Azur, menin kitchineke fonaric toiletta

For those of you who know kyrgyz, you can stop right there. Because that’s what happened. For those of you who don’t know your baldar from your kuzdar, your ong from your sol or your kush from your jai then I will explain:

I have a flashlight. It’s a tiny little thing with a little blue LED that comes on when you push a button and shines an eerie blue light. It doesn’t have any bells and/or whistles, just one button. But it serves (or served) me well. Whenever it gets dark in Kyrgyzstan, and I would swear we log in more dark hours than you do in the states, I use my flashlight to see. It helps me out at five in the morning as I stumble through the kitchen (or ash ui) or search for my shoes on the front porch. It’s very paidaloo.

Last night, two days before Valentines Day, I was outside with my little flashlight, my tevete (a wooly hat), my jacket, my nice pair of Colombia gloves and my satellite phone. My phone was there because I was calling kishiler from the states, most of whom were avoiding me. I talked to a lot of answering machines that night. Answering machines are my friends. I had to use the facilities (a hole in the ground) so I stepped into our outdoor unlit lavatory, juggling all my things, and proceeded with my business. I was shaken from mid-stream by the sound of something small and seemingly flashlight-shaped hitting the floor of the lavatory. There being no light and me having no light I said to myself ‘I’ll just come back tommorow morning and retrive my little flashlight’ and continued talking to answering machines.

The next morning my little flashlight was nowhere to be found! Maybe Pumba (our dog) needed the assistance of a flashlight because his super-dog-vision just wasn’t enough in the pitch-black of the Kyrgyz night. I asked my Eje if she had seen it and ‘don’t got a clue brother’ was all I got. When I told Kanat and Chong Ene what fate had befallen my little source of light they all laughed. So my flashlight is gone forever, but not forgotten. I keep a picture of it in my room and kiss it goodnight everynight before I go to sleep know that it is down there swimming in poo. I saw my little flashlight the other day. When it saw me it cried and cried, 'Taylor! Taylor! Save me! Save meeeeeeeeee!' If we have any extreme dumpster divers out there I’d sure like my flashlight back!