The Wood-Chopping Grandmother of Mazeri
Nora Qaldani is 67 years old, but she isn’t your typical grandma. She chops her own firewood. She makes her own cheese, entirely by hand the old fashioned way. When I offered to carry a bucket of milk for her, she insisted to give it to her because it may be “too heavy for me”. She also makes a dangerously delicious khachapuri.
She lives with her nephew, Chabuki and her sister, Nato, both of whom share the same last name. She was born in the village of Mazeri in the Becho valley of Upper Svaneti. She spent most of her youth in Sokhumi, the capital city of Abkhazia. In 1978 she graduated from university there with a degree in public relations, and lived and worked for twenty two years in the city until the war with Russia in 1992. Like thousands of other Georgians, she and her family were forced out of their home in Abkhazia, only able to take the clothes they were wearing at the time, or as she described it “the nails on our fingers”. She tells me that she was close friends with her Abkhazian and Armenian neighbors in Sokhumi.
“There was no tension before the war. No aggression. Georgian and Abkhaz families had been friends for generations. We would go to each other’s supras and celebrate holidays and events together. Our children were friends. We lived in peace. With the war everything changed. Neighbors turned on each other, everyone had weapons, and people’s homes were destroyed, sacked, burned. War is a terrible thing”, she concludes, “never let anyone tell you that anything can be achieved through violence… anything”.
Mazeri is a Svan mountain village along the road to Mestia. About three quarters of the way to Mestia, the road splits off to the left, going into a region called the Becho Valley, of which Mazeri is the largest village. The Becho Valley is a magical place where there is a natural spring every kilometer with what Georgians call “mjave tskali”, or sour water, because of its metallic flavor and lighty carbonated texture. The water is perfectly safe to drink and quite refreshing. Locals have sworn by the stuff for thousands of years as a cure for the cold, an upset stomach, and most notably a strong pakhmalia, or hangover.
The village has just enough tourism to provide a comfortable environment for foreigners, but not so much that it loses authenticity. If you want to see the real Svaneti, come here. There are a handful of small, personal guesthouses as well as two larger hotel-type options with grounds for camping. That’s about the only non-traditional industry in this village. There are no WiFi cafes, no tourist shops, no restaurants. For all of those touristic accessories, head over to Mestia- the capital of Svaneti.
In Mazeri you can taste the delicious, delicious food of the Svan home. Hot kubdari (a Svan dish similar to khachapuri which uses meat instead of cheese), Svanuri khachapuri fresh from the pechi (Svan oven), homemade matsoni (Georgian yogurt), and the sharp, salty yet juicy Svan sulguni cheese.
One feels far, far away from the loud, bartering bustle and stale heat of Zugdidi. Far away from the incessant party culture of Batumi. Here things are different. Calm. Simple. Sustainable. The locals live with the land, not off of it. They eat what they produce and sell the rest.
Almost every family has their own cows and chickens, with which they make their own cheese, yogurt, cream, and butter. Glass containers are re-used for canning and the preservation of jams and sauces. Plastic is actually quite uncommon here; any plastic goods have to be driven up to Mazeri by van, making the fresh, domestic products less expensive than pre-packaged ones. Food scraps don’t go to waste, either. They are fed to the pigs and chickens, and all waste is reused for composting. After spending some time here, you come to realize that the recent pushes for environmentally friendly consumption in many cities are not a new idea. This is how human society had always been before the introduction of plastic and other non-reusable products.
The quality of products here is truly astounding. The egg yolks are orange- something which you can’t find on a regular supermarket shelf anywhere in the world. It’s a sign that the chickens are fed high quality food and receive plenty of open air and sunlight, and it’s only viable on a small scale, so you can only find it in villages like these.
The main source of income in this village, just as with many other villages in Svaneti has historically been the sale of cheese in Zugdidi and Kutaisi. Nora is known in Mazeri for her cheese-making, and boy does she make it well. I go along with her one evening to see how she makes her famous cheese.
Nora, Chabuki, and Nato run a guesthouse from their home for travelers.
As I enter their home I am immediately greeted with unbelievable warmth. I do not feel like I am a guest, I feel like a family member who has returned home after a long time away. Nora is like a third grandmother I never knew I had or wanted.
I shuffle into the guesthouse exhausted after a full day of travelling through the mountain rain. Something is sizzling away atop the Svan pechi. The seductive smell of freshly baked dough and melted cheese wafts through the room. The smell of happiness. Khachapuri is cooking.
