Dan, Abigail, Alex and I moved back to England in August 2011, after living for eight years in Uganda. Before that we had lived in Zimbabwe for five years, and our children were born there. So relocating to England last year was hardly “re-entry” for three quarters of the family, but just ”entry” (Dan being an American). Even for me, I had not lived in a settled way in the UK since I was 24, so setting up home here permanently (for now…) felt like a whole new experience. A few weeks after we arrived here, we were sent on a “Re-entry retreat,” where we were told that for every three years someone has spent on the field it can take one year to feel resettled back at home. If that is so, we are looking at a very long process, and we are only just beginning…
Much as we prepared ourselves, read books, and talked to many people about re-entry, it has still surprised me how strange it has all felt. I remember early on writing that I felt like a boat adrift, randomly casting out ropes to try to find some moorings. Gradually we have found ourselves more at home in the months since then. What has helped is re-connecting with old friends more than once (ie getting past the “it’s been so long, there’s so much to catch up on” conversations) and also making new friends here in Gloucester. We have been really helped by finding a group of people who were also missionaries and returned a few years before us, so they can relate and be supportive in the right ways. And they have been wonderful to us. Meeting to pray regularly with one of them, Christine, has been a great support.
God has so blessed us also with a lovely cosy home to live in, and in giving our children an amazingly smooth transition into new schools and friendships, which they both love. The fact that they are both so happy, even though missing Uganda, has helped me feel good about our move.
I do still miss our African life very much. Much more than I was expecting. I miss the warmth of the sunshine, the brightness of the light and the colours, the joy of the friendships, the reliance on each other, the love in the handshakes, Florence our house help’s quiet friendly presence (OK and her actual help!), and the beauty of the surroundings, the birds, and even the croaking, zipping, chirping, whooping night sounds.
But there is also a list of things I do not miss, and am thankful to have left behind: the chaos and daily irritation of contending with the traffic, the heat, the dust, the ants in the kitchen and the cockroaches in the cupboards (how they kept coming back…), the soft persistent knocks at the door which always came at mealtimes or during quiet times, the clattering and chattering of workers outside your bedroom window or at your back kitchen door unbelievably early on a Saturday morning… oh, and the power cuts.
And here is a list of things I am loving! Especially right now, the season of Spring – so gorgeous and colourful after the drabness of winter, the promise of warmth in the air, the singing and nesting of birds… And the consistency of the power supply, the safety and ease of driving, the five minute school run, seeing family regularly, old friends, chocolate bars, gin and tonic in the evenings, Doritos, the local library, Alex getting to do hockey and cricket, weekend walking in the beautiful, gentle English countryside. Lots of good things!
So it is a mixture of relief, gladness, sadness, pain, comfort, nostalgia, longing, thankfulness… crowned with a good deal of stress in all the decisions that had to be made when setting up home from scratch here, and missing the friends you had come to rely on in the challenges of life, - the friends back in Uganda!
The plethora of choices we have here is probably the biggest difference, and also what most of all makes the transition difficult. Choices in the supermarket – how many types of bread, yoghurt, or toothpaste, do people need? Choices in which supermarket to go to, which power suppliers to go with, which TV channels to have and how many, phone and internet providers, choices in how to pay each of them, choices choices choices. It all seems reckless and out of control. One cringes for the environment, and then tries to work out how to harm it least in this consumer-mad life we are embarking on. Recycling bins proliferate outside every supermarket, but it makes you realise how much STUFF people have, everyone, not only the rich people. Then you think of Ugandan friends, families living in houses with incomplete roofs, the whole family sleeping in one or two bedrooms sharing beds, children having no books or toys of their own, cooking on charcoal. Then it all seems so skewed and, unavoidably, unfair.
But are people here aware how rich they are, how comfortable life is, how good their daily food is, how safe their roads are, how abundant their possessions are? They are not. They are often dissatisfied and compare themselves with those better off than themselves, they grumble about prices, about the government and about the health service… Not everyone though. And actually, this part about people’s lack of awareness of the world beyond theirs, I was expecting. Perhaps it is me who needs to remember to be thankful, not to take the comfort, pleasures and predictability of life here for granted. How though to reconcile the life we are now leading with the years that have gone before…that, I am still working out. I know we want to serve God here as we did in Uganda. People here need a Christian witness in a way more than they did there. How to embark on a new phase of life without divorcing ourselves from what went before, that is slightly puzzling at the moment. It feels like such a different direction that we are taking. But I believe God still has something for us here that we have not found yet. And he will show us his plan. For now, I am just giving myself time, to settle, and to recover. I am realising at this point that I need quite a lot of time, and then… God wil show me what’s next. This realisation has given me peace.
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