As I can't reach Tusheti - the season is opening in June, until then the mountain roads are blocked by snow walls - I figured, I go the nearest I can to the Tushetians, and that's Alvani. Here I share with you diary entries of my "expedition" to Alvani.
11.04.21
I'm in Kvemo Alvani.* Kvemo and Zemo (Lower and Upper) Alvani are villages of Tushetian people. The Tushetian mountain villages have harsh living conditions, so since circa the nineteenth century it is common for Tushetian people to be in Alvani in winter times and in their Tushetian villages in warmer seasons.
For this research on lament in voice, I wanted to experience the Tushetian spirit, through interactions with Tushetians, but also through getting to know the place, connect to the earth. But as the season is opening only later in spring, that is out of reach for now. Although Luka, a local who is organizing since 2017 cultural festivals in Tushetian summers, named "Aq Tusheti" (by interest visit https://www.aqtushetii.com ), told me that airplanes are flying every once and then, for the very few people who dwell there also in winter times. So it would be possible to get there, but I wouldn't have a place to stay, no shelter, no food. So I better alternated it with Alvani for now.
And here I am, in Alvani. I called Mari Khachidze, who has an organization named "Tusheti Brand" (visit by interest: https://www.facebook.com/tushuribrendi/) in Kvemo Alvani. With her organization Mari works on rehabilitating and sustaining Tushetian culture, with an emphasis on music. Mari herself is a musician, plays Tushetian accordion, Fanduri (a Georgian stringed instrument), and other ethno instruments like Chianure (a local bowed string instrument). She works with local children, teaches them singing, playing instruments and organizes for them cultural and educational events. In this youth center the local children have a place for cultural sharing and play. She organizes for them lectures and seminars in which artists, writers and musicians are invited to present their field of work and give the children insights into their professional areas.
It comes so, that Mari works on the subject of Tushetian "lament in voice". She has gathered a lot of material in Alvani from elder people, who either did lament themselves or are acquainted with that ancient practice. The old ones are kinda the last generation who witnessed the cultural intactness of lament and thorough death rites.
I'll meet her after breakfast. Now it is morning and I returned from my early dawn hike. I went up the road to where a chateau is located. At the edges of its wine-yards is a nature reservoir named Babaneuri. The forest was lush and mossy. I missed that so much. That quiet, peace and green. I filled my lungs with the freshness of the soft morning air and soaked in the sounds of rattling leafs and chirping birds. I exchanged my mikrobioms with a beautifully moss-covered tree and was charged again after my city exhaustion.
Anna, the hostess of the guesthouse, made me oatmeal with her handpicked raspberries and Thyme tee from her Tushetian garden. After the breakfast I went to meet Mari in her office. Tiny hiccups of our very first encounter were smoothed. She told me much about her organization and about the hard lot of being a feminist in Alvani. It is hard to find support as a woman-only-organization, that is not backed by some man's name. Every endeavor needs double and triple effort and the locals are sill not taking her too much seriously. Not a big surprise. I'd say generally Georgia, but even more so the mountain regions are highly patriarchal in their organization, in how especially business relations are held, in who gets to decide what etc. It's hard to be a feminist, but especially so when you are out there. I'm glad she does what she does.
In the evening Mari brought me to an elder woman named Nazo Bebo (Bebo means Granny). Nazo Bebo is 87 years old. Her mother was a well known "lamentor in voice". Nazo tried with big effort to remembered some of her laments, although it was not something that was much to her personal interest. She tried really hard to remember. It was so sweet to witness her good will and eagerness despite her difficulties of searching in memories. That generation, especially those ones of the mountains, have some kind of sweet sense of responsibility.
Still, she didn't share much about lamentation, but she told me about times when she was sixteen and seventeen. As soon as it would get warmer and the mountain roads opened, her sister would hand her over her two little boys. She would saddle the hoarse and get going all by herself, with the two small ones, on a three day ride to their home in upper Tusheti. The cheese was never so delicious like on the nights at the bonfire under bare skies, she said.
...
Mari invited me as a guest speaker, to speak about my work with the children. I love that idea and gladly take the opportunity. But I'm thinking more in terms of a workshop format, where we'll work together on a performance. We'll perform the loss of "lament in voice" practices.
12.04.21
I went for a hike before breakfast. This time to a small, old, local church on a hill.
Tushetian mountains from that hill.
