It was #OurTurn to leave for Ireland on Saturday evening from Joburg, 31 July 2021.
This has been a very eventful and extremely fast paced time, and decision we had made. I had begun looking for work in Ireland in January of 2020, COVID hit and everything went dead. I in the interim had Lyndon update my cv, update my LinkedIn profile and sort my cover letter. From March 2020 until January 2021 I had not heard a word for any of the jobs I had applied for from SA to Ireland. Around the third week in January 2021 a recruitment agent came across my LinkedIn profile and cv, we had a chat about my intentions to move and when I plan on making this happen. All went well and the next thing everything was quiet again, I honestly thought there was no chance of ever finding a job, I was nervous about the thought of leaving SA, leaving my job with a company I was with for 11 years and having to uproot my family after being at this time in our house which we bought for only 2 years.
21 May, a day that is very special to me on its own (I’m not going to elaborate) the same recruitment agent said he wants to have a WhatsApp call with me. That night we had a chat and he told me he has something for me he’s been working on since January. I was gobsmacked, I honestly thought I had been forgotten. A week later again on a very special day to me, and Friday evening…. I had my interview with my prospective employers. I was so nervous for this. I was sweating all day, I was in Pretoria the day doing meetings and had to rush back to the South of Joburg at break neck speeds to be on time for my interview. My nerves were completely shot… I sat down in a teams meeting with a managing director and financial director for my interview thinking this is going to be a flop, a short interview and nothing is going to happen. And an hour and a half later stood up walked to my lounge to my wife with the biggest smile on my face and told her I’m going to get this job…. The interview went amazingly, we got on like a house on fire and by the Monday following that weekend I had a job offer. And a really good one at that.
All kinds of thoughts started running through my head and I was in quite a panic.. do we.. don’t we… and I really thought no we can’t… but my wife being my confidante and true supporter told me to go for it…. Take the job and make the move while you have the chance…. So I accepted the job offer, no negotiation, no if, and’s or buts. The company, the people who had interviewed me and my recruiter all were so amazing that I was happy to make the move.
Then comes telling the family what’s happening, there were tears and a bit of apprehension from those close to us that thought or still think things might not work out but my wife and I have been through a lot early on in our lives which have left deep scars. Those scars have made us stronger and we will make any situation work. So our minds began focusing on what’s next.
My employers submitted my visa application on my behalf within the week I signed my job offer; I luckily qualify for a critical skills visa. With my wife without a job offer we decided it would be best for her and our 3 year old daughter, for mommy to be at home, for the two of them to spend quality time together and to just give my wife the time to be a mommy.
So visa applications submitted and the wait began but so did the anxiety…. When do we begin planning what happens next… just a little bit about me.. I like my stuff and I don’t like people touching moving or breaking my things… I like to know where it is, I know the condition of it when I last was near to or used it and no one must mess with my things… (my things is everything around the house… cars, toys, hobbies, daughter and wife ????) We started off having 2 valuations done on our house with 2 great agents and their values came out almost identical… we then immediately put the house on the market…. Things just got real for me and my stuff is now for sale, my wife began pricing and listing our things for sale to friends and family first and then to Facebook marketplace and can I tell you my anxiety went through the roof…. (we had decided to move over with cash and bags of clothing in order to start our lives afresh, plus in all honesty we never had the money to ship things over)
We priced everything to sell reasonably quickly but I was in for the shock of my life that within the first week we had sold probably 60% of all our household contents… cash was coming in, furniture was going out and I was crawling through my skin seeing my house and belongings disappear before my eyes. My wife being the strong person she is put up with my antics and screams about things being gone and refocused my energy to the end goal.. Ireland.
3 days after putting our house on the market we had our first offer… it was reasonable, and the house essentially was sold in 3 days….. we had thought to begin applying for all our paperwork. But we hit a problem with our marriage certificate, we only had the hand written copy we didn’t have a copy of the marriage register which was supposed to be given to us. What do we do… I started panicking, my wife didn’t want to be left behind for any time at all, so we had to resolve this asap. I went through our wedding album and found a photo showing only partially the details…. In the interim we tried to contact the pastor who married us, he had moved away from the church at this stage and needless to say never replied to any of our attempts to contact him….. we then tried the church directly and they said that after a period of time, they had handed all their registers back to home affairs as they could no longer store everything… but the had some still left over and they would check and get back to us…… an hour later I got an email with a scanned copy of our wedding register and I almost began crying. I could have kissed the admin lady who found it if I was near to her…. So off we went and applied for unabridged marriage and birth certificates for the two of us and applied for our daughters passport. All within a few weeks of each other.
