The war was a sad and shocking end to my Peace Corps service, as these final posts reflect. The good news, however, is that the ultimate nightmare scenarios did not come to be. Things were tragically set back, but the resilient Georgians picked up the pieces and moved on with the rebuilding and reforming of their nation.

And I've moved on, too. Georgia has a way of drawing you back, though, and so I return for another year with another job. Please visit my new blog:

Epistles from the Caucasus

I'm writing this from Cairo on my way through a pretty large chunk of the Muslim world, Central Asia and China. Unfortunately, due to the current problems in Georgia I'm going to have to delay my return to the country (I was supposed to go for a short visit in September). I have heard from a number of my coworkers, who have been allowed to return to Gori. Society Biliki is back up and running with minimal damage. Since they are in the thick of the relief efforts, they have their work cut out for them.

Since I'll be traveling, I'm planning to organize a project to help out with this work after the holidays. Hopefully by the winter we will have a better picture of the long term needs arising from this crisis. In the meantime, a group of former Peace Corps Volunteers have started an initiative to help out with the current basic needs of displaced people. You can visit their website here.

This has been a very difficult few days. After a few days of intense fighting in South Ossetia, Russia invaded sovereign Georgian territory, including my former site, Gori. Apparently the mandate of Russian "peacekeepers" included bombing civilian targets outside of the conflict zone. I know for a fact that one of Biliki's children was killed in Sunday's bombardment. Today, despite a "ceasefire" Russian troops have surrounded Gori and have allowed Ossetian militants to loot and burn the city. I know a few people who remained to protect their property and homes, but I don't know how they are doing.

Peace Corps has completely pulled out of the country. All of the new trainees were sent home almost immediately and the remaining volunteers are safe in Armenia. I finished Peace Corps a week before the war began. The most frightening aspect of all this is how quickly the situation spiraled out of control. When I left the country two days before hostilities there was no indication that this would happen.

A few people have asked about my opinion of this situation, and I can give it now that I am a private citizen. As I see it, no side is innocent in this conflict. The Georgians were reckless to initiate the conflict in South Ossetia. The siege of Tskhinvali (the South Ossetian capital) was brutal and probably unnecessary. If the Russian statistics are true, the death toll of the battle will be around 2,000. Of course, the Russian response has been totally disproportionate and totally out of line with any international norms. The Russian regime has proven itself to be a brutal, oppressive 19th century-style power. The West owes it to Georgia and all emerging democracies to stand up to Putin and Medvedev.

In the meantime, the innocent civilians of Ossetia and Georgia are caught up in the crossfire. These people have been my friends and family for two years and it is heartbreaking to see what is happening to them. Fifteen years of progress is in jeopardy. I can only hope that there is something left of Gori when the dust settles.

-----------

More information:

BBC - Violence Flares in Georgian Town

New Republic - How the West Botched Georgia

NY Times - Georgia Says Accord Broken as Russia Occupies City

EurasiaNet - Russian "Imperialist Boots" Stomp on Georgia

EurasiaNet - Georgia: Scene of the Outbreak of Cold War II?

I know its been a long time since I have updated this blog. I finished out my service last week and left Georgia two days ago. Work got very busy and things fell by the wayside and I apologize for that. In the near future I will post some blog entries reflecting on the positive times during my last days in Georgia.

For those of you who have seen the news in the last few hours, the South Ossetian conflict, which has been boiling for years now, has become very violent. The threat of a new war is growing. I have every confidence that Peace Corps will take care of its volunteers; for me, I am safe in Turkey. We can only hope and pray that this violence does not spread further and threaten the progress for which my friends in Georgia have worked so hard.

In the meantime, for those of you looking for updated news, as always, I recommend www.civil.ge and www.alertnet.org.

It was generally agreed that this winter was the worst in a decade. In December and January, the temperatures were well below freezing. I heard rumors of Siberia-like weather in certain areas of the country, but this goes unverified. What I do know is winter here can be no fun. My wet clothes froze almost immediately when I put them on the line. I could literally fend off attacks with my solid underwear.

Making life even more difficult was the fact that my water pipes froze in early January and did not thaw until February. Apparently insulating pipes were a little too bourgeois for Soviet planners. A single faucet in the courtyard of my building remained, thanks to the fact that it was kept running all day and night. Once a day, the residents of my block would trudge down, buckets in tow and fill up.

But, life hasn't been all bad. Before I moved into the apartment last year, my landlord installed a modern gas heater. This heater can make an entire room toasty...so warm, in fact, that I could loose my long underwear (much to the envy of my other Volunteer friends). In March, as if the gods were feeling sympathy for us, the weather warmed suddenly. The snow and ice disappeared. I stopped using the heater. Life suddenly became more bearable.

