City of Three Doves

"Fucking map!" I was furious. Samtredia (The city of three doves) should have been 27 km from Chohatauri according to the German map Franz had given me way back in Yozgat. We should have been in the city already but people were telling us we had 10km more to go. It was the first time the map had failed me (unfortunately not the last) and it couldn't have happened at a worst time. It had rained again that day and our spirits were really low. We hadn't come across many people except for some men driving 5 cows down the hilly road. We had a humble meal of canned fish and corn in front fo the only store we came across and things were tough. I had really hoped that the first few days from Ozurgeti would be easy since Tim was still getting over his bout of pneumonia but we were unlucky. We couldn't find a place to have a cup of coffee or tea all day - nowhere to warm ourselves up. Not a single gas station we ever came across in Georgia had a bathroom or cafe! The abandoned buildings we passed were also starting to get to us, not to mention the creepy old Soviet monuments - muscular heroes, straight out of a comic book, weilding triumphant swords or a worker's hammer - sad reminders of better times, of forgotten philosophies, principles...

To be brutally honest, I experienced Samtredia as a dark, muddy ghetto. Not one street was paved properly nor were there any street lamps - soon our shoes were heavy with Georgian mud. The large concrete communist monstrosities were all falling apart - their facades 20 years without a single coat of paint or bucket of plaster...much like the rest of the country, it felt as if the city was taking its last breath...

We were told there would be a hotel in the center but as we slowly made our way into the city under the pouring rain we discovered that it was under renovation, although it didn't seem like anyone had touched the ancient building in decades. I was lost; no idea where to go, what to do. It was around 8 pm so the church would be closed and finding a priest would be impossible. I ask everyone I come across for another hotel but no luck...

As we were standing on a corner, thinking desperately what to do next, a car pulls up to us and three young men ask me where we were from and what we were doing in Samtredia. I explain hurridly and ask for a hotel. Tim is in no mood to talk with the men, thinking they were more drunks taking us for clowns as was the case many times along the way. There was something about the guy that I liked though and I told Tim that all was good. The 3 men in the car told me of another hotel and we left in that direction but the receptionist there told us there were no vacancies. I didn't have the heart to tell Tim and just gave him a desperate silent look. The two days from Ozurgeti seemed to have gone all wrong - Tim shouldn't have been walking at all after being so sick, let alone under these cold and wet conditions. I felt guilty, I know I had pushed him to continue...

As we head for the exit two men from the car show up at the door and ask if everything is alright. When I tell them there is no room for us, one of the men, Dato, offers to take us to his house. I shake his hand and thank him in the warmest words I could express in my limited Russian. After explaining our 'no car' philosophy, Dato and his friend Tato (yes, sounds like an 80s pop band:)) agree to accompany us on foot as their friend Gia follows us by car. The two kind souls walk 3 km with us in the pouring rain without umbrellas or raincoats, soaked to the bone by the time we reach their muddy neighborhood...an act Tim and I deeply respected...

"We like meeting people from other countries," begins our host Dato, " I saw you guys walking down the street and felt you needed help, you needed us." How true he was! We sat at the dinner tablewith our three 25 yr old friends as Dato's beautiful wife served us simple but delicious meals. Dato's father, a slim white-haired baker named Konstantin was the tamada and he was moved by our story and happy to be with us. All of our possessions were hanging above the wooden stove and Dato's 8 yr old daughter and 3 yr old son looked at awe at our toys - walking sticks, sleeping bags, etc.

"What do you guys do for a living?" I asked and everyone's face darkened. "We used to work but there no jobs now," replied Tato solemnly. Rarely did we come across a young person in Georgia that had a job and I learned there and then not to ask hard questions like this at the dinner table.

Dato was a quiet man and after reaching his home he let his father and friends do most of the talking, yet there was something very familiar about him and I felt that I knew him well. It could have been that he reminded me of my friends back in Herzegovina - quiet, tough, God-fearing men with prideful hearts. Gia also reminded me of my countrymen. He was a young war veteran and had been wounded on the front lines during the Russian-Georgian conflict. Although he spoke little of the war and I inquired even less, I could tell from the bags under his eyes that he had seen too much too young as did many of my friends, relatives and neighbors back home. He told us that he would soon be deployed in Afghanistan for a peacekeeping mission and that this was neccessary for Georgia to enter NATO - a key for their future security against Russia. "Seems like a big price to pay," I told him, imagining this good man in a hostile desert, "you have given enough," but Gia was a patriot and would give to his country to the end.

"To our guests, gifts from God," Konstantin raises his glass and we follow, "thank you for walking to us! To your health my friends!" We all drink our wine down in a single gulp and again I am moved by the respect and hospitality shown to me by the Georgians who even during hard times still manage to fill a stranger's belly and warm his spirit...

After a lot of wine, chacha and good food, we are shown to a large bed with heavy colorful quilts. The next day we would head for Kutaisi, the second largest city in Georgia, where we would meet up with our friend Irakli the Philospher but I didn't think much about it. I kept replaying our encounter with the three men in my head. I felt something was pushing us forward towards our goal of Tbilisi. Again a "random" encounter had saved us - 4 and a half months of "random" encounters and hundreds of people who had passed our fates from their hands to another's....it was as if they were waiting for us along our road, waiting to push us forward...I smile to myself as I realize we were saved by Dato, Tato and Gia in the City of Three Doves, "Of course, it makes perfect sense!"