Transitions

It's that weekend when Mum, Dad, Granny, a beanbag, three new frying pans and a fresh-faced queezy feeling fresh-hatched student all squeeze into a car en route to university. A mate of mine here has just returned to UK to help purchase the potplants and shift the suitcases with their son en route for college. For us it marks three weeks since FirstBorn started boarding school in UK.  I'm back in Kenya, back Home, but home feels different. Something is missing. Someone. So I've been thinking on transitions, on tales from friends in the same space and of our experiences in the last few weeks.

As FirstBorn and I sat perched on the edge of our chairs at the lunch for new international students and their families on D-Day, H-Hour at the new school, a kindly soul told us of her grandfather, who had spent his early childhood in Eldoret, Kenya.
'And then, when he was seven, he was sent off to school, on his own, on a steamer to UK.  He didn't see his parents again for a year and a half.'  Poor mite. But it puts our anguishing into some perspective.

Several of our friends who grew up in Kenya a generation ago describe memories of traumatic arrivals at UK schools, of immersion into a very different reality. One described being given a five pound note in case of emergencies before being left. Described considering what to do with it, and doing what you do in Kenya. He found a handy tree, buried the fiver under the tree, left his marker stone so he could find it again.  Post office accounts or handy envelopes left with the housemaster an alien universe away.

A mate who was housemistress at an international boarding school in Kenya 15 years ago described their then reality.
'There was only one phone on the whole compound, for staff and pupils alike. You'd all queue up, - and the guard in charge of the phone would stay in the room with you while you made the call - even when you were a staff member! If you wanted to say something private you'd have to clear the queue from the room.' Aargh.

So yes, things are far easier now. There is email, skype, mobiles, texting. I do feel that she really is in good hands. But she's still a very long way away, and we miss her desperately.  But it helps to hear the experience of others. A mate last year described tapping on her son's bedroom door to wake him of a school morning, tapping as she'd done every other day for the last x years. But of course, he wasn't there. Another, in this her son's second year away, described counting suitcases at Heathrow as she returned. Recounting them. Something's not quite right. No, the problem isn't the suitcases, it's that its not quite right without him here with us.  For me its the empty space at mealtimes that sets me off. We've had to shift round the table, so everything is off centre, so none of us are where we were before. As we aren't.

FirstBorn seems to be settling. She's found friends and fun things to do.  She's sent enthusiastic texts and emails, - and now they are coming far less frequently, a good sign I feel. She claims to have practised her flute at least once. And, out of character, even to have gone on a voluntary run.
'Once. But not again. I haven't changed that much!'
But this isn't an experience for the faint hearted, child nor adult. Not as dire as for that tiny seven year old, but heart-wrenching nonetheless. Hearing of problems that you can't solve for them, of issues that you attempt to coach through in your laborious enigmatic text speak.  A mate here whose adult children are students in UK:
'Her boyfriend split up with her over the summer. Seeing her little face and downturned smile on skype and not being able to do anything much to help, being stuck here when she needed me, oh it was awful.' 
I heard at third hand of a Kenyan student studying abroad whose passport got put through the washing cycle once too many times.
'He couldn't get it sorted in time, couldn't get back, had to spend his first Christmas away from home.'

Others, outside the experience, say sweepingly
'Oh it makes them very resilient. You don't need to worry. They adapt.'
Yes they do, and so do we. But that is the armslength cliche, and this is the soft underbelly of the reality for now. Tables laid with one place too many. Favourite foods placed into supermarket trolleys and set aside at the checkout. Mums with bleary mascara hugging each other on the playground, 5000 miles away.

Preparing for Boarding School

I know its one of those contentious topics. My working life has been working in state sector education, its where I choose to put my efforts, I know how much the input of one family can make a difference to a school, and yet here we are, Firstborn off to boarding school 5000 miles from the family home. I think, if we're honest, we each have areas where we fall short of our best lights. If you're tempted to write to me today about our decision, don't, today, D-Day minus Two, ain't the day, take the time instead to muse on your own less consistent areas.  But I thought, nonetheless I'd write on preparing for boarding school from the expat perspective.

Visiting the final choice school in rural England last year the head told us with relish about their first boarder from Afghanistan, who had just joined the school.
'A week in when I asked her what she'd found different, she grinned, and told me she'd just seen a woman on a bike, cycling!  You don't see that in Afghanistan, she said.'
Firstborn and I have now been back in UK for a week, engaged in the frenzied expat shopping scavanger hunt of items for a new school, a new season. :
'Yes you will need a jumper or two. I know they aren't that stylish, but warmth matters too. Yes and some gloves. And you want your goretex raincoat to be longer than that. Yes even longer than that.'
Standing back and recognising that items that were acceptable in not-very-judgmental-Nairobi, now look shabby even in not-very-swish-South-Wales. As we've scratched our heads in despair, comparing the list of essentials with the paltry pickings we find, that Afghan girl - and her bemused mother facing the same shopping list - have been vivid before me. Because difficult as it is to find astro boots in Swansea, I'd guess its far more difficult in Kabul, or on first arrival in a new country.