Central heating is indeed a blessing, but an early spring...that is a miracle.

Nothing starts off the holidays here in Gori quite like Stalin's birthday. Every year on the 21st of December, nostalgic pensioners gather in front of the Stalin birthplace to hold speeches, wave flags and banners, and reminisce about the "good ol' days" of the U.S.S.R. My friends and I went to see the festivities. Despite the snow, some 50 people (a few were members of the Communist Party of Georgia--yes, it still exists) were milling around in front of the museum. It was quite possible that we Volunteers were the only ones there under the age of 60. Despite the fact that for most of these people's lives our two countries were enemies, the response to our presence ranged from curiosity to benign indifference.

I'm sure it seems strange to an American that Stalin would still be held in such regard, and I realize that so far I have written very little about the "Stalin cult" here in Gori and, to a lesser degree, in all of Georgia.

We all know what Stalin did while in power. Many Georgians here in Gori recognize that, though some either deny it or play it down ("He really didn't kill that many people...the capitalists are making it up...."). Its also important to realize what was accomplished during Stalin's time--the U.S.S.R. was taken from an underdeveloped cluster of nations to an industrial power rivalling that of the United States. They beat Hitler and got the bomb. So, for a lot of people, Stalin has come to represent what was once great about Georgia.

Here in Gori, of course, Stalin is alive and well. We have Stalin Street, Stalin Park, five statues of Stalin, the Stalin Museum and Birthplace... Gori's floundering tourism industry is just starting to understand the kitchy goldmine they're sitting on. Already, the Stalin Museum's admissions price has been raised to an outrageous 15 lari (about 8 dollars) and the giftshop sells Stalin busts and mugs. I'm holding out for Stalin tshirts.Of course, Stalin continues to come up in everyday conversation here. At the supra table, we inevitably drink to his memory. How do I deal with it? Whenever it comes up, I always invoke the Big Three--a toast to Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. Its always a winning toast and one that always gets an approving nod from the nostalgic pensioners.

Well, I've let this blog sit and languish over the winter for far too long. What's happened over the time away? Georgia has been in the grip of the coldest winter in a decade--leaving me without water for weeks (seriously, can insulation really be that hard?). Saakashvili was reelected, but the opposition remains unimpressed. We celebrated Stalin's birthday, American Christmas, New Years, Georgian Christmas, Georgian New Years, and Epiphany. And, finally, my fiancee Jessica came to visit.

I'll post more on all this meore...

The Iowa primaries may be 16 days away, but the Georgia presidential election--two days later--promises to be way more entertaining (or is it nerve wracking?). For those of you who haven't been keeping up, a snap presidential election was called following the events of November 7. There are currently seven candidates bidding for the presidency, including Saakashvili, who was required by the constitution to step down to run.

These elections seem to be an even wilder variation of the primary season. However, the only person who seems to be embracing the glitzy American-style of campaigning is Saakashvili, who has enlisted the help of pop stars, athletes and other celebrities. Last week, he came to Gori on a campaign stop. Judging from the preparations, the event was to be quite a show. A large tractor trailer truck, covered in Georgian flag decals and "5s" (the ballot number of his party), rolled into Stalin Square early in the morning. Later, it opened up to become a stage. More buses, plastered with the flags, the number, and giant pictures of Misha, later followed.

One of the "Misha Mobiles"

(thanks to my Georgian friend, Dato, for the pictures)

I did not attend the rally, but it really didn't matter. The music that blasted from the stage was so loud, you could hear it from several blocks away...enough patriotic pop songs to make Lee Greenwood proud. The theme song of the campaign, "Misha Magaria!" (Misha is Cool!), was recorded by a regional governor who was formerly in a boy band. The schools in town had let out for the event and it seemed that a large number of the people carrying Saakashvili placards afterward were decidedly too young to vote this year.

The crowd awaits Saakashvili

Since I don't own a TV, I can't follow the twists and turns of the campaign (Internet media has yet to catch on), but for there are a number of helpful websites for all you Georgian politics junkies:

As always, Civil Georgia is the best place for up-to-the-minute reports.EurasiaNet.org has set up an excellent site, complete with news, candidate photos and platforms.Finally, check out this blog if you're interested in reading an English translation of "Misha is Cool!"

Life has returned to normal...we'll see how long that lasts. In the meantime, I've posted a lot of pictures from our St. George's Day celebrations--the be all and end all of Georgian holidays. As usual, the residents of Gori went up to Gori Jvari and sacrificed their lambs...and later had a supra with lamb stew. Below are some of my favorite shots...the rest are on Flickr. A warning though, some of them may not be for the weak-at-heart.

