This post was written in real-time on May 23. I apologize for the delay in uploading!
I’m sitting at the airport in Bishkek. It’s 5:30AM. Over the next 31 hours, I will fly almost 10,000 miles to my parents’ house in Seattle, the last of the 67,067 miles I will have flown on a total of 74 flights during the past two years. I’ve been free of Peace Corps for 12 hours. And the sense of relief is overwhelming.
The past two years have been many things. I’ve seen 10 different countries, learned 4 new languages, and left an impact on some 75 schools in my region. Living in Kyrgyzstan has been lively, wonderful, and life-changing, working with some incredible, inspiring local colleagues on many important projects in their communities. I have rather different feelings about being affiliated with the Peace Corps.
I’m not here to discuss the Peace Corps, because to be honest, I need some time away from the organization before I start to reflect on my experience working under them.
What I do want to talk about is the last month of my service and what I did with my last two weeks in Osh, because ironically, May wound up being the most work-dense month of my entire service.
I started out May with another of my college counseling presentations at the top girls’ school in Osh, followed the next day by more Business Skills Group and a special meeting with a team from USAID working on an excellent project to develop branding and tourism marketing strategies for Osh. As some readers may have realized, my blog is actually one of the few online resources for visitors to Osh who are trying to see more than just the Lonely Planet sights, so expanding the ability for people to access my favorite places and cafes and cultural experiences is a big goal of mine. It was great to meet the team, who actually found me in a Google search, of all things! I’ll be adding a booking portal and service to my site soon through some local colleagues who operate tours on the Pamir Highway, so stay tuned.
Continuing the Osh branding theme, I got to give a few more tours of the city to visitors and a journalist, before heading up to Arslanbob for one last time for the 3-day Constitution Day holiday. Back in Osh, more tourism and branding awaited.
On May 11, though, I had another of the prouder moments of my service: I became the first volunteer in nearly two decades to conduct a project in Batken Oblast. Through my series of college counseling trainings, I got invited to two schools, one in Kadamjay and one in Kyzyl-Kiya, two of the biggest cities in the oblast, to teach students about the process and to train the college counselors on the process. This is an enormous step for the Peace Corps in terms of reaching some of the most rural areas of the country with the greatest need, and I’m thrilled that I can be a part of pioneering the re-opening of Batken.
After one last weekend of running and exploring around Osh, though, it was time to put my life back into the two bags that it came here in. Packing is emotional and not fun. I made a big effort to Marie Kondo this process and throw out things that didn’t “spark joy” and I actually did a better job of it than I had thought although much as I did when I left Tajikistan, I have 3 carry-on bags, two of which are plastic.
Finally, on May 17th, I watched Osh recede into the distance out the window of the plane behind me. A week of paperwork, time with friends, and goodbye tears later, and I find myself here, the engines spooling up and the cabin crew inviting us to enjoy our flight in the eloquent rolling of formal Turkish. And I look out the window at the country that I called home for two years for a final farewell until life brings me back.
Kyrgyzstan, I already miss you.