Preface

It was the first night in our mostly empty house in Canada. ‘Mr. Lisa’ was still in Congo and I had that weird feeling of heavy responsibility of being in a new house, with new sounds and smells, in a new country, by myself with the kids. I never had it when we were all together, but I often had it the first night we’d arrive in France without him. I was in charge of making sure the house was locked at night and I knew that when I woke up in the morning, it would take me just an extra second to figure out which country I was in. It was a strangely familiar feeling that came with our lifestyle.

The girls were tucked away in their new bunk beds, and as I climbed into my bed I recognized how nice the quality of the mattress was compared to the one we had in Congo, and how strange it was to have our familiar bed from France here in Canada.

I had just fallen asleep, floating in the space between dozing off and deep sleep, when I was suddenly awoken by the sound of rapid fire surrounding the house. My heart pounded in my chest. I shot up in my bed with an awful panic and fear of the worst. Congo was generally safe, but there was history of civil war. You just never know. I opened my eyes, expecting to be in our apartment in Pointe-Noire, but after a beat of time, I realized, we were in Canada. It was Calgary Stampede and our house is close enough to downtown that the massive fireworks show from the Grandstand sounded like they were being set off in our backyard.

Fireworks. Not guns.

There was nothing to worry about.

We were home.

——-

There seems to be some kind of movement going on. Spread across social media I’m seeing different versions of the same message, “Quit your day job and travel the world.”Sounds familiar. I can almost say ‘been there, done that’. But our move wasn’t as spontaneous as that. One of us had a job, and we knew it wouldn’t be forever.

The appeal for me was the travel.

For the better part of a decade I got to experience living abroad, and traveling extensively to corners of the earth that my wildest travel dreams never sent me to.But at what cost?

That’s the part that is rarely discussed.

Yes, of course I shared some of it, and those closest to me may have heard the down and dirty parts, but generally, complaining doesn’t make for a good online feed, does it? The polite thing to do online, is to keep things light and fluffy.

“Congo doesn’t look so bad on Instagram” I’d hear. And there were many parts that were great: the international, cultural, and life experience, the friends, family time…and the parties! But I usually couldn’t share the other side… it wasn’t socially appropriate to take out my $1000 mobile phone in many areas of Congo. Because of the history of civil war, people living there, in the non-expat areas, are very anxious and apprehensive about having their picture taken. When I’d walk down the street in the local market, I’d think to myself that it was like walking through the pages of a National Geographic magazine, with locals carrying chickens by the ankles, cooking on the streets, unclothed children running barefoot on dirt roads, women fetching water in giant buckets which they’d be carrying on their head in 38 degree heat and a wall of humidity. Those were the memories that make me grateful beyond belief for being born where I was. But it wasn’t right to pull out my camera in those moments.Those years gifted our family a global education that is irreplaceable and a lifetime worth of memories and stories that we cherish. But there were sacrifices during our wonderful life abroad that have only really been highlighted now that we’re home. I feel like I buried them long ago because there was no point in letting them surface. The losses were part of a package that had so many benefits.

I’ll try and be less vague.

Now that I’m home, I feel like there is a part of me that I’m rediscovering.

My personality is changing. I catch myself behaving a certain way and I can’t help but smile and think, “Hey girl, where’ve you been!?”

Over the last couple weeks I’ve noticed myself regularly talking to strangers: complimenting someone’s shirt at the mall, commenting that a meal looks good as we pass a table in a restaurant, telling a stranger that their hard work in their flower garden is paying off, and giving words of encouragement to runners passing by on the river side pathways.

I would almost never do that while we lived abroad. I could have, but it usually didn’t feel appropriate, or I wasn’t confident enough in the local language. I might have thought those things, but I would just quietly suppress the urge to vocalize them. After enough years, the urge went away.

But now that I’m back, and it’s starting to sink in that it’s not just for vacation, I feel my old personality coming back slowly and surprisingly. I can’t stop talking to people and the social interaction is something that the extrovert in me has missed so much. It’s a stereotype but it’s so true; Canadians are a friendly bunch!

They say travel give you a window to the world and mirror into your own country. Truer words have never been spoken.

I feel like I now have one foot on each side of the globe. I fit in here, yet I’ve changed. I can’t unseen my experiences, and I don’t want to. It’s made me who I am. I loved living abroad, but it also feels so good to be home.

The take away: our life in Europe, Asia and Africa was amazing, but there was a trade off. The same goes for being back home. What I’m missing in adventure, I’m gaining in a million small ways, some I didn’t realize I missed, like my personality when I’m functioning daily in my own language. It’s something I don’t take for granted after living in non-English speaking countries for years. I can’t stop buying books, because they’re in English. I can’t stop talking to strangers and riding my bike everywhere I go, because I can.

And most importantly, I’m so thankful for the perspective that our time away has given me: for the lessons that the challenges taught me, and the appreciation I have for the small things I now find luxurious in my own country.

The months leading up to our move home I was living in fear of life on the other side of repatriation. It was not an easy decision to make, and change is always hard. You rarely read positive things about moving home after years away. It’s not all perfect(our house is usually a mess) and it does take some readjusting, but I’m here to tell you that from where I’m sitting, there’s been many pleasant surprises. Life after expat is not nearly as scary as I thought!