The sheep market

This old woman sang on the mountainside for hours.

Children at the church, waiting to get the chickens blessed.

My apologies to PETA.

Little has changed in our situation since I last posted. There is still a state of emergency, the Peace Corps Volunteers are still of standfast, the opposition and authorities are negotiating back and forth. However, there are signs of improvement. It was announced that the emergency rules will be lifted at 7 p.m. today. Things are quiet here in Gori, but no doubt things will be interesting once the campaign gets into full swing.

Enough time has passed now that the Western media has begun to write analysis pieces on the recent events. While some of them are fairly accurate, its frustrating to see how much of the coverage lacks context and understanding of the country. It seems that some journalists, having last looked at Georgia in 2003, are now struggling to come up with a tidy new paradigm to explain what's been happening. If you're looking for coverage, the New York Times has been particularly detailed and, as far as I can tell, is the only American newspaper to be filing its own reports from Tbilisi.

Some links:

(of course, my previous disclaimers still apply)

NY Times - Challenger Named in Georgian Election

NY Times - Georgia to Lift Emergency, IMF Says Turmoil Damaging

NY Times - Georgia's Future Looks Like More of the Past

NY Times - Amid Turmoil, All Eyes Turn to Georgia's Patriarch . . .

BBC - Georgian tycoon "to contest poll"

BBC - Saakashvili defuses Georgia's crisis

That's all for now. I will write an entry very soon to discuss what I've been doing this whole time...

Well, its been a roller coaster of a day. This time yesterday, it seemed that there would be no happy end to the crisis here. Peace Corps Volunteers were packing their emergency bags and updating their resumes. It may be too soon to say we're totally out of the woods, but there is a palpable sense of relief in Gori today.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm restricted from sharing my political opinions on the matter...doing so would compromise Peace Corps' status as a non-political organization. If you're looking for opinionated commentary, there are plenty of private blogs reporting on the events from a variety to different perspectives. That said, I'll try my best to report my personal experiences as the events unfold.

The situation changed rather quickly yesterday. As I was leaving from work, I received word that President Saakashvili would be making a major address to the nation at 7 p.m. He announced that snap presidential elections will be called for early January 2008. Additionally, the question of when to hold parliamentary elections will be decided by a referendum. As of this morning, it seems that all parties are happy--if reelected, Saakashvili would be able to claim a mandate, while the opposition has now been given the chance to challenge him.

Currently, the emergency rules restricting the media and some political activity are still in place. However, like I said yesterday, outside of the capital, everything seems normal. Contrary to what it may seem like in the Western media accounts, all of Georgia is not under martial law. I had heard some stories of demonstrations in Kutaisi and Batumi, but Gori's Stalin Square was empty, aside from two workmen installing a tacky new clock tower.

It was very interesting yesterday to see how quickly rumor and hearsay can spread, especially with the major media outlets shut down. Information was passed across the country through emails and text messages. I heard countless stories of what exactly happened on Rustaveli Avenue, some may be true and some may be urban legends. One of the neighbors came in panicking that the government was enforcing a 6 p.m. curfew (not true). Over the course of the day, there was wide speculation as to the fate of one of the opposition leaders. People kept coming into the office with various stories--"he's in Gori hospital;" "no, he's dead;" "he's been kidnapped;" "he's okay;" "no, he's still in the hospital..." For the record, the opposition leader in question made an appearance in Tbilisi later in the day.

Georgian news websites were off line, so we turned to English-language sources. A good portion of my day was spent constantly reloading the front page of Civil Georgia. I got calls from Peace Corps Volunteers in isolated villages asking for updates. On two occasions, I was requested to check another Volunteer's email to ensure that no one from home had sent anything hysterical. What was life like before the internet?

More information:

Here are some links to other media sources that have covered the events of the past two days.

BBC - Georgia to hold early elections

BBC - In Pictures: Emergency in Georgia

NY Times - Georgia Leader Calls Early Elections to Decide His Fate

NY Times - Georgian Leader Imposes a State of Emergency

The Economist - Georgia's Protests

Washington Post - Georgia's President Moves Up Election Date

For up-to-the-minute updates go to: Civil.ge

NOTE: I post these links for your information, dear reader. Any commentary contained in them do not reflect my opinions or those of Peace Corps.

I've received a couple emails of concern about the recent developments here in Georgia. Yesterday, violence broke out in central Tbilisi after six days of opposition protests. Police in riot gear cleared the crowds with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. During the night, authorities shut down pro-opposition television and radio stations. A state of emergency has been declared in the capital and non-government news sources are not functioning.

