Tag: international moves

  • In Another Land

    We walked across the sand and the sea and
    The sky and the castles were blue.
    I stood and held your hand.
    And the spray flew high and the feathers floated by
    I stood and held your hand.
    And nobody else’s hand will ever do
    Nobody else will do

    Then I awoke
    Was this some kind of joke?
    Much to my surprise
    When I opened my eyes.

    We heard the trumpets blow and the sky
    Turned red when I accidently said
    That I didn’t know how I came to be here
    Not fast asleep in bed.
    I stood and held your hand.
    And nobody else’s hand will ever do
    Nobody else’s hand

    “In Another Land” by Bill Wyman, sung by The Rolling Stones 

    We are enjoying some much needed family time. It is hard to believe that we are here, and our short time is going sooooo quickly.  We are eating it up (I mean that literally) and Burundi already seems so very far away. Another world. For now, we are enjoying this one. It’s a world full of brothers and sisters and cousins and grandparents and cold and firsts. Our kids are getting some great “firsts” under their belts.

    First time seeing snow.

    First time wearing winter jackets.

    First time ice skating (that didn’t go so well).

    First time sledding.

    First snow ball fight.

    First time seeing their breath outside.

    First time having Christmas with their grandparents and cousins.

    Our poor kids experience so many new things every day that they fall into bed exhausted and wake up late (we are loving it!).

  • How not to Loose One’s Mind Crossing African Borders, and Other Useful Things to Know Before Driving to the Center of Africa

     

    I tried to come up with a nice succinct title for my thoughts about the journey from Durban, South Africa to Bujumbura, Burundi. But like the roads I took, it may look like an inch on the map before you but the reality is it’s going to be long, hard and nearly inaccessible by the average driver (reader). Both previous thoughts frustrate Kristy to no end. The drive to Burundi with little to no clue of where I was to stay along the way (or direction I was heading, in all reality) and the writing style that meanders between sentences as long as a Tanzanian highway and ever changing tenses.

    My journey of 5700 km (3,541 miles for you Americans) started as a fun tandem with friend and fellow Hope Church-ite, and French speaking Burundian, Alain.  The journey ended in a sort of race against darkness and a battle of nerves with drunk soldiers at the edge of Bujumbura.

    The start was 2 weeks late.  The reason being that newly purchased used vehicles need their log-book to get through borders.  My log book was doing African time wadding through the red tape of South African banks and Currier services.  The “I’ll make a plan” attitude of the shoot from the hip good-ol’ boy I bought my 2000 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado from didn’t exactly speed the process.  By the time it arrived my heart was already in the hills of Burundi, my mind on coffee, and my wife about ready to have an anxiety attack with the  sure mountain of details my optimistic and adventure ready self failed to attend to.  She mentioned food would be good thing to bring. Yes, and that I should actually should buy a map.  She also suggested plates and silverware/cutlery might be useful.  I could continue, but for my sake lets just say I’m thankful that my wife made me bring along a roll of toilet paper just in case.

    Morning 1. Tuesday.

    4:30 am start.  Shelly the creative director/videographer is at the gate to video me pulling off into the pre-dawn to fetch Alain.  The night before we were meant to leave but a very unpleasant phone-call about the sure death of Ella if we fly her to Burundi made it less then ideal to hit the road.  I made  a great call, a morning start was much better.  My good friend Cyril and I had spent the better part of Saturday loading the 4X4 with more house hold and coffee lab supplies then you can imagine.  No really.  Imagine….. your wrong, it’s more.  A couple more hours rest, family time and what I didn’t realize was to be my last good meal in a week took place.

    Alain loaded.  One small bag, still too big for the 10 inch of luxury (read luggage) space I allocated each of us.  Oh, and the nearly 150 lbs welding machine we squeezed on top of the already loaded roof rack.  Open road.  Full Land Cruiser.  No coffee.  Yet.

    West coast to northern South African border never was reached so quickly.  We two men… no, road warriors. A dynamic partnership meant to be.  What could stop us?  Botswana by dusk was our war cry.  We might make Burundi in 5-6 days!  This sunset banter was tossed around as we dodged flipped burning petrol trucks, police wielding speed cameras and finding the black elixir (coffee) half way in the coldest place in South Africa, Harrismith, Free State.

    Then the border. 7pm.  Dark.  Ominous in the glow of  flickering florescent bulbs.

    The first border.

    The easy border.

    The border that beat us and nearly sent me home.

    Alain was denied entry to Botswana.

     

    Coffee Guy

     

  • Huntin’ Monkeys

    My brother came by for a visit a few weeks ago (he just hopped on a quick 30 hr flight to get here) and on his last day with us he had one request: monkeys. He wanted to see MONKEYS! To us, monkeys are a little like the neighborhood skunk that everybody hates. Annoying, a little bit dangerous, totally unpredictable and really hard to find if you are looking for them. Looking for them is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s like that Forrest Gump line, “You never know what you’re gonna get.”

    We packed up and went-a-huntin’ and as usual, I was totally the sceptical one. Whining on about how we might never find them, until we practically ran over them in the road five minutes after the hunt began. Sometimes, things seem a lot harder in the beginning than they actually are. I keep telling myself that in these last days before the big move. I’m especially hoping it’s true re learning French!

