It’s not the longest I have been away from Oz. I travelled for 22 months prior to me
planting my feet back in one place; I just chose to pick a different continent
to call home. I never had the calling or
intention of living overseas, ever. I
had always been an Australian homebody.
I was happy to travel, take my holidays overseas and always with a return
back to Oz and call it home. That all
changed after my BIG trip, your priorities change and I literally returned a
different person to the one that left in the March of 2011. I would like to say a better, improved
version of myself and I felt I could be doing more for others rather than just
myself, paying it forward as such. The
thought of going back to a ‘normal’ life after everything that I had witnessed
and experienced on 7 continents, an 8 to 5 job just did not sound that
appealing! When I told my best friend
that I planned on not coming back to Australia during my Odyssey 10 months
after leaving, she told me that the day she said goodbye to me at the airport
on day one, she knew that I would not be calling Australia home when I finished
my trip. Funny, sometimes your friends
know you better than yourself, as it was the last thing I was thinking would
ever happen. It was never on the cards
for me.
I’m not sure about other people from other countries, but
when I travel I am a proud AUSTRALIAN. I
find living in a foreign country, and especially Africa, where there is hardly
anything Australian on the continent, seeing anything that has Australia in it,
about it or spoken about it, my heart swells.
A great example was the 2014 World Cup, I am not a football fan, at
all-but when Australia was playing you would have thought that we were in the
grand final, I was with the boys every step of the way and I watched 2 of the 3
games. Considering I am not a soccer (football-whatever)
fan, this was a pretty big deal. There
is something about living away from your place of birth that makes you very
patriotic and appreciate what a great country you come from and what a great
place it is to live (albeit its getting expensive). We have a stable economy, great climate, all
the goods we need, services and just about anything and everything a person
would need to live a great life. Some
people DREAM about living in Australia, we get asylum seekers, students to
study, refugees travelling for months in crammed boats to come to our beautiful
country, stowaways and immigrants wanting to call this great land their home. So I can see why people sometimes think I am
a little crazy when I tell them that I left Australia to call Africa home. Unlike 95% of expats that live in Kenya, I am
a little different. I didn’t come with a
job placement, I am not here on a certain length of contract, I have not met a
Kenyan and have done it for ‘love’ and all I can tell people is that it was a
lifestyle change for me. Like any place
you live on the planet you are going to sacrifice certain things-but then you
also gain certain things that tend to even out the pros and cons of leaving and
living in certain countries. It may not
be apples for apples exchange-but that comes with the territory.
So I am not going to whinge about what I miss about
Australia because I CHOSE to live here in Kenya. I think any person that is living away from their native
land will always miss something about it.
No matter how much you love your adopted country, it is natural that you
will miss certain things. But in saying
that, I am human and you are going to have days where you wish you could be
somewhere else, or you hear a song that takes you back to a place, you smell
something, you see posts on Facebook or you chat with someone via Facebook, Skype
or What’s App and realize just how much you actually miss certain things, and I
think that is just normal. I have had a
rough week, details I cannot go into at the moment, but let’s just say a there
was a very very serious marriage proposal, the loss of a large amount of money
and past people showing up again in my life to name a few of the things. Emotionally I have been knocked for a six and
I had a meltdown a few days ago. Nothing
that ½ a bottle of vodka, a night of crying and a brand new day dawn couldn’t fix,
but being in a different country, I think it makes you even more susceptible to
your emotions. They say when you travel
your emotions are heightened and after being on the road for 22 months before
planting my feet in Africa I would definitely agree with that statement. I did learn early on in my 2 year travel
odyssey, that you do romanticize about what you are missing back home, and
after returning after nearly 2 years away, not much had changed and you
wondered what you had worried about in the first place. Of course you miss the big stuff like
birthdays and milestones, but otherwise I could have warped back the 2 years
and noticed nothing different except that my god-daughters are now little
people, with their own personalities developing and making their own
choices.
So what do I miss about Australia?
NUMBER ONE SPOT has to go to friends.
I would say friends and family, but as I don’t have a lot
of family of my own, my friends are the family that I am lucky enough to pick
myself.