I can tell you that the situation outside of the capital is calm, almost business as usual. My NGO opened for business today, the power is on, the internet is running. Some of the schools let out early, but in general, it feels like a normal day. We have been instructed by Peace Corps to remain at our sites, stay up on the news, and be ready in the event of an emergency. This is similar to the alert volunteers were place on for over a month during the Rose Revolution of 2003. Time will tell how things will turn out, but for the time being, don't worry--despite the headlines, things are calm and we're safe.

While traveling through the wine country of Kakheti, I stopped by the town of Signagi (pop. 2,146). I have to admit, I've never seen anything quite like it. As I mentioned before, the Georgian wine industry is attempting to put itself on the map. Naturally, wine attracts tourist, and these tourist have discriminating taste, so to speak. Up until now, there has been a lack of a destination--a place where these picky travelers can sit in posh hotels and admire the scenic views over some wine and cheese.

So, while most of the towns in the wine region gradually paint over their former-Soviet dullness, Signagi has opted for an extreme makeover in an effort to meet this future demand. In a throwback to the old days of Five Year Plans and centralized planning, the government is conducting a massive renovation of the entire town. Every storefront has been repainted, every street has been repaved (in quaint cobblestone); there are fancy new European lampposts and a fountain with a giant bronze stag. In a few more years, this will be quite a sight, but at the moment it feels like I should have been issued a hardhat at the city limits.

Signagi overlooking the Alazani Valley.

Signagi is certainly an inspired choice for a shiny new tourist town. It is situated on the side of a hill and overlooks the Alazani Valley far below. On a clear day, there is a spectacular view of the Caucasus. All of the houses along the narrow streets have wooden porches with intricate latticework. Oh yes, and it has one of the only Mexican restaurants in all of Georgia. It is only open by reservation made a few days in advance in order to give the manager enough time to go to Telavi to buy ingredients.

On the day that I visited Signagi, I arrived to find the town covered in Georgian and NATO flags. The town was celebrating the arrival of Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO Secretary General. Seizing on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (what little boy doesn't grow up wanting to see the NATO Secretary General?), we met up with some other Peace Corps Volunteers and stood in the receiving line.

Misha working the crowd.

You have to hand it to Saakashvili--he knows how to make a dashing entrance. Within a few minutes, we saw Saakashvili and his entourage triumphantly descending the hill with the only finished street in town. Once they reached the square, he began working the crowd--smiling, waving, saying gamarjoba. Oddly, few people were trying to shake his hand. When he got to us, my friend Nick daringly offered his hand. Saakashvili paused for a brief second, looking at us as if he were thinking these people don't look Georgian. He took Nick's hand, gave it a firm squeeze and moved on. That was it--our fleeting encounter with power. Satisfied, we worked our way back out over the construction pit, found a shady area, and had a drink.

October is grape harvest time and as luck would have it, last week I was in the wine region of Kakheti at the height of the season. I took the opportunity to visit the main wine factory of Badagoni, a fairly new wine company based outside of Telavi. Badagoni is a joint venture between Georgians and Italians. The result of this partnership is a strange combination of East meets West, Telavi meets Milan. The finest Italian wine making technology is plopped down in the middle of rural Georgia. Their marketing campaign (you can view television ads on Badagoni's website) juxtaposes a quaint Georgian bebia with some chic Italian models.

This is Georgia??

For all the rich tradition behind Georgian wine, its surprising that its not all that well known in the West. For a long time, Georgians were exporting strictly to customers within the Soviet Union. The Soviets' emphasis on high yield forced Georgian wine makers to sacrifice quality for quantity. Old Georgian vineyards were destroyed and various additives were used to make the grapes go farther. By the 1990s, Georgian wine was all but unmarketable to the West (this article from the NY Times gives a pretty interesting background on the situation).

As I witnessed in the Badagoni factory, all this is beginning to change. With Russia's embargo on Georgian wine, producers are looking to other markets. As a result, Georgia's wine is tasting a lot better. We were lead through the factory with lots of nice, shiny Italian machinery. At the end of the tour, we were given a tasting of three Georgian specialties--Saperavi (dry red), Mtsvane and Tsinandali (dry white).

The company Badagoni has poured a lot of money into the project, and it will be interesting to see where things go from here. In a few years, Kakheti may be the next Napa. Well, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself... Word on the street is that the bottles will begin appearing in the US very soon, and at $5 a bottle, that's quite a deal. If you find one at your local grocery store, say a toast for me.

I've been working with a group of volunteers to create Sakartvelo: Stories of Peace Corps Life in Georgia. We hope that this will be a monthly podcast about Georgia and our work here. Check out our website at www.sakartvelopodcast.org, or you can find us on iTunes.

Please, feedback is very welcome!

