Burial Ceremony

Today was an interesting day. I was told yesterday that I would be going to a funeral for an uncle. I'm not sure whose uncle it was, or how he was related but we were going anyways. I went to school and did "research and planned" aka was on the computer all morning. My co-teacher is at a different school on Tuesdays and Thursdays so on those days I don't do anything too important. The most important thing I did today was tell the music class that there is a difference between "Jingle Bells" and "Jingle Bell Rock". Yep, super important. Anyways. At 12:30 I got a call from my host mother who said, "Leslie, go." I knew this meant it was time for me to leave school and head to the preschool. She then got ready to go to the funeral and we walked to the store where we would wait for the family to come pick us up.

About an hour later they finally arrived. We all said hello and did the usual greetings. Then we hopped into the car for what I assumed would be at least a 20 minute drive. Well it wasn't. We could have walked to the house we were going to. It took less than 5 minutes in a car. We drove around the corner from the preschool.  I didn't see the point but I think it had something to do with us all arriving together as a family. We all walked toward the house and then up the stairs. There were some women singing softly in the first room we walked through. In the second room was an open casket in the middle, lots of flowers and lots of women sitting around the edge of the room. We walked in a circle past all of them. I felt very awkward because it wasn't anyone I knew and I couldn't say anything to comfort them even if I wanted to. They wouldn't have understood me. The whole thing just made me want to cry but I didn't have any reason to. Except that I'm just an emotional person and people crying and wailing has a tendency to make me want to cry. I think that is the first open casket I've seen in about 15 years. It definitely startled me but I couldn't stop staring. We eventually went back down the stairs and waited around. There were many tables set up in the front yard. I sort of counted the plates that were arranged at the tables and came up with a number near 200. I know that at least 150 of those seats were filled when we finally sat to eat. After much waiting the casket was brought down the stairs and we began the procession to the cemetary. It was about a mile away. Some people walked behind the casket, others rode in cars. I was in a car. We got there, some woman cried a lot and said a lot of things(well more like screamed). I'm assuming she was talking about the man but she kept saying deda(which means mother). I didn't make any sense to me. Then after about 5 minutes we left. The casket was still above ground and still uncovered when we left. I'm still confused about that too.

After we got back to the house we sat down at the tables and started to eat the food that had been set out. The man who was in charge of leading the toasts made several. The men all stood up at the end of each one. The women just sat because women aren't required to drink for toasts. I couldn't understand anything that was going on. I just ate the food and asked questions about the food.What is this, what is that? I recognized most of it. I finally found a cheese that I really like. It was almost like eating string cheese. It even tasted like string cheese. Even the cheesy bread had the yummy mozzarella cheese in it. I could eat that stuff everyday, but at the end of the eating I really didn't want to eat ever again. Too much food.

We went back to the house and then I left with Eka, Mari and Gocha to go to Poti. There is internet there and  they speak English. Double bonus. I am here until Sunday. I probably won't do much more than I would have in the village but it is nice to have the option to go do something. When we arrived in Poti I was talking about the ceremony with Eka and she told me that the body is laid out like that in the house for a week. I'm not sure what I think of that but I know that is how it used to be done. I am also wondering where the priest was in all of this but maybe after last rites they don't have to do anything else. I don't know, I'm not too informed on the ways of the Georgian Orthodox church.

I also have a feeling that in approximately 40 days there will be another gathering of this sort at that same house. But that is just a guess. OOH one more thing. I got my camera back today!!! YAY! So hopefully some pictures will be coming soon. Farewell for now.