The Price You Pay For Fame

I don't like to complain. (Well, that's a damned lie. Yes, I do. But I try not to be gratuitous about it.)

This is Varketili, the suburb of Tbilisi, Georgia where I teach

school. I couldn't find a picture of my school, but take my

word for it: most of Varketili looks just like this. I lived there

for a couple of months, then moved uptown. I commute now.



Ever since I started teaching here in Tbilisi earlier this fall, I've been going on and on about how wonderful my pupils are (I began referring to them as "my kids" when I had been teaching them for less than a week) and how much I enjoy teaching.

One of my recent blog postings was in fact entitled I Never Had A Child In My Life; Now I have 300.

True, very true.

I love my kids. So would someone explain to me why I am currently the loneliest guy on Planet Earth?

Because it is true that the children at Public School #117 in Varketili do make me feel like a cross between Santa Claus and Justin Timberlake. They hug me in the hallways. They mob me in the street. They come up to me just to say "Hello" (the only English many of them know) or to introduce themselves, ask my name and ask me questions about myself and about America. And to tell me things about their country, of which they are, justifiably, proud.

"Do you like our country?" I have been asked.

"Yes, I like Georgia very much," I reply. Which is true, and also, usually, gets a smile from my little interlocutor.

The next question is invariably "Do you like our food?"

That one's tougher to answer. I like their food, but I can't pronounce it.

Would that someone, anyone in this country over the age of 14 would treat me that way.

But they don't.

Among the kids of Tbilisi, I'm the greatest thing since Coca-Cola.

Among my so-called "colleagues," I'm the Invisible Man.

Oh, it's not a rule without exceptions. I do have one co-teacher, a woman named Medea, who has been very nice to me. She's about my age, widowed for 20 years, struggling to get by on a teacher's salary, like the rest of us. I can't say we're good friends; we never socialize off-campus, but at least she does talk to me.

And there's another, "Natia," half my age or so, who is very busy with little children at home, but tries to be civil to me when she can spare the time.

Almost all of the rest of my fellow teachers here fall into two categories: (1) The ones who will only talk to me if I learn Russian first, and (2) The ones who won't talk to me at all.

The "teacher room" at PS #117 has become a place I tend to avoid. If I go in there between classes, I had better have my copy of In Search of Lost Time with me, because for me, the choices are either read a book or look out the window.

And believe me, Varketili doesn't have that much to look at. Crumbling old Soviet apartment buildings with laundry hanging outside of their windows isn't exactly a soul-uplifting vista. Especially in November.

Okay, I understand that we have a language barrier, most of my colleagues and me.

That includes, I'm sorry to say, a couple of them who teach English. Their English is good enough to teach fifth graders, but it's not good enough for conversation in the sense that I understand it. Generally the best we manage is Q&A: they ask me for clarification on the meanings of English words, and I ask them for such useful Georgian phrases as "Did you do your homework?" "Why didn't you do your homework?" and "Quiet!"

The Georgian phrase for "Be Quiet" is pronounced Sijoumay -- "See-joo-may" -- and believe me, does it come in handy! Yesterday I momentarily stunned my noisy fifth-graders by barking out "Sijoumay!" They lapsed into silence, stared...and then started tittering.

"You surprised them by saying something in Georgian," my colleague explained.

"So why don't you learn Georgian?" I hear you cry. Because I'm only going to be here seven more months, and that's not enough time to learn a language, particularly a language as difficult as Georgian.

"How difficult can Georgian be?" I hear you cry.

Okay, Mr. or Ms. Smarty-Pants, here are two short sentences in Georgian:

"დილა მშვიდობისა. როგორ ხართ?"

Uh...you were saying?

This language is lovely to hear, beautiful to look at, and difficult to learn. And it's only spoken by four million people on the entire earth. Ninety-eight percent of those people are right here. If I busted my butt for the next 20 weeks trying to learn Georgian, what would I get for it?

Memories of having once studied Georgian; that's about it. I know what I'm talking about, by the way. More than 20 years ago I lived in Brazil, and I studied Portugese very hard. Two years. I had a great teacher. His name was Miguel. He was a grammarian, and a fabulous tutor. I got up to the "intermediate" level in Portuguese with Miguel, the best I've ever done with any language.

I don't speak ten words of Portuguese now. If you don't use a language, you lose it. Where besides Brazil was I going to use Portuguese? Portuguese is not spoken anywhere except Portugal, Brazil and a few small places nobody ever heard of.