    Here’s what’s goin’ on:

    • Our beloved Jeep finally sold, to friends who are more like family.
    • Last Friday Ben brought home a ’99 Land Cruiser (pics coming soon). This will be our vehicle in Burundi, and Ben leaves to drive it from here (Durban, South Africa) to there (Bujumbura, Burundi) in just a few days. The drive itself will take about a week.
    • Yesterday Ben was in Cape Town, just for the day, to meet with some lovely people from Starbucks (Hi, guys!) about our project in Burundi.
    • We just found out, as we are about to move, that we have been granted permanent residency in South Africa. This is a big deal for us as a family. We feel so connected to South Africa that it just feels right to be permanent residents.
    • We set a for-sure-no-going-back moving date. The 23rd of June. It’s on people, it’s on.
    • My bedroom is covered with packed plastic bins that I am convinced will fit in the back of the Land Cruiser.
    • We found someone, after loooots of searching, who is willing to fly our Great Dane from Durban to Bujumbura.

    Do you follow us on Twitter and are you a fan on Facebook? If not, we would love it if you would! With all this activity and so little time to type, right now it’s the best way to find out what’s up with us.

    It’s the final days and our heads are swollen with details and our hearts are bogged down with the strain of goodbyes. Despite the stress, we are finding time to laugh with good friends and wrestle with the boys. Breathing deeply these last moments in South Africa, our favorite adopted land.

    Luv,

    Kristy

    photos all scott e. knutson

     

     

     

  • the road to burundi

    The road to Burundi is probably not paved with cheese, just like it wasn’t in an American Tail. All the mice sang about it, about a place where the streets were paved with cheese, where there were no cats. A threat-less path made of food sounds pretty good to me right now too!

    I can’t sleep. I really want too, but I can’t. There are so many details flying around in my head… so many things stressing me out. The truth is, I don’t think we are great with big huge detail oriented things… like moves. Yesterday Ben told me that he thinks he should leave for Burundi with the vehicle on Monday. It’s Wednesday. Do we have a vehicle? No. Can we afford to buy one? No. Does he have visas to get through the borders he’s going to cross? No. Have I packed what will go in the vehicle? I’ve started, but really… No.

    Then, if I turn my head two inches in the other direction I start to think about how today I signed my house away. I signed it away, just like that. The place I brought my babies home to. Our first home. A home in a city that I love… a city that loves me. When we bought this house we wanted it to be a home that was always welcoming. A place people could journey to and feel safe, as if they had arrived at their home away from home and were immediately a part of the family. It has been that for so many, including ourselves.

    On Saturday we sold off most of our household belongings. It was like our house had vomited on the lawn. Ten years of life in a place laid out bare, for everybody to pick through. Watching people look at my things and decide if they wanted it and then haggle on the price was a bit too much for me. So, I hung out away from the sale and had good talks with great friends and pretended none of it was happening. Friends volunteered to take money and run the whole thing, and even make everybody coffee. My dad is here all the way from America, along with my little brother Scott, and he watched the kids all day while we sold. And sold. And sold. I feel such gratitude for people like these, it was a labor of love.

    I will say that it is kind of freeing to be sort of possession-less. It feels good to know that our things will be of good use to others and we can move on with just the essentials. The essentials, at this point, include a whole lot of dark chocolate.

    Luv,

    me

  • A Dirty Bed Does It.

    It’s really early. So early that my kids are still asleep and the sun is barely in the sky. As a general rule I make it my prerogative not to get out of bed before my kids do. They are such early risers that I can’t bear the thought! But on this beautiful Saturday morning in South Africa, with the early rays of light finding there way onto my walls, I can’t help but be awake. We are supposed to Burundi in just three months. The end of February signals the beginning of “crunch time” in my head. Time to plan, pack, decide what the leave and what to take, get the house SOLD, say goodbye to a decade of life in Durban… but instead I am struggling to wrap my head around any of it. I want to go outside and stare at the sunrise forever, and forget about all the goodbyes, the new beginnings, and the FRENCH that is in my future.

     

    Someone told me at a party last night that my life sounds “so exciting.” I thought… “Does it?” Right now, to me, it sounds like a logistical nightmare that I can’t put off. We have to be there in June. There is no postponing it while I get all my ducks in a row. June is coming, whether I like it or not. It’s time to really own this future of ours. It’s time to believe in the impossible. It’s time to trust myself, my husband and my God that I can do this. I can live there. I can be a successful woman, wife, mom and photographer there. We can change the lives of people if we go, but the likelihood is that we will be the most changed of anyone.

    Risk has a way of breathing life into everything. When I woke up in the hills of Burundi, on a bed that was so dirty I could only manage to sleep on top of it, and pillow-less to boot, I knew my future was there. That was the moment, my moment, and it snuck up on me like the gentle shift of a wind on our beach at home. As Neo played under the mosquito nets in the early morning light on that dirty bed; I knew that we would be sacrificing the house, the relationships, the place that has made me into who I am. I don’t know who I would be if we had never moved to South Africa, but I don’t really want to meet her. South Africa is our home. My kids were born here. I grew up here, from newly married girl on an adventure to the woman I am now. I am so grateful for what we have met here… the people who are just like family, the constant sunshine, the beauty, the crime, the disappointments, the failures. It has all shaped me.

    I know I need to give it all up, risk it and re-create my definition of home. Home is wherever the three bodies that mean everything to me are. They are home, and this home is on the move.

    Happy Saturday,

    Kristy

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