Right before fall set in, a group of friends and I decided to spend some time at a cabin in Borjomi National Park. The park is one of the largest in Europe and is impressively run. It regulates the visitors, has a full-time ranger staff, and keeps everything in good condition. So, its great to see such a nice destination that remains relatively untouched.

Unfortunately, the hike to the camp turned into a 15 kilometer trek up the side of the mountain. Nothing too extreme, but I found myself woefully out of shape and exhausted most of the way (the supra the night before certainly didn't help matters either). By the time we reached the top of the mountain ridge, it was getting dark and we were getting nervous about finding the cabin. As we continued along the trail, we found ourselves in the middle of a sheep herd. Two shepherds approached us and invited us in. They were kind enough to help us find the cabin, built a fire, and shared some vodka.

We had brought some marshmallows and graham crackers ("smuggled" from America by some new volunteers) and we showed the shepherds how to make s'mores. They were good sports about it, but had the usual look that Georgians have when we Americans push our cuisine on them. Our British friend, Clare, had also never seen a s'more and seemed more open to the experience. The next morning, the shepherds found us again and invited us over for breakfast--raspberry tea and bread.

The shepherd, on the left, serving us tea for breakfast.

In the end, they seemed reluctant to let us leave. They spend weeks at a time on top of the mountain during the summer, so life seems rather slow and monotonous. If you ever go hiking in Borjomi, bring some marshmallows--you never know if you'll need to entertain some bored Georgians.

Admittedly, I’ve done a pretty bad job of keeping everyone updated this summer. I promise that from now on, you’ll be hearing a lot more from me. Anyway, here in Georgia, the leaves are changing, it’s a lot windier, and we’re planning the Gori Halloween party. Fall must be upon us. But before we get into that, I’ll share some things that happened over the summer… In mid-August, I traveled to Kobuleti, a Georgian beach town, with my NGO for a staff retreat of sorts. Kobuleti is the Myrtle Beach or Coney Island of Georgian beaches—a real blue collar resort town. It lacks the faux nineteenth century architecture of Batumi or (so I’m told) the natural beauty of Sokhumi. However, it makes up for this with a sparkling new amusement park and a loud, raucous café/discoteka every fifty feet. Kazakh investors are pouring money into the town and there are about five large hotel complexes under construction. The feeling one gets walking down the street is that Kobuleti is a very rough work in progress. Cows graze along the boardwalk. Abandoned Soviet hotels sit crumbling and overgrown between spiffy modern buildings. Kobuleti's beach I spent most of the days sitting on the beach and reading. Georgians at the beach act much like Americans at the beach…sitting in the sun, reading, yelling at their kids for going too far out in the water. Unfortunately, Kobuleti has a stone beach, so sand castles are out of the question. Men in boats offered parasailing and tubing. Every ten minutes, a vendor would come by hawking inflatable toys, sea shell necklaces, soda, chips, beer and….corn on the cob?? Yes, corn is synonymous with summer here in Georgia.A beach toy vendor making the rounds.

One other food worth mentioning is Adjaran khachapuri—the cheese bread that is specific to the coastal Adjara region. Its bread shaped like a football, filled with cheese and an egg cracked open in the center. Once I got over my squeamishness to half-raw eggs, I found that this was one of the more delicious things I’ve had in Georgia. Interestingly, its really only sold at the beach; my Georgian coworkers bought a bunch to take home to Gori.Delicious Acharuli Khachapuri

Next entry: A hike in Borjomi National Park

After a month-long hiatus I'm back in the swing of things in Georgia. I returned to the US to find that it is still there, just as I left it. It was kind of strange to be in a country with all those shiny new cars, air conditioning, traffic laws, and fast food. Coming back to Georgia, I found the daily temperatures approaching 100 degrees and almost no rain for a month. Home sweet home.

Last week, I received a summons from the Gori Regional Court to come and testify in the case of the theft back in January. My host cousin was facing his court hearing date and I had to come and...say something. I was instructed by Peace Corps to simply say, "I have no more claims against this person, please don't call me again." We initially tried to do this in writing, but the judge insisted that I come to the hearing.

We arrived about 30 minutes late to find that the hearing (of course) had not started. So the waiting began. I spent most of the time in a van with one of the Peace Corps staff members, refining my "statement" and discussing the criminal justice system in Georgia. One interesting thing I learned: criminal court literally translates to "blood court." Also, Georgia is just now trying to implement trial by jury, but seem to be running into problems. What do you do in a country of less than 4 million where everyone is connected to everyone? An impartial group of peers is most definitely hard to find.

In the end, I never got to make my statement. The police never escorted my former host cousin from the prison to the court. We'll have to wait another day. In the meantime, we've submitted another petition to the court, basically saying "I have nothing else to say, don't call me again."

