1 Degree of Separation, Sometimes None

I have been in Georgia for close to seven months now. In that time, I have only spent any considerable time in Kutaisi and that was only for training and only eight or so days. Most of my time has been spent in Tbilisi with a side trip to Sighnali in the Khakheti wine growing region of Georgia about an hour and a half to the east of the capital and work assignments in Rustavi, a satellite city of Tbilisi, only forty minutes outside the city center. To many Rustavi is a suburban or a close enough place that they live in Tbilisi and work in Rustavi. There is however farmland separating the two and while Rustavi is clearly just outside Tbilisi, it is its own place, quiet, cleaner, and poorer than Tbilisi.

During my time here I have meet many different Georgian people, but due to a language barrier, I only get to chat with a few. Of those few, I usually meet people who speak at an advanced level of English and in a country that is practically being reborn over the last few years, a high competency in English is usually a reflection of some elitist background and in some cases, just hard work and lots of studying.

Among the people I meet, it seems like all but a few are famous. When I say famous, I mean the real kind of famous. The equivalent of going to Hollywood and running into Steven Spielberg, going to Washington D.C. and having coffee with Colin Powell, or meeting the Speaker of the House or Ted Turner. Georgia is a small country with a long history, but has a short modern history. The people who ran the country during Soviet times seem to have been replaced or laid off for the most part, but the people who ran the country during the first eighteen difficult years are either still in the mix, albeit behind the scenes, or more often than not people who provided the framework from which the next generation, their offspring, those in their late twenties and thirties from which to dominate Georgian finance, media, government, and society. They are so young and unassuming. The following are some of those people (names have been changed).

Ted Turner
He had this terrible voice, like someone who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, but refused to speak in low tones. His voice is abrasive to say the least. His manner was loud, but no one seemed to mind. When he made an entrance into a room, you noticed. How could you not?

He came into the room intoxicated as I would later see he often was and talk up a storm. Everything he said got the table rolling with laughter. He was easily the funniest guy I have ever seen in Georgia. He made the most serious of people laugh. People seemed to love him. I don't speak Georgia so I couldn't partake, but laughter is the same everywhere in the world, infectious. There was however one instance where he made a reference, in English, to being Jewish. One of those self hating Jewish references so common to the humor of Jewish people. It awakened my curiosity seeing as there aren't many Jewish people in Georgia. I wanted to know his story. I had only met one other Jewish person since being in Georgia.

My ice breaker was a question I had that needed translation. At one point during time with older Georgian people, I whistled. Half the people, especially the older men, looked at me and told me not to do that. It appears that I offended them. I didn't understand and no one spoke English. I asked what the problem with whistling was? He explained to me that during Soviet times whistling meant you had no money and that someone had your money. It basically meant you're a poor loser. I had no idea of course, but learned quickly not to whistle ever again. The translation wasn't totally clear, but you get the idea, culturally it was rude.

We got to talking over the next hour or so, the usual questions and answers. Well, there was nothing usual about this guy. He was 32 years old. He started his first company when he was 16. This would have been 1996, a time when Georgia was hardly the modernizing state that it is today. He took sometime to study at Penn State in America before returning to Georgia to get involved in the media business his father had been building over the 90's. Go vocal cord cancer along the way, hence the voice. At 25 he took over from his father and over the course of a few years, seven to be exact, built the two largest television companies in the country. At the age of 25 he was essentially the CEO of both ABC and NBC.

Jerry Bruckheimer
Sometimes a conversation that interests a person has to be underway in order for people to feel comfortable enough to get involved. Recently I was talking to a fellow TLG Volunteer about the state of educational reforms in Georgia. At one point I mentioned that my former colleague had been relocated to PS#51 in downtown Tbilisi. PS#1 and PS#51 are commonly acknowledged as the two best public schools in Georgia. The Georgian man sitting at the table mentioned that he attended PS#51 as a child. I mentioned that their are no bathrooms according to my former colleague and that part of the educational reform movement in Georgia is to get all schools outfitted with better wash facilities. This started a lengthy conversation about education in Georgia.

As the conversation started to fade I got to talking about the generational differences between his parents, him, and his children. It is commonly acknowledged here that the older generation are products of a Soviet conditioning that is ingrained in the thinking and way of living life. The modern working class generation had limited Soviet experiences, but grew up in a time of great conflict, turmoil, corruption, and at times war. The youngest generation mostly doesn't know from the difficulties of the past. Their world is mostly happy and without terror, although other social ills and limited reach in the international arena remains. That was my way of saying, Georgians might have computers, cell phones, and the Internet, but they don't have the disposable income to travel, buy any big ticket items, or open a business without significant assistance, except for a select few. I bought a bag of oranges today for less than $2 (in America easily $15), but a car still costs $5,000 at the low end. A huge sum of money in Georgia.

