Summer English Programs

On June 15th the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Science and Education started a joint English language training program for police officers throughout the country. Old and new volunteers would be placed in police stations, live with local families, and work through a twelve week curriculum designs to provide a basic introduction of the English language.

It was the responsibility of my colleague and I to provide a quick and dirty on the curriculum and issues in the classroom to about sixty volunteers already present in the country at a resort in Anaklia on Georgia's Black Sea coast. At later dates throughout the summer, newly arrived batches of volunteers would get the same two hour presentation without the luxury of sitting in a beach side resort, but the word resort is loose term for what Anaklia really is.

Anaklia was under construction when we got there. There wasn't a patch of grass in sight and you had to look both ways before crossing the soon to be promenade for heavy equipment vehicles and trucks flying back and forth. Once you walked the short distance to the coastline you had to step over bottles, plastics, netting, and other types of debris as the main river flowing from the high mountains drains into the sea fifty meters from the hotel. Once you get in the water, everything is fine past the first ten feet of oil slick water and debris. The water is actually quite nice and will make for some nice swimming once they replace the grass and trees, and bulldoze the debris away from the coastline. It is also a sandy beach unlike the south coast where river stones both large and small make up the whole coast line, much easier on the feet.

The president of the country is the principle investor in the nicest hotel to eventually dot the coastline once it is finished by Fall 2011. In the meantime, the one existing hotel is doing just fine with a decent kitchen, strong drinks, and a nice swimming pool. The only problem is the guy with a jack hammer ten feet away from the pool hammering away. You get use to it.

A walk along the soon to be promenade takes you along a strip of land that is a fishing village dotted with the occasional coastal property which will soon be leveled in all likelihood for more hotels and shops. It is suppose to be the next big thing, but right now it is one hotel, one under construction, and lots of wiring, bricks, and debris.

During Soviet times the north coast of Georgia is where most people went for sun and fun. Now with the occupied territory of Abkhazia effectively a Russian province, it is off limits to Georgians and remains a sore point of discussion some twenty years later.

Old piers are something of interest to me. Steel reinforced concrete doesn't seem to last long when it is located near a body of water or completely abandoned in an urban environment. It might have to do with the way the concrete was mixed in the nineteen sixties, who knows. Either way, the pier was literally hanging into the sea where it hadn't actually broken off and fallen in. I couldn't help but wonder, A, why was there a pier in a place with no history of tourism or shipping, B, what must it have looked like when it was finished some four or five decades ago, and C, is there a photo of the ribbon cutting ceremony, who were those people, and where are they now. Yes, all this from a ten second gaze at a forgotten pier on an isolated beach thirty minutes down a dirt road practically no one lives on.

On the second day in Anaklia we went to see the hydroelectric dam that separates Georgia from Abkhazia. It was basically a gorge with some rusty old dam and processing center that you could look at from upon high. We couldn't see much else as the fog was thick and the sky opened up and started soaking us in sheets of rain. The kind of downpour where you have trouble keeping your eyes open because it is so heavy. The government officials managed to get one snapshot before we ran to the buses. We all can now say we have seen Abkhazia or at least a cliff face that is technically foreign soil until it is returned to Georgia.

After the disastrous trip to the dam, we went to a restaurant in Zugdidi, the capital of the Samegrelo region and had dinner. This region is home to the Migrelian people. I can't get a straight answer from anyone on what makes the Migrelian people different than Georgians except food and language. They are a proud people, known for being boastful and occasionally loud and arrogant about their heritage.

Migrelians speak a different language in addition to Georgian, have lived in Georgia since the beginning of time and make the same food as Georgians except the cheese is a little less salty and the cooking style is a little bit different. Instead of cheese on the inside of dough, it is on the inside and wait for it, the outside too. They don't look much different either except for perhaps the lighter eyes and hair that is common in the eastern regions of Northern Georgia. Russian genetics may have worked there way into the gene pool a bit more than in the rest of the country.

It is a topic of discussion that can be too sensitive to talk about. Black Americans are no fool and they know that somewhere along the line some white slave owner may have forcibly injected his genes into their genetic makeup, but here, the "We are all Georgian" philosophy is strong and something not to be questioned. I can just see my Georgian friends rolling their eyes at this last statement. Luckily or not so luckily, depending on how you look at it, having a common enemy is a good way to bring people together. Once that external enemy dissolves people usually find ways to hate each other internally. For Georgia, thousands of years of external enemies has created a very unified group of people. Nationalistic like most people, but not arrogant enough to think they invented everything like the Chinese.

Everywhere you go in Georgia the food is basically the same, but for some reason Migrelian food is just a little better. The cheese is a little better, the textures are smoother, the meat a touch tastier. I use to think it was all nonsense, but having eaten basically the same food for a year straight and having the gut of a beer drinking couch potato to prove it, some regions do it just a bit better and in the case of Lagodekhi, Georgia, a town near Azerbaijan at the base of the high Caucasus Mountains, a lot better. Lagodekhi likes its meat tough, it cheese super salty, and its service aggressive.

With that first meeting in Anaklia we had a good glimpse of who the volunteers were and what to expect from most of them. That is, many of the drunks were still in the program, many of the drama queens still existed, and many of the overachievers which is Steve-speak for people who want to change Georgians and instill their American and sometimes Christians values on the Georgian people were still there. But they were a dying a breed of volunteer held over from the first five or so groups coming to end of their one year contracts. Many would leave early, quit, or be fired, and things would prove to run smoothly considering the scale of the countrywide project.

With the newer groups, green as ninety percent of them were, we found a smarter, more responsible group of recruits. Sure there was the occasional hippie leftover, alcoholic in the making, and some people in way over their heads, but most had a clue at least. They seemed to still have limited numbers of trainees with teaching experience, but they seemed to be more aware that this wasn't a cake walk party and that they might be pretty far out there in remote regions.

People have a much better idea of what to expect in this program now and the recruiting process was cleaned up from a free for all to a bit more selective. I will say this though, while they appear more mature and experienced, that is twenty two or much older, the younger people seem to be canvases for ink. From the neck to the calf muscle, a quarter of the people and half the young people have tattoos the kind you really can't hide unless you wear a suit and even still, a sleeve or neck tattoo still shows through the cuff or collar.