TBILISI
Almost every night since pro-EU protests erupted in Georgia last week, young husband-and-wife duo Mamuka Matkava and Gogona Parkaia have been working flat out to feed their fellow demonstrators. Each night the couple, one a musician and the other an artist, spend three to four hours cooking dozens of mchadi, a traditional cornbread native to their home region of Mingrelia in western Georgia, in their small flat in a quiet residential neighborhood of the capital Tbilisi. Adding to each piece a slice of salty Georgian sulguni cheese, they dish out the snacks to protesters gathered on Tbilisi’s central Rustaveli Avenue, the epicenter of the protests. Many protesters stay out until morning amid lengthy standoffs with riot police armed with water cannon and tear gas. The South Caucasus country of 3.7 million has been gripped by crisis since the Georgian Dream party, returned to power in an October election the opposition says was tainted by fraud, said last week it was halting European Union accession talks until 2028, abruptly freezing a long-standing national goal of EU membership that is written into Georgia’s constitution.
