Ode to Gugu

The woman on the left is my counterpart, Guguli. She is probably my favorite person in the village. We work very well together and understand each other. Most of the time I feel like it is Guguli and I versus everything that’s wrong with the Georgian school system. We give students grades that they deserve and usually parents and teachers complain (even if their child doesn’t know A WORD of English) and the director will inflate the grades behind our backs (grade inflation cannot even begin to describe it). She tutors the kids after school for no money which is almost unheard of (teachers at my school make what is equal to $84/month) and she actually understands the education process. She knows that reciting a passage word for word is not actually learning, that kids need to learn how to think critically. She is able to make up creative activities instead of blindly following every horrible exercise in the book and gauge the knowledge of her students to figure out what they need to work on which is also rare.

Many people criticize her because she doesn’t speak English very well (she knows grammar backwards and forwards but can’t speak very fast because she’s not exactly young) but English is her FOURTH language! She walks an hour to and from school everyday and comes to school with dirt caked on her fingers from working in the garden (we won’t mention what her husband does). She is constantly bringing me fruit and candies and forcing me to eat them...

It KILLS me that she’s retiring soon after I leave. I wish I had gotten to her twenty years ago and she could keep working with volunteers after me. I’m really going to miss her when I leave, and I’m going to miss saying “Guguli” because it’s the coolest name ever..