. It requires tending to the chickens even when they are not in the mood for it. In American cities, if I was not in the mood to cook chicken, I can simply go to the closest grocery store chain and buy myself a warm rotisserie chicken for less than $10. You simply can’t do that here. If you live in a city in Georgia, you can be lucky enough to buy a ready-plucked chicken at the closest bazaar. In the village, simply go to your garden and you can pick which chicken you want to devour later.

So I stood there and tried to explain that they do not have to write down their activities of what life would be like in the city. I calmly told them that this just an example and they are to be authentic in explaining their lives in the village. For a second, I thought I just derailed the entire focus of the activity. Instead, I used this as an opportunity to show why this activity is important because it highlights the differences and brings awareness to what are lives actually are like. It brings forth the knowledge to effectively plan trainings and activities that would be effective in the life of the community.

This is a Daily Activities Calendar that the male teachers completed as a group
This is a Daily Activities Calendar that the male teachers completed as a group
9 years ago
0

Death of the Piglets

by Rawan / Her

Immediately after I posted my last blog entry (about meeting my host family), this happened…

To set the scene, it was around 11:30 p.m. creeping around midnight. Justin urgently wanted to go to the restroom and I figured I might as well go too. He couldn’t find his headlamp/flashlight or his boots fast enough, so I told him I’ll just go ahead and see him in a few minutes.

Headlamp/flashlight and boots, you ask? Yes, because “going to the restroom” is a 5-minute adventure down the stairs, into an unpaved gravel “road” around the house, into a wooden shed, with a concrete hole in the middle that functions as our “toilet.” Our Outhouse also shares a wall with four large pigs and it is right across the chicken coup. Since it was raining on and off that day and there is no lighting, this is where the boots and headlamp/flashlight come into play. Silver lining, there is one less step because there is no flushing.

Baby wipes in one hand, flashlight in the other, I walk downstairs. I find all the adults outside in bath robes and coats looking distressed. Even though this is only my third night, I knew this was not routine. I see the women walking in and out of the pigs’ den and the men speaking loudly inside with a screaming pig. The invite me inside the pigs’ den. Turns out, the fattest big pig of them all just delivered 9 piglets! The host grandmother starts making an eating/attacking non-verbal expression. Now, I’m just horribly confused.

My host sister (the young mother of the family), knew I had a flashlight, so she takes me to the wheelbarrow located right by the outhouse by the garden. She has me point to the wheelbarrow. You know what I see? I see 3 half-eaten, half-alive piglets!!! Half their body is literally eaten- a scene right out of a horror film. I thought they would be dead, but nope, they were heaving heavily as they were taking their last breath. The mother pig delivered her piglets and then tried to EAT THEM ALL AND BURY THEM.

The host grandfather was still in the den attempting to dig out the rest of the 6 piglets underneath the mother pig’s poop as she dug them there alive half-eaten. I was just literally standing there shocked, helpless, and speechless.

Clearly the family was upset, most likely because they just lost a valuable source of income and clearly energy and time for raising the cannibal mother pig. I, on the hand, never knew pigs do that! So I walk upstairs with my eyes wide open, disturbed.

For the 20 minutes I was down there, Justin did not even come down. He was supposed to come down right after me! After I managed to tell him the story, I don’t think he was ever more grateful for holding it in and waiting. Oh, and he laughed out loud at my expense.