And when we're already at visual sharing - here is my current working space <3
I met today Tamara Bebo (Bebo means Granny/ Granma). She is a "lamentor in voice" and lives in Kvemo Alvani. Ever since the pandemia she has not been visiting funerals and has not lamented in public. Her grandchildren don't want her to catch something. I asked Tamara how she got into the practice of lamentation. She told me, she was born into it, fated to be a lamentor. Born an orphan, raised in a gruesome home. Encountered much pain and loss. Her friends used to say, she was already lamenting as a child. Lamenting over her fate. I felt an admiration for her. I wondered what made her heart stay open and don't get bitter after all the experiences she had.
Tears would roll down her cheeks effortlessly. It felt, as if they had no threshold to cross. Her crying didn't have a severity or acuteness, though. She was very calm and every word of hers, if with tears or without, flowed into each another, even when she'd skip themes .
Her gaze was also mild but strong. Gaze through Neptune. I liked her very much. She liked me too, I think. She asked me a lot about my self. On my interest in that subject. I told her, what I managed to find in the current moment in my chest. I was a bit confused of how to handle this very touching conversation, that was a formal interview-meeting at the same time. These two things blend, things are not so split, but it's challenging to navigate it. I got lazy to think about clever questions for my work. All I wanted was to rest my chest for a while at that place, that seemed so spacious for emotional flow. And I did so. Tamara didn't sing me really a lament in voice. She said she can't, cause there is no cause. How right. How can you lament when there is no context? Then at the end, she did sing me though something, cause she didn't want to leave me without having heard one. She sang a lament that generated at her brothers death. But as she sad, "laments in voice" shell be sung in context, otherwise they are just song. And so it was for her singing to, a sad song.
She gifted me with her hand-knit socks. I was happy for that. This woman who's emotional wisdom was so vast that she could cry for the whole village without loosing ground. And her earthy watery hands knitted this socks. I'll wear them in great honor and get cozy in them, in times when this world feels remote and cold.
....
I went to Maris office. A poet was educating the children on a Georgian literature piece about friendship. The children where eager and also tired. Me too. I drank my fourth instant coffee.
On that day I learned to play on the Fanduri (a traditional Georgian three-stringed plucked instrument). And on that day I felt the softness of the heart after meeting Tamara. At somewhat seven or so in the evening Mari invited me to dinner at her place, where we made salad with green garlic from her garden. Her mother joined then too and they called a neighbor. An elder woman, named Gulnara. Gulnara was a big contrast to Tamaras tender presence from the morning. Gulnara Bebo was 81 years old. A sharp-tongued, very loud and witty women. She liked inappropriate jokes, and honored that "two-hundred gram of extra meat, that men have". It came to the "two-hundred gram extra meat", after I asked about a traditional rule, where women were not allowed to touch the dead or visit the funerals when they were having their menstruation cycle - Another similar rule: if a women who menstruated died, no one except of other women who had their menstrual cycle at that moment where allowed to touch that dead woman. She was also not buried properly and only after some months, was it allowed for her bones to be moved to the common graveyard of the village. - She answered my question with: "Because they are unclean". That followed a gender based discussion of different generational and cultural backgrounds. Why was something sacred as a menstrual cycle considered as unclean? But she had more affinity with the phallic order. As a killer-argument she asked me, if I have that "extra two-hundred grams meat between my legs"? Confused I mumbled- No, I have something better. I felt like a small girl, called for defiance and yet her wrinkles shrunk me.
The curfew time was calling for an end to the dinner. It was already nine. I was also tired, my head was buzzing. Mari brought me to the guesthouse. It began to storm that night. And I lay in bed, feeling all the different feelings from the day. Wanted to ooze myself in the softness of Tamara Bebos feeling, being then pulled to the more disturbed affair with Gulnara Bebos measure of things, while snoozing into the heavy rainfall sounds.
13.04.21
I get into a Marshutka (small bus) at 9 o clock. We arrive in Tbilisi in the afternoon. The driver is a short and harsh man. They talk about two suicides that followed one another in the recent days.
The driver almost bumped into a dog. I shrieked and the driver told me, if I shriek again like that, he will fly out from the window. I said it happened to me already once, that a driver overrode a dog. And then he told a story, of how he did override a dog once actually and how annoyed he was, to find his front license plate ruined. Hearing that hurt me and made my heart feel unsafe again in this world. Tamara, lend me your vast heart, that managed to stay open regardless of harshness.
To learn more about Mari Khachidzes organization "Tusheti Brand" go to: https://www.facebook.com/tushuribrendi/
To learn more about the cultural festival and residency program "Aq Tusheti" go to: https://www.aqtushetii.com/
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