‘We’re all in the same boat’: The J-1 student series

Editor’s note: Over the coming weeks, The MV Times will be sharing the stories of a handful of the hundreds of students who received permission to work in the country under the exchange visitor visa, commonly known as the J-1. We start with Tinatini Dvali, who came to us with the idea for this series. Her hope is that Islanders and visitors understand that J-1 students are more than workers, and are an important thread in the fabric of Island life and culture.

This summer is Tinatini Dvali’s third spent on Martha’s Vineyard. She first traveled thousands of miles to the Island through a work-travel program in 2022, and has applied again every year since. She is one of hundreds of J-1 students who bolster the local economy during its busiest seasonal time and the summer break from university, usually between the months of May and September.

On a recent sunny day, Dvali sat down with The Times to talk about her experience on the Vineyard — the highs, the lows, and her daily routine. She rested cross-legged in the grass at Ocean Park in Oak Bluffs, in the hour break between her six double shifts at two different Island establishments. Her brown hair was loose and lying over her shoulders. Most of the day, she wears it pulled up in a ponytail.

“These three years that I’ve spent here have changed me,” she said. “Once you come here … I feel like [the Island] gets into your mind so much, and you cannot erase [it], and you feel pulled back.”

Dvali is originally from Georgia, an Eastern European country of 3.7 million people that borders Russia and Turkey. She celebrated her 21st birthday last Sunday.

Dvali remembered the past three summers fondly. She worked at some of the most beloved local establishments: During her first year, she was a barista at Mocha Mott’s and scooped ice cream at the Sweet Spot in Oak Bluffs. She said she loved the places and people, but that her first couple of months on-Island were a huge adjustment. 

“The first year was confusing for me, because it was such a huge change. Growing up in an Eastern European country and coming here … it was a blur for me,” she said.

She specifically remembered seeing everyone smile at each other and talk openly — even to strangers, which she thought was odd. In her home country of Georgia, and other places she’s visited in America –– namely New York City and Washington, D.C. –– she said people are kind, but more direct.

“It was weird in the beginning,” Dvali said. “In other places in the U.S., people are not going to come up to you and talk to you like they do on the Island. It was the Island spirit that helped me to adjust to the place.”

Dvali spent much of her first and second years getting to know locals, and said she’s embraced life on the Vineyard from a dual perspective. She sees the Island through the eyes of her fellow J-1 students, who are from countries ranging from South Africa to Bulgaria, but also through the eyes of Islanders and the culture of the place she’s come to know well over the years.

Dvali is a business and information systems major, and after this coming school year, she will earn her degree from the American University of Bulgaria. She has a passion for writing and reading — her favorite books are by the Turkish author Elif Shafak, whose stories have central themes of travel, empathy, and the interconnectedness of all people and lands. Dvali said she’ll be back on the Island eventually, not just to work but because the place is a part of her now.

“I imagine myself coming back here and seeing the shadow of myself,” she said, as she looked beyond the park and pointed to the sidewalk she often walks on. She traced her route with her outstretched hand. “Coming down from the bus and going from one job to another in dirty clothes, covered in flour, with cucumbers and salad dressing on my shirt. The people that see me at night, I want to go and tell them: ‘You should’ve seen me in the morning!’”

Six days a week, Dvali takes the No. 13 bus at 9:30 in the morning from her apartment in Vineyard Haven, works a shift at MV Salads from 10 am to around 5 pm, where she said they alternate who works the counter, who cooks, and who cleans. She has a little over an hour before her next shift, at Back Door Donuts, where she fries doughnuts and converses with customers until 1:30 am, before getting on the No. 13 bus again and walking the rest of the way home.

Dvali lives in a rental this year, and pays $200 a week. She said it was the first time she found an apartment outside of her job; during her second year on the Island, she was 19 years old, and lived in workforce housing with a few of her colleagues. Dvali had what she described as a busy but beautiful summer. “I thought I had it all figured out,” she said with a laugh.

This year, Dvali feels bittersweet knowing she will be leaving the Vineyard soon, and has been finding a balance between her love for the Island and the knowledge that after this year, she’ll say goodbye — at least for a while. After she graduates, the J-1 visa program will be unavailable to her unless she enrolls in a master’s program.

“At the end of the second year, I felt that I would try to come back on the Island to see the people who I had met all these years. And that I would always be connected to this place,” she said. “This year, I figured out that it’s temporary … [and] to cherish all the time that I spend here.”

Dvali said the Island has been an important journey for her — a recognition that she’s not alone, not stagnant, and is ever-learning. The Island community taught her the importance of expanding your surroundings, and to not live within the same four walls. It’s dangerous to surround your brain with your mirror image, she explained.

Her aspiration is that more Island residents and visitors understand that J-1 students are here to grow and experience a new environment. She said she hopes people see J-1 students “not as customer service people, but also people who have come here from somewhere else and have a life here.”

She encourages the J-1 students she meets to get out there more, meet new people, and focus on more than work while they’re on the Island — if they have enough time outside of their jobs. Leaning into courage and the drive to experience life, she said, is the best way to develop a greater understanding of the world, as well as get a peek into the complex lives of others.

“The Island is like this mother to me, who gave me all this perspective and all these feelings,” Dvali said. “I feel so blessed. And I’m so grateful I’m going through this right now, and meeting all these people — people from all over the world. You do not have your personal story here without other people. You’re a skeleton, and other people make your day. They put the flesh on that skeleton, and make your time here complete. It’s also through the people that you feel all those emotions. We’re all in the same boat in that way.”