At this point I’ve got to write something. Not to write at this point would be tantamount to treachery - a treachery to myself above all others. Things are changing, with the severity of goodbyes and the finality of lasts. And they’re happening fast.
Two years ago I came to Kazakhstan with 66 other people. Most of us were early twenties, most just out of college. There were a few outliers, a few people who had worked awhile or even retired. But we were all wide-eyed with dewy anticipation, many of us subtly scented with fear. They gave us a number, to identify who we were and when we had come. We were the twenty-first group of volunteers to come to Kazakhstan. Kaz 21s.
Two years have gone by, and we are now 51. Not everybody made it. Some people got lost along the way, bogged down in the heavy weight of the Kazakh sun. Others lost themselves in little internal combustions, the tips of their fingers too hot to hold on. Still others were pulled by the magnetic voices of those they’d left behind, the siren song that had them crawling to splash overboard.
And none of those choices were wrong. They were right for those people in those moments, at those times.
But 51 of us survived, and 49 of you will go home. Or have gone already.
I love you lot. Thank you for the hand-in-hand fumbling and bumbling the last two years. For the quiet victories and stinging lessons.
I will miss every darn one of you.
That’s all the drama I’ve got left in my veins, and all I care to say.
Lopa out.
