7 years ago

Cooking in Peace Corps Georgia

by Rawan / Her

Living with a host family sometimes felt like I was grounded from using the kitchen. I love cooking, but being a permanent guest of sorts meant that your food was served to you. It meant that whether or not I was in the mood to eat Georgian Gupta soup yet again, I had no choice. My host mom did let me use the kitchen, but the only ingredients I was able to whip together was scrambled eggs, oatmeal, or buckwheat. I had no idea what to do with the other things in the fridge. Since I couldn’t really control my diet, I really missed cooking. Hence- the feeling of being grounded. When Justin and I found our own place, I was really excited of cooking again. I was dreaming up recipes in my head and thinking of all the ways I was going to make that kitchen my b**** !

Georgian Baazar — The vegetable section of the baazar close to our apartment. Notice how the cabbage is repeated in the very next stand.

But those dreamy recipes fluttered away like pretty butterflies when I realized two reasons. First, the selection at the baazar is much more limited than what I used to buy at Safeway/Vons in California. To set the scene, each stand is more or less a repeat of the one next to it. In a nutshell, the majority of the vegetables available are: potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, dill, cauliflower, eggplant, bell pepper, onion, garlic, cabbage, and carrots.

You can buy tons of Georgian cheese, but you be deluding yourself if you think you can find Parmesan, Cheddar, or Swiss cheese at the baazar. I have heard rumors that Parmesan cheese does exist, but I have not been able to find any at my site. The diversity of beans are limited and so are the nuts. I haven’t seen white beans or cashews since I’ve come to Georgia.

Georgian Oven — The oven in my kitchen. Please note that the lower-left burner is well…burnt. It is not dirty. Pretty sure this oven is older than me.

Now, the second reason why the other half of my dreams vanished is because of the oven. I don’t know what my landlord meant when he said “it works.” If he meant does it do a good job of just sitting there? Then yes, it does it a good job. If he meant does it actually turn on and bake food? Then no, it does a horrible job on that one.

Like many ovens and stove tops, you have to use a lighter or a match to get them working when the gas turns on. The automatic beauties back home are for Georgia in 2050. So even though the gas is on in the oven, the flame won’t stay. The flame is too scared of the dark so it just flutters away like my baking dreams. It also has a weird number system anyway. Instead of “real temperatures,” the knob is labeled from 2 to 10. According to my friends, number 3 is the magic number. If I ever get it working, I’ll let you know.

Oven Knob — This has to be the oddest oven knob I’ve ever seen. What do these numbers even mean?

Until then, I have been experimenting. I am currently attending the Cordon Bleu of Georgia. This chapter of the Cordon Bleu’s curriculum is simple: go to the baazar, buy things, and go wild. How do you get graded? Your husband or your own taste buds will make a happy face or a disgusted face. Since I only have a stove top, limited ingredients, and being lactose intolerant, it has been difficult coming up with different recipes. So I’m proud of myself for being able to come up with my own recipes without the help of a cookbook, measuring cups or spoons. So far, I am able to make from scratch: cauliflower-onion soup, marinara bolognese pasta, cauliflower and chickpeas over millet, and eggplant stir-fry. Today, I made-up the eggplant stir-fry and it is a definite repeat. It was very healthy and quite delicious 🙂

Made up meals! — My very own eggplant stir-fry. Very lightly oiled and tons of vegetables! Yum!

I won’t lie, I will still miss the idea of having an oven. Since it is decades old, it probably won’t get fixed. In the meantime, if you have any recipe ideas with the above mentioned ingredients, drop me a note!

7 years ago

Homesick during the Holidays

by Rawan / Her

The week before Christmas, homesickness came and told me, “don’t be a stranger, come knock on my door.” Homesickness is like M&Ms in a way, you just can’t have one thought or one moment of sadness. You find your hand reaching in for more despite your better judgement. Silver lining is, I’m not the only Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Georgia who feels this way. We were told in Pre-Service Training (PST) that a “the low phase of service” will be around November-December. Essentially, we were told to expect to be homesick between Thanksgiving and the New Year.

