Change is in the Air

It's that time of year, when normally stoic, stolid, resilient expat women adopt a wild-eyed manic expression. Coming to the end of the school year, and it's the madness on the merry-go-round, when expat families moving to new posts, move.

A new friend of mine was talking when I first met her, two weeks ago, of moving to (Spanish-speaking) Mexico.  This week I bumped into her again. The organisation's plans have changed. Now they're off to (French speaking) Mali. In six weeks. Different continent from where they'd envisaged till so recently. Different school system. Need to sell and declutter a completely different set of articles from the Mexico scenario. And they've got two school age kids, and her husband is travelling for the next week of the rapidly elapsing time left in Nairobi.

In the butchers I bumped into the other member of the remedial stream of the slick Latin American salsa class. We had howled with laughter at the back, as the sleek class rotated one way, and we, fumbling, stumbled the other. We hadn't seen each other for over a year. Barely have a language in common. But as we spoke very slowly together, out her story tumbled. Her daughter, 18, Italian, is about to go to university in UK. And it's a long way from Kenya, from their relations elsewhere in Europe, and from Mum. Their international school has just organised an evening for the parents of nearly adult children about to move to university in third countries, to lead the parents through the stages of supporting a child in a third country. How to underwrite a phone contract or rental agreement when you don't have a bank account or residence in that country.   Why it matters to have more than one sole piece of photo ID. 
'One of the teachers spoke. Her son had washed his passport twice in the washing machine in his first term. He couldn't get it sorted in time to come home for his first Christmas.'
It gives me goosepimples just to think of it.

There was a time, not that long ago, when organisations sending expats gave you a while to come to terms with the idea and to sort yourselves out before you boarded the plane. That was then. This is now. Several of my career guidance clients are only being interviewed for jobs in another country, another region, two months before the post is due to start. Two months is no time at all to sell your car and your generator, research another country, get far enough up the waiting list for a school, find willing homes for the chickens and the dogs, pack your stuff, sort out your tax affairs, maybe squeeze in a quick break and be off. Even if there are two adults in this relationship and one of them isn't in paid employment and can devote herself to it full time. If you're single, or worse, a working single parent, well get burning the midnight oil.  I see the stress of it, on the faces of my clients, the ones in employment, under pressure to find a new job in time in a new country where the family wouldn't mind being too much. Researching new issues and roles and how your skills are relevant to a different context and preparing for interview in a new country. Or, most likely, in multiple new countries. And I see it on the faces of my mates, the spouses, seeking to gallantly support, but not push, to say in a bright, brave upbeat voice:
'Hm, well it would be very interesting in Moldova wouldn't it. Or Machynlleth.  They've both got lots to offer.'

One of my mates described having packed up the family's stuff in Japan, and sent it shipping freight back to UK, where her husband was next to be posted. But even before the freight had arrived, his company had changed its mind again, decided actually, South Africa was where he was needed. And by default his family too. There was no way to divert the shipment on the high seas, so months and months later it arrived, all wrong for the season, wrong for the circumstance, packed for another parallel life, which wasn't now going to happen.

So if you stand in a supermarket this summer and watch someone, distrait, buying 30 coathangers, seven light bulbs, two dustbins, a machete and some chickenwire, smile kindly, hold her list safely as she seeks to stuff it all in the trolley, and maybe buy her a doughnut to keep her sugar levels up.