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.
We had a pet rooster for about two months. Justin tried training our rooster like a dog.
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.
This is technically a calf, but this still counts as a cow selfie
In my office’s bathroom, there is a bathtub. This is because our office is actually a home converted into an office.
I am the only foreigner at work. All my colleagues are Georgian and we speak Georgian at work.
Georgians are obsessed with mayonnaise. They sell it in tubs and they also drizzle it on pizza.
Here is an entire section of mayo at the market.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At the bazaar during April 2018. You can see the different shades of red for the Easter eggs.
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!
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.
I currently live without a dishwasher, a dryer, a couch, a TV, a radio, or even an indoor toilet.
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.
I made up this marinara pasta sauce that is incredibly healthy and delicious. No recipe here.
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.
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.
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.
My office is about a 15-minute walk from my home. I walk every day to and from work.
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?
Let’s Play Together is a project I co-lead with a couple of other volunteers and McLain Association for Children (MAC) that provides an opportunity for children of all abilities to learn, play, and engage with each other. Someone very special to me taught me at a young age why this is important and I dedicate this blog post to Natasha.
Every Friday, my mother’s side of the family gets together, and we share a feast together. I have moved away, but they still do this in my original hometown. When I was a child, I was fortunate that my great-grandmother was still alive and I was able to get to know her. Up until her death, the entire family would gather around my great grandmother’s table. Now, we gather around my grandparents’ table. Each Friday, we spend hours chatting and eating. When I was about 5 years old, my sister, Shereen, and I thought my mom’s first cousin, Natasha, was the coolest. At the time, Natasha lived with my great grandmother. We were very interested in Barbies and Natasha, my mom’s cousin, was also interested in them! In fact, I think Natasha was sometimes more invested in the storylines that our Barbies’ lived than we were.
Some members of my family for what I am assuming is a wedding reception. However, for lunches, we would have at least 2 dozen members of the family get together. Natasha is the young adult female with black hair on the left. My great-grandparents are at the head of the table.
Natasha was only a few years younger than my mother. Therefore, we absolutely loved the fact that a grown adult wanted to play Barbies with us for hours on end. As we got older, Shereen and I began noticing that Natasha was the only adult who was interested. We were confused why did Natasha not have her own family or do things like the other adults did. As young children, we did not complain because she was an awesome playmate. My mother explained that Natasha was special and has a warm heart, but her brain developed a little differently. Not fully understanding that concept, we continued playing barbies with Natasha every Friday in her room for a few years.
As Shereen and I grew older, we also grew out of our Barbies phase. Natasha did not. It got really awkward telling her that, “No, Natasha, we don’t want to play Barbies with you today.” I was 11 years old and I looking back, I want to punch my 11-year-old self in the face. Natasha had a mental disability and although she had an adult body, she never developed an adult state of mind. Natasha was patient and offered to play other games with us. I can’t remember what other games she offered, but I knew that Shereen and I probably broke her heart because we weren’t interested in the other games she offered.
My mother (right), my aunt (top center), and Natasha as a baby (bottom center).
At the time, my original hometown did not have resources or centers for persons with disabilities. In fact, there was still a stigma and misunderstandings regarding disabilities, mental or physical. My grandfather did a lot of innovative things for his niece, Natasha. However, she still spent most of her time living with her grandmother and most of the time isolated. My family loved her and included her in our family activities, but I know that she felt different.
In the year 2000, my parents, sisters, and I moved thousands of miles away. Therefore, we only saw Natasha during the summers when we visited. A few years after that, when I was 18, my great-grandmother passed away. Natasha moved next door to live with her first cousins in her own small apartment that as above the cousins’ house. When I was still in college, Natasha passed away, alone, when she was about 35 years old. I do not remember the last conversation I had with her. Yet, the only thing that kept on looping over and over in my mind was the memory of me telling Natasha, “No, I do not feel like playing Barbies with you today.” Shereen felt the same way. We felt immense guilt for some reason. My mother told us, “Do not worry, Natasha, knows that you two loved her.”
Regardless, I always felt that I needed to do something that honors Natasha’s life. I just never knew how, until now. A little over a year ago, my sitemate Karen, a G15, co-lead a Peace Corps project called “Let’s Play Together” (LPT). This project is a partnership with the McLain Foundation for Children in Georgia and Peace Corps Volunteers. We create one-day events in various towns and villages in Georgia, mostly in underserved villages. In these events, children and young adults of all abilities play, dance, create art, play tug-of-war, and other fun activities throughout the day. In the last couple of years, we had hundreds of children participate in Khashuri, Batumi, Sachkere, Terjola, Kutaisi, Rustavi, Gori, Poti, Ozurgeti, and even Tbilisi.
