Gori

CULTURE TRIP!!!! Peace Corps gave out the first round of culture trip allowances this weekend and I left my little village to join another trainee in Gori, one of Georgia’s larger cities and Stalin’s hometown. We spent Saturday and Sunday exploring the city and enjoying our first block of truly free time in a month. We were cut loose to wander on our own, at our own pace without schedule or supervision and loved every minute of it. If it sounds weird that 20-something’s should have supervision at any time (especially at a volunteer job) remember that we’re now working in the most complicated bureaucracy on the planet (our beloved government) and there’s nothing bureaucracy loves more than even greater bureaucracy. We were pretty happy to get out on our own for a while.

While in Gori we got put up at the Hotel Victoria which was especially welcome because it had more than a few amenities not found in the rural villages we live in. Use your imagination.

We did a number of cultural activities while in Gori (Gori fortress, Stalin Museum, the bazaar) but the shining moment of the trip was undoubtedly Populi. It’s not a monastery or statue or ancient battlefield, it’s a small grocery store on the edge of town about the size of your standard CVS. If you’ve never lived in a developing country you may not get the appeal but I’ll try to explain. I think the main selling point is this: occasionally you want to eat something that wasn’t less than 12 hours ago was inside or a part of an animal, something that’s undergone some processing. “Organic” has lost something of its novelty and appeal for me.

Populi is a beautiful, luminescent, heavenly western-style grocery store that (almost) could have been plucked out of any American suburb. April and I went and bought fried chicken, Ruffles, Nestle chocolate, Pepsi, orange juice and most anything else that looked appealing, was heavily processed and tasted like home. We eat well here in Georgia; most of us will count ourselves lucky to still fit into our pants at the end of training. This weekend though we got a little bit of America with our meals and that’s hard to come by here.

April and I both left feeling recharged and better about the future. We’ve got Peace Corps staff, our host country counterparts and our host families to help us through our time here but I’m betting Populi is going to be the most important partner to surviving service.