Marshrutka Madness (A Video Game of Georgian Driving)

That yellow vehicle is a marshrutka. This reference will come in handy later in the text. (That monument in the background is some statue in Tbilisi. I'm sure it's important somehow, but I don't know how.)

I haven't written for a while due to various reasons that I won't bother going into in detail because, to be perfectly honest, they're both depressing and childish. Now, I will say that I have always struggled with an inability to cause conflict or upset people in any way. I have also always struggled with my latent guilt which has me literally fighting with myself and feeling guilty about even the smallest thing which I wouldn't be able to fix, anyway. Add to all of this living with a family with whom I can not effectively communicate. Add a host father who is never satisfied and who doesn't make enough money to buy bread (don't get me wrong, we eat way too much bread, but it's hand made because it's cheaper to buy flour than loaves and only the rich can afford to buy loaves). If you combine my inability to handle conflict and his tendency to yell at anyone who moves in his generally vicinity, you've got a pretty good idea of how the last two and a half months have been. Like I said: depressing. Difficult.

Moving on, though. At the moment I am writing this in my pajamas wearing snoopy slippers. I just finished hand-washing my clothes and hanging them to dry. Earlier today I made corn chowder from scratch. At school I impressed my ninth graders with how quickly and well I can write in Georgian and before that I had a lesson outside with my sixth graders to learn shapes and colors and brush up on basic vocabulary (street, horse, chicken, school, sun, sky, cloud, grass, etc). This morning I woke up, after a week of miserably cold, wet, rainy weather, to the sun shining through my curtains and cloudless blue skies. All day I've been able to see both the Upper and Lower Caucuses. In a week I get to take a helicopter/small plane to Mestia in Svaneti, the only place in Georgia that I absolutely have to see before I leave.

It's days like this that remind me why I am still here and sticking it out to the end, no matter how many times my students tempt me to shove their heads in buckets of water to calm them down.

(Side note: I am sitting on my front porch in a tank top and flannel pajamas rolled up to the knee. Least amount of clothing I have worn outside in months.)

The sunset from the back window of a marshrutka. Taken somewhere outside of Kutaisi on a trip I made with my co-teachers and a couple students.

I promised last time an entry about Georgian driving and marshrutkas (hence the themed pictures). Since I am currently sitting with a view of one of the biggest highways in Georgia, this is probably a good time.

My first experience with a long-distance trip in Georgia was from Tbilisi to Batumi my second day in Georgia. Luckily, I was too busy avoiding the heavily leaking air conditioning to really notice the way the driver was handling the bus. (I did, however, notice the sheep on the van next to us driving through the mountains. All I saw was the head, really, as the body was nicely packed in a burlap sack and roped to the roof.)

The first time I went out on my own (with two friends) to experience Georgian driving was in Kutaisi. We took a taxi to the center and met up with some friends for a nice meal on the river. The only distinct thing I remember was that the driver did a lot of leering and attempted to converse with us in either Georgian or Russian, though none of us spoke either language.

From the steps of our training center in the middle of Kutaisi, one of Georgia's largest city. Yes. Those are cows crossing the road in front of a Mercedes sedan.

Those first two examples of Georgian driving do not include the most important form of transportation in Georgia: the marshrutka. In order to truly understand and be a part of Georgian culture, you have to ride in a marshrutka. (Sometimes spelled 'marshutka', sometimes 'marshrutka' with a second 'r', depending upon whether it's the Georgian or Russian spelling. Mostly I say 'marsh' these days.) There are a few varieties of marshrutkas available: government (actual tickets bought at a station) or private (no tickets and able to be flagged down on any road anywhere); local (these run between major areas of large cities like buses, but without the schedule); city to village (these run between cities and villages. For example, I live in a village called Teklati outside of Senaki and I have two drivers that know who I am, where I live and probably more about my business than they have a right to.); short-distance city to city (from Senaki to Zugdidi, which is about an hour trip); and finally, long-distance city to city (from Senaki to Tbilisi, which is about a 5 hour trip depending upon anything from the weather to the mood of the driver).

As a rule, shorter distance marshrutkas stop at any point, have no regular schedule, tend to be as reliable as meterologists, are privately run and will attempt to fit as many bodies and bags as possible into the marshrutka. I lucked out in Georgia: I'm tall, blonde, foreign and interested enough in their language and culture to be a 'kai gogo (good girl)'. That may seem off topic, but it means that on marshutkas which seat 12 people and are currently holding 25, I get front seat and don't have to suck in the gut and stand for an hour pressed against an old woman who has never met a toothbrush or a bar of soap and has a thing for fish cooked with garlic and onions.

An inner-city marshrutka in Tbilisi. As you can see by the sign in the corner, they have numbers and destinations, though how they'll get there or when they go seems to remain a mystery. From the cracked windshield you can see this man is probably an adventurous driver.

Don't let my good luck fool you, though. I've had my fair share of close encounters. I have two favorites which stand out. The first was on a trip to visit a friend, Joanne, in Chkhorotsqkhu which is an hour north of Senaki and basically the last stop on the paved road. I was lucky enough on this occasion to have a driver who believed in speed limits and picking up as many people as possible, only to stop barely a kilometer up the road to drop someone off. This kind of stop and go makes trips virtually unbearable. Especially when there's a large woman carrying a sack of fish whose chest is the same height as your face. Said chest was covered in a sweater that likely hadn't seen a bar of soap in at least a decade and had, from the look and smell, been intimately acquainted with more than a few animal slaughters over the years. I got to Chkhorotsqkhu no worse the wear but feeling like I had a new appreciation for washing machines and weight limitations.