Now I want to explain that I have made some AMAZING
friends here in Nairobi, I am surrounded by great people, and they are my
African family. We all go through the
same issues, problems and concerns when we are all living away from our ‘native’
countries and I wouldn’t change that for the world. I have been privileged enough to have been
included in their lives here and my time in Kenya would not be the same without
them. BUT, there is a difference from
friends who you are still getting to know, to people that have known you for 17
years. I don’t want to upset any of my
Nairobi friends, but it’s true. I miss
them. I miss them a lot on some
days. They know me better than myself
sometimes and I miss having them around.
Leaving my friends was one of my defining reasons for NOT going on my
World Odyssey and when I voiced this concern to my BF she said that they would
always be there for me, no matter where in the world I was, and you know what, she
was right, nearly 4.5 years on, they have been.
That is the good thing about long friendships, they have stood the test
of time and I do know that they are there for me, anytime. Michelle is one of my oldest and greatest friends
I have ever had with a friendship spanning over 18 years and she will be
some-one that I will have by my side when I am 90, with no teeth, drooling, and
she will still love me for the person I am.
NUMBER TWO
My God-daughters.
I have been lucky, having no children of my own, that I
have been included in my God-daughters lives from the day they were born. Faking that I was Michelle’s sister on both occasions
I held both girls literally hours after they were born. If you ask me and the girls, when Aunty Sandy
isn’t around, I am the favourite God-mother and I treat the girls as they are
my own. I have been included in all
their milestones and they are genuinely great little people. They are growing up so quickly and they are
fast becoming young ladies. They love me
unconditionally each and every time I am home and they are full of questions
that are so simple and basic that you just never know what is going to come out
next. They are 8 and 6 years old and on
my last trip back to Australia at Christmas time, I was hit with a barrage of
questions about Santa (does he have money, does he die, what happens if his
sleigh breaks down, where does he go to the toilet, do the elves die, do the
elves get married, are they paid money, what do they eat and the list goes
on). I am also asked why I can’t help
the babies and children from Australia, explaining I am helping children that don’t
have mum and dads and you can see their tiny minds thinking about this and
digesting the information. We came up
with a wonderful solution that we would just clone me and then one of ‘me’
could stay in Oz and the other ‘me’ could come back to Kenya. If only………
They have such big hearts that I always leave with toys they don’t play anymore
with and pencils and paper especially prepared, for me to bring to the children
in Africa. Needless to say our airport
goodbyes are just heart wrenching, leaving two little girls crying hysterically……
gosh I miss them so MUCH.
NUMBER THREE
Food has to rank high on the ‘miss’ list.
It may seem inconsequential to some people, but sometimes
you just have a craving for something particular that you cannot get or even
try and recreate here. It may ‘look’
like what you crave, but then when you taste it; it is just a big
disappointment. I have been proactive in
sending some of the dried goods via cargo a few times and the last batch came
in the post, by sea, that took 3 months.
I knew it would take that long and I made sure the expiry dates of the
food was longer than the transportation time that it would take to get
here. In saying that, it is an expense. From the postage costs in Australia, it was
85AUD for a 5kg box, to the customs that has to be paid on this side in Kenya,
on the same 5kg box was 2200KSH (25AUD) it works out to be an expensive craving. With this trip back to Australia in October being
the last one for a good 3-5 years, it is going to be something that I am just
going to have to get used to and to find equivalents here in Nairobi. The frustrating thing here is that you may
find a certain brand or type of food that you do like, at Nakumatt for example,
and then you go back the following week and the item is no longer there. If it is an imported food, then it is all
based on what comes through so you could go weeks or months not seeing the same
product again. So you get into the
routine of buying multiple of the product to stock up ‘just in case’. I have learned to adapt, find alternatives
and learn to make do with what you can get.
NUMBER FOUR
Socializing.
We socialize here but it is different. We have BBQ’s and morning teas, lunches, art
classes, coffee’s, SAWA meetings to name a few and there are always dinners in
place with NES, but sometimes you just miss a good drinking session, pub music,
live concerts and the occasional nightclub.
I know we have all that here in Nairobi, but I live on the other side of
town to where the clubs are and it isn’t just as simple as heading to club like
back home (taking into account security).