So what advice would I give to others from my experience?
Plan ahead. 
I thought visiting our dentist in March for an August departure would be ample time to get a brace diagnosed and fitted. But no. For while Nairobi has orthodentists, first they take a cast and x-rays, which are sent to a sporadically held Dental Panel in another country, to assess whether this brace is really needed and therefore might be part-reimbursed, or is just cosmetic.  We got an email from the Dental Panel two days before FirstBorn left Kenya, - but we now need to wait for the cast and the x-rays to wing their way back to Nairobi, for the brace to be made. Halfterm maybe?

Confer with experts.
Life in UK has moved on in our three years abroad. I am a timetravel waif from the 1970s dumped into 2012 without any of the necessary skills.  Thank you my UK mum mates who advised on clothes shops for 13 year old girls (New Look, H&M, River Island; Jack Wills & Hollister if you've come into the money).  And facebook friends and the managers of several phone shops who patiently explained the pros and cons of different mobile phone payment options, several times by the end.  Thank you expat mums who recommended tracing round the feet of SecondBorn so I could still get Clarks school shoes for him, while he stays in Nairobi. Snarls to those Swansea Shoppers in stitches, listening to the mother daughter changing room dynamic 'You can't wear that out', squared, cubed and fastforwarded when you're buying clothes for a new culture, where the vagaries and negotiated boundaries of Nairobi dress codes are irrelevant.

Manage your emotions
FirstBorn is flying the nest. I can't protect her from what is coming next, she'll be independent, without me - so my residual role as Mum for this stage is to ensure there is a nametaped mattress waiting beneath the clifftop, and that she has appropriately sized, sourced, regulation coloured wings to wear as she flaps away. Or so it feels in my surge of panic. 

I know this feeling of old. As she rushed off to pre-school, could she reliably wipe her bottom independently?  As SecondBorn started school, could he find his gloves, scarf and coat from the pile of others on the floor of the classroom?  And now, aged 13, can she do enough of the other things needed for independent twenty first century living?

As we scurried around South Wales's shops under a teetering pile of five towels and a skype headset we have discovered our own rhythm. Reduced to tears by the man in the small independent sports shop we stopped for our first reviving coffee at 9.05 am.  When confused, when stressed, when anxious, when faced with a long list of clothes for a season you haven't encountered for the last three years, a cup of tea every 90 minutes is primary health care.

Make sure you have a postal address
This is not a trip to do exclusively from cutprice travellodges. This is a trip where you need a kindly friend or relative to receive the parcels of ebay purchases, and a flourishing local market to supplement the shortfalls. Alarm clocks, skype headset, laptop bag and hockey stick. Welly boots and school shoes, trainers and padlocks. You need access to someone's internet, to rejoin Tesco Clubcard (now only online), to arrange insurance for the flute, excess insurance for the hirecar, to liaise with the soulmates who will jolly you along as you howl into your pint.  You'll be doing those Mum things, - shaping gumguards - which you just can't do from a travellodge room. Today's instructions required a saucepan, boiling water, a slotted spoon & a mirror - possible from someone's house, just impossible when all you have is a Corby trouser press and a dinky kettle (fused).  And anyway an extra set of hands will come in handy for the marathon nametaping extravaganza that lies ahead.

Bring multiple proof of address and identity.
You'd think money launderers might be dealing in bigger figures than a debit account for an under-16 year old with an ATM card only and no overdraft. But we have to comply with the same legislation. As I brought out the piles of correspondence which proved only our complicated situation but not the address in which I was trying to open her account - how many 13 year olds have utility bills in their name anyway? - the kindly manager heaved a sigh. And thought, I think, if I were a money launderer, I might have prepared a better story. It's the kindly logic I love in UK.

For me this is a time of huddling close. Huddling close to our Firstborn while she's in my grasp, and to our denuded family on the sofa once I'm back. But huddling close too to my mates, the other parents going through this in Kenya. This stage (13+) is a time of boarding school for all but a handful who continue school in Kenya, whether its boarding in Kenya for the majority, or abroad, for a few. So all her peers are away too, though closer to hand than her.  As I loiter in Britain waiting for the first weekend when I can spring her from school, I'd been wondering what I could do that would meet my needs to be stimulated, amongst people, but allow me space to be probably actively miserable too.  I'll be going on a walking holiday, alone, in Cumbria, where I spent so many happy childhood and teen holidays, and to a writing conference. Distraction therapy I hope, while our love makes her way, with us at one remove.