My second most memorable experience was a trip from Zugdidi back to my village. This driver was also a firm believer in the 'push them into the car just enough for the door to shut and press them further in' mindset. I was, unfortunately, one of the last to get in. But not THE last. This meant that my left butt cheek was pressed against a woman sitting next to the driver, there was a man pressed against me from behind, my right hip was pressed against a woman whose nose appeared to be making its acquaintance with the interior of the vehicle and my front was shoved into the hip of a man whose upper body was sprawled across the dash. My right leg was stuffed between the woman greeting the interior and the man across the dash and my foot was wedged against the door. My other leg was bent and I was half-sitting on the woman, with my leg practically between hers. Thankfully, this only lasted for about ten or fifteen minutes. Had it gone on any longer, I'm fairly certain my hands (which were resting on the dash below the above-mentioned man) would have fallen off, as they were pretty much holding me up.

In both of these situations, there was not a single person who was surprised, upset or frustrated with what was happening. Everyone just sort of slowly molded themselves to be the same shape as the interior of the vehicle and held on until their stop, which they sometimes had to find by bending even further and hanging their head in front of a window.

Georgians will take their cars anywhere. I'm glad marshrutkas stick to the 'roads'. Usually. What you can't see in this picture is that behind me is the car that I rode in to this river-outing which was driven by a drunk man wearing no seatbelt and I believe there were 7 people in a 5 seat car. (Near Narazeni, Georgia)

Those anecdotes are not, by any means, a rare occurrence here in Georgia. I'm generally more surprised when I don't have to get intimately acquainted with strangers or when, most shocking of all, I get to sit down. Despite a severe lack of personal space, though, marshrutkas are disgustingly handy. Because of the variety you can get almost anywhere in Georgia at any time of day. Because the people taking them are the kinds of Georgians that can't afford cars, the rates are, happily, quite low. For a 5 hour trip from Senaki to Tbilisi it costs about 15 lari ($8); the equivalent ride on a greyhound (the closest thing to a marshrutka I can think of) runs at probably around $60. If I take a local marshrutka from my village to Senaki it's 50 tetri (about 30 cents), and a ride from Senaki to Zugdidi, which takes about an hour, costs 3 lari (about $1.70). I can buy an hour-long trip on a bus for less than the cost of a hamburger at McDonald's.

No wonder the driving is so insane in Georgia. They let two year olds play with phones while driving a standard.

With the cheap trip, though, comes the seating arrangements mentioned above...and the driving. I recently took a trip to Tbilisi to see a 2012 European Cup qualifying game between Georgia and Croatia (which Georgia won with a goal in the last five minutes making it a simple 1-0! Sakartvelos gaumarjos! Go Georgia!) and in the mountains between my village and Tbilisi there was still snow and ice. Unfortunately for sensitives stomachs, Georgian driving does not change simply due to rain, snow, ice or heavy fog. I once drove through the mountains at night and my driver turned the lights off when no one was around and turned them back on when other drivers' lights lit the road. The better to see the unlit, foggy, winding, mountain roads?

Almost all drivers are the same: they don't wear seat belts (or they didn't until a law was passed on December 1st requiring it); their idea of passing is two diesels moving slowly on a winding mountain road being passed in the middle by a BMW and a Mercedes marshrutka going who knows how fast and swerving at the last minute within inches of taking off bumpers or knocking someone off a cliff; they believe firmly believe in one-handed driving (the other is needed for the cigarette they hold hanging from the open window), even when swerving, swearing, honking and speeding simultaneously. I have lost count of the number of times I have thought, "This is it. This is the end. Death by marshrutka." Then closed my eyes and waited for the crash.

The only thing more dangerous than the drivers is the roads. On any marhsrutka ride, you can count on your marshrutka speedily swerving around any/all of the following: cows, pigs, chickens, horses, sheep, goats, dogs, cats, water buffalo, horse-drawn carts, old women holding sticks while chasing the aforementioned animals, men carrying loads of flour in wheelbarrows, old men on bikes, children and various other obstacles. This is not taking into account other cars. Or the state of the roads. In Batumi, one of the major highways through the city has more ankle-deep potholes than Georgia has chickens. And that is saying something, I can guarantee you that.

This is not a strange sight. I am more used to seeing cows crossing the road than people at this point. I took this on my way back into Martvili from a suphra at a monastery on the outskirts of town.

So, for a summary:

Marshrutkas fit 23 people and a goat in a space meant for 12; the drivers have one hand holding a cigarette while the other is used to simultaneously honk, drive, speed, swerve and weave around traffic; the roads are rife with livestock, people, other cars and more potholes than you can count; it's the cheapest form of transport imaginable.

Yes, there are 'risks'. Yes, it reminds me of the way a 5 year old would play a racing game. Yes, sometimes I genuinely feel like my life will soon come to an end. But, honestly, I don't think my Georgian experience would be the same without marshrutkas. They're convenient, they're cheap and most of all, they're fun. Sometimes when I'm standing in the rain waving desperately and cursing my luck that they don't have real stops with a cover, I'm not fond of this particular mode of transportation. But then I realize that I'd have to have a car in Texas; nowadays I only notice when the marshrutkas are going slow; it's almost a comfort to have people pressed to me on either side, because then it's easier to keep my balance on the road; I can usually tell the difference between a swerve around a car and one around an animal, even if I'm not looking out the window. Despite the insanity, this is one thing about Georgia that I'm really going to miss.

Especially with views like this. Sunset on the road to Tbilisi.