Beggars, beggars, everywhere...

On Wednesday, as C and I were on our way home from our Georgian lesson, we stopped at a khachapuri window for some street food. As I was preoccupied with my not-terribly-tasty meat-and-onion-stuffed dessicated bread thing, I ran into (and almost ran over) the Polyglot Begging Woman.

I remember the PBW from when C and I were in Tbilisi in 2003. She cornered us and asked us, in Russian, then English, then Georgian, then German, for money. She noticed I was Asian and tried out some Japanese. C tried to fend her off in French, but she slipped right into it and started upbraiding him in that language. She's persistent, loud, and shrill, and always walks and talks in a relentless, rapid-fire staccato - like a wind-up toy that's been wound allllll the way up. And she always heads, torpedo-like, for foreigners.

Though I fear being on the receiving end of her needling demands, I like her attitude. She's pushy and direct and unapologetic — unlike, say, the sad black-clad grannies who crouch by the underpasses with their palms mutely extended for alms, or the wheedling children who worry pedestrians on Tbilisi's main avenues. (I don't know the story with the old ladies — they look terribly forlorn, and a lot of Georgians give to them — but the children are often on the street because their parents or some other handlers are using them to earn money. Yuck.)

Anyway, I found myself nose-to-nose with the PBW, and just as she opened her mouth to ask for money, I held out my sad little lunch and, through a dry mouthful of bread mumbled, "Ginda?" (You Want?)

Momentarily flummoxed, she paused, then gave a half-polite, half-comic half-shrug (Why not?) and delicately tore off a small piece with her thumb and forefinger, saying, "Okay, but just a little bit."

Then she wheeled away and continued up the street.


*

The other day at the Goodwill Hypermarket, I picked up two bags of chocolate coins (the chocolates are wrapped in silver & gold foil with euro markings on them) for Christmas. One of them is for JW's kids in Sighnaghi, and I think that I'll hazard giving the other bag to the beggar kids. I am partly afraid that I'll end up on the receiving end of a hail of retributive rejected chocolate euro-missiles (Darn you foreign lady, give us the good stuff!) but fuck that. There are worse things than an angry rain of chocolate, and kids should get presents at Christmas. (Or fake Xmas anyway - Georgians celebrate on January 7th, which corresponds to December 25th on the Julian Calender. (Or something.))

That is all.