The beginning of our new book, KazMainea: An International Adoption Story.
Standing In An Airport In Kazakhstan At Midnight
With Thousands Of Dollars Strapped To Our Bodies.
The man in the tiny smoke-filled customs office speaks a little English and asks a lot of questions. Why are you here? Where are you going? How long will you stay? And then, scariest of all, Are you carrying any US currency?
Of course we’re carrying US currency. Twenty thousand dollars, if you must know. Fresh from our bank back in Maine.
Back in Maine, where we seriously wish to be right now.
Cigarette dangling from his lips, he makes a gesture that is universal: Show me the money! We take a breath, untuck our shirts, unzip our sweaty money belts, and lay out the contents.
We all stare at the stacks of new bills on the table. This could be the most money this guy has ever seen. Heck, it’s the most money we’ve ever seen. What if this man from customs declared he would be keeping it?
Squinting through the smoke, he nods and waves us away like a bad thought. We thank him as though he just gave his kidney and hastily grab the cash and secure our belts. We stumble out into the noisy airport.
The place is chaos. We face a wall of people moving, talking, shouting, smoking, holding signs with strange letters. Dozens of eyes are on us. Our tired brains register an unsettling fact: we are the only Americans in sight. Did they see us leaving the customs office? Do they know why we are here? Do they know what’s in our sweaty belts?
We are supposed to meet the guy who will drive us to our apartment. Except, we don’t know what he looks like. With eyes burning from the smoke and lack of sleep, we search the faces, looking for...what, exactly? We don’t know. The faces look back at us blankly.
Here we are. Two mild-mannered, middle-aged adults from Maine, in an airport in Kazakhstan, in the middle of the night, all alone. No one to call. No one but us. This is crazy!
