Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been doing my best to really keep a positive, open mind to things that have been happening around me. I used to consider myself a very open-minded, non-judgmental person. I fear these couple of months have definitely tested those traits.
So a lot of this started when I went to Tbilisi for a week for a Save the Children Training. It focused on peer education in the fields of HIV/AIDS, Alcohol, and Tobacco. I loved every second of the training. It was a lot of stuff that we’d Americans learned during health classes, but for the Georgians it was a lot of new info. I was really excited for my Counterpart to learn and for us to be able to educate some of the rest of the people in my village.
Turns out she wasn’t really interested in really implementing anything, especially HIV/AIDS education because she mentioned that she wasn’t sure those topics would be socially acceptable in my village.
I completely understand that HIV and AIDS are taboo subjects, even in our culture, but with Georgia having 2540 registered cases and a projected reality of 4000, these things need to be addressed, especially when most men in the villages, town center, city, and whole damn country have visited a prostitute at some point in their life!
Then to test my normally accepting personality it gets pushed a little further. So I’m teaching my 10th graders about family. I have them all draw their family trees and present. So one of my students gets up and starts talking about her dad in his 2 wives. I stopped her and corrected her “My dad has 2 sisters, my aunts” “NO, my dad has 2 wives, my mothers”….WHAT?!?!? I tried my best to keep my surprise hidden, after all she has no choice in the matter. So, a little time passes and then I talk to my friend Jen and she apparently meets a man in Adjara who lives in her village that has 2 wives and wants to take a third! It’s craziness….right? So apparently this happens a lot. I’m in the process of researching the intricacies of these relationships (Are the Orthodox? What do their villages think about it? etc). I still am not sure it even makes sense in Georgia! If this weren’t a second world country and such a “religious” country then maybe I wouldn’t be so bothered by it, but it’s INSANE!
So I guess the thing that I have to realize and remember is that I am in Georgia, not America. Not everything moves as fast. Ideas, People, Service (other than marshutkas, but even those are slow because drivers decide they want to stop for a smoke break or to go shopping or god know what. lol). But, with that all being said, something’s got to give!
I talked to my dad about the Save the Children Training and he wisely said “today, the world is an ever changing place and you have to adapt and move forward if you do not then you get left behind.” Now I do agree for the most part, but trying to put my non-judgmental cap back on, I think it’s a lot easier for Americans to say because we live in a progressive society. A lot of the information we present them is new to them. I have to remember that not too many people accept new ideas right off the bat, but if they at least start thinking about them and talking about them, it is worth it....
Now how to get over this 2 wife thing…
