Holidays in Sioni

It is a typical August in the capital. Each day just when we think that Tbilisi has reached the peak of its heat - it becomes even hotter, even dustier and more stifling. It seems hard to imagine how the trees scattered throughout the winding streets and along by the river manage to stay green at all. Apparently it is set to do this until 28th August - when miraculously - on the eve of a festival celebrating some saint the rain and the cold weather will arrive. It is the same every year - and Tbilisian's are now accostumed to the constant talk and complaints about the heat - soon enough the time will come round when the complaints will shift to the cold - and then the lack of electricity, gas or decent roads will really show their true malevolence towards the good people of the city.

But for now, it is summer - and the older women carry their fans and flap them continuously in waves of unexpected movement. The younger women - too 'city' to carry fans - are done up in their tight stylish western clothes and sweat beneath their make-up and totter around in their high heals from one patch of shade to the next. The widows and those in mourning - drapped from head to toe in black simply sit - with as little movement as possible - pausing every once in a while to dip their newspaper funnels into the seasame seeds they are selling - or to use their knarled hands to count out a kilo of nectarines - now costing only 1 lari (50 cents!). The beggar women - sit on the steps of the relative cool of the metro tunnels and underpasses - in the darkness they hold out their hands or their begging bowls, - sometimes there is a little child balanced on their knee to inspire greater sympathy, sometimes a piece of material covering their faces so no one can know the depths to which they have sunk.

As we sweat our way through the summer months the relief for all those who can afford it is the possibility of leaving the city every weekend for cooler climes. This involves trips out to the nearby villages where everyone has some kind of family to visit - and where the vineyards and the homemade chacha (kind of vodka) keep you refreshed. If one is very wealthy you can even get as far as the Black Sea - and holiday in relative style within a stones throw of Turkey - although for most Georgians this trip will involve a certain amount of regret and nostalgia - as they remember and mourn for the days when the region of Abkhazia belonged to them - and the palm trees and beaches were the envy of the entire Soviet Union. Now - the trip to the coast will involve Bathumi and the quiet clustures of villages along the sliver of coastline left to Georgia. Many of the sanitoriums and hotels along the coast are still filled with the internally displaced Georgians forced out of Abkhazia during the war - an ever present reminder of the breakaway regions and the civil war of the past decade.

For my family - this weekend involved a trip two and a half hours outside of the city to an artifical Soviet creation - lake Sioni. Made by a dam to provide electricty - the process of its creation sank 7 villages beneath its waters. And now, on 28th August - that magical date again when the water is at its lowest - you can still see the crucifix of the top of one of the churches. As a reminder to Stalin for his lack of piety about flooding churches legend has it that the lake takes the sacrifice of one person per year to pay for its creation. And - so my Georgian host sisters assure me - this is absolutely true - atleast one person will drown in Sioni every year.

Once you leave Tbilisi - the ery feeling that nothing has been done, mended, changed or built for 30 yeears infuses everything. It is like living in the mind of a Soviet Mis Haversham - inhabiting a world that for everyone has stopped at the height of Soviet power - and has not changed since. If you half closed your eyes you could just imagine that this was the glory days of the Soviet Union - though once you open them again - the decay comes into sharp focus and the temporariness of all our human endeavours at civilisation seems to emerge. As everywhere here - the trip to the lake should take about half the time that it actually did - but due to the roads - it took several more hours. Like everyone else we were staying in a rented room of one of the dilapidated houses on the edge of the lake. They were built for the workers who made the lake in the 50's - and seem entirely unchanged since their inception. There was little water in the communal taps outside, dispersed electricity and the lake itself had the inevitable trappings of rubbish, broken glass and a slabbed concrete beach around its edge. In our one mosquitto infested room my host family and I and our three immeasurably hard and stupidly sagging beds spent the nights - or rather the mornings, for the intimacy and nightlife of this place is the basis of its appeal. There are no bars, no clubs, nothing that would naturally incline one to believe in the potential of Lake Sioni as a place for the young. But it just goes to show how little you need to have a good time. There are the numerous young people of Tbilisi and there is sunshine and homemade wine and once this is added to a sense of leisure and holiday there are no limits to the potential of a place.

Ruso, Tata (my host sisters) and I and numerous random cousins and young Georgians stayed up until 4 in the morning every night or sometimes just never went to sleep - swimming in the lake - drinking chacha and having funny conversations that revolved around my limited Georgian slang words - we gossiped about all the dilemmas and crises that were being played out in the quiet intimate heat of the lakeshore. And while the older generations smoked their endless cigerretes and drank outside of the dilapetated houses - the young people wandered the streets and the lakside. The last night Vashe, my host dad got "baqui" (russian drunk) and started crying that I would be leaving them soon. And the hotheaded, passionate way that Georgians accept and love you here seemed almost overwhelming.

As much as one cannot help but admire this endlessly lovable characteristic - I realise that this trait is also perhaps the root of what I find most difficult about Georgian men. My cool Northern European blood rises - and I realise that I could never marry a Georgian guy (not - just to clarify - that there have been any offers). My own cultural sensitivites are disturbed too much by the position of men and women here. I see it as I look around at the youth as they descend into the logic of cha-cha. I see it as all the guys produce the knives they always carry with them. I see it in the way they're not afraid to use them and to threaten anyone - even girls - with them. I see it with the subtle characteristics that mean kidnapping is still common - and with the fiercely protected virginity of the women - that means a girl is a slut or a whore if she is anything other than an untouchable virginal angel. I see it in the double standards applied to men and women here - and in the way in which a wife is expected to shoulder so much of the burdens. I see it in the fear my host sisters have of their male friends particuarly when they are drunk. I see it in the way in which I am told I should go and sit with a guy if he has ordered me to sit with him. There is machismo and patriachy in the UK - there is masculinity and femininitiy - expectations that fall unfairly on both sides. I have spent the past year studying how gender relations are manipulated and can effect every aspect of our lives - of our lives in any culture. And I am certainly not imagining the UK to be a sweet haven for gender equality. More correctly, it is my familiarity with my own cultures stereotypes and expectations for gender that shine through all too clearly. I realise my own inherant biases and beliefs that I find almsot ompossible to overcome.

Once you are out of your own culture the differences leap out and slap you full in the face. I guess it is also all a question of extremes. Here the extremes of masculinity seem stronger. And the roles of a man and a woman not just subtle unconscious expectation - but out and out enforced rules. In the UK I have never felt that I have to sit with someone for fear he might become violent if I don't follow what he has asked of me. In the UK I have never felt like I would be seen as a slut if I had a boyfriend before I got married. In Sioni a strange dance appeared to repeat itself - where the girls tiptoed round these enormously warmhearted, impossibly passionate, but highly unreasnoble and quicktempered, usually drunk alpha males. In amongst all this machismo there was an incredible amount of kissing and hugging between guys and an amazing sense of community between everyone. But only so long as you don't overstep the mark - as long as you are not gay, as long as you are strong, as long as you can fit in. I love the community, I love the hospitality, I adore the passion and I admire the sense of responsibility for each other. I like it - but really wouldn't want to live it - my western woman attittude shone through rather too clearly. Maybe I just prefer my own particular form of patriachy to the one that inhabits here.