I’m not saying Nairobi is boring, far from it as they do have expo’s, bizarres,
blankets and wine and festivals to name a few but I find myself in a group of
friends that are all married and have children, so I miss having some single
mates to go out on the turps with and have a boogie (dance) and let my hair
down. Hand in hand with this is the
meeting of new people, of the male and female variety. I am very limited on the new people I meet,
which I need to be careful of, as people’s contracts come to an end, I need to
make sure that I am continually making new friends so that I don’t wake up one
morning to find all the people I know have left town and I am left with no
friends. Imagine!! It is a constant reality that I didn’t think
much about when I first moved here and already I have seen two great people
leave Nairobi, with one on the horizon, and I dread the next round of
departures, but I am lucky I have 2 years before that happens for most of my
current group, hopefully. I did join a
dating web site at the beginning of the year but have not been actively
involved in following up, so I will make sure that it will be a priority in
2015.
NUMBER FIVE
Blending In.
Again I know I chose to live in Africa, so I accepted
that I would not blend in so easily. I
accept that. What does seem to get me,
and also other expats, is because of the colour of our skin, prices for goods
and services sky rockets and you could be paying triple, or even more, for
services that are just not worth that much.
It is a constant daily battle and you have to be on your toes 100% of
the time when buying things. A classic
example last week was a picture I wanted to get stretched onto a frame. I had a massive picture done the month
previous for 850KSH (10AUD), so I had an idea on the prices and I went back to
the same guy I get ALL my stuff made from and just dropped off the
painting. He messaged me the next day
telling me it was done and I asked the price.
He told me 2500KSH (30AUD). I was
shocked and told him that I would not be paying that solely based on the cost
of the picture from last month. So he
came back and asked how much did I want to pay and I replied back no more than
500KSH (7AUD) and even that was probably too much and he said fine!!! I did later find out that he outsourced my
work to someone else and they saw it was for a mzungu and upped the price, but
that is just how it all works here. Just
this week, my carpenter asked if he could borrow my drill to use on a job (the
rental would be 500KSH a day), wanting the drill for 3 days that has now extended
to a week. The crazy thing is I am
saving him over 3500KSH and he still asked for the full 500KSH I owed for the
painting!!! Really it is so frustrating. I do have to say that there is a method to
their business madness as there are people/nationalities that will pay the
first price offered, not realizing that they are getting ripped off or they
think about what something like it would cost in their own country and they
think they are getting a good deal when in fact they are empowering the sellers
and making life difficult for the rest of us when we know what things should
and do cost. I can’t blame them for
asking crazy prices if they are going to get crazy people paying, as long as I don’t
get ripped off it is just totally draining some days and such a BIG effort for
the smallest things. I have been lucky, I
have been able to go back to Australia once a year the last few years where I
get to immerse myself back into an Aussie culture for 1-2 months, surround
myself with my loved ones, recharge my African batteries and to get my ‘fix’ of
things that I just can’t get while I am in Kenya or without the hassle.
Okay, so I may only have 5 things and not 10, which has
to be a good thing. Of course there are
the small things, like driving at night knowing you are safe, driving without
thinking (haphazard road rules and matatu’s always keeping you on the ball and on
high alert), knowing where you are, walking down a street without the fear of
getting held up, but I don’t ‘miss’ these things as such, as they are just a
way of life here. What about shopping in
a ‘western’ mall, eating Red Rooster or a pizza from my favourite pizza joint,
frozen cokes, Shingle Inn cupcakes, Shelly’s quiche, Burger Rings, Twisties, a
good gravy to go on chips, wedges and my list goes on… but we have a saying in
the expat community which is ‘first world problems’. Are they really that serious with what we
witness here every day and my work with the Miracle Babies and The Nest? Definitely not. They are just first world problems and I will
not complain about something’s as everything is about choices and again I CHOSE
to live in Kenya and there has to be some sacrifices.
I am human though and I am allowed to miss my mates, have
a crap day and wish I could transport myself back to the safe and knowing arms
of my friends. I will always call
Australia home, but Kenya is also my home now and it is all about adapting and accepting
the things that cannot be changed. But
man I will always miss the above things.
I know with my last trip back to Oz in October I will be making the most
of everything single thing mentioned in this post.
Sounds great can think of many place better to be.
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