Leaving

It's a funny old business - this 'leaving your life behind'. In many ways (although I cannot confirm from experience!) I think it must be a bit like dying. Although you know you're going to a better place, it is sad to leave everything familiar - your house, work and friends - in the knowledge that everything will carry on as before, just without you.

However, the difference is that you get to hear all the nice things said about you first :)

I suppose it is appropriate that we are more happy than sad, but I guess it is also important to express some of the sad and not just try to overlay it with the happy (I am particularly good at that - being a bloke and not doing the crying thing...). So here you are - I am a bit sad about leaving Kenya.

But if I am completely honest - not that much :)

This is probably partly because the optimist in me has hugely built up how perfect Australia is going to be - probably my internal way of coping with transition. Libby and I have been joking about how much better parents we are going to be; how much more exercise we will do, and how much better our quiet times will be!

Probably not very realistic because, as we were taught on our pre-Tanzania orientation course, 'you take yourself with you'. Nevertheless, there is something about setting up your life from scratch that does give you the opportunity to establish new routines and habits. Hopefully we will seize these opportunities with both hands, and do things better next time round.

In many ways Nairobi has worn us down (so much for the 'slower pace of African life'...) with the constant battles with traffic, the security concerns - and the extended days to try and beat the traffic (and mostly failing). Having Ruben probably hasn't helped either, as sleep has been a bit scarce for the last 18 months. All in all, almost 8 years of Africa has left us, if not burnt out, very tired. Definitely ready for a change and hopefully a bit of a rest.

So, we are done with Africa (for the time being at least) and more than ready to start a new adventure at the other end of world.

By the time you read this, we should be on our way - somewhere in the skies of Kenya, heading North East towards Dubai; then South East to Melbourne, and finally North to Cairns.

I guess our next post will be from Australia...