A few days in Pankisi Valley, and settling in our new apartment

Kamilla’s writing . . . 

Today me and my family are going to make a fire at a nearby river. On the way home we saw a mom donkey and her baby! The baby had hair over its eyes! The mom was puling a cart 😠. The cart was full of wood 😠. The cart was to heavy she slipped 😡.

Spencer’s writing . . .Pankisi Valley Pancakes and Persimmons

1. Introduction

This year my family is traveling the world. Right now we are in Gorgia, and I think Norway is next. So far we have been to Costa Rica and visited family and been to a wedding.

2. Pankisi Valley

This week we traveled to Pankisi Valley. The valley is where the Kist people of Gorgia live. The Kist people are Muslim but came from Chechnya 200 years ago. The Alzani river passes through the valley

3. Pancakes

At the guesthouse our host made us pancakes every morning! I liked mine with peaches, honey and occasionally jam There were also eggs and cheese.

4. Persimmons

Our guesthouse had lots of plants, fruit, veggies and animals including:

A cow some tomatoes persimmons and (this one was painfully verified) stinging nettles😮

Our host said we could pick some persimmons so we asked how to pick the ripe ones

She said to look for little circles on the bottom. We picked several to eat as we explored the valley they were delicious.

Yvette’s writing . . .

Our recent highlight here in Georgia was a 3-day trip to Pankisi Valley.  Since we’d decided to move apartments here in Tbilisi, we took advantage of that transition window to leave the city for a few days.  (It’s a balance between renting a place longer-term so we can settle in and enjoy while going on excursions which sometimes means double-paying for accommodations.)  Anyway, so on Monday, Nov 1 we packed up all our stuff,  dropped most of it off in our new apartment, and headed north.  Pankisi Valley is an area mostly populated by ethnic Chechens who are Muslim, and who were invited from Chechnya to settle and secure this valley ~200 years ago.  They speak Chechen in their homes (the kids learn Chechen, Georgian and English in school), and continue to have strong ties to Chechnya even now.  For much deeper insights into Pankisi Valley, see this fantastic blog (Pankisi Gorge: A Unique Homestay Experience in Georgia by Emily Lush, whose blogs about Georgia are great), and for more insight into the traditions of Sufi Islam as practiced in the valley, see here (In Godly Trance: Zikr in Georgia’s Pankisi Valley). (And BTW, I’m excited to know about Mashallah News, started in 2010 from Beirut  . . . “Tired of a media coverage

dominated by ruins, rockets, religious fanaticism and ‘ancient’ retributions, the team decided to create a multilingual forum from which to broadcast different and neglected narratives. . . . We want our audience to develop an evolving relationship with this region, through a continuous engagement with its diversity of life-worlds, perspectives, beliefs and actions.” Writers are based in Bangalore, Beirut and Tbilisi.  Narratives/stories determine our perspectives and biases, and I think this type of work is both cool and important.)

Nazy’s Guesthouse came highly recommended, and it was even better than I expected.  Nazy herself is a warm and gracious hostess, and a strong, skilled, passionate leader and advocate for tourism as a way to develop the community and help especially the young people envision a vibrant future. As a lawyer who worked in Tbilisi, years ago Nazy chose to return home to Pankisi and realize a vision of tourism to create a positive future for Pankisi Valley. Over time, numerous grants have helped to develop businesses / cottage industries (cheese-making, bee-keeping, felt-making, etc.), and intense community action against Georgian government and business interests averted a hydroelectric dam that would've removed the main water supply from 2 villages. Nazi’s goals demonstrably extend well beyond her family business – rather, she's actively engaging with various parts of the community by divesting / developing businesses / activities of interest to tourists, etc.  Thank you Nazy for sharing yourself and your story so generously! This work also reminded me how much I miss non-governmental-organization work -- of course most impactful and rewarding when community-based.

Beyond learning about the community-based tourism that’s developing, and we especially enjoyed experiencing village / farm life around Jokolo and Duisi as true tourists -- being out in beautiful Fall nature in the mountains, staying at the cozy guesthouse, eating home-made food including fresh butter, cream, milk, jams, pancakes, breads, soups, etc.  Absolutely delicious.  We enjoyed puttering about by the river, where we threw rocks, built a fire, got muddy, watched herds of sheep or turkeys come through, and watched a donkey cart (with baby donkey alongside) try to haul a heavy load of wood.  We took a tour of the area with 19-year-old Lalita, who tolerated our numerous questions, and the 2 among us who can particularly be both rambunctious and complaining at times.  We also did a half-day horse ride with Arby, a seemingly attentive, reserved, kind man, up into the mountains through tremendous Fall leaves, along a tributary of the Alazani river.  I’m now a big fan of Caucus saddles, which are like sitting on a pillow.  My horse was named Hooligan.  😊  Discounting that Spencer and Kamilla were constantly competing (then bragging) over who was in the lead, it was a very peaceful and beautiful ride.

Another highlight was stopping for lunch on our way back to Tbilisi.  We had met Levani several weeks ago as we tried to make our way back to Tbilisi via local public transport.  He kindly helped us understand the driver’s description that our kids would cost full fare if they got a seat (fair enough!).  Levani is a chef who won Georgia’s first “kitchen wars” culinary competition. At the time, he invited us to eat at Marleta’s Café next time we were back in that region.  So we did!  Our tummies and hearts were filled by this quick lunch at the café, with the friendship and delicious salad that Levani gifted us with, chatting with Sopo and Leo, enjoying the cozy wood fire, consuming several other yummy dishes, and playing with the German Shepherd puppy “Linda”.  So glad we decided to stop, and grateful for these amazing people showing us Georgian hospitality.

 

Back in Tbilisi as of Thursday (Nov 4), we set about getting settled into our new apartment.  We love that it’s light-filled, artistic, tall ceilings, and each of the kids has their own room.  (Not like they’ll actually sleep there, but . . . #tryingtobepatientwithkidsanxiety).  It’s also very sparsely furnished, so we’ve familiar with several nearby shopping areas for finding homegoods.  Interesting when you learn what you really need to keep house / home. What’s in this picture cost about $20 and a few hours of wandering market stalls / lanes / malls.  Feels like a small but happy victory. 😊 Still shopping for an immersion blender / whip cream maker (see how critical this is?!), yoga mat,  maybe a pitcher and a plastic table cloth and some additional second-hand linens.  In all honesty, this feels a little silly, the logistics of travel/home-making on the road.  Why are we being bothered by “settling” to this degree?  On the other hand, it remains true that we’re home bodies, plus we’re keeping a bit more to ourselves (and cooking at home) both to save money and due to COVID.  And we’ve committed to staying in Georgia until the end of the year (including Christmas), so we’ll use this stuff and then give / leave it for someone else to use when we move to our next country.  As someone I follow for soulful inspiration, Jack Kornfield, says, “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.” 

Another piece of logis-trivia . . . . Here’s what it took this last week to retain our Sunday morning pancake tradition – kefir for buttermilk, finding baking soda / powder, vanilla-with-sugar-powder to add to our whipped cream – and since we didn’t have a blender/mixer this week, we experimented with “shaken” instead of “whipped” cream.  So it was only about 30% whipped, but still yummy.   Each of us have slightly different take on some combo of peanut butter, Nutella, bananas, maple syrup, whip cream. (I, alone among our foursome, add all of these. Yum!) Even here, keeping some of our family traditions feels valuable.  Making Christmas holidays fun/special will be a next challenge . . . . :-)  And lastly, here's a beet salad I've been grubbing on -- flavorful beets, creamy feta-style cheese, green onions, walnuts, plus olive oil and salt.