Michele Spillane 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇨🇦

In June 2016, a dog fell into the Sayran reservoir in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and could not climb out. The concrete walls were too steep and too slippery. A man climbed down to help. Then he could not get back up either. Strangers stopped. Nobody organised anything. Nobody was asked. One person grabbed another person's hand, who grabbed another, who grabbed another, until a human chain stretched down the wall to the water below. The last person in the chain reached down and pulled the dog out. Then they pulled the man out. Someone filmed it from the opposite bank. Nobody in the video was ever identified. Last week, on March 22, 2026, a bronze sculpture was unveiled on the bank of that same reservoir at the exact spot where it happened. It was created by Yerbosyn Meldibekov, one of Kazakhstan's most celebrated contemporary artists, whose work is held in museums in Antwerp, Hong Kong, Singapore and beyond. The sculpture shows a chain of figures holding onto one another. The hand of the last figure extends deliberately beyond the railing so that any passerby can reach out and take hold of it.