Ben Sweeney’s Weblog

So, back to regularly scheduled programming. I’ve been up to a lot of studying lately – lectures/conferences, research, as well as recently started Georgian lessons. However, I still have a backlog of stuff that might be interesting, starting where I left off a bit ago.

Anyways, as I mentioned before I was walking with Stefano around the old castle on the mountain top and we met some locals. They managed to get my number from Stefano and so I invited them to my upcoming party. They said they were busy in the evening, so I set up a date with Ana, the Georgian girl, earlier in the day.

I don’t remember if I talked about my dating experiences for my month in Russia, but they were pretty surreal. During one, the girl’s boyfriend showed up outside the café – he was unhappy to see me, and she was unhappy to see him. The other story also ended up with the girl probably having a boyfriend as well as some interesting details too complicated for here.

This date was not an exception. The girl interested in me, and well vice versa, showed up with her friend Shoko as a chaperone of sorts. This was awkward mostly because Shoko only knows Georgian, while Ana and I were talking in Russian. We walked along Rustaveli, the main street here, Shoko and Ana arm in arm, while I chatted with Ana. We sat on a bench eventually, and I figured out why they couldn’t come to my party – they are not allowed out after dark. I also think that Ana doesn’t have a cellphone, and had to communicate with me with Shoko’s (using some of the most incomprehensible quasi-Russian sms language I have ever encountered). Also, they are 19, not young ‘tweens, for whom I could see a curfew being applicable.

We talked about society and gender roles in Georgia, something which I had already heard about. Society, while opening up, is still very traditional with sex before marriage strictly forbidden for girls, but permissible for most men, most of whom have some kind of encounter with a prostitute while still in their teens. Also brought up was the paradigm that Russian girls are sluts, with the idea that a Russian would be ashamed if they were still a virgin at 30, whereas a Georgian girl would be proud of that fact.

In all, it was quite pleasant, but I didn’t see much of a future with girls who couldn’t hang out after dark, whether or not they planned to be virgins until marriage. I’ve been getting more text messages from Ana, she told me that if I ever have a party during the day, she would be able to come (with Shoko of course).

I left them to go prepare for my party (which Stefano beat to writing a blog post on – http://ourmanintbilisi.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/ben-ians-housewarming/ ). Knowing Georgians, I decided to pick up some food beforehand, so I got a few bags of chips, some bread and dip, as well as some candy. My friends and friends of my roommates started arriving – the first 4 or so people here were all Georgians, and we hung out in the kitchen and had some beer and nibbled on the snacks. When they heard more people were coming, they conversed in Georgian and went and got their coats. They came back with bags of food – mostly sausages, and more bread.

More Georgians showed up, about half of them had more food contributions – candies, cakes, a huge jug of wine, beer. I already had chacha in my freezer, so I brought that out too. We moved the kitchen table and all the chairs we could find into the dining/living room until we could barely squish everyone in. Then we started feasting and toasting. I was simply amazed how my plan for a simple party with music and dancing and chatting had turned into a full blown supra.

Ian, my roommate eventually showed up after a long day working his two jobs and joined in, and other people kept trickling in. Shaman showed up (I’ll explain about him in the next post I think), and so did the guy we started calling Warmongler, as well as one of Georgia’s top rock stars actually. Warmongler is this defense contractor working in Georgia, and in our crowd of NGO workers and people who value peace, he became disparagingly known as someone who would profit off the blood of the innocent. So, first, Warmonger, then with the “l” added – a touch of Swedish linguistics apparently. Anyways, it was a bit of a shock to see Warmongler – after running into him I had thought we wouldn’t run into him again, and I don’t know how he heard about our party. He did have some interesting talks with Shaman though, who told him about this 700 year old woman his mother knows. Warmongler listened to all of this with a straight face and asked Shaman how old he thought he was. Shaman said that, oh, you must be much younger, perhaps only 300 years old.

