Border Lands

I was out to dinner with friends in Lviv, Ukraine when I checked my e-mail and found out that my new village in Georgia would be Tamariani. I quickly Google mapped it and my first thoughts were, I’ve complained so much about not having a real toilet that they have stuck me in Azerbaijan! By the looks of it, it looked like I was only two or three kilometers away. Since arriving back in Georgia I had been thinking about walking and looking for the boarder for a few weeks and over the weekend when I was in Tbilisi I was talking to some other volunteers. I told them where I lived that that I was basically in Azerbaijan. All of them wanted to know know what the boarder looked like and I had to give them the bad news that I still hadn’t been there yet.

On Monday it was a really warm, sunny spring day. I decided that I might as well try to find the broader and see if it was really that close. I walked through my village talking to a fellow volunteer on the phone about the past weekend and I came across a group of students and waved hello and kept on walking. I reached the end of the village and I had made it to a field. Out of no where my fourth grade shadow came running and screaming towards me, like she always does when I think I am lost and then walks me home. I sighed and looked down at her and tried to reason with her that I was not going to fallow her back to my house today, I was going for my walk. My Georgian is still really, really bad, but her English is worse. A few other students showed up and one was an 11th grader who has a decent grasp on the langue and I explained that I was going for a walk. It appeared that my shadow was not going to take no for an answer and if I wouldn’t turn around she was going to stay with me. We walked in a barren corn field and I started speaking to her in English, it was better then talking to myself and I might as well be good company. I asked her if she was going to fallow me back to America too and she said yes. I laughed because I know she has no idea what I said, but I can picture her really trying to run after my car when I go back to America crying that I am leaving her. I suppose I could adopt her, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

As we walked, we went over the alphabet and numbers up to ten. I felt like we were making progress on our English. Every once in a while she would point back to the village and say that we should go back. I would say no and that she could go back. She acted like she was going back a few times, to see if I would fallow, but she quickly caught on that I would not fall for that game. 

We came to a four way intersection of dirt roads, one was the road we came on, one road went over a bridge, one road lead back to town, and the other road went along a river. I went with the last one. I told my shadow that I was looking for Azerbaijan and pointed in the direction that we were heading in and she told me that I had it all wrong, that Tbilisi was that way. I told her I had looked it up on Google maps and I had been to Tbilisi the past weekend and I knew it was the other way. We walked along the river and stopped at one point to take a few photos. On our other side was a field with horses and I asked if we should go ride them. She shook her head no. (Swear to God this child knows English, but pretends not to just to annoy me.)

I saw two men approaching in the distance and assumed they were the farmers who owned the field and I didn’t want to be rude so I walked towards them. The closer I got, it became clear that they were in fact soldiers. Soldiers with big automatic weapons and binoculars. Oh shit.

They came up and said a curt hello and it became apparent quite fast that they didn’t know English and well my Georgian is again, crap. They tried asking what we were doing here and thank god my shadow started talking a bit. I used my crap Georgian to tell my student to tell them that I was her teacher, we were just going for a walk and taking photos. (It’s funny, but kids seem to understand me better. Adults just don’t listen.) They asked “Document?” I pulled out my cellphone and iPod and was like “no document, I was just going for a walk.” One pulled out his walkie talkie and the younger one pulled out his cell phone. They told us to wait there. There was some conversation and I kind of stood around kicking the dirt with my boots and looking up into the bright sun, thinking can we go yet? I turned on my camera and started to take a photo of my shadow and they said no photos and made me show them the ones I already had. I flipped threw a few and then realized I still had ones of me being silly to have a profile pictures with my new glasses on so I stopped. I was happy to see that they didn’t care, that I didn’t show them all to them. 

I pulled out my phone and called my co-teacher, like she said to do if I ever needed help, and handed it to one of the guys. He handed it back to me and she said, “Emily, listen, you are on the boarder lands. You should not be there. You see the river? Half that river is Georgia, half the river is Azerbaijan. You must stay there until the commander comes in 10 or 15 minuets. Ok, Emily?” The border lands? Where the hell is the “Welcome to Azerbaijan” sign? Shouldn’t there be a fence?

The soldiers just kind of stood around smoking cigarettes, the younger one kept playing with his cell phone. I stood around a little bit more, but I felt a little stupid so I just sat down on the ground and picked at the grass. My shadow was unfazed by the whole thing and was playing with a thorny plant, pulling it apart. The young soldier asked my name and I asked his and he laughed when I said it wrong. It was clear this conversation was going no where.

In the distance we saw dust and a pickup truck speeding towards us. A middle aged man got out and I was relieved that he spoke decent English, at least it was good enough to interrogate me. He again asked for my documentation and I explained that I had just been going for a walk and was unaware I had stepped into the “Border Lands.” He asked my name, nationality, what I was doing in Georgian, when I came and when I was leaving. He didn’t badger me and could see that I was indeed a harmless American. He told us that he would drive us out of the “Border Lands,” even though I was sure we could walk the 500 meters there ourselves. When we reached the edge he said he could drive us home and I said that would not be necessary, I did not want my host family freaking out. We were greeted by a handful of my students when we got out of the truck. One girl gave me flowers, a welcome back to Georgia present I can only assume.

I walked my shadow home for once and headed on to my own house. When I got there my host family was sitting outside talking to a neighbor and I thought, yes they have no idea. I stopped at the picnic table to say hello and they said they had received an interesting phone call from the sheriff. My host dad asked if the army was good. I said yes. My host mom made a gesture that said she knew she should be mad at me, but found the whole thing really hilarious. 

Two days later my host family is still making fun of me every chance they get. I go along with it. I understand I am entertainment for these people. I wasn’t harmed in anyway and I am sure that if I spoke half decent Georgian I would have gotten a date from that solider. I also thought about baking them cupcakes and bringing them to them as a thank you for not killing me, but I am living in Georgia and the closest grocery story is two hours away in Tbilisi, because you know I can’t make cupcakes from scratch. I also would have to go back to the “Border Lands” to deliver them and I don’t want to do that anytime soon. I am however really tempted to go back with a hand painted sign that says, “This Is The End Of Georgia” and maybe some of that yellow cation tape and make my own fence, because really having another country a thirty minuet walk from your house isn’t all its cracked up to be.

I can see Azerbaijan from my backdoor! 

My silly photo that I didn't want the soldiers to see.