While I’m waiting until after I’ve left Kazakhstan to post this I’m actually writing on the 28th of November (last day in Kaz) while sitting around a coffee shop and trying to get my thoughts together after what has been one of the most hectic and tumultuous 10 days of my life. At this point I’m sure a few of you are a bit confused as to what this post is about. Well the Peace Corps Kazakhstan program has been indefinitely suspended, meaning that all volunteers are being evacuated from Kazakhstan. After 18 years of operation in Kazakhstan the program will be shut down until further notice, and while it may be re-opened in the future it does not seem likely at the moment. While I’m sure many of you are curious about why Peace Corps (PC) is leaving Kazakhstan let me tell you now that I’m not going to address the reasons why we are leaving in this post. There were too many factors and frankly mentioning only a few of them will undoubtedly paint a skewed portrait of the lives of Peace Corps Volunteers during our service in Kazakhstan and of Kazakhstan itself. I will provide some background information about what happened over the last 10 days or so but this post will be about my reactions and feelings after I got the news, no more. This first part will only be half the story because to fit all of my thoughts and feelings into one post is just not possible without turning it into a tome that will bore everyone about 5 minutes into reading. So like any good storyteller I will just start on Wednesday the 16th of November and take it from there. This will be from the day I found out to the train station the day I left to go to Almaty, the rest will come in the next post.

While this whole time has been very emotional, I think the day I found out was easily the most emotionally schizophrenic. Wednesday is usually one of the longest days of the week for me due to the fact that I start my day at about 7:30 in the morning and am running around and working until about 8 at night; though this particular Wednesday actually seemed like it was going to be one hell of a good day. On Wednesdays, around 9 AM, I usually give English methodology seminars to teachers at the government pedagogical institute, though on this day I was told I could sleep in and come and give my seminar at noon. This made me really happy, not because I could sleep in but rather because it allowed me to enjoy one of my favorite things in life, that being University of Kentucky Wildcats basketball. After mentally preparing myself to be without UK basketball for 27 months I was ecstatic when I checked the schedule for ESPN America on my local cable package and saw that to my surprise UK would be playing the University of Kansas in basketball at 8 am local time. Needless to say, like a kid at Christmas, I woke up at the crack of dawn out of sheer excitement. I made a pot of coffee and proceeded to watch the game and after UK won, I showered and left my apartment to give my seminar. While the content of my seminar was not particularly exciting I actually enjoyed it more than pretty much all the other seminars I had given so far in Kazakhstan. After my seminar I walked a block to the secondary school (High School) where I teach and sat to have another cup of coffee and prepare for lessons. At this point, because of the game and the seminar, I was in a really good mood when I answered the call from a PC staff member, though as you can probably guess that changed very, very quickly.

Before I even got the message that Peace Corps was closing this phone call filled me with worry. The tone of the speaker’s voice and the phrase “can you sit down and listen for to me for a few minutes because I have something to tell you” immediately made me think that I was about to be told that someone back in the USA had died. So I sat there and listened, and after a few words I realized that no one important had died but that something intimately important to me had. While I am usually very good at analyzing and finding the right words to describe my emotions, when I look back at that moment I simply can’t sum it up. I wasn’t numb, sad, angry, happy, or anything like that, there was just something visceral that I really cannot describe.

We were asked not to tell anyone until the next day while other volunteers were being told and PC prepared to break it to our schools and organizations in the best way they could. While this was, in my opinion, for the best it did, somehow, manage to make an already emotionally trying day even harder to handle. Because, after I found out I still had to conduct my two favorite English clubs and somehow cancel them without giving a concrete reason why. I pretended nothing was wrong and at the end of each club made the announcement that all volunteers would be in Almaty for a conference for a little while and that all clubs were cancelled until further notice. While this allowed myself and fellow volunteer Katie Whitmore time to prepare a statement to all our club participants about our departure and the permanent cancellation of all volunteer run clubs in Shymkent; seeing their smiling faces and hearing their goodbyes was basically just turning the knife that already felt like it was lodged in my stomach.

