Sex and Supra

So I haven’t written in a few days, it’s been sort of busy. Although not really. Actually, it’s kind of hard to say. There are these bursts of activity, followed by days of non-activity. Half the time I feel as if I am wasting my time, other times, I feel like I hit jackpot because someone from an NGO or government agency agreed to an interview. Although, sometimes during the interview, I begin to wonder what the hell I am doing at the interview.

Anyways, on a more positive note, I went to my first Georgian supra. Supra is basically a gigantic feast where everyone toasts like mad for hours and eats like there is no tomorrow until the rooster sings and everyone rolls out like barrels full of pickles. Wait, do pickles come in barrels? I think they do. Or at least in Germany.

So the supra was in honor of a girl who was celebrating her birthday. The toasting starts pretty much in the very beginning when the toast-master (!) starts off with a toast and pretty much all the other men have to follow by toasting while standing up. Toasting also requires gulping down all the wine in the glass in front of you or you’re being rude. Thanks to the Georgian patriarchic society, women only do the first toast and all they really have to do is take a small sip. Otherwise, I would have been under the table within the first 30 minutes.

The very first toast, which is in the honor of the guest, is usually drunk out of a larger glass/bowl/whatever large container that’s near by. While standing up, the toast-master says something in Georgian for say 3 minutes (during this time, I smiles and look around wide-eyed) then he gulps down the large container of wine. In the meantime, the man seated next to the toast-master fill his large container with wine, says his 3 or so minutes of toast in Georgian and gulps his wine. In this case, the 2 containers, which were shallow bowls, were passed down to other men down the table. Essentially, one toast takes like 30 minutes. Since it’s a toast for the guest of honor, women chime in when they have a chance but they don’t need to gulp the large container or stand up. During this time, everyone blabbers, answers mobile (yea, did you notice that – mobile!) calls, chats up the waiter. No one really listens, including the guest of honor. And since I have no clue what they say, it could be anything in the world. And it’s not like anyone is listening.

So the whole thing is repeated again some 20 minutes later when the toast-master toasts the parents of the guest of honor. All the men follow, women are relieved from any duty of toasting. Which I tell you, I didn’t mind. Because after toasting parents, the ritual calls for toasting for the siblings, then for those who are dead, and so on and so on. It’s ridiculous. I have no clue how many liters of wine these people consume. It’s like water here….

On a more serious note, today I was able to go on the outreach work with the social workers to distribute tests results for female sex workers. Last week, the center drove around in a large van with doctors who took HIV, syphilis, and gonorrhea. I got to see some of the places where women work. Some are really nice and have really good protection, there were burly men standing around. I can’t say if they are any good places to work but they seemed fairly decent. Others were shitholes. In fact, I went to this one place where I can’t remember if the rooms had doors on them. I think there were but it didn’t seem like it. There was some woman passed out on the bed in one of them. I also got to talk to some of them, they seemed really nice. One girl was really cool, she talked to me for a little while about stuff in general. But I cannot imagine how she copes with life, she herself said that she hates when others know what she does. Although, as she said, it pays.

Oh, and then it turns out that I live in sex work central. There is a massage parlor just around the corner from me and the next largest street from me, which is half a block away, is lined with sex workers. Nice!