No Love for the Georgian Bromance

A running joke among my volunteer friends and I is that my host family thinks I am a man. I personally think it is hilarious, that we have come to this conclusion and for the most part they do have a point. My host father is quite keen on having me drink and for the first week everyday he would offer me different kind of alcohol, which I would also deflect with answers like that beer makes me vomit. I’m never a hundred percent successful at this. Last week I ended up having beers with my host dad and the region’s police chief. I hate to say it, but I was almost out drinking both of them, but then again they were were in a heated debate over some topic in Georgian so all I had to do was politely sip beer out of my “I <3 Georgia” mug, that my host parents bought for me in Tbilisi. (I cannot wait to take this bad boy with me back to America and use it for the Keurig machine at Gap.) The other night I also got in on the boys drinking action when we were having a supra to celebrate to delivery of about 5,000kg of fertilizer. I will admit it is fun for me to kick it with the village men, chugging wine, eating great food, toasting to everything, and trying to get me married off. Yes, that’s right I have a potential husband lined up. He seemed more interested in who ever was texting him, probably his secret girlfriend, then me. I am also pleased to report that I did not throw up after drinking all that wine, which again makes me a man. 

You see women here aren’t suppose to be drunk in public. A lot don’t seem to drink at all because of this, especially in the village. I have Georgian female friends who have been away to university and have lived a life away from their families and then after to come back and live with them. I had a friend tell me I like to drink a little and dance, but my brothers don’t like when I do that, so I don’t in front of them. If my older brother ever told me that I shouldn’t drink, I’m talking social amounts not black out amounts, I would tell him to go to hell. When I in my house my host mother is always hovering around to make sure that I don’t look too bad off or that the men aren’t too rowdy. If anything like this happens she pulls me out. If she thinking I am drinking too much she will try to cut me off, and normally my host dad shooters her down I am sure he says to her, “Just let her drink, she’s still in control. She is my American son I have never had. I mean half her head is shaved, so clearly she’s not a Georgian woman, there for she must be a man!” 

They have also tried to take me hunting for little birds with them. It’s quite a popular man activity here. They have this big riffle looking gun that shoots pellets. On the weekends they are always doing target practice, if they don’t have something to do like make Cha Cha. I honestly haven’t seen them kill a bird yet and I kind of want to take them up on the offer to go hunting and kill something so I can one up them. My host dad thought I didn’t want to shoot a gun and that is why I didn’t want go hunting. I really didn’t feel like being laughed at for doing something wrong again. I ended up pulling out my pictures of target practice from Ukraine. They were super impressed, it was either my sweet hat or the fact that I had l told them that I killed ten Russian spies with a sniper riffle, you decide. 

Ukrainian Rebel

They have also been really interested if I can drive or not. I explained to them that I have a license and my own car back home. There minds were f*ing blown. I drive and have my own car? They told me I could take the BMW for a spin, but it’s not an automatic, however the Mercedes SUV is. Again I think it was my host mother who ruined my fun and informed them that I could not drive cars when I am here. The men then had the bright idea that I can drive the tractor this spring. (Because yes boys, that is not a motorized vehicle, which again I am pretty sure that I cannot drive here. I will however pose for a photo op later on.) Many women here don’t drive, either because they don’t have a license, or because the men here just drive too crazy. They kind of have made up their own rules that they just seem to know, and I hate to say it, but I’ve heard that women driving causes a lot of accidents here because they fallow the proper road rules, not bro ones.

There are a lot of gender specific rolls here in Georgia and I am not completely against them. It is a very traditional society and awesome if the men want to be out in the fields growing the food that the women are going to cook in the kitchens. The issue I have is the double standards. We have a female friend of the family that comes over at least a few times a week, always brings some kind of food, and sits socializing with us, and oh smoking cigarettes. (Women here don’t smoke cigarettes in public incase you haven’t caught on yet.) She keeps a pack hidden in our kitchen and stays around for an hour or so and smokes a few. I do not know how her husband doesn’t know or better yet   why she should have to hide it. I understand that it is not the best habit to have, but I don’t think it spouses should be hiding things like that, I mean she goes off to a friends house so she can light up? I know she’s not the only one to be doing something like this. We were told during orientation to be aware that in the villages smoking women would hide it. I mean come on, people know you are doing these things, why not just do it in public if they all know? I’ve been tempted to walk down my village smoking a butt on my way home from school, with my bright red lipstick on and headphones in, just to see people’s reactions, but I am a teacher and I don’t need my students thinking this is good behavior. I just want to do it in spite so badly some days. The men can’t really judge, because most of them smoke and the village women already know that a select group smokes and they don’t beat them with sticks. Do it in public already! Stop hiding! 