Its been far too long since an update, but life has been busy despite the heat and the slow pace of summer. The new group of volunteers-in-training arrived last week and Gori is the base of operations. This means that I get to play host, answer a lot of questions, and show everyone the ropes. Its actually a lot of fun and its nice to have everyone coming to me for a change.

Last weekend, I travelled with three of my friends to Kazbegi, a mountain region in north Georgia. Its the last major stop along the Georgian Military Highways, the main road that cuts north and south between Tbilisi and Russia. I think its the most beautiful area of Georgia, and the pictures don't really do it justice. But, until you can come see it for yourself, you can check it out on my Flickr page.

Mount Kazbegi is actually a dormant volcano with an elevation of about 16,500 feet. The church in the foreground is Gergeti Sameba--or Holy Trinity Church. As a point of reference, it stands at just under 7,900 feet. My friends and I got up early wheezed our way up the mountain, out of shape from a year of no exercise and out of breath from the elevation. We made it to the church, which had some spectacular views of the mountains. As a tour group from Germany approached, we continued up along the ridge, starting and stopping, until we reached a point to view the Kazbegi glacier.

As a follow-up to my last post: The European Commission and other sources estimate that pig fever is in 52 of 65 districts in Georgia. Restaurants here are substituting beef for pork. Meanwhile, in other Georgia news... There was a recent spat over road construction near the South Ossetian conflict zone, just a few kilometers away from Gori. Nothing as bad as last year's helicopter fiasco, but you know its summer when things start heating up in the Gori suburbs.

Finally, its now officially been a year. Appropriately enough, we marked the occasion in Tbilisi at a Thai restaurant. That same day, Joe Cocker came to town. To mark the occassion, Coca-Cola plastered his face on every Coke bottle in Tbilisi. Tickets were so expensive that the booking company offered a payment plan...and the whole place sold out. The iron curtain slowed pop culture down a bit.

Recently we received a bulletin from our medical staff about a rapidly-spreading case of African swine fever. We're always vigilant for bird flu, had a small bout with rabbit fever, but the case of pig fever has seemed to take everyone--including the Georgian authorities--by complete surprise. The virus doesn't affect humans, but it has the potential to completely obliterate the pig population in this country and make it impossible to restore it.

Public Enemy No. 1

In case you were wondering, pigs are a big deal here. First of all, they're physically huge...I've seen pigs that are as big as cows. Most of them wander around freely, much like the cows, and aren't confined to one pen. This is going to cause some problems when there are sick, free-roaming pigs in the country. But most importantly, pork is a staple here. Mtsvadi (pork kebabs) are a national dish; most New Years supras feature a large pig head as its centerpiece. We're in danger of losing a lot of good food!

The concern here is that if the virus is not stopped, it could spread south into Armenia and north into Russia. Already, 20 thousand of Georgia's half-million pigs have been slaughtered, but the virus continues to move east. It's going to make for a very interesting summer if this continues...

The weather has turned hot and dry, so in order to enjoy "the nature" before everything turns brown, my sitemate and I went on a hike. We went up along the mountain ridge above Gori to the site of a ruined fort. Here's a picture:

Also, Georgian wine has been in the American press a lot recently. Read this article from the Washington Post about one man's personal mission to raise awareness of kartuli ghvino among American consumers.

After the fun in Lankaran, I headed up the coastline to Baku, that boom town on the Caspian. The city is flush with cash--oil and gas revenues--and so it feels way more cosmopolitan than anywhere else I've been in the Caucasus. It has a much larger foreign population than Tbilisi, many of whom work for BP and other oil companies. There's a definite sense that the city is going places. Its one of the fastest growing in the world, if all those construction cranes are any indication.

Baku panorama. The gothic-looking building is a Soviet-era government building.

In Baku, I stayed with a young expat couple who are working for BP. It was a bit strange to move from Peace Corps Volunteers to young professionals; I sometimes felt as if they had picked up some scraggly homeless man of the street. Needless to say that their living standards are much higher than mine--no bucket baths for them. But I was very grateful for their hospitality and showing me a good time. Incidentally, one of my hosts was one of the engineer sfor the Shah Deniz gas field, the main source of natural gas for Georgia. I now know who to complain to the next time we have a gas shortage.

Baku has a beautiful historic section filled with old mosques, carpet shops and hamams. The centerpiece of Old Town is the Maiden Tower, a bizarre looking building from the 12th century. Aside from the center, there is little else for a tourist to do. Fortunately, there's some good shopping, including a huge selection of cheap 3-dollar DVDs. No doubt these come from the most reputable of sources.