Even though I couldn’t focus on anything and my mind would not stop racing, after clubs being able to go back to my apartment and shut myself off from the world gave me a small bit of respite. I finally fell asleep later that night after dreading walking into school the next day after Peace Corps broke the news to them. Needless to say I didn’t sleep that well at all, I managed a few hours of fitful sleep but that was about it. I rolled around and constantly woke up until I finally gave up trying to sleep and made some coffee and took a shower while trying to mentally prepare myself for what I was about to have to deal with at school. After just sitting in my apartment listening to music for a while I eventually forced myself to leave and head to school. I had turned my phone off already because I did not want to answer any of these questions over the phone; I thought it too impersonal a way to handle such a difficult subject with people to whom I had become really close. So after I took a lot of time walking from the bus stop to my school I felt like I was mentally prepared to deal with everything. I was wrong.

Why was I wrong? Well because when I walked in there were no sad faces, no tears, no evidence that anything was out of the ordinary. At this point I honestly did know what was happening, so many different questions went through my mind, do they not care, has Peace Corps not told them yet, am I dreaming? After a few seconds of bewilderment I realized that they must not know yet, or at least I was hoping that was the case, so I went outside and called my regional manager to ask if she had called and told them yet, she told me she hadn’t been able to reach them yet and that if I was okay with it that I should just go ahead and tell them myself because I was there. This was a bit bittersweet for me, on one hand I had to break the news to them, but on the other hand I was going to be able to break the news to them personally. So I stood outside for a second and took a few deep breaths to brace myself and went inside and found all the teachers I could and asked them to meet me in the teacher’s lounge for a moment because I had something really important to tell them. When I pulled them out of their classes I think it was pretty obvious to them that something was up, so I just decided that I would just get to the point as quick as possible and basically acted like I was ripping off a band-aid and told them that Peace Corp was closing. When I looked around after I told them I saw pretty much exactly what I had expected to, that being sadness, disbelief, incomprehension; in other words, I saw on their faces all the different emotions I had felt in the last 24 hours.

Now I wish I could remember the next few days as vividly as I did the first few but looking back I honestly cannot. My life became a blur of packing and saying an endless amount of goodbyes to people at clubs, acquaintances, and students at my school. I honestly do not know if it was the best idea but before I started all of these later goodbyes I decided to memorize what I was going to say about my leaving and all that because, looking back, I do not think that I could have handled putting myself out there emotionally with every goodbye, I fell that I would have been too emotionally and mentally spent to focus on all the things I needed to get done, i.e. packing and buying train tickets to get me to Almaty on the necessary date.

So after an emotionally and mentally grueling few days Tuesday night finally came and it was time for me to meet the other volunteers in the city and board the train to Almaty. I had tried all day to prepare myself because I knew this was going to be hard in every way possible; between getting all of my bags to the station on the train, to see all the people that came to see us off, and to know that this could be the last time that I would ever see any of them, after spending a year and a half getting to know them and build relationships with them, was something I dreaded.

When I got to the station it was pretty much everything I expected it to be, namely sad. The weather was cold and dreary, even though I know it is not true, it felt like Mother Nature knew how all of us there were feeling and decided to set the weather accordingly. The further I get away from the whole situation, the more I realize those fifteen minutes at the train station were probably the hardest fifteen minutes of all of my service. Breaking the news to everyone that I was leaving was hard but seeing all these people huddled together against the cold, some with teary eyes wanting a hug or picture every five seconds was just too surreal. It was like a sad scene in a movie that tugs at your heartstrings but that you think in the back of your mind seems too much like a movie to every really happen, and at times while I was standing on the train platform I honestly thought it was too surreal to be real. Though with the final kisses, photos, and hugs I snapped back to reality and knew that it was time for me to step on the train and end so many of the relationships I had spent the last year and a half creating and strengthening.

So after what seemed like the longest fifteen minutes of my life I was sitting in my train cabin with the other three volunteers from Shymkent, and in their eyes I saw the truth in the saying by British-American novelist Amelia Barr, that being:

“All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves.”

Because for all of us sitting in that train cabin, as we pulled away from the platform, we were pulling away from all the little parts of ourselves we had left with the amazing people we had met and grown to love over the past year and a half of our lives.