My G15 sitemate, Karen (left) and I (right) during the Let’s Play Together event in Khashuri on Saturday, June 10th, 2016
Karen pulled me into the project and after she finished her Peace Corps service, I took over her role as the logistics person for Let’s Play Together. I currently co-lead this project with my friend Courtney. We have led four amazing events in this school year and we are currently in the process of handing the project over to the two amazing G17s for them to run the project next year. I truly feel like this project helps me honor Natasha’s life and provides a way for me to make an impact in Georgia, specifically for young Georgians with various and different abilities.
Like Natasha, Georgians with different abilities, specifically outside of Tbilisi, have very little resources and opportunities. Many face stigmas and the community still believes in this crazy myths surrounding disabilities. One time, I heard a story, that If I remember correctly, a little boy in an underserved village became bedridden because the family was told that the child was not supposed to go outside or do anything due to his condition. The boy would not have been bedridden if the family was properly educated. Basically, the child became MORE disadvantaged due to the stigma and lack of education regarding disabilities. I was dumbfounded.
In June 2017, we hosted a Let’s Play Together event in the town of Khashuri. That Saturday morning, it started to rain. Karen and Courtney O., the G15s who ran the committee before Courtney A. and me, expressed concern regarding the event. I remember telling Karen, “why does it matter if it rains?! It rains all the time in Georgia and life moves on.” Then Karen told me the shocking news that an old Georgian wife’s tale if a person with a disability is in the rain, that his/her disability will worsen. Sure enough, only two children with disabilities showed up. The other parents were concerned about their children because it was raining. Luckily enough, by 10:30 a.m., the sun started peaking through the clouds. We called many parents to remind them of the event. We had more children with disabilities come, but still, the number of participating children could have been higher if it weren’t for the rain.
Let’s Play Together event in Zugdidi, Georgia in December 2017. Courtney (immediately left of the poster in the green shirt) and I (immediate right of the poster in the red shirt) are the G16 committee leaders. The remaining people in the photo are the Peace Corps Volunteers that participated in the event that day.
Another story, not related to Let’s Play Together, but still worth mentioning is the healing myths of Ureki’s magnetic beach sand. Ureki is a town in the western part of Georgia along the coast of the Black Sea. The beach is absolutely gorgeous; the sand is black and fine. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, it is said that “it heals people with its disabilities.” Justin and I have been to this beach a couple of times. We will see many children with wheelchairs lying on the beach. I do not have words for this, except to say, that I doubt that this myth is scientifically supported. Many Georgians that I have met swear by this and the beach’s healing powers. I find it upsetting because a lot of children with disabilities are tucked away in their family homes. They are not active in society. Yet, I will find children of various abilities on the beach with their parents praying close by. Here is another blog post in which describes briefly where the healing powers come from.
This is one of the reasons why Let’s Play Together is such a great project. MAC provides all sorts of resources for the event. Physical therapists attend the event and help us. We have games that involve everybody- regardless of level. Our games are intriguing, involving mind and body and creating a bond between the participants and youth volunteers.
Therefore, Let’s Play Together has such a simple concept, yet it is very impactful. Having an event in which children of various abilities play together demystifies our differences. Through games and dance, we all realize we are more alike than different. Every person on this earth has value and can create impact. It is important that we create a safe space in which people of all backgrounds feel valued and appreciated in life. The event may be only a few hours long, but I know that it means a lot for our participants and volunteers. It means a lot to me to be a part of such a strong and impactful project during my service.
My organization and I applied and received a grant from the Let Girls Learn project to encourage teenage girls into sustainable, green farming! How? We taught them how to compost and provided them with the materials to do it in their villages!
When I studied abroad in Hong Kong during college, I took a day trip to Mainland China for a Spa Day with a friend. In the cab, on the way to the spa, I saw a milk ad on a billboard. It had a cow, showing its utters, stating how fresh her milk is. Right next to the cow billboard, there was an ad for pork. It had the same set-up, a pig was basically saying, “Hey, I’m yummy. Eat me.” It freaked me out. I realized that American commercials (excluding Chick-fil-A), tends to shy away from things like that.
American culture, regardless of personal values, does not have a strong desire to know where our food comes from. Things are slowly changing, but it is true. When I told people that our “pet chickens” were later “dinner” in Peace Corps, people thought, “oh, my poor thing.” It is completely forgotten that most of the world and human history knows exactly where their food comes from. For centuries, most of food came from our backyard’s or our neighbors.