Thanksgiving Dinner — The delicious food spread at our Peace Corps Thanksgiving dinner

Good thing though, I was doing really good for the Thanksgiving period. I was surprisingly not homesick. Maybe it is because in college, I worked every Thanksgiving. I used for work for the Mouse, aka Disneyland. Since the holidays get really busy at the park, pretty much every staff member worked some sort of shift. But the main reason is probably because our Peace Corps staff in Georgia did a beautiful job in giving us a Thanksgiving dinner (albeit, the week prior). We had an All Volunteer Conference (All-Vol) in which all G15, G16s, and Response volunteers attended a two day conference in Tbilisi, Georgia. Some of the PCVs volunteered to cook us an all-American, perfect Thanksgiving. There was turkey, apple pie, mashed potatoes, gravy, and even cranberry sauce.

Thanksgiving Dinner in Peace Corps — The dinning hall in the hotel where we had our Thanksgiving dinner

During dinner, one of my friends in the English Education sector, Kelley, decided it would be fun to do the Mannequin Challenge. It was such a fun activity that everybody could participate as a group. Check out the video here.

So in essence, I think it is because I had Thanksgiving a week early, it really did help alleviate any forthcoming homesickness. On the actual day of Thanksgiving, I went to work like it was a normal day. Unfortunately, Peace Corps Volunteers do get any American holidays off from work (unless we use our personal time off). However, the Peace Corps staff at our national office gets both Georgian and American holidays off (yes, the world is unfair, I know).

After work, Justin and I went out to a local restaurant with our local American friends. There is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) who lives in town and a Fulbright ETA couple as well.

Thanksgiving Dinner Group — Thanksgiving dinner with our friends at a local restaurant

I also came up with a possibly mean system to also offset any homesickness: don’t talk to the family. When my dad called me to wish me Happy Thanksgiving and reminiscence about our previous Thanksgiving, I told him that I don’t want to talk. I simply picked up the phone quickly and told my dad, “Baba, I’m doing really good today. If I talk to you, I will get homesick. The last thing I want is get homesick. I’ll call you back in a few days.” He respected my wishes sadly and that was that.

But Christmas is a different story all together…

First, Georgians do not celebrate Christmas on December 25th like most of the world. Georgian Christmas actually takes place on January 7th of every year. Of course, there are vastly different traditions that take place in Georgia. For Christmas, I don’t like change: I like to stick with my prescribed traditions. Go shopping on Black Friday and decorate the family tree all together. Christmas songs are constantly played in the house. This year, none of that. This is the very first year I will not be spending Christmas with my family. This is the first year that I will not wake up on the 25th of December and see a Christmas tree. It just doesn’t feel like the holidays for me because all the preceding holiday traditions just have not taken place.

Kutaisi Christmas Tree — A Christmas Tree made of electric lights displayed in one of the circles near the center of town

However, it is like the world knew that I would need some Christmas spirit in my life. As I thinking about writing this post yesterday, one of my colleagues walks in the office with a Christmas tree. My boss starts playing Christmas music in the background and we all start decorating our own very Christmas tree. So even though I was no decorating my family’s tree in California, I still got to decorate a wonderful, plastic tree last night.

The Christmas Tree at our World Vision office

Then, as I was walking up the office stairs this morning, I see two Georgian men carrying a Fed-Ex box! There is no Fed-Ex in Georgia, so I quickly knew that very box must be my care package. My wonderful friends back home, who are more like family at this point, mailed me and my husband 36 pounds (yes, that heavy) worth of American goodness! I probably should have waited to open the box with my husband on Christmas, but too late!

Peace Corps Care Package — Opening up my care package the second it gets delivered!

And on Christmas Day, other PCVs and I will try to capture the spirit of the holidays. We are having dinner together and doing a White Elephant gift exchange. We will try to dress up and look fancy. So even though I’m not with my blood relatives on Christmas, I am with my new family in a way. That helps a lot in homesickness. We have found a home away from home within each other.

7 years ago

Showering: an Stressful and an unpleasant Experience

by Rawan / Her

Peace Corps experiences are filled with many extremes. There are so many moments where you just know you are making a positive difference. Then, there are moments where you just want to teleport back to America. Quite frankly, the happy moments are the ones that fuel many of us to keep going. We need to remember those high moments, because there are hardships coming right around the corner. Peace Corps is such a roller coaster ride with so many ups and downs. And they aren’t the Disneyland roller coasters where the stratification is not so extreme between the high and lows. I’m talking about Six Flags roller coasters here, baby.

Low moments of hardships come in all shapes and sizes. One stressor for many Peace Corps Volunteers in Georgia are showers. You read that correctly, showering/bathing can be an actual hardship. Long gone are the days where you can say, “I’ll be ready in 10 minutes, I’m just going to hop in the shower.” There is no such thing as “hopping” in the shower. For one, there is probably no shower place to hop to. Second, it is not a quick process in which the word “hopping” implies. This is one of the many reasons why we shower once, twice, or three times a week.

