Peace Corps/Kazakhstan and Heather

Our daughter Heather has had quite a week.  She describes her sudden new circumstances in her blog, which you can link to from this blog, called "Heather and Thither".  Her letter is so beautifully written and important in our "All Over the World" family, though, I wanted you to see it here:

Dear Friends,

Three days ago I was sitting in my classroom, sorting (new!) books for our school's growing English library when my Regional Manager from Peace Corps called and read to me a carefully worded message from our Country Director: the Peace Corps program in Kazakhstan is closing. Following a number of individual assaults on volunteers, some possible terrorist attacks scattered around the country, underhanded local political smears on Peace Corps Kazakhstan, and a long-awaited meeting with a recalcitrant Minister of Education, the director of Peace Corps world-wide has determined that we "can no longer maintain a program in Kazakhstan that meets Peace Corps' standards for volunteer safety and programmatic effectiveness."

So I'm leaving.

I don't know exactly what comes next. I have hugged all my co-teachers and held back tears as they each separately exclaimed, "But we had so many plans! So many ideas!" I have explained to classes of wide-eyed students that I must leave for America, promising that indeed I will not "forget to them" (their prepositions perhaps highlighting my unfinished work?). I have sat for my last tea with my Kazakh mother who worries that I'll get too skinny when I'm no longer eating her manta and plov. On Tuesday I will get on a bus and leave Zhetisai—nineteen months earlier than I had expected. I'm sure that there are other doors opening even as this one swings shut in my face, but I worry more about the doors available to my students, to my Kazakh colleagues, to my new friends.

I'm moving through these days with a somewhat surreal hovering feeling, a bit numb to the unreal-ness of the situation. Fortunately in a bizarre stroke of luck, my mother and dearest friend had been planning for months to visit me this November and are here (though leaving on flights today) to help me process, to help me pack, and to take a bushel of photos of the life I've been living for the past 8 months.

I'm sure I'll write more once I've landed firmly on new ground—I have so many stories and photos for blog posts that I've been mentally composing in hopes of stable internet! So check back in, but this will be the last blog "post-marked" from Kazakhstan.

Love,

Heather