The party went very nicely, the Georgians mixed with the expats well, there were Georgian dancing lessons, and one of my friends got an accidental call from me with me teaching someone how to sing along to a Clash song, the phone accidentally dialing from my pocket.

People stayed quite late, most left by 5, but a few stuck around, including Shaman who fell asleep on my couch, and Tano, a DJ who I talked to until he left at 7 in the morning. At this point I went to bed, exhausted and glad that everyone had finally left, but still pleased with how well the party had gone.

At 10 in the morning, my house phone starts to ring, and I pick it up. Its my landlord, and I groggily say “Hello Rezo.”

Rezo says “Good morning Ben, I heard you had a great party,” which is a strange thing to hear from a landlord.

“Yeah, it was ok, thanks, we weren’t too loud, were we?”

“Oh, no, but the neighbours still told me about it. Someone vomited off your balcony onto their stoop. Go clean it up.”

So I throw on some clothes and get my mop and bucket and go clean up the sick in the courtyard. The lady, whose stoop it was vomited on was quite pissed – she has kids (who she does not want to expose to debauchery) and no time to clean up other people’s vomit. Another neighbor was there, and helped too actually, so we got it cleaned up pretty quickly. I went home and had a beer, then took a bit of a nap before going and meeting Stefano for a coffee. We then decided to go to the Dry Bridge Market, to see if Stefano could pick up an expresso maker. Long story short, we met a (probably alcoholic) Georgian who glued on to us (as Georgians are wont to do), followed us around talking to us about Italian Neo-Realist films, and eventually found us a tiny antique espresso maker that some guy was trying to charge 50 dollars for. Too much, and we finally managed to escape from the Georgian guy.

I went home and then went for khinkali with Ian. I think this was the week in which I had khinkali 5 or 6 times – they really are incredible. Following this we went and met some expats at a beer garden, and then picked up some more beer and snacks and headed to Stefano’s place. At this point, I don’t know how we had the energy, I think it was meant to be a quite evening, but when you make plans like that in Georgia, they are almost always sure to go wrong as a Georgian will come along and do a cannonball in your pool of tranquility. In this case, there was a pounding at the door about halfway through our glasses of beer.

In comes Stefano’s neighbor, a smallish guy, bursting with energy. He sat at the head of the table and led us in toasts and told us about him. He reached the peak of his career at 24 or so as the vice minister of Sanitation and health for Georgia, and now at 28, he is trying to form a political party, but didn’t really have any political goals. While he was incredibly charming at first, it seems like he really just wants power, but it is unclear what he is going to do with it which sounds like a very dangerous situation.

Anyways, he goes around the table and does toasts to each of us, giving us Georgian nicknames. Stefano becomes Stefo, and we drank to Stefo. I finished my whole glass of beer, and the neighbor, called Meskho, gave me an indication of approval – that was the right thing to do, it means that I really respect my friend Stefo. Then came my nickname. I’ve been called Beni a lot here, the –i just puts the name in the normative case, but Meskho decided on Beno. At this point, Stefo weighs in, a little grumpy with his nickname, and puts forward Bepo. So we toast to Bepo, and again I think I manage to drink all or most of my glass. Meanwhile Stefo sipped his beer, although Meskho urged him to show me the same respect I showed him. He wasn’t going to, so I stepped in. I took Stefo’s glass and downed it. Meskho almost flipped out.

“What!?! How can you do that? Only I do that. I am here, you can’t be me too! Wow.” He was incredibly pleased at my honor, well, at my restoring Stefo’s honor by finishing his glass. Apparently it was amazingly Georgian.

We continued drinking until Meskho would leave at 4, and then headed home. I had to get up early to let in Mats, the Swedish journalist who was moving in to live with us for a bit and then went to bed.

I got up later, and headed out with Mats for more khinkali, but decided to stop at Ian’s office first. We walk in mid-Supra – they have a table full of grapes and khinkali and chacha. Apparently one of Ian’s co-workers had come back from her cottage with bunches of grapes and a little chacha, and the guys in the office took it upon themselves to turn this into a whole banquet. We joined in the feast. What a country this is.

