Oh Jehovah...

Every now and again, your otherwise Groundhog day taxi conversation seems to take a strange curve ball and go into new uncharted territory. That would easily describe my taxi ride from today. Conversations usually start with: "Your Georgian is quite good", "Are you married?", "Do you have children?", "How long have you been in Georgia for?", "Do you like it?", "Why did you come here?", "Didn't you know America is better?" etc.

However, you know your Georgian is getting better when a taxi driver tries to pass along Jehovah's Witness books to me passed from the glove compartment.


Originally the conversation stemmed from what I am teaching at the university and other topics, which I have passive understanding of but it is more difficult to speak about. Finally he branched into yet another topic, religion... He mentioned that he is a Jehovah's witness. I tried to ask what the difference between that and the orthodox faith is and understood enough to know that it sounds similar. He has been one for 15 years. For those outside of Georgia, this topic is the one where Georgians are extremely intolerant, have beaten people trying to convert others to be Jehovahs Witness, denied passports as they have the "wrong" religion etc. In other words, it is quite a hot topic. The man asked me if I could read in Georgian, which is completely unlike Russian if you are catching this blog later on. I answered, "Slowly, but yes." I was thinking he was still evaluating and being impressed with the foreigners language skills but then tries to pawn off religious paraphernalia on me. I escape by saying that I have 2 pamphlets at home from a colleague of his which I did legitimately receive a month prior. I also mentioned that I was a bit Buddhist. I has left these brochures earlier on my desk at the university briefly and got a mouthful from some of my students. I had taken them being curious about religious propaganda and whom it was from. It was the Jehovahs...