The staff of the project “Ventidipacesucacuaso” (Windsofpeaceoncaucasus) was finally able to say goodbye to their “mines”, the darkest office of the organization that always had the same note hanging on the door: “This is a bad moment!”. Nobody “lost all their hope” until the end, our obstinacy not to render to unexpected events and difficulties won the battle and lead us to stop waiting. The countdown stopped and friendship is already on tour.
After watching over the actual possibility of getting to the Caucasus, among suitcases and yawns, at dawn, Rondine’s delegation woke up with its dream in its pocket. Someone had to stay on land, but he remains one of the protagonists of this story: Koka, a Georgian student, was the guardian that opened the door to our trip and said goodbye while we were leaving with the eyes of a poet and heart of a giant.
As for any experience too longed for, we were afraid it would happen to be too short an experience. Rather, having dreamt about it for so long made us create this other world in our hearts, and love it and know it even before meeting it. And as Maga, Aleko and Rouba played the ‘Person, place or thing?’ game on the plane, making up new words, mistaking them and changing them, we are all trying to fill a new dictionary with this trip, a dictionary made of non-existent definitions and new realities.
The traveller’s eyes are like the ones of a mother who doesn’t lose sight of her son because she wants to live every instance of his growth. With these eyes, our students and our president, during the night, looked out over Baku, vibrant with lights, from the windows of the plane.
No reason to be impatient: this trip has been desired so much that not even the queue to get our visas made us lose our patience. And Anna, a Russian student, didn’t lose her patience either, before giving 14 kisses, after 3 months, to Dato, our Giasone, our Georgian ‘golden swallow’.
Now Azerbaijan is waiting for us, it’s here. This is the land that we sometimes thought we would never get to.

AZ