Well, I’ll write about the protest first, then get back to the posts I’ve been working on, hopefully in a few days, although I’ve only been going on the internet every 4 days or so (which makes me feel out of touch with a lot of things, but has been weirdly liberating).

So, to address my last post, I did go to the protest, and while it was bigger than I imagined, it was pretty disappointing. The rain stopped by the time the protest really got going, so there was a sizable turnout, with a few thousand people showing up (maybe 6-7 thousand). They stood in front of the Parliament building on the main street in Tbilisi, blocking traffic and listening to speeches given by opposition leaders from a truck parked on the sidewalk. It seemed like the crowd was about half pensioners, although people here often look older than they actually are. This was a good sign for me, studying pensioners and all, but I was feeling pretty bad, getting over a cold, and didn’t really feel like interacting with people, even though of course I did eventually. I met up with Stefano (taking pictures) and Ian (on his way to work) in the crowd and we mingled.

I talked with a guy about what the protests were about, and the clear theme was ousting the president, Saakashvili, which I already knew. While most of the people I talked to didn’t propose a clear alternative to Misha (Saakashvili’s nickname), this guy said that they were going to try to change Georgia into a parliamentary state with a prime minister, more responsible to the people. Then he showed me some brass knuckles he had in his coat in case any there was any provocation from the police. I told him that getting rid of Misha is exactly what the Russians wanted from the conflict, and asked what he felt about that. He said that everybody at the protest were Georgians, pointed out banners of groups with their names, such as ‘Patriots,’ etc., but he didn’t completely convince me of his point.

I listened to a lot of the speeches, and it was quite nice to understand a bunch of parts of them, mostly American/Russian words with Georgian grammatical endings that change the meaning, as well as a few commonly used Georgian words. One of the speakers was quite excited that Obama had been elected, and gave the traditional cheer “Garamajos Obama,” literally “Victory to Obama.” Meanwhile, the crowd seemed mixed on Obama. A bunch of people were carrying posters with Obama’s face on them – friend Dan wrote more about this if you are interested, but I don’t think everybody there supported Obama. Most Georgians were in favor of McCain, and it is felt that Misha was tight with him. A lot of this is because McCain is more hawkish, in line with Georgian national feelings, and the fact that he would support Georgia in taking a hard line against Russia. Perhaps because this was an Anti-Misha rally, there was so much support for Obama.

I talked to some other people, and they really presented a picture of an atomized civil society. The people in the crowd didn’t really interact much with each other. People came in groups of 2-6 or so and just stood or talked with the people the came with. This group of people tried to explain what is wrong with Misha, that Georgia does not have a free press, that one of their friends standing there had been fired from his job at the University because of his political views. These people did not come with an organized group, even though there were a few groups there with their banners.

After a few hours in front of the parliament, the protestors organized in the street and marched to the presidential palace (still under construction). There, there were more speeches, and I got a good view of the oration. Standing on the podium of the truck was a speaker in the middle, flanked by two people with flags wearing gas masks, as well as various other opposition members. Last year there were protests, but of a much larger scale, and perhaps less anticipated/ planned. The government used tear gas on the crowd and even declared martial law for a short time. This year it really seemed to me that there was little to no chance of tear gas. Last time, Misha’s international image really suffered. He likes to present himself as a pro-democracy leader and the martial law really worked against that. To me, the crowd seemed pretty subdued, and I did not feel very much energy from them. I was texting with my roommate about all this from the protest and this is what he sent me:

Message 6:
Not quite the
weather for it.                      [‘it’ being rioting and tear gas]
Keep an eye out
for riot cops..
Remember piss
works well
against jellyfish
and teargas ; )
seriously if misha
does do something
stupid and let off
gas or something.
Wet your tshirt
and use it to cover
your face.. And
run..
From:+995 98 XX XX XX
04:45pm 11/07/08

I think tear gas could have been a real risk if the crowd had been a serious threat to Misha as president, but it really wasn’t. I did get an e-mail from the US Embassy when I checked my inbox a few days later. It warned not to go to the protest I think, I really did not have much time to read it, especially since it was no longer pertinent.

