One of my best friends is a mom of five amazing kids. When I had my first daughter she gave me some very sage advise to help my marriage. She suggested that while we had a newborn my husband and I should ignore/forgive anything said to each other between the hours of 1 and 5am. In hindsight it might have been some of the best advice I’ve been given. It’s stressful trying to function on so little sleep.

Personally, I think the same advise can be given for the first few days of settling into a new country as an expat! Of course it can go smoothly and be considered a great new adventure, but that adventure also comes with a lifetime of stressful situations, packed into just a few days.

We tend to make the most of our summer holidays and arrive to our new location a day or two before the kids start school. That means we have a very short amount of time to make our new location “home”.

Here’s a few things tackled by many expat families the first couple days of arriving to a new country:

-customs

-(lost) luggage

-culture shock

-language barriers

-trying to understand local accents

-buying everything needed to fill a house from bath mat to curtains, and finding the stores to do that

-deciding what goes where in the house

-dividing up closet space(a test of true love that can rival setting up a Christmas tree!)

-confirming that the kids are registered in school

-making sure the kids are transitioning well in the new school

-meeting the neighbours

-making new friends

-helping the kids find new friends

-finding out where and how to buy groceries(it’s not always in one place)

-hooking up tv, phone and internet

-finding a bank machine that will let you withdrawal money(because you’re in a no-card country)

-buy a car

-organize car insurance

-arrange for a driver and/or other help in the house if in country where that happens

…You get the idea. Many things of this list may seem easy, but doing them in a new, and developing country that you don’t know your way around yet can make it extra stressful and challenging. No matter how many times a family moves countries, it requires all hands on deck, and a solid rallying of the troops! Everyone gets a lesson in practicing their patience during the early days of settling in a new country.

Our family seems to like the adrenaline rush of arriving with a couple days to spare and checking everything off that list in the two days before our kids start school. Throw in my iPhone falling to its death at the bottom of a toilet, and our 3 year old missing her first day of school(they start at three in French school) because she needed to visit a local clinic to get antibiotics for strep throat, and that about sums up our first 3 days in Congo. Go big or go home, right? At least I now know how to get to the clinic!

To make a long story short, we’re settling in surprisingly well. I think Indonesia was a good stepping stone for us in moving to Africa. We’re already accustom to things being a bit different than we were used to in France and having to scout out certain areas of town to find specific things we’re looking for. Vegetables here, meat there(…but make sure you don’t go to that other place). And groceries here are generally double or triple(and sometimes quadruple) of what we’d pay in France….that always stings a little.  But the price is easier to digest at first because I don’t have a great grasp on the conversion yet; which means I don’t really know exactly how much I’m paying until I get home and convert it properly…then try not to faint when I realise how much I’ve paid for a single red pepper.

Indonesia prepared us by teaching us to clean our fruit and veg in vinegar, not drink the tap water, beware of mosquitos, and be patient with the painfully slow internet. We’re used to having a driver and a helper in the house.

I’ve caught myself gazing out the car window thinking that things aren’t so different here, and then I spot a beautiful Congolese woman in their vibrant, colourful dress with a baby tied to her back and it registers that indeed, we are living in Africa!

To be continued…

(I’d love to share some pictures with you but as mentioned earlier my phone has gone to iPhone-heaven and the camera charger is lost amidst the unpacking disaster. So photos will come another day.)