I paid an agent to expedite the marriage and birth certificates, and waited to see what would come of it….. now all this happened within 3 weeks of applying for my visa, we were on track to hit the 12 week mark (supposed visa eta)…. Next thing I’m driving at lunchtime I get a call from my recruiter and think there’s going to be a problem… this guy was so overjoyed he couldn’t contain himself, my CSEP was approved…. In 3 weeks… (ok this comes with saying the company is a trusted partner, there is a housing crisis in the country and for my skill and expertise this application was pushed quickly through the line).
Things just got super real… I hadn’t resigned yet nor had my wife, we still had a ton of things to do and all our paperwork wasn’t ready to travel as a family only mine was….. I was on everyone’s case following up multiple times a day about our applications. We both walked into our bosses offices and gave them 6 weeks notice, this is ample time for them to wrap their heads around the situation. My wife’s resignation went well, she was wished well and it was accepted amicably. Mine on the other hand came with a heavy outpouring of emotions and just bad taste. I at this point had two choices, smack the guy and walk out or let him have his last say and know that this will never happen to me again… I chose the latter. Not because I needed anything at this point but I sat there and showed my employer that I was the stronger person who wouldn’t get riled up about what was happening to me now (sad to say that even after such long service a person is still just considered a income generator and not a person, so by resigning I was closing that tap off).
My wife went to Home Affairs to check on our marriage certificate as our agent said it was ready…. None the wiser we get a abridged marriage certificate. With this our receipt was taken and we had no proof that we applied for unabridged…. This threw a huge spanner in our works.... I had decided to do a full new marriage certificate application fully with the agent and pay whatever it costs. I then got notified my daughters passport is ready (we applied for this at HA in Killarney Mall) same time our birth certificates would be ready too… so I set a half day Friday aside and off I went.
I got to the mall picked up the passport in seconds and was back on the road within 5 minutes. I got to the Alberton Home Affairs office to get our birth certificates and was stopped at the door dead in my tracks. Security told me no collections under level 4 restrictions only again on level 1. This response won’t work with me and quick on my feet I haul out my daughters passport, my contract of employment and my approved visa with a cover letter to the visa and let the gentlemen know that I need this paperwork to fly out on the Sunday (2 days later), but this was never the plan just a rouse to get inside… he told me to wait outside the door, he disappeared and 20 minutes later re-emerged and told me to wait. I stood there for a further hour… time was ticking and I didn’t know if I would even get in, it was almost 15:00 and we all know Fridays and home affairs don’t work well together… I began getting anxious, the next thing the security tells me to go show a supervisor my paperwork… by this point I’m in the building and I know half the battle is already won… I gave her all the details with the cover letter, spun her a story about not being able to book flights until I had my daughters passport and it worked she told me to go sit and wait to be called…..
My name eventually gets called, I go to the counter and see something strange with the paperwork… there was 3 documents.. I knew what it was…. Page 1 was my unabridged birth certificate and page 3 was my wife’s unabridged birth certificate, wedged between the two was our unabridged marriage certificate…. I only had 2 receipts with me as our previous one was kept…. I flipped the receipts and made it look like I had 3, signed the book and was out the door as quick as I could go.
I walked to the car and phoned my wife and in the process just a flood of emotions came running through me… we now had all our paperwork…this was all by the 2nd of July, almost a month after getting the job offer we had everything we needed to fly, our house was sold, and by this time 80% of our contents was sold.
We were waiting for our #mapmymove session with Vicky and Megan just to clarify a few queries. After which the next day we booked our plane tickets, got our travel insurance and we were beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
A week later…. After more than 18months of steering clear of this pandemic my wife starts getting cold sweats, body aches and needed to see a doctor. 7 GP’s contacted later no one would see her, we eventually got an appointment for her early the next morning. With this she is tested for COVID and later that evening we get the news, a positive COVID test result…. Our hearts sank… all this planning and we were about to see our dream be delayed by this nonsense virus.. and all this while we are working our notices…. We then go into 10days of quarantine and try and avoid thinking of what the positive test result is going to do to our family if we can’t get to Ireland.
