A Day Of Charity Collection With ESN

Hi again everyone, As I was going through my memory I just suddenly remembered a great day that I had with my Erasmus Students Network friends here in Tbilisi the last year. I would like to share that amazing experience with all of you here.

"ALILO" that is how the locals call this lovely festival that is organized once a year. As a member of the ESN family I was given a chance to be a part of it. I had no idea of what the festival was about and what were all the things we were about to enjoy till the end. Actually the story started like this, myself and my friends were speaking with our ESN friends who are Georgians and they suddenly asked us if we were comfortable participating in a festival called "ALILO" that is going to be conducted by the church. All of them were participating in the event and they wanted us to be a part of it as well. For us it was a great opportunity to understand what the Georgian traditions and the customs are. We agreed to it happily and we were waiting the day of event.

About a couple of days before the event we were having a meeting with the incharge of this event who was a nun and she was giving instructions as what to be exactly done on the event.  As there was language problem between us and the nun our Georgian friends took the role of an interpreter and clarified us on what she was saying. She was a quite and a very kind women and she was patiently listening to everyone's suggestions. The meeting kept going on and we on the other side was having some fun asking questions and imagining how the event would be. At the end of the meeting the organizers of the event distributed the costumes to be worn by all the participants of the event and we had a surprise awaiting us. We weren't given any costumes but the nun asked us to come in our traditional wear to the festival. In the beginning we were actually a kind of "shy" [ I don't really know how to express it] because we thought we would be totally the different people out there among the crowd. We made up our mind soon and we were all set for the day of the event.

On that day we actually got to know the meaning of "ALILO", according to the Georgian calendar Christmas is celebrated on the 7th of January every year and this festival is conducted right after the end of christmas with a great "cause". During this festival all the participants enact on the roads with an aim of collecting charity for the poor and the needy and wishing all the people a merry christmas. We were really excited about the event and we were preparing ourselves.

The entire event was a long walk from a place called Rustaveli in Tbilisi to the Trinity Church which is the world's largest orthodox church. On the event day we made our way to the place of origin and to our surprise the entire place was so colorful not because it was decorated, it was all those fancy dresses of the people and the actors over there. There were actors from the Tbilisi film university [as far as I remember] and also other university students dressed up as different characters and we got ready wearing our traditional dresses which is none other than Dhothi. After getting dressed up we made our way to the crowd and it was like we were the weird ones over there because everyone around there were looking at us. Its common because our clothing was different and at the same time we were foreigners among the local people. 

There were carts made in the form of elephants and camels, women dressed up like queens were sitting on the top of the elephants. The camels followed the elephants and were given a place to walk in the centre between the camels. There were two big buses moving slowly at the last to collect the charity that the people of the city are about to offer during the event. Many other participants were dressed up in white drapes with a cross on it making a boundry on either sides of the road so as to keep the crowd off the centre. They were given greeting cards containing a greeting from the church. There was a specific time when Georgia made me feel like a star ;) As we were standing, getting ready to start a Georgian TV channel made their way to us and asked us for an interview. I didn't know proper Georgian at that time and I answered in English for their questions regarding the festival and how does it feel like to participate in it.

Sometime later everything was set and we started our journey. As we move acrossed the streets of Rustaveli towards the Liberty square people gathered on both sides especially the children were so happy to see all these fancy elephants and camels on street. We stopped at several places to collect charity and at the same time so many little kids wanted to take photographs with all the animal models. We on the other side was even enjoying this event which also has a good cause. It was so much exciting and fully fun filled. We even had chances to speak and become friends with two other megrelian people. Megrelians, I think they are also another group of people who speak Georgian but in a different dialect. We started speaking to each other and we shared a lot of things about each others culture, even made some funny jokes and in the end it was all a fun filled day apart from a little bit of hard walking.

After walking a considerable distance we were able to see the top of the Trinity Church at a close distance and we had to walk a bit uphill to reach the gate. Entering the holy Trinity Church was a pleasant feeling which made us think that we had contributed at least a little in a nobel cause. There was a special prayer that was held at the end of the festival for the welfareness of all people. We just walked around the church for a while getting some nice cool breeze and relaxing ourselves a bit. At the end of all we changed our clothes back and it was like everything was back to normal again. We greeted our friends back for giving us such a good opprotuinity to know some Georgian customs  and came back home.

In the end ALILO gave us an opportuinity to mingle with the Georgian society, make some new freinds, have some fun and most importantly it gave an opportunity to help people. It always feels good to cherish good memory and this festival for me on a foreign land is one such memroy to cherish..!