In Tbilisi on our first day together my husband, Robert, showed us the old town and the fortress on the hill. Soon afterwards I found a spot for a painting, while Robert and Gerald went to see more of the fortifications. I had barely begun and there she was, a little girl holding out her hand with a winning smile. (I had just been instructed to not give money to "gipsy" children, they were being kept out of school to beg.) So, I told her "no" in Russian. She did remind me of a stray dog who ventured into our yard many years ago, the same heartwarming message: "I am so glad I found you!" She was direct, but polite and very intuitive and it was that intuition that helped her navigate in the world. It was my first encounter of this kind and I was glad she did sit down and we talked a little. She said, she was 12, her parents were dead, she had a 16 year-old brother and lived with her grandmother. Her name was Zarina. I continued on my painting in the Georgian sun. She wanted to paint as well, I gave her some paper, a pencil, sharpener and eraser and she proceeded to draw the one flower she knew over and over and to write her first name in curly Georgian letters. Last of all she covered the page with rows of letters, she was obviously practicing her handwriting. My husband and Gerald had checked on us once and when they came again, she informed me of it well before they got there. She would not look at them, not even for a photograph. She had green eyes, that were striking with her dark hair and red shirt. However, I had to go and told her to keep the pencil etc. and gave her the little notebook. A minute or so later when I looked over my shoulder she was nowhere to be seen.
Later in the week when I met Nora and David (both from the Netherlands), I was very glad to find out more about street children. David was helping them (and handicapped children) in Georgia. He told me the street children did have parents who didn't or couldn't take care of them. The stories they told were made up and some of them even pretended to be deformed etc. It had been a struggle, but there was a good home for them now. He told me a couple of success stories, but money was getting hard to come by in the Netherlands as well because of the recession. I remembered Zarina had said that she went to school, but she acted like a child who was learning how to write and did not often have a piece of paper...
The watercolor I started with Zarina is finished. It is the view of Tbilisi from the hill with the Armenian church in the foreground.
The next watercolor is the view of an interesting building seen from the hotel. The architecture really made it stand out. I asked about it and all the info I got was that there had been parties there in Soviet time and that people still lived on the upper stories. The first evening we had seen the small arts and craft market on the steps in front of it and glanced into the courtyard inside. It seems a building from before the revolution..