My wife thankfully recovered from COVID very quickly and really within the first 3 days was sick, thereafter she was doing much better already. On the day she was diagnosed with COVID she found out she was pregnant too…. A quick back story…. our only child so far is 3 and she comes from the blessings of IVF, we have tried for years and years to conceive naturally and nothing worked, we even tried ivf a second time, and this didn’t work the second time round either. We’ve even had a few miscarriages in the early stages of pregnancy, so now to have this precious gift given to us is absolutely amazing.
So now, 100% of paperwork is done, flights, quarantine, travel insurance, Airbnb, all booked and paid for. 95% of our contents is sold, we have majority of our capital, small things remain which wouldn’t make much difference to our bottom line. School is finished 2 weeks before we depart and still my wife is testing positive. A week before we are due to fly out of SA we move out of our house. By this time we have now finished working and we anticipate taking the week to relax and pack while staying with family at our own leisure. Nope, this was not to be the case… I get called back to work for nonsense, we have sold our cars (with big losses) so we borrowed one and my wife is sitting at home with my daughter both driving each other crazy as they cant do anything or go anywhere.
Beginning of this last week my wife still tests positive, we start getting advice on how to try speed up her body shedding the virus. Mid week we test again, low and behold the test is negative we are ecstatic at this point. We do our final pcr tests before departure and carry on packing. We are busy for a few days, and also late into the night buying last minute things, packing last minute things, literally right up until we need to leave for the airport.
Neither one of us has ever left South Africa and now we are at the airport waiting to fly to Dublin with our 3 year old girl. Our checkin and baggage was uneventful, we had a drink with our friends and family and through to departures. We get stopped for having 6 juice boxes with us and get told to leave that…. Well so be it, they make us take a towelling nappy affectionately known as Dudu from our daughter in order to go through the detection machines. This caused an enormous scene taking a toddlers favourite item of comfort away. FYI for any parent travelling with children, if you have hand luggage and cant put that bag on your back, check it in… you need all the hands you got to get them through the airport.
We find our boarding gate and not before long are seated on the plane and on our way. This flight was jam packed full, we flew Qatar to Doha. The service was good, they didn’t have any kids meals and my daughter wouldn’t eat what we ate so for the duration of this flight she had half a muffin that we bought from a shop before boarding and some wine gums. She also didn’t sleep more than 2 hours on this flight, the tv entertainment was just too good for her, we tried giving her medication to sleep and she just wouldn’t drink anything.
This all being said a word of advise that I could share with parents traveling the same route. The meal services start 2 hours into the flight and again 2 hours before landing. Your little ones might wake up here, this would give them 4 hours of rest in between. If your routine is as important to your little ones as ours is, rather plan your flights with the first meal time in mind that they can sleep right up until you land.
So, we get to Doha all fine and dandy walk through the airport find our gate and we seem to be good. We all have a bathroom break and soon enough begin boarding our next flight to Dublin. At this point with no sleep and being irritated our precious little girl starts throwing a massive tantrum outside of the boarding gate in the queue to move through. She’s crying and screaming her lungs out. We grabbed her and pushed through the screaming to get back on the next flight.
This flight Doha to Dublin I would say was 85% full. Again no kids meals, but they give the little ones a toy parcel to play with. This wasn’t as fascinating to our little one as the tv and that kept her happy. She slept a little bit here but it definitely wasn’t enough to perk up her mood and again all she ate was a breakfast fruit bow l as she didn’t want the adult meals. This flight felt like it was never going to end. It was a smaller plane so it was less spacious than the first one and definitely not so easy to sleep on and fewer bathrooms.
We landed in Dublin, we got off last from the plane as many people cannot understand want it means to disembark by row and the social distancing is just out the window at this point. We then headed to the BMU queue and as if on queue our daughter began throwing a fit again, crying and carrying on so much that an official took us to a queue for assisted persons. All our paperwork was in order all stamped everything was good to go. You go back to where you arrived originally as this is the waiting area for the quarantine busses. We sat there for what felt like and hour. Little one finally fell asleep in mommy’s arms. At this point we wait, until everyone for quarantine is called to collect their bags. Only one person is allowed to collect their bags from the family unit and you are escorted two at a time. You are then taken straight onto the busses and whisked off to your hotel. We were taken to the restaurant lobby and sat at table to begin filling in paperwork regarding our COVID testing and meal choices. We ended up being booked into the Crowne Plaza Dublin Airport hotel for quarantine.
So from landing until we were finally in our room was about 4 hours… the hotel staff are really accommodating they offer you water while you wait and make sure if you need anything to eat (you won’t eat here they will bring it to your room). Our room being for the three of us is quite spacious, we have two twin beds, it came with a bar fridge already accommodated and USB ports for easy phone charging in the walls.
We were exhausted, we ate showered ate again and went straight to bed. All three of us passed out pretty quickly. The next day would be our first pcr tests. These tests are very thorough compared to those we had in SA. They take throat samples, then cheek samples and up into the nose (all on one stick). Children above 2 years of age will be tested too it’s just a cheek swab though. At this point you are not allowed to leave your room until you get a negative test result. So we waited…. The breakfasts, lunches and dinners have been really good. The water has been limiting but you can order more and it will be brought to your room. Again we slept a lot of the day and were back to bed early that night. Our little princess tells us it’s still wake time with the sun still shining at 21:00 at night and that it’s not sleep time… so that’s going to take some getting used to.
We activated our bank cards for use abroad before leaving SA with Standard and FNB, tried to buy SIM cards from our hotel room and sorry for us they don’t work…. Together with that we requested intentional roaming for both our SIM cards and after Doha nothing worked…. We were up the creek without a paddle… luckily I have a banker (service I pay for part of my account) who I instructed via email to rectify the standard bank cards… fyi fraud division blocks you otp via email through MasterCard somehow and that needs special clearing. With this we found out that you can phone FNB card, banking and digital banking divisions from the app… 24 hours later and all our cards are working.
The next day the health services contact us at about 10:00am, my daughter and I are negative and my wife has tested positive again…. This, they cannot be sure if it is a false positive or not. The hotel medical staff tell us we have to separate from one another, or all move into the quarantine floor. This had us puzzled…. So the health services contacted again, they took all the detail of my wife’s previous infection, recovery and testing. They decide that by their rules they have to consider this a new infection. They need to notify the airline, passengers and anyone who we may have been in contact with. Now I would like to remind you that I have been with my wife through her first infection right up to this day, I have slept in the same bed as her, washed her laundry and dishes without wearing gloves and masks and I still test negative…. What that means, I’m not sure, but false positive tests are real and shedding of the virus takes different times in different people. Never mind the inaccuracies with pcr testing but I won’t go there.
We are then advised of our options. We have to separate, my wife goes into 14 days of self isolation in the hotel, my daughter and I can continue with the normal quarantine and leave after a day 10 negative test. Or we all move together and stay in quarantine for an additional 17 days as this overlap will cover if one of us infect the other. After a lot of tears and lots of crying my pregnant wife gets taken off to the infected floor by security in full hazmat suits. I begin work on the 19th August I can’t be stuck in a room until 2 days before work I need to sort our lives out and it’s selfish but it’s the best decision for us at this point in time and the least amount of days Neede for all to quarantine.
The staff here at Crowne Plaza are really nice, understanding and really willing to help a person out. My daughter and I have been allowed to take our outside breaks three times a day which has really helped with both our spirits by I can’t help but wonder what my pregnant wife is doing alone for her mental sanity, and this will continue for her for another 13 days.
On a side note of the outside breaks, we get to go to a enclosed area on the grounds, it’s not very big but it’s fresh air… sort of, considering mask wearing. I must say we have been really treated well with a toddler, time outside and her lunches are great, she loves hearing the food get delivered and can’t wait to open the door. Mornings she’s rushes to get the juice, fruit and yogurt from the bags. We haven’t had to do a grocery delivery yet, it’s our day 3/4 not sure… we packed rusks, chips, cookies, mini cheddars, sweets, coffee, rooibos, and a few other goodies. Honestly nothing has been needed so far.
To end this part for now… our house hunting has begun and it’s not easy, I have a few tricks up my sleeve and have been getting some feedback but is still tough, as I would need to rely on public transport at first.
We have had a few tough days, but we did all this and much more in only 9 weeks, at times it was chaos, at times there was heart ache (especially after having to put down an old, blind, Dachshund of ours). We have been blessed to be able to get here so quickly, it did harden us up a little as we haven’t had the time to process our emotions but we are a stronger family for it. I was despondent when we arrived, exhausted and drained, but we sat here in quarantine while we were still together and I told my wife I am excited to be here. I am excited for our family’s upcoming journey, it’s going to be tough, it’s going to test us but we are looking forward to our future in Ireland.
Good luck to all of you who have made it all the way through my writing as I know it can be quite long winded, but if I can somehow spark an idea or enlighten someone who has been wanting to ask a question and afraid to then I have achieved my goal.
Important links:
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