In my first few days at my apartment, I was looking forward to showering. I went to the gym for the first time in 8 months, so my hair was greasy and I was in the mood to feel nice and clean. But God had a different plan in mind. Scratch that, the universe, fate, the stars, and God himself all colluded together to make my cleanliness nearly impossible.

That’s right….we sometimes go a week without showering. Welcome to our new normal.

My bathroom is outside as I mentioned in my earlier post. One of the walls are shared with the house, but you still must step outside to enter the bathroom. There is a toilet, a 30-year-old washing machine, a sink, and a shower head. In Georgia, having a shower head without shower curtains is very typical. Consequently, everything can get wet.

Georgian Showers — The bathroom in our current apartment

Since winters are harsh in Georgia, my landlord gave us a tiny electric heater for the bathroom. Justin and I skillfully hold the shower hose and make sure it does not spray the electric heater. This new skill is non-negotiable; otherwise, we can electrocute ourselves and die. Also, getting dressed in the bathroom after the shower is also difficult. To avoid getting all my dry clothes wet while getting dressed, I’ve decided to buy a robe. I’ll go into the bathroom wearing only my bathrobe and carrying my towel. It much easier only hanging one item of clothing on the rack. It is also much easier to put on a robe than a pair of pants.

Georgian Heater — The small electric heater that we use in the bathroom

Furthermore, there are so many knobs and pipes to even get the thing going. I’ve yet to master all the knobs and pipes for the apartment. Since it was one of my first showers in the apartment, I asked Justin to get the water running. So, I’m standing there wearing only a bathrobe and I’m cold. We turn on the shower and the water is ice-cold. The ice-cold water is splashing everywhere. The water heater is not turning on (pictured below). Eventually the hot water starts to work, but the water heater is bipolar. It goes to practically boiling in a matter of seconds. There is literally no middle ground with this thing. If I turn the cold-water knob ever so slightly, the heater turns off.

Our water heater, place in the kitchen (pictured when turned on)

So, for the next forty minutes, Justin and I are trying to maneuver the water to a normal warm temperature with no luck. Either the water heater is boiling the water or just not working. Since we kept the water running during our experimentation, we both started to get concerned if we are going to run out of water. Like most city dwellers, we get our water from a tank. The city water does not run 24 hours a day like it does in mainland America.

So, Justin’s aerobic workout included running to the water heater in the kitchen, to the bathroom, to the “basement” to check the water tank. My challenge was keep my feet from getting frostbite (I’m over exaggerating here) as the ice-cold water is splashing on my bare feet. After 40 minutes of trying to get the shower to work, I gave up. We discovered that bathroom sink had the capability to have lukewarm water. I stripped my bathrobe and started washing myself with the sink water. I took my washcloth and splashed my body little by little. Mind you, I was shivering at this point. I didn’t care water was getting everywhere, that would have happened regardless. I washed everything but my face and hair by splashing that sink water.

Justin, however, was determined he can fix this. He has more patience than I do or because he wanted to shower more than I did. He finally got the water to be lukewarm from the shower head. I jumped at the opportunity and shampooed my hair quickly. Conditioner was not happening; I couldn’t risk the water to have a tantrum again. As I was doing that, Justin started getting ready for his shower. Instead of turning off the shower water, I left the hose in the sink. Neither of us wanted to re-experience getting it to the right temperature again. I put on my robe and handed him the shower hose for his turn.

Luckily, the shower water stayed in a good mood. Thankfully, it did not change its mind on Justin. Once we were done with showering, I ate some Nutella with bananas and all was right with the world again.

And since then, our luck has been good. This could be due to the fact we officially understand our water system. In essence, once we arrived at the perfect water temperature, we have not changed the temperature knobs. We are lucky that turning off and turning on the water is its own knob. Also, showering when the city water is running is so much better than the tank water. The water pressure is much stronger when the city water runs in the morning. So our shower schedule is highly dependent when the water is running from the city. If this sounds at all complicated, don’t worry…it is. If this sounds like something you don’t want to deal with, then consider yourself privileged.

7 years ago

Georgia’s Poor Infrastructure Led Our Water to be...

by Rawan / Her

Two weeks ago the craziest thing happened with our water system. We had moved into our new apartment about a week prior and our first problem already arose. Justin gives me a call to inform me about our problem and all I could say was “What do you mean our water is blue?!” Justin literally said that our water had turned blue. Like Royal Blue. I was perplexed as to how that happened. But at the same time I was not that confused because the water system in Georgia is complicated. Also, it is Peace Corps; therefore, unexplained $hit happens all the time.

