TRAVEL

 

Moving on? 

 

 

 

“I think I’m quite ready for another adventure”

– Bilbo Baggins (The Lord of the Rings)

 

With every international move, my dad would always say the same thing to me before we went; “Happy Landings”, a throwback to his years of working in the RAF. But it meant so much more than just ‘travel well’. It wished us prosperity. It said to me ‘hope that it all goes O.K when you get there’.

But how can we know? Are we ever fully prepared for what awaits us when we move to another country?

What do we pack for the next two, three or more years, for each international move? Of course there is the shipping of personal effects, things that will make your new accommodation feel like your space. But more than anything we carry a virtual hope chest; packing positivity that it will be a good move, oodles of optimism, that this next employer will be better than the last, and a bundle of belief, that everything will fall into place, in your new destination. 

I read something recently, that took me right back to those pre-departure times. The story talked of packing an emergency evacuation bag and its contents.

I remembered moving to Osaka and being taught the earthquake drill at work. My boss told me to go back to the apartment and prepare an ‘earthquake bucket’. These emergency supplies would help you to survive, if you were sheltered in the strongest room of your home after an earthquake, and everything else around you had been reduced to rubble;  water, candies, a radio, batteries, candles, matches and toilet tissue. I dutifully did as instructed. A powerful earthquake never came to that part of Japan during my time there.

When we moved to Nairobi, nothing prepared us for the terrorist attack that took place a few hundred meters from our home, on our third weekend there. We sheltered in our apartment for four days while the siege continued, with gunfire and grenades within earshot. When a big explosion went off, and the sky was filled with an enormous cloud of black smoke, all the neighbouring colleagues in our building ran into our apartment. It was the worst welcome imaginable, to what turned out to be two incredible years in Kenya.

During our induction week in Jakarta, our new boss spoke many times of a ‘smooth landing’. Between him and the HR department at our international school, they did everything possible to facilitate that. But during our first week in Indonesia I fell over, cut my head open and needed ten stitches. After an X ray, two CT scans and several visits to the ER to have my wound re-dressed, I was told that there was no damage to my back and no slow bleed in the brain. Later on in our time there, I contracted T.B, which required a year of treatment. According to the World Health Organisation, Indonesia is one of the countries in the world with the highest incidence of TB.

This is a time when many people in the international community are moving on. It’s busy time, procuring police clearance, shipping personal belongings and saying emotional goodbyes. And simultaneously your thoughts are of your next destination. We know people who are preparing to move internationally, for a whole host of reasons; ends of contracts and new opportunities. And it might take extra resilience and guts to make a move work right now, with travel restrictions and so much impacting on life in many places. The research into your new location begins. But really, can we ever anticipate what will happen in the next place that we will call home?

And maybe that’s exactly as it should be. If we worried about all the things that might be, we would opt to live carefully, to stay in one place. The thrill is in the going. We’ve always opted to live fully. Moving to another country is exciting, intimidating, challenging and rewarding all at the same time.

So this is for everyone who is moving on. Wishing you well in the weeks ahead, as you prepare for your new adventure.

Happy landings!

Are you preparing to move to another country?

 

© Maggie M / Mother City Time