I did end up finding a gasmask myself. I was feeling weird in the big crowd funneled into the tiny alley by Misha’s palace, so I headed for home. The nearby streets were mostly deserted, except for police officers every 30 feet, and a gasmask just lying on the ground. I picked it up and went home, then to the banya and a large dinner with spur-of-the-moment lessons in Canadian and US civics. Then back home again, where I got involved in one of the more crazy things that have happened yet to me, basically involving a Georgian girlfriend, a missing (presumed dead) boyfriend, later the police, and then it turns out, another woman. This was a chain of events that caused me to get many frantic phone calls and SMSs from the Georgian girl, and has not finished yet, but I believe that this is all I can write about it, unless like I write a book, and in that case it will be a whole chapter called “If I Wrote a Story About it, I Would Call it ‘The Scarf.’” Look for it on shelves in 2010.

Anyways, I did talk to a bunch of pensioners at the protest, and got an interesting impression. They were there protesting, but not necessarily for their rights, and instead just to get rid of Misha. I told a few of them that I understood that they were against the president, and asked if they were for anything, to which they responded, “Oh, yes, we are for being against the president.” I kind of sighed, hoping to hear some kind of proposed change or dream for the future, and moved on. As I said, I really feel that civil society is pretty weak and atomized here, meaning that it is not very unified or organized. It is less of a society where people can interact with each other, and more a society of individuals. They all came together as individuals, less as organized groups, to show their discontent with the government, but I really feel like sustained parties with grassroots support would be more effective. One of the problems is that there are so many political parties here, each taking only a small segment of the population. A parliamentary government, while perhaps more accountable and democratic in principle, would be unstable and easily dissolved, and I could see a lot of the action taking place behind closed doors (which seems to be the situation now).

The fact that there were so many pensioners at the protest is an indication that they have some kind of political consciousness, even if their goals are negative goals (I mean being anti-something without a clear or unified alternative of what they are for). The real thing I came to study were the protests held by pensioners demonstrating for increased pensions and rights. The lack of civil society is a little disheartening, although I am finding the country quite interesting and will wholeheartedly study this lack of civil society.

To address the other points of my previous post: the bombing in Vladikavkaz is pretty clearly not Georgian and I don’t think the Russians are trying to construe it as such, the Lari has gotten a little stronger, although it is still down (with high margins between the buying and selling price), and we have electricity again (but yeah, no internets).

See you later, more posts soon!

So, there are protests scheduled today for in front of the parliament. I’m really hoping this will allow me to get in contact with groups of pensioners, something I’ve found hard to do. However, almost everyone I’ve talked to thinks the protests will be minor. The reason for the protests is it is the one year anniversary of major anti-Saakashvili protests from last year. Saakashvili has remained relatively unpopular, but he was re-elected, and although the conflict was unpopular to say the least, there is a feeling that getting rid of him would be a victory for the Russians. Also, it is raining, so I expect a smaller turnout.

The other thing I wanted to update about is fears that another conflict will break out. My roommate is a major proponent of this theory and he keeps me up to date on factors that could lead to this. Firstly, there are plenty of reports of open violence in South Ossetia, with sniper fire across the border. However, I have heard that much of the fighting is between Ossetians and Russians. Apparently the Ossetians are refusing to return the guns that the Russians gave them. Also, just recently, there was a bombing in Vladikavkaz with many dead and wounded. This is a follow up to Russian claims that there would be a Georgian terrorist act in Russia, and the Russians will probably try to blame Georgia for this, but I don’t think much will come of it. The point is though, that this region is not completely stable.

One other thing which has just come to my attention is that the Georgian Lari is taking a nose dive. Bad times, and I’m glad I have my money in dollars.

Also, my electricity has gone out, and having internet at home is as unlikely as ever.

I have many posts to catch up on, many half written, so expect more in the next few days, as well as an update on the protest.