Historic Baku

My return to Georgia was more or less uneventful, aside from a wheezy old Azeri man who kept calling me "puppy" in Russian. Its also possible he was using some diminutive name from the word "son" (like "sonny boy"), but it sounded more like the former. We got into an argument over my origins; he insisted that I was British, even though I showed him my American passport again and again. But he made up for the minor annoyance by sharing some dinner and vodka.

I returned to Georgia early in the morning to find the miserable April weather gone. The leaves were green and the weather was warm...not a bad homecoming, not bad at all...

After Sheki, I traveled with some other Peace Corps Volunteers to a town called Lankaran, a town on the Caspian Sea just north of the Iranian border. Its quaint by Azeri standards, with a nice black beach and a lighthouse. One of the tourist "sites" is a large, cylindrical prison that once held Stalin. Legend has it that Gori's favorite son escaped to the Caspian through an underground tunnel. Nowadays, the site is abandoned and crumbling.

Lankaran's main square.

The first night in Lankaran, it was pouring rain and the power was out all over town. I had gathered with a group of PCVs in one of their homes, trying to keep dry. For dinner we had lavangi, a dish most famous in Lankaran. It is basically a whole roasted chicken stuffed with walnuts which you are supposed to eat it with your fingers. So here we were: sitting in the dark, soaking wet, hunched over whole chickens and tearing the meat with our hands. Is this what Peace Corps does to a man?

The PCVs in Lankaran were holding an "America Day" the next day and fortunately the weather had improved by the morning. America Day is an ongoing project in PC Azerbaijan in which a large group of PCVs descend on a town and treat 50-75 Azeri students to a day of activities and games about American culture. Since it was May, the theme was Memorial Day and the 4th of July. The students were first invited to see some skits and presentations about the holiday and then were taken out to the sports field to learn how to play softball.

Explaining the symbolism of the American flag.

An interesting thing happened during the presentation on the 4th of July. In order to explain the significance of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution, we put together a brief skit...150 years of history in 10 minutes--from Jamestown to Philadelphia. During the section on the Boston Tea Party, we had decided to use to use some tea boxes and throw them to the ground as a visual illustration. When the first box hit the ground, there was a collective gasp among the students. Getting a little carried away, one of the PCVs stomped on one of the boxes. A few people groaned, some turned away. This is how I learned that in Azerbaijan, tea is sacred. I can only imagine what would happen here in Georgia if I desecrated a bottle of wine, but I never realized that people could get so upset over tea! Fortunately, a few slapstick moves released the tension, we decided that the second time we would be more careful ("This was a protest. It was symbolic. It really upset the British. Understand? Understand??"). I'm not sure if I can look at a box of Earl Grey the same way again.

Final update: Baku

I'm posting these entries on Georgian time, so when I say "tomorrow," I actually mean "whenever I get around to it." Anyway, continuing with my travel story...

I left for Azerbaijan early in the morning with only a vague idea of where I was going. Tbilisi is close enough to the border that you can take a cab to the checkpoint for about $30. I crossed over with no problems. It is a bit disconcerting that the minute you leave Georgia, the Georgian language (which I slaved over for weeks) becomes utterly useless. Instead, I had to rely on Russian, which I found was being gradually displaced by Georgian. For the first day in Azerbaijan I found that Georgian words continued to come out of my mouth ("ara" instead of "nyet," "kho" instead of "da"), much to the confusion of the Azeris.

The first stop on my trip was Sheki, a town in the northwest corner of the country at the base of the Caucasus. Sheki is probably the second biggest tourist town in Azerbaijan, and for good reason. It is a gorgeous town with some amazing views of the mountains. The town was a stopping point on the historic Silk Road. Traders would often stop here en route from Europe to Asia. In the 18th and 19th century, the Sheiks built the caravansari (Caravan Palace), which was basically a hotel for traders. The place still functions as a hotel today.

The caravansarai.

In Sheki, I met up with a few Peace Corps Volunteers who had come to visit me in Gori last Christmas. Sheki is an ideal placement--lots of nature, clean streets, a 4-star hotel. They even worked out a deal with the hotel restaurant to get a weekly meal (actual cheeseburgers!) in exchange for free English lessons. Oh, the things we do for free food...

I spent a day and a half in Sheki and traveled with the local PCVs Charlie and Magda to a gathering on the other side of the country. We were planning on taking the night train to Baku and moving on from there. However, when Charlie called to order the tickets, the operator curtly stated that there were none and hung up. Now, I've traveled enough in former-Soviet countries to understand the train system (they're the same no matter where you go). Both he and I knew that this guy was lying...you could show up five minutes before and get a ticket. However, in Azerbaijan there seems to be a strong system of patronage. Charlie called up a friend and asked him to be "a sacrifice" for him--"be a good guy, do this for me, talk to your friend, pull some strings." The guy talked to a guy who talked to a guy... A few minutes later, Charlie got a call from an unidentified man at the train station, who begrudgingly told us to come and get the tickets.

