Khulo

I really got the royal treatment in terms of sleeping arrangements because I actually got a bed.  I have no idea where everyone else slept because there were so many people, but what I do know is that I got my own bed.  It was in the hallway, and it was creaky, and I was woken at 5am because the mother was starting the arduous breakfast-making task, but it was a comfortable sleep nevertheless.  Oh wait, I wasn’t woken at 5am by the mother, I was woken at 5am by the CATTLE DRIVE going past the house, and then again at 6 by the mother starting breakfast.  Which was less loud than the cattle drive. 

Breakfast was a cheesy repeat of dinner, and all the better for it.  I was also forced to take two enormous shots of cha-cha for breakfast because it’s a “disinfectant.”  This was one of the hardest things I have ever had to stomach in my life.  It was 7:30am.  I wanted to die.  Embarrassingly enough I actually tried to refuse (which is nothing short of heresy and to be honest, bad manners and I should know better) which did not go over well.  In the end I would take a shot, grab a piece of bread, shove it in my mouth, take a tiny bite and then force the 80% pumice-derived firewater into the bread through my teeth, and then remove the bread from my mouth, so as to give the illusion that I had taken a big bite of bread (I’m really good at this.  I’m also really good at pretending to chug when the “Waterfall” card is pulled in King’s Cup.  I actually end up drinking less in Waterfall than I do during a normal sip).

Anyway, let’s remember I had to get through two 3oz shots of this stuff so nevertheless by the end of breakfast I was thoroughly crunk.  And not loving it.  Lest we forget how much water I had been deprived of in the past 24 hours.  Water was a pretty interesting commodity there too, as there was a hose carrying fresh glacier water from just up the hill into the house and then down a drain at all times.  It was icy and delicious.  

The bathroom was an even better affair, as it was just a hole at the far end of the deck with a scant amount of curtain cordoning it off.  It was also where the deck was highest above the ground, and there was definitely no fencing or wall or anything demarcating a zone of containment for unwitting passersby.  There was also no hole in the ground to aim into.  It was perfect, and terrifying.  Like most things in life.

Anyway, it took about four hours to actually leave the village because part of the road had suddenly washed away, and we had to walk down a muddy bank and across a creek for some inexplicable reason and I completely ruined my shoes(—LOLz, just kidding, my shoes were so effed at this point that any amount of cow manure, mud, and thistles would only do them good).  We went to visit the home of the lady who was in the marshrutka with me coming up. She was staying with her uncle who hounded me with questions about how much I made in Canada.  Thank god I’m an unskilled, unemployable vagrant with less than $1500 to my name.  He wasn’t satisfied with my answers ($1500 is still a king’s ransom, mind you) and demanded to know my parents’ pension amounts, which I was able to fire back a big ol’ $0 but ultimately hit a language barrier.  I can’t even explain roll-back neoliberalism the western demographic crisis to people who are actually living it in English, so how am I to explain to a Georgian villager in a language I only pretend to know?   I then got to ask the questions and learned more about the village and the inhabitants, most of whom lived in nearby Khulo during the cooler months.  I said, “Oh, so these are like your summer homes?” in the (unintentionally) New-Moneyist way possible to which all their jaws dropped.  I guess I’m just not that good at small talk. 

Then Maxim walked me to the marshrutka launching point, I bought a tonne of cell phone cookies (something you only wish you could try) and waited for the 1pm marshrutka that would take me to Khulo.  With an iPod not quite dead, and a sleepiness setting in from the morning shots of breakfast cha-cha, I was ready to board this rickety Mercedes van and descend from the clouds.