Day 24. Tbilisi.
Getting sick while on holidays isn’t much fun. But falling ill in a foreign land where you are language challenged is downright terrifying. So when Joseph started vomiting last night I had a far bit of cause for concern. Joseph’s body started revolting around 11 pm and he made hourly dashes to the toilet all night to spew. I suspected food poisoning but I knew I had eaten exactly the same food as Joe that day and I felt fine. In the morning, I messaged Hans in Switzerland and he was fine as well. So I messaged Kaxa who had eaten the same suspect Turkish shawarma with us in some little village halfway between Tbilisi and Batumi. He was fine as well.
But Kaxa, Hans and I have tummies loaded with microflora ready to fight off anything that dodgy shawarma can throw at us. Joe’s tummy is still fertile grounds for attacks. I told the guesthouse owner that Joe wouldn’t be having breakfast and he diagnosed the problem immediately as ‘summer shawarma’ and definitely something to avoid. I guess we got that advice a wee bit too late.
Joe was still spewing and getting weaker but within minutes of simply asking Kaxa if he was fine, the wheels were already in motion amongst our Georgian family. Kaxa told Tamriko who then told her sister, Tiko. Within minutes of alerting Kaxa to Joe’s illness I got a message from Tiko saying she was on her way to take care of Joe. It didn’t matter that she lived on the far western side of Tbilisi and it didn’t matter how sick Joe was … she didn’t need details, she was on her way.
Tiko arrived and immediately took control and interrogated Joe about his illness and relayed the diagnosis to her mother, who prescribed some action. She then spoke to the guesthouse landlady who had seen food poisoning countless times and who whipped out a satchel of medicines. Tiko and I then found a chemist and Tiko described Joe’s symptom … this was the same chemist with whom I struggled with earlier to simply ask for a tube of toothpaste. Tiko is a Georgian/English translator and easily told me all that the pharmacist had prescribed. I know five words of Georgian and the chemist spoke five words of English. I simply could not have managed on my own.
Tiko and the landlady worked on Joe throughout the afternoon by making him drink electrolytes and sweet tea. Once it seemed that we had all we needed for Joe, I told Tiko to go home but she would have none of that. She insisted she would stay until Joe was better. We let Joe sleep and sat outside the room. I did some business work while Tiko sat quietly and waited until our next checkup on Joe and responded to frequent calls from Tamo and her mother to check in on Joe’s recovery. Tiko gave up her entire Sunday to be available for whatever Joe needed.
The selfless generosity displayed today by Tiko and her family is somewhat of a foreign concept to many of us in the West. If I had heard of a traveller in Adelaide who was ill I might call and say ‘let me know if you need anything’. But I honestly don’t know that I would drop tools and give up a day just to be available if needed. But this seems to be a theme we’re seeing in Georgia. There is simply an innate kindness and generosity that many of us in Western countries cannot understand.
Joe should recover enough to fly back to Australia in a couple of days and as he does I’m sure he’ll be forever appreciative of the day that Tiko came to nurse him back to good health.