The Bakers Adventures

It’s been just over a month since we moved to Kenya and the initial excitement has settled into something more real. The kind of real where the thrill of adventure sits right alongside the ache of homesickness, sometimes in the same day, sometimes in the same hour. What’s surprised me most is that I don’t miss the big things. I miss the tiny, ordinary comforts I never really noticed until they weren’t here anymore. I miss McDonald’s salty fries (a tragic absence I’m still grieving), being able to just get in my car and go (or to just sit on my drive for an hour, IYKYK), finding the cleaning spray I like without needing Google and prayer, my favourite skin products, Dog walks with a costa on chilly mornings, sofa days or evenings around the table with my best friends and being able to show up for the not-so-special moments that stitch friendships together in hard times and allow me to be the friend I want to be. This one has ached, a lot. Not also forgetting that this year, for the first time in four years, we won’t be at the Pompey Panto on Christmas Eve… a tradition we genuinely love and look forward to every single year. I even miss the slow, glittering build-up to Christmas.. hearings Christmas songs on loop in the supermarkets, the lights, the adverts, the cosy gatherings and the subtle consumerism we all claim to dislike but secretly enjoy.

It feels strange and selfish to miss these things when I’m surrounded by so much perspective. Here, people walk an hour or more to work because they can’t afford transport, getting a bus is a luxury. People support entire families on wages that wouldn’t buy a takeaway at home, make daily decisions between utilities and food, and never take a “day off” in the way we would recognise. Life can be harsh and direct here, and poverty is not abstract.. it has a face and a name and a place in everyday life. It does leave me feeling slightly ashamed of the things I miss, but I’m trying to remind myself that I am also human… born into the world I only know, while I do recognise the privileges I have in life.. I’m only just starting to unlearn the assumptions I didn’t know I had at all. I suspect that by the time I go home, some of the things I miss now may not matter at all, and I hope this to be true.

That said, one of the unexpected blessings is that I feel incredibly grounded in the relationships that matter. I speak to family and close friends regularly, and the love comes back to me with the same weight. When you move away you worry that distance might loosen everything you rely on emotionally, but so far, the opposite has happened. I feel closer to certain people than I did before and it makes my heart warm. Yes, I’m lonely in the literal sense of the word, but not in a sad, pitying way. I’m choosing it. I haven’t built a social life here yet, partly because it’s not as easy as it sounds and partly because I don’t have the emotional energy to go out and make new connections.

This year has been enormous.

Solo parenting while Dan lived here for close to a year, navigating the emptiness of sleeping alone and not being able to hand the baton to anyone. Holding the girls emotions and every need especially in the those early days when the separation anxiety was top tier. Closing a business and putting down a dream I once had, losing Dan’s lovely grandmother so suddenly, a car accident that could of been worse but set me back in health and confidence, finishing the most intense wedding season of my career ( exhilarating and exhausting all at once), juggling the summer holidays alone.. again. Heartache and heartbreak in realising and accepting hard truths in relationships, packing up a house of ten years and then saying goodbye to everyone and everything I know and love.. to finally moving to a developing country.. It’s safe to say my nervous system has had a little too much to process, and I haven’t made sense of some of it yet. Some parts feel blurry and others feel uncomfortably sharp. But I’m working through it in my own time, and have made peace in areas I thought I never would so that feels like progress.

Meanwhile, the girls are thriving. Evie won every sprint in PE, which in Kenya is a feat I’ll never stop being proud of. We even got a call to say she has real potential in sport and performing arts. Erin got 10 out of 10 in her spelling test and scored 50% in her Kiswahili written exam.. higher than some native speakers. Considering she didn’t know a single word when we arrived, that’s huge. She’s still content in her developing friendships which seem so wholesome. They have really welcomed her into their world and make her feel so seen and I’m so grateful to them for that. Peach continues to the social butterfly she was born to be.

We’re settling into a rhythm as a family, finding joy in the small things. We went bowling.. which cost £25 for one game, so don’t be fooled into thinking Kenya is cheap. Expat areas are basically England with hotter weather and louder music. Evie won the game, and yes, Dan was playing seriously. I also had maybe the most intense manicure and pedicure experience of my life. Four and a half hours, £20, and I came out feeling like a laminated woman. I don’t think my heels have been as smooth since the womb. Elite service.

We bought a Christmas tree too. It claimed to be six feet tall and is, in fact, three. But Evie doesn’t need a chair to put the star on this year so she thinks it’s perfect. We’ve watched Christmas films, gone swimming after school, Dan and I have been having morning gym sessions together and I’ve had quiet evenings watching crime and thriller boxsets while the city buzzes somewhere outside the window. I’ve actually watched 6 series in a month. Impressive, I’d say.

This chapter is stretching all of us. There is grief and growth and pride and loneliness and the strange in-between feeling of being here but not fully rooted yet. It’s overwhelming at times and I have a lot of time alone to sit in it. Kenya doesn’t feel like home yet ( for me, anyway), but it feels like it’s going to change us in all the right ways. 222: You are exactly where you’re meant to be.

People romanticise moving abroad like it’s always a sun-drenched montage of cocktails, sunsets and exciting new adventures, and sometimes it is. But other days it’s not. And that’s okay. Two things can be true at the same time.. it can be magical and hard, exciting and overwhelming, full of gratitude and still occasionally lonely. We’ve not done much adventuring as we’ve focused on getting the girls settled into school and Dan has had some big things come up at work meaning some weeks I’ve had about 1 hour a day with him.. but we have my in-laws coming out for new year and we are counting down the days to have a little getaway and see more on Kenya while making memories with people we love and miss.

I promised myself I would document this whole journey with honesty, not just the glossy parts, because real life deserves to be seen too. And this is real.. messy, beautiful, exhausting, surprising… and my story to share. I hope the next update leans more towards my contentment of being here and knowing my place within this chapter. My goals next month is to venture to some groups and try and find my people. A positive step into making this place feel like a home.