My PST (Pre-Service Training) Host Family were farmers and grew various vegetables and fruits. I personally picked out these garlic bulbs from the garden back in PST.
For Georgia, this is still the case. According to The Fund Georgian Center for Agribusiness Development, the “agricultural sector employ[s] around 53% of the active workforce.” For less than 4 million people, that is a crazy amount of farmers. In my personal opinion, this is probably an inefficient way to feed a nation. To make matters worse, there are a lot of harmful farming practices in the country.
My host neighbors in PST riding their tractor to the far early in the mornings. I would see this man so many days on my way to training.
Georgian farmers heavily use pesticides and toxic fertilizers. Green farming practices are nearly non-existent on a national level and are not commonly used by local, small-town farmers. According to WECF International, Georgia still uses illegal and toxic pesticides in their farming practices. Many of these pesticides are untested, and they are replicates
of the “western trademark pesticides.” Farmers tend to use these replicates because they are cheaper; however, they contain harmful toxins and pesticides that are also less effective at killing their targeted pest. The improper use and storage of these illegal and banned substances pose a health risk to the farmers and contribute negative effects on the environment.
My youth counterpart and I receiving fresh fruit from one of the farmers in our composting project
Also, men make up about 90% of farmers in Georgia (our own needs assessment). Females may look after small livestock, such as chickens. However, the men are strategically in charge of the farm and make the important decisions. Women, on average, own fewer assets, such as land, livestock, and human capital. They have less access to inputs, such as seeds, fertilizers, labor, and finance. They tend to depend on their husbands for these things. Increasing women’s resources could “help rural women maximize economic opportunities, increase productivity, and improve food security, education and healthcare since women tend to reinvest in their households” (The World Bank).
To alleviate some of this, my youth organization, Youth2Georgia, wanted to do a Composting project in the villages of Imereti. Initially, we submitted the proposal to the German Embassy, but we got denied. Therefore, six months later, we revamped the project idea and submitted it as a Let Girls Learn (LGL) grant. I discussed a bit of what LGL is in this post if you want to read more. We felt that composting was a great way to reduce the dependence of harmful fertilizers and pesticides while increasing female participation in sustainable, green farming practices!
Iberia College Training and Composting Demo. Here, we are building the first composting bin at the Agricultural School at Iberia College.
So for a couple of months, I worked hard with my counterparts. Many times, a Peace Corps Volunteer will write the SPA or LGL grant, but because we were not on a tight deadline, I refused to do that. For nearly two months, I spent several hours a week working with my counterparts. In fact, I did a mini, informal Project Design Management training. I explained all aspects of the Let Girls Learn grant writing process. They even wrote the first draft to the grant. I worked with them on all the edits. In the end, I rewrote a lot of the English and fixed it up. However, it was a truly a group effort and I was very proud of how much we designed the project together.
In total, we delivered three separate trainings. The first training was at Iberia College with about 20 participants. We trained the entire staff under the school of agriculture and their students. The staff and students included both male and female. We strongly believe that in order for gender equality to be achieved both men and women must participate in the process. The second training involved teenage girls and several of their mothers. We were hoping that involving the parents would increase the likelihood of them actually composting.
A picture of our second training. We held the event at a local winery of a famous female winemaker. The well-known female winemaker was also a participant and served as role model for composting.
We have later learned that there was no correlation between parent participation and girls composting. In fact, it seemed that less teenage girls wanted to participate in the training with their parents. Therefore, for our third training, we only invited 20 teenage girls. All the participants were from villages in our region. Therefore, all of them had access to large farms in which they could do composting.
This is the winemaker’s composting bin! I was so proud of how she got started on it and already filled it up half way within a few weeks.
Now, I will admit…We were not the most successful with the turnout. Only about 17% of the participant actually composted on their farms. However, over 80% indicated they understood how composting is made and why it is important as evident by our post-tests. More importantly, they understood why increasing female participation in farming is important (we had a gender component in our training).
On one of our monitoring days, we visited the sites that started the composting. I’m not making this up, but it was one of the most beautiful days I had in my service. I cannot tell you how bright the smiles were of our participants. For those who composted, they loved it! Seeing how proud they were made me proud! It was heartwarming how they took care of their composting bins and how it will change the quality of their farming.
For two of the three trainings, I had partnered with one of my friends and Peace Corps Volunteer Ryan. If you read the Thanksgiving post, he is referred to as Yarn Skallah. He was conducting a grant and a project to teach youth to professionally film and edit videos in the same community I was doing my composting. We thought it would be a great idea to film the composting trainings. If you are interested, here is a YouTube video of my trainings!
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
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.
