Letters from Between the Humps: Adventures and Misadventures in Kazakhstan.

• Author: Burr, Karen Koster
• Position: Book review

Letters from Between the Humps: Adventures and Misadventures in Kazakhstan

By Patricia Vail

Personal travelogue, cultural guide, and political science lesson, Letters from Between the Humps packs us off on a journey through time with Pat Vail to Kazakhstan shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

She took early retirement when an article in The Florida Bar News on the work of the Central and Eastern European Law Initiative, or CEELI, ignited her imagination and launched the odyssey chronicled in her book. Energized by the prospect of contributing to the nascent legal system, she leapt at the opportunity to live in a new culture and help build democracy in Eastern Europe. During her time there, she kept a detailed diary and wrote numerous letters and emails to loved ones at home regarding the legal development projects and daily life. The book combines these sources into chronological diary format, after an introduction to the political and social context for the initiative. With detailed descriptions of observations through her six senses, in elegant prose laced with witty and sometimes sardonic humor, readers are instantly transported and enjoy the ride. Photos and recipes reel us further into the joys and travails of life there.

Her experiences and musings recorded in real time conjure a sense of immediacy and intimacy for the journey. Readers twist and turn with her through the hazardous streets, Byzantine politics, and vagaries of spotty utilities in this gorgeous landscape.

Excerpts from November 9, 1996, give a glimpse of the fullness of life depicted:

The staff meeting pushed onward with some projects going OK and others mired in politics of personality. Presidents like our [p]resident have lost patience with democracy someone claimed.... The gas, as usual, was not producing enough flame for heat in the oven so chef Olga was cooking chicken in an enormous pot on an electric hot...