One week to go

 By Lindsay

We are rapidly heading towards Tuesday 7th June, when we leave this fair Isle and fly to Juba, to meet our new team, colleagues and friends, and start working with Medair. The prep has gone pretty well - there has been quite a few jabs, medical checks, bloodwork, a Resilience consultation (I loved mine - so many helpful tips of how to cope well!), tons of emails and a huge amount of help from Medair. We are almost packed up and ready to hand over our house to the lovely Anna and Julia who will be staying while we are away. 

The emotion of leaving / arriving in South Sudan has not particularly hit me yet. Trying to imagine life somewhere different is always hard, and all I can really think about is leaving here well, and then we have about 12 hours of travel to mentally prepare arriving somewhere very new where everything (for me at least) is unknown. We have said quite a few goodbyes to friends, and yet I think the weight of leaving friends and familiarity will probably hit a few weeks into the placement. So you can expect a flurry of messages in about a month! One of the wonderful things about living in this day and age is that we remain connected. Medair has decent internet in Juba, and so you never really need to say a proper 'forever' goodbye. However, I recall from living in Uganda, despite good comms, you can still feel far away... 

We had a lovely holiday in Crete a couple of weeks ago. It was planned ages ago, and while the timing was a bit rubbish with last minute arrangements being put off until we returned home, it was nice to get away and do something else except talk about South Sudan! This week is not too over-loaded - we are seeing a few friends, family, and completing the last bits of packing, but there is time to compute and walk about and say goodbye to our surroundings. 

If we don't see you before leaving, farewell! Stay in touch, and we will be back filling you in on life in South Sudan very soon! x

PS. I have tried to get a function on this blog so you can get a notification when we send a new post, but alas. Instead, there is a contact form - if you would like a quick email saying we have done a new post, let me know on there, and we will keep it short and sweet, promise!


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