Living in the Caucasus sometimes feels like being in an episode of The Sopranos. You talk to a guy, he gets things done, one of these days he's going to call on you for a favor...

Tomorrow: America Day just above of Iran...

Last Tuesday I returned from a 6-day jaunt through Azerbaijan. First impressions: Everyone in Azerbaijan wears a suit and a mustache. There are few street dogs but lots of street cats. The streets are cleaner. There are no pigs (its Muslim country, after all). There is so much oil here that they're actually bathing in it, and yet there's still a gas shortage. I'll post the stories over the next three days...

My adventure began by attempting to get a visa. Recently, the Azeri government hiked the visa prices up to $100. I imagine it was out of reciprocity (since its absurdly expensive for their citizens to get a US visa), but the move will probably undermine all the recent attempts to build tourism. But, being a sucker and with the promise of free lodging, I trudged over to the Azerbaijan embassy, fought the crowds of Turkish laborers and Chinese merchants and started the process.

Outside the embassy, there is no line; the Georgian police guard would periodically come out of the security booth and yell at people if they were getting too pushy. A nervous looking Azeri man would come out and scan the crowd pushing against the gate. He would arbitrarily pick a few people to enter the building and lock the gate on the rest of us. This continued for about two hours until I finally managed to catch his eye. Realizing that I was a Westerner and that I was about to drop $100 (other countries pay less that fourty), I was rushed inside. A man looked over my papers and told me to return in three days. Lovely.

Following orders, I came back in three days. As I approached the embassy, it started to pour down rain, followed by wind, followed by snow (yes, snow in April). I had arrived about an hour before the gates opened to be sure that I was at the front of the line. I spent the next hour staring spitefully at the embassy, thinking "This better be the best freaking trip of my life." Of course, the whole process wasn't over...I dropped off my passport, was then sent across town to the Bank of Azerbaijan to pay for the visa, and returned at 4:00 to get finally get the visa. I wish I could say the visa was cool and colorful, but after all that effort, all I got was a boring blue stamp. A PC Volunteer who had spent six years in Russia once said that the Azeri embassy was one of the biggest bureaucratic messes he's ever seen; I'm inclined to believe him now.

Fortunately, the rest of the trip was more interesting, but more on that tomorrow...

PS--For photos of my trip to the Land of Fire, see my Flickr site.

One of our favorite hangouts in Tbilisi is a South Ossetian restaurant in Old Town. Not only is the food good and cheap, but the beer is some of the best of the Georgian variety. While Georgian wine is the pride of the people, alas, Georgian beer is an afterthought. Of course, the Ossetian khachapuri is worth the cost of a round trip bus ticket to the capital. So, last weekend, when one of my Volunteer friends had to unexpectedly terminate his service, we decided to have an impromptu sending-off party Ossetian-style (minus the sedition).

On a weekend, the restaurant is crowded and smoky, and the large oak tables and stuffed animals on the walls give it the feel of a beer hall. Most of the table were taken up with men having supras. As the night wore on, some young men decided to sing some folk songs, which is typical during a long supra. They must have been a choir, because they were excellent and most of the tenants in the restaurant applauded at the end of the song. This continued for a while until another table decided to join in the act. So, the competition began. After a few more songs back and forth, we Americans decided to get in on the fun.

The only Georgian song that we all knew (or could at least fake our way through) was the Georgian national anthem, "Tavisupleba (Freedom)." So, we stood up and started singing. Suddenly, everyone got quiet and stared at us. There was a moment of hesitation in the restaurant while the Georgians tried to figure out what was going on. The table of young men next to us stood up and joined, and by the end of the song most of the restaurant was on their feet, raising their glasses, and singing along. All in the name of cultural understanding.

If you're curious about what the Georgian national anthem sounds like, here is a link to a YouTube video. This is a pretty fascinating clip and airs every night on Georgian television just before the station goes off the air, if I'm not mistaken. I'm a bigger fan of the anthem of the Georgian national football team, "Chven erti gundi vart (We Are One Team)." In the video, they're chanting "Sakartvelo! Sakartvelo!" or "Georgia! Georgia!" I need to find some white and red face paint so I can be this guy for Halloween next year...

PS--Thanks to Mike for his help in translating the word gundi. Even though he ET-ed, he's not that bad of a guy. Gone but not forgotten...at least until the new people show up...