He calmly tells me that the blue tablets that I bought for the toilet bowl is the culprit. I had bought one of those blue gel tablets that slowly dissolve in your toilet tank each time you flush. Attempting to keep our toilet bowl always sanitized, we placed one tablet in our toilet tank before our Tbilisi trip.

Bought this German toilet tank blue tablets

When Justin came back a day earlier than I did, he naturally wanted to use water. Except, he didn’t get clear and clean water. He got bright, royal blue water that is coincidentally the same color as the tablet. He turned on each faucet in the house and they were all blue- including the shower. The conclusion was clear: the water from the toilet tank “backwashes” into the reserve tank of the apartment. The silver lining is at least it isn’t the toilet bowl water that goes back into the tank- just the toilet tank. But I can still say gross?

I can't believe the water from the toilet tank goes back to the reserve tank! — I can’t believe the water from the toilet tank goes back to the reserve tank!

Before I move on with the story, let me try to explain why we even have a reserve tank in the first place. In the United States, I don’t know a single home that has a water reserve tank in any of the states I’ve visited/lived. In Georgia, despite having rain all the time, we don’t always have access to water. I have been without running water for days in this country multiple times. This is not because there is drought (far from it), but because the water infrastructure is poor and crumbling. Therefore, the city water is inconsistent and does not run all day. Each neighborhood in the same city has a different schedule as to when the water runs. Better yet, even the schedule is flimsy. At our apartment, the city water supposedly runs in the early morning. However, I have come home sometimes to have it still running at 2:00 p.m. Other times, I wake up and the water still hasn’t come from the city. To combat not having water, each home has a reserve tank. Thus when the city water is running, the smart thing to do is to fill up the reserve tank. That way when the city water is not running, you simply use the water from the tank.

Our water reserve tank in the "basement" — Our water reserve tank in the “basement”

Back to the story…

Since I was still on the bus and was useless to Justin, he immediately went to problem solving mode. He tried emptying out the entire reserve tank. We obviously can’t use the contaminated water to shower, brush teeth, or cook with it. Problem was that he was not able to empty the tank completely. The pipe that is connected to the tank is placed almost to the bottom. Therefore, the last few gallons of water cannot reach the pipe to be emptied out. Worse yet, the tank would need a professional or someone with tools to dislodge the tank and drain it.

Once I returned to my site, I called every friend who lived in Georgia for a while to see if they had any suggestions. None have encountered the problem before or even knew how to contact a plumber. They did laugh (rightly so) at our misfortune.
Desperate, I called my supervisor at work late at night to see if he could help. It took him a while to actually believe what I was saying since our situation was so odd. After he understood everything, he was able to call our landlord and explain everything in Georgia. Since we couldn’t do anything at this point, Justin and I went to bed with no access to clean water. End Day 1 of no water.

The next morning, our landlord came over. Unfortunately, the city water filled up the tank so the water got diluted. Therefore, the blue chemicals were no longer super visible in the tank. In disbelief, our landlord wanted to see the tablet that caused all this trouble. Once we were about to hand it over, he was going to take the second tablet and put in the toilet bowl. Justin and I jumped to our feet with a firm no!

"Ara!" (no in Georgian). Don't put the second tablet in the toilet tank! — “Ara!” (no in Georgian). Don’t put the second tablet in the toilet tank!

I had my boss call him again and explain to him that the water is diluted. It was important that our landlord knew that the water was still contaminated. Once he believed us, he said he will come back the next day with the proper tools. So there goes the second day with no water. End Day 2 of no water.

Instead of sleeping and enjoy the Giorgoba Holiday, we woke up early. We took empty huge bottles and filled them up with the clean city water (since we didn’t have to use the tank during these hours). Our landlord was coming after the city water’s schedule, so it was important that we fill up those bottles. He rolled almost two hours late to detach the tank from the basement. Justin and the landlord proceeded to empty out all the wasted water in the yard. Then they took the new mop I bought and cleaned the inside of the tank. By the time they were done fixing everything, the city water had stopped. End Day 3 with no water.

So the takeaway is just because a country rains a lot, do not assume clean, available, running water is a thing….

For more information regarding the water supply and sanitation, click here.
It is not just my site with problems, read here for another example.

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