Moving again...

This week I have definitely been on the roller coaster, with amazingly happy moments bursting up against a few unpredicted downturns. 

The great things that have made me feel up up up include how well Abby and Alex are getting on at their new schools, with making friends especially, and coping with the work well; also, our move last Saturday into a bigger, light and sunny house with a garden on both sides full of apples and autumn colours; our container arriving on Saturday morning, and the ensuing reunion with familiar things; most especially, Sunday lunch with our new neighbours, who happen to be a wonderful Kenyan family called the Itumus. John is the rector of the church just a few hundred yards up the road. We went there on Sunday morning and all enjoyed their informal family service. Strangely enough, we already knew John because he used to be on the team at my brother’s church in London! We spent hours with them on Sunday talking about Kenya, Uganda, the church there and in England, bishops, Zimbabwe, our pasts, our possible futures, food, work… it was such good fun and we are deeply heartened to have lovely African friends living right next door, who have said we can come over to borrow salt any time. In addition to all that we also had another meal out at more new friends’, a couple whose son, James, is in Alex’s year group at school, and the boys have really hit it off and become great friends already. They were missionaries in Bangladesh a few years ago.

In addition to all of that, we have also had visits from TWO English friends we know from Uganda! Fishy, who works in Jinja, has been here for a short working visit and came for lunch, and Isabel came to collect the boxes that they had put on our container. It was so lovely to talk about Uganda with them and about resettling particularly with Isabel.

In the face of all these great things happening in the space of five days, my emotions have several times suddenly swung down and I have felt overwhelmingly tired. Things that trigger it have included: moving again so soon, but, unavoidably we feel; seeing friends from Uganda was a high but then left a low feeling afterward; yes unwrapping familiar china, furniture, books, curtains etc was like Christmas all over again – but finding it all so dusty and dirty from the container – everything needs either washing (though we did wash most things before we packed them), serious dusting, or throwing away. Towels that looked pretty white and clean there look brown and dirty here compared to newly bought ones. (Note to future returnees – do not bring old towels back with you…) Incidentally we had a chance to say hello and goodbye to those small shiny brown fast-running creatures once more, - for the last time, we sincerely hope! I was hoping the unpacking guys didn't notice them! There were also a lot of small spiders in the container, hence cobwebs everywhere… Then trying to decide where to put furniture which involves hefting it all around several times in each room to try it out, disagreeing with Dan about how many bookshelves we can tolerate in the living room, disagreeing about putting bookshelves at the ends of people’s beds, and about putting the headboards of beds in the middle of the room instead of against the wall… you get the picture…

Also Abby has been hit with her first true English head cold, caught from class-mates. Poor thing, but she is getting better day by day.

We are in a hurry to get the house in order because are in a hurry to feel settled and at home. But maybe I just need another measure of patience, to allow this transition to unroll at the right pace. One day at a time.