The thing that I think pissed me off the most since being here was being at a supra with a friend and there were probably twenty or so people at it. The wife of the house hold that it was being held at was rushing around most of the time while we were eating, making sure that there was enough food, never really having time to sit down herself and enjoy the party. The table was split men on one half and women on the other. This seems quite common and I’m not horribly against it. The women can talk about women things like mommy and me yoga and guys can talk about the newest Apple product, oh shit sorry this is Georgia, those things don’t exist here. (Kind of off topic but I told my sixth grade boys how much I paid for my MacBook and they about shit their pants the other day.) 

The supra went on for hours and it was a school night and I wanted to get home and go to sleep. It was close to 10:30pm and the guys kept drinking more and more, toasting away. They were making a racket and having a jolly time. I looked over at my half of the room and it was full of a bunch of the most tired, pissed off looking women I had ever seen. One of the wives was even pregnant and the guys were completely ignoring the fact that we were beyond over it. None of us had drank, which was probably a good thing in my case, because if I had, and known enough Georgian to get my point across I would have shouted at them for being so fucken rude and irresponsible. They are suppose to take care of their wives, keep them happy and protected, yet they were sitting there drinking more and then driving home at least somewhat intoxicated. They more then had their allotted amount of fun. I mean this supra started around 5pm and I didn’t get driven home until well after 11:30pm and that was only because my friend was able to use the excuse that I was an American guest who had to teach the next morning. If I was a Georgian woman, forget it. I would probably still be there. Unacceptable in my eyes. I have grown up around very strong women, who have taught me to stand up for myself and I know that if my dad ever tried to pull crap like, especially if my mother was pregnant, he better enjoy the couch, because he was going to be sleeping there. It is so hard at times to sit in a country where women don’t always have a voice, granted mine is a rather loud, strong one. I would never stand for a spouse that acted like a big man-boy. 

After this particular supra, I was on the phone with one of my friends and I said, “I’m pretty sure this year I am going to get into more cars with drunk drivers then I had in my whole life.” I don’t really make it a habit, to be driven around by drunks in the States, but it has happened a few times, when people were a little buzzed. I can probably count the times on one hand, if I really sat down and thought about it, like I said it’s not a habit I am into. Here however, when someone gets pulled over the first thing they do is breathalize you, wether or not you seem drunk. This happened on one of my marshooka rides and man was the driver pissed. That says something about a country when they check alcohol content in the middle of the day. My friend asked why I didn’t refuse to get into the car of someone who had been drinking. I told her I didn’t want to cause a scene. He also didn’t appear to be drunk. I know that is not an excuse and people reading this right now are thinking that I am in fact stupid as shit and that I make poor choices. I except this, however to it is a really hard situation if the driver doesn’t look clearly intoxicated and his family members are getting in the car. You will seriously offend someone by questioning their ability to drive and you will shame them, which is taken very seriously here. It’s one of those damned if you do and damned if you don’t things. I feel every volunteer is going to or has at some point and not just once but multiple times had to deal with this. (I might add the last time I left my village was over almost two weeks ago so I am not getting driven around that much to start with.) Also if the police just assume the drivers they pull over are drunk, even if your drive is sober, the one next to you on the road may not be. 

Things like these make me wonder why I am here sometimes. I shake my head and think, “I just don’t know any more.” This weekend I am most likely going to try to spend at another volunteer’s place, which he has his own mini-apartment. I don’t know how to exactly explain to my host family that I will spending a night sleeping over at a guy’s house without them freaking out and thinking I’m a whore. (Women in Georgia don’t have sex unless they are married and if you are sleeping at a guy’s house you are sleeping in the same bed as him and there is penetration. There is also no such thing as a guy and a girl being friends here.) Nope, it’s more like a sleep over with two ex-pats who want to be able to speak fluent English to someone in person, while drinking a little, making fun of this crazy situation so they don’t loose their minds and then passing out in separate beds in different rooms. I am just waiting for the shit to hit the fan with this one. It makes me miss America and my parents who accept that I have friendships with guys and I’m not sleeping with them, but then again I think they suspect that the majority of them are gay. (We don’t have gay people in Georgia.)

I just want to slam my head against a hard object and go, what the hell are you people thinking? There are so many things I don’t understand here and it bothers me a lot. It’s just so backwards, like the fact that my host father encourages me to drink so much and then the next morning asks why I was drunk last night and why I am hung over this morning. I don’t know. I guess it’s because I am in fact not a Georgian man?