But never mind that. What's getting to me is the fact that most of my fellow teachers here won't even make a gesture in my general direction. Not even a smile or a "hello," which is the least I get out of the kids. They come sashaying into the teacher room with a cheerful "Gamarjoba," (the Georgian word for hello) for their colleagues, but not so much as a glance at me. They walk past me like I was a table and plunge right into a spirited session of gossip and professional bitching in Georgian with their fellow old biddies. And young biddies -- which brings up another subject: some of the young teachers here are hot -- unfortunately there are no single women of my age in this country except widows with rotten teeth. The USSR did NOT provide dental care.

Aside from toothless, or nearly toothless, widows of the late communist regime, women in this country fall into ... well, I'm going to have to resort to the "categories" thing again. Three this time: (1) Married. (2) Young enough to be my daughters. (3) Both. And even if that situation did not apply, there's a Georgian "cultural" thing: you can't just walk up to a woman and start talking to her, even if she speaks English as well as Katherine Hepburn. In Georgia, you have to be "introduced" by a "family." Well, that lets me off; I live alone. I don't know any Georgian "families," and am not likely to.

Yes, it might be a cultural thing, this cold shoulder I'm getting, but there's no claiming that Georgians don't like Americans. It's Russians who are unpopular here, and given the way Russia has been invading Georgia for the past 150 years, that can hardly surprise anyone. (Having said that, there are some older Georgians who do admit to a certain nostalgia for Russian language and culture).  But Georgians do like Americans. Would the kids here make me a celebrity if they were hearing a lot of anti-American rhetoric at home? I don't think so. In fact, this will make some of my "leftie" friends back home just gag, (the hope for which is among the reasons I bring it up) but Tbilisi has a "George W. Bush Avenue." I'm not kidding. It's near Varketili, on the way to the airport. There's even a big picture of old GWB waving and smiling.

This is course led me to wonder aloud just what the heck Dubya ever did to get so popular here.

"He came to visit," an American colleague said.

"I didn't know that," I replied. (I never read the news anymore. Ever.)

"And?" I went on.  "Did he promise them anything?"

"Well, no, he just gave 'em the old 'Think of me as your Padron' speech," my friend said. "Naturally that led to some Georgians thinking, 'Oh, good. We'll start a war with Russia and the Americans will come help us."

I'm not holding my breath on that one.

So, whatever the cultural problem might be, anti-Americanism isn't it.

It just might the fact that I'm male. This has occurred to me. Few if any of the kids in my school have seen a male teacher at any time in recent memory. Virtually all of their teachers are women. While this might make me an exotic figure of fascination among the kids, it might "put off" the old biddies for some reason, and maybe the young biddies too. Maybe there's some arcane cultural fillip buried in heart of every Georgian woman that says she isn't supposed to talk to strange men, especially foreigners.

Whatever it is, I certainly would appreciate an adult conversation with another adult, even if it has to be through an interpreter. Or even a smile. I don't get either. If I want to hear English spoken, I have to walk down Rustaveli Avenue (Tbilisi's main drag) to Prospero's Books, a bookstore/cafe where Americans and Brits hang out, I assume for the overpriced English-language books and the (wildly) overpriced cappucino. People from Teach and Learn With Georgia, the government agency that brought us foreign teachers of English over here, often hang out at Prospero's Books, using the Wi-Fi and sucking up the high-end coffee, and now and then I'll see somebody I know there.

Or ... I might bump into somebody I know on the street. It's happened. A couple of weekends ago I was wandering around in the mud over near Station Square (the main train station) where there is a huge shopping bazaar. Suddenly I heard a voice. "Hi, Kelley!"

It was my friend and co-TLG'er, "Hannah," who hails from St. Louis and was walking in the opposite direction.

We went shopping together. Some other TLG friends joined us later. Eventually there were five of us, shopping in lousy weather. I had to break this party up at last. My ex-wife, who is working temporarily at the American embassy here in Tbilisi, had invited me and one other TLG colleague to dinner, so I had to peel off.

But what a refreshing and relieving Saturday! To be among English-speaking adults for a few hours who actually wanted to include me in their conversations! After it was over, I was back to living the way I customarily do here, which is to say I commute to my teaching job, get love from the children and cold shoulders from my Georgian "colleagues," and then return to my one-room studio apartment to spend the evening, the night and usually the weekend alone, reading, listening to classical music on iTunes radio, and wishing that someone, anyone I work with would talk  to me.

Or at least smile.

Or at least say "Gamarjoba." I don't speak Georgian, but I know what that word means. I just never hear it here, (the only place you're ever likely to hear it) unless it's addressed to someone else within my hearing.