He mentioned to me that even though he is only 31 years old, he remembers the terrible things that took place in Georgia when he was a child and the terrible things he did as part of a collapsed systematically corrupt system. He seems like a nice enough person, but for me, I am more impressed by how his mind works. He seems to think like an American or European educated person. There is a connection between ideas that is usually only acquired through extensive learning in various social and pure sciences. The well rounded generalized education we take for granted is not the norm in many countries. Most people specialize at a young age and never get exposed to other subjects. A well rounded education is something that is sought after, not necessarily a standard in developing countries. It might sound arrogant, but well rounded people are not a dime a dozen.

So I asked him who he was and what he did? He told me he use to work in land development. Right away that tells me he is rich. He told me he sold it a few years back and has been producing since 2003, the same year as the Rose Revolution. I asked him how is father was? He told me that his father was the former number two in Georgia during the reign of the last presidency which lastest well over a decade. His development company owned 35% of the Georgian market. At 23 he was already producing movies, at 27 he sold a gizzilion dollar company, around the same time opened the nicest movie theater in Georgia, and is currently enrolled to study film at UCLA.

Both these guys couldn't be anymore unassuming. They dress in Target T-Shirts. Wear blue jeans. Have no fancy jewelry. Drive regular cars. And come off as normal people. No one treats them differently and they don't treat anyone differently. This would be a common theme throughout my encounters here. I have only seen one nice watch so far on a man who wears relatively plain clothes. The watch however is a time piece of the Swiss variety, no diamonds, but pure gold and super thin.

David Beckham
I was with some Georgian friends not too long again and a man comes into the room to greet a friend of a friend. It is no big deal. The two men greet each other in the customary way which is to shake hands and kiss each other on the right cheek. He greets a few other people and everyone moves onto their conversations, beers, and food. He joins us for a few minutes before leaving. When he leaves someone mentions to me that he was a footballer. I am thinking he played for the Georgia national team when the World Cup of Soccer rolled around every four years. I was clearly mistaken.

Apparently I was in the presence of Georgia's greatest soccer player. Over a decade he played in the English Premier League and is one of the most decorated athletes if not the most in modern Georgia history. To my friends he was just a friend who went away for a few years played some soccer and came home. It would be like having lunch with Michael Jordan at Apple Bees because we knew each other from high school to these guys.

Ministers
When I go to The Ministry of Science and Education for work related matters, I occasionally meet with the deputy minister. Her office is next to the minister's office. At times the minister walks around and sure enough says hi and goes on his way. He is probably going to be president of Georgia in a decade or sooner. He just says hi like it is no big deal because in Georgia it is no big deal. Everyone I meet, especially government officials are in their thirties. Many movers and shakers are young here if not all of them.

If I planned ahead, made the right requests, and the timing was right I could probably meet the President of Georgia. The Minster of Internal Affairs was in my office a few months ago just checking things out, so why not the top dog? A stretch perhaps, but you would be surprised just how small Georgia is. When I was chatting with my media mogul friend the other day, my boss, The Minister of Education and Science called him to schedule a lunch. He takes the call looks up at me and says, "That was your boss on the phone. We are having lunch tomorrow."

Writers
There is a book in the English language bookshop that seems to be something of standard reading for the traveler to Georgia. It is the book Georgians will buy foreign friends as "something you should read." My former roommate even had a copy of it in his room. I personally never thought much of it until one day I met up with some friends and were told that so and so was going to pick us up. Sure enough he picked us up and we went to Georgia's biggest radio station just to check it out and have some cake.

The radio station was a salute to all the good music of the 60's and 70's with bits and pieces of music from other decades thrown in. People might not speak much English here, but they sure know the lyrics to many Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd songs. In fact musicians are all over the place here. You can usually find live jazz somewhere, a live band, or some street performers most nights of the week. Some bad, most good.

After a tour of radio central, we headed over to the bookstore where the news crew was waiting to interview him about his new play that was opening in Batumi. I had to google this guy and ask around. Turns out he is one of Georgia's most famous writers, having written fifteen books, and at times getting into hot water because of his words and his political stance during a time when not falling in line was grounds for incarceration.

Small World
I am basically a nobody in Tbilisi. This is a city of 1.6 million or so people and in the short time I have been here, I have run into taxi drivers I remember, doormen I remember, the guy that checks my coat, people I have meet randomly, and others in the street or elsewhere. For a city so large in numbers, you sure see people you know all the time. I am starting to get why famous people are no big deal here. People are people. The only person I know of that has a special detail is the president of the country.