Nora, like a true Georgian grandmother, offers me a slice. Then three. Then she bakes a second Khacapuri, and a third- the endless flow of glorious, cheese filled pies is interrupted only by the occasional offering of something else delicious and homemade. Fresh matsoni (farmer’s yogurt) with wild blackberry preserves? Yes, please. Fried mountain potatoes with caramelized onions and sweet, tangy Tkhemali (Georgian plum sauce)? Absolutely. When in the hall of the mountain queen, do not skimp on any of the nostalgia-creating deliciousness. This is a meal to compare other meals to. Here’s how she made it.
The walls and floor of the interior of built from glazed Svan pine. On the first floor, there is a large living space with a Svan pechi (oven). This is the heart of the home- where the family gathers at the end of a hard day of work to relax and talk.
“They don’t make them like this anymore”, Nora tells me. This is clear from a first glance- the oven has two opening compartments, one where wood is burnt and a second where food (typically khachapuri and its meat filled Svan version, Khlobdani) is baked. The oven was handmade by a local smith who specializes in building pechi. This is standard, though. Almost everything here is handmade, and built to last for decades.
Nora methodically polishes the top of the oven several times a day so that it maintains its reflective matte. The family gathers around this oven every evening- talking about the events of the day, solving problems, exchanging stories, laughing, and thinking.
Nato is sitting in a green chair in the center of the room, in front of the television. She is an incredibly intelligent woman, having finished at the top of her class in University in Sokhumi and Leningrad. Unfortunately, she is no longer able to walk. She had a minor back problem before the war in 1992. The suffocating, unending stress of the conflict greatly worsened her condition, and she was unable to find the necessary medical attention in the chaos of the post-soviet period.
Chabuki offers rides on horseback up to the three waterfalls of Mazeri and the Ushba glacier, as well as an eight hour trek to Mestia for tourists who enjoy a good challenge. The day I arrived, he returned home late- well after dark. Apparently there had been a few alpinists who got stuck on the way up the Ushba glacier. They called Chabuki and asked him to bring an alpine rope to help them down. He called a friend and they rode over to the glacier on horseback, wearing sandals. Chabuki, having grown up in these mountains, realized that there was no need for a rope. He quickly climbed up to the alpinists, in his sandals and adidas sport pants, and guided them down, alpine gear and all. When he returned he was eager to show me the horse. “He is a champion”, Chabuki tells me. “He won the horse race in this village last year”.
That evening I sit down for a supra with Chabuki. I am offered the family wine. It’s quite good. He calls it tsoskhali qvino — living wine, though many in Tbilisi refer to it as Bacchus after the Roman god of wine. You can’t find this in stores, because it’s made without preservatives. It comes from Georgian families and can only be found in Georgian homes. It’s meant to be drunk young and fresh over the series of many, many toasts. It goes down lighter than bottled wine, so it’s ideal for a long supra.
I hesitate to write “feast” as the translation for supra because it’s so much more than that. Of course, there are large quantities of food- far more than one can ever dream of consuming. And, of course, this food is delicious. But the main point of a supra isn’t the food, nor is it the drinking. It’s the people sitting around the table. The supra unites communities, builds new friendships, and strengthens existing ones.
There’s a head of the table, called the tamada, who is the most eloquent or oldest member of the supra. To call the Tamada a “toastmaker”, however, is inaccurate. The tamada is an impromptu poet, creating verses both specialized to each person at the table and generalized to everyone present.
There is an order to the toasts. We start by toasting God and peace, both in the world and our own lives. Then we drink to the beauty of our country and culture. Next we remember those who have passed away, and then to our families and children. After each toast by the tamada, he passes on the responsibility to continue the toast to another member of the supra. The role is passed around the table, and each person adds to the toast said by the tamada. This complimentary toast includes whatever emotion you feel in the moment. “I would like to drink to those in our families who are far away from us today” Chabuki begins. “Giorgi, I know that your mother is living in the United States and I know that you must miss each other very much, so I would like to drink to your mother”. Everyone at the table reciprocates the toast and we drink to my mother. I continue the toast by drinking to Chabuki’s brother, who is living in Barcelona.
After each toast, everyone at the table poured a little bit of wine on the floor, a tradition in Svaneti. “Our passed relatives are waiting”, Chabuki tells me. “They are watching our Supra and waiting to be poured some wine.”
I am eventually overcome by a familiar feeling. Location, background, and politics all fade away and I am sitting as one among others appreciating the beauty and difficulty of life.
Nora brings out her panduri, a traditional Georgian string instrument, and begins to sing. It’s a song that she learned from her father as a little girl.
Evening turns to deep night and the crisp mountain air mixes with the sweet musk of freshly poured wine. After the last toast has been drunk and the last of the wine finished, we go outside and admire the stars. They are really clear tonight.
