I didn’t sleep more than a few hours that night.
That tormenting restless feeling of knowing you should be sleeping, but that you actually can not.
It is torture.
I was in that space.
At some point in the early hours I must have finally slept; woken with urgency by my alarm, reminding me of my obligations - get up, get dressed, get in the car, do the daily commute (which in my case was 140km a day), attempt to facilitate some mind-opening, and then go home to crash on the couch.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Yawn.
The Zoom interview had gone well (or so I thought), a couple of weeks earlier, but I did not for one minute believe that an international school would hire me - ME! A 56-going-on-57 year-old slowly decaying invisible woman.
But they did.
And because of that offer, I could not sleep. I could not sleep, because after much deliberation; googling possible dangers in the country I was looking at living in; checking out the creepy crawlies; the temperature; the living costs on Numbeo - I had accepted the offer.
And my mind was swirling.
What the heck had I just done?!?
I got up that night after hours of tossing and turning, to construct a list.
It was a ‘must do’ list.
With the list complete (and it was a long one), I felt somewhat relieved of the weight of all those thoughts on my mind, and went back to bed reassured that I was at least sifting through the bedrock of my imagination about every conceivable thing I should, could and would do, before I left New Zealand.
I was headed for Cairo. I could not get the song “walk like an Egyptian” off my mind.
I had about 8 weeks to practise that walk.
What would I do with my cat?
I read that Egypt is largely desert - a land of shifting sands and with that, seasonal sand storms. I had visions of “The Mummy” movie in my mind - fleeing frantically from an impending and fast-approaching sand-slash-sandmonster storm. After some intensive hunting on the facebook page I had just joined “Expats in Egypt”, I learnt the sandstorm season lasted for two months. Sheesh! Shifting sand, creating an ever-changing landscape, reinforcing the notion that nothing was static - everything changed, and if we tried to resist it and stand against it we would simply be sand-blasted. Best to lean in and be flexible whilst doing so - like a blade of grass or a toi-toi that I saw doing just that on my daily cycling commutes to and from work up the Dunedin harbour from Port Chalmers, when I lived there.
More recently I had lived near New Zealand's Southern Alps. A great up-thrust of jagged peaks that reminded one constantly of the seasonal changes wrought upon the landscape. The tips of snow-clad mountains all year round, with a thicker, longer deeper coat during the cooler months, constant pulling me closer - a yearning to be there, in the thick of it all - nature, my safe happy secure real place - tantalisingly close as they flirted with my sense of adventure.
What was I going to do in
all … that … sand?
The process to work in a Canadian school in a North African-slash-Middle Eastern city, has not been without its frustrations.
Bureaucracy!
Cannot live with it … cannot kill it.
Original copies (is that not the biggest oxymoron EVER?!) of my qualifications; Police criminal checks; letters of recommendations from previous schools; