"Armed robbers threaten to take grandson" 5 years ago, this was the headline in the local news paper where we lived.
It was surreal to see it, as the grandson referred to was our son.
He was 4 years old at the time and his sister was 9 months old.
The event in question happened yesterday, exactly 5 years ago. It was the final push for us and as a family to move.
I contacted an estate agent and made the appointment that would lead to our house and everything we owned being sold and our feet landing on Irish soil on the 1st of December in the same year.
As many of you are at the point where you just received your final push, I thought that considering that it is now exactly 5 years later, perhaps it would help you to know if it was all worth it. This is the story of our last 5 years..
On the 5th of August 2015, driving home from work, my husband and I felt that feeling of excitement as we phoned my in-laws to say we are coming over with some boerie rolls. We worked very close to each other and always drove to work and back together. We stopped at Spar and then went to go pick up the children from creche and the day mother before heading over to the family.
For many years we had been flipping between looking at, and then not looking, and then looking at again moving to the UK again. On and off and then on and then off again. We felt we had the opportunity, with Hubbys' British passport, but also really loved SA and having our family around the corner. The children had cousins living close by and we loved the life we had with them all seeing each other often. Growing up as friends. This was our pull back and forth.
Many of you will understand what I refer to when saying the push and pull in the decision to emigrate. There is something in the idea of moving that pushes you over (education, travel, crime in SA etc etc), but at the same time there is the pull from SA side (family, owning your home, AFRICA) and where you are simply depends on whether the push or the pull is the strongest at that time.
In reading about the UK, yet again, I came across a process that is called the Surinder Singh (SS route, now gone due to Brexit). Basically, you were able to come and live in Ireland under EU Treaty rights and after a few months and then move over to the UK without the Spousal visa costs. The more I researched it (and for those who don't know me, I do a fair bit of it), the more the idea of simply settling in Ireland appealed to us. Why move twice, right?
So on that day, we were heading to the in-laws to break the news that we had decided to make the move. I remember saying to my husband that with all the crime in SA at the time, I was so happy we had decided to move before becoming a statistic.
Well, needless to say, by the end of that evening, I not only had been made to be wrong, we received what would be our final push and there would no longer be any debate.
We needed to renew my husband's UK passport, as it had expired 9 years earlier. We needed to apply for mine and the children's passports, as none of us had one. We had no certificates. We had not had our house on the market prior to the decision, and on top of that, I wanted to get out. Fast.
I did not want to process the events of the evening and I was over the fear. We had our plan and there was no time like the present.
I researched CV formats and started sending Hubby's CV to every recruitment agency and company Google would let me. I managed to develop quite a good relationship with the recruiter at Sigmar and we set up an appointment for my Husband the day after we were to arrive in Ireland.
We decided on Galway, simply because I loved Galway girl in P.S I love you and booked into a b&b in Salthill for 2 weeks after we arrived.
We were incredibly blessed in that my brother in law and his family were going to follow us over and they would arrive on the 1st of March 2016. So while it was all very exciting and new, we knew we had to make it work and it had to work first time around. With the exception of family, we had sold everything and going back was simply not an option.
My Husband secured that job and is still at the same company today. We were really very blessed in that.
We arrived during Storm Desmond in 2015 and I can tell you one thing for free, that was an education!
We rented a car in order to find a place to stay. One place was as unknown as the next, so in a way that kinda made it easier to look, because we had no preconceived ideas of areas. We did not realize how big Galway was though!
My Dad often had Irish bands playing in the house and one of the bands we would often listen to was The Waterboys. They have a song called Glastonbury song, in which they reference coming around the mountain in Carraroe. So, jokingly I said to Hubby we should see if there is anything available to rent there.
There was.
I sent an email, and the owner phoned back.
It was a week to week rental and it would give us the flexibility to find somewhere suitable so when the family arrived, we would all have a place to sleep.
That same owner also had another place, which was available 2 months later, and so Carraroe stuck to us and us to it. We have now moved away from there some years ago, but it will always be such a happy place for my heart. All the endless possibility that lay ahead of us there when we arrived. We knew nothing, but we knew what lay ahead was better than what was before.
My sis in law and I had so many laughs and happiness when walking the kids to school in the rain and having to run from the creche to the National school, 2km away because it started 10 minutes after the creche. And we discovered the Chocolate Brownies at the Spar! It was a very happy time.
But in saying that, it came with it's own challenges. Sadly, many of you will find out that this move has a very big impact on your marriage. Emotionally, it is not always possible for both people to be in the same part of the process all the time, My Husband wanted to go back to SA from the moment we arrived and I settled and felt at home very quickly. It makes it very hard to support each other in the way you need to when what you see as the answer to the question : "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" to be in completely different places.
There is a lot of adjusting to do. You need to find a new normal (and I don't mean the post Covid kind). In SA, if you want to buy something, you know exactly what it's called, where to go to get it and how much you will pay. We have been here almost 5 years, and I only recently discovered that the Iron-bru at Tesco tastes exactly like Cream Soda. How is that for a wtf moment! How do you confuse Saffa? Take something they know (Iron-bru), change the colour (orange) and make it taste like something completely different but, like something they will be looking for but not find (BECAUSE SOMEONE MADE IT THE WRONG COLOUR AND PUT ON THE WRONG LABEL!)
There is the adapting, learning to live with PTSD that you didnt even know you had, because all of the sudden you realize that normal in SA in absolutely not normal and you don't have to breath eat and sleep while being alert and "on" all the time, but there is the new stress that comes with that realisation where you know you have loved ones that are still there. It becomes a drive to find a way to get them out and all the while still trying to find your own way here.
But then you see your children play. And they don't know this fear. They don't know the homesick like you do. And little by little, if you are lucky enough (and we were very lucky in our entire journey), you find walking somewhere with your hand held by your husband and manage to align what we want in our future. Where we see ourselves in the next 5 years is in the exact same spot where both our happiness is and our family has grown by 1.
The little Facebook group that was born on my birthday in 2016 and has grown into this beautiful teenage website, reminds me through each of your stories, how far we have come, and how lucky we are to be here. And each of you have become part of my journey,
Next year, if all goes as we pray it will, we will become home owners once again. We will visit SA and teach our children her ways. But today, when the heading came up as to our experience 5 years ago, for the first time my heart didn't take that dive to where it feels like we are back in that moment. For the 1st time I was ble to see what we have and where we are as a direct result of it. And while it was absolutely the 2nd worst experience of my life (the death of Dad being the worst), I am eternally grateful for this life we now live.
Now, like my Dad used to dance with me, I dance with my children while Hothouse Flowers sing about how "A thing of beauty is not a thing to ignore", and I definitely intend of being thankful for every thing of beauty our life now has!
Important links:
#MapMyMove- Our coaching Services - Confused or lost and need some direction, book a session with us to help untangle the confusion and work out your route of immigration
Steps to take in the Immigration Process
Resources for this topic- Immigration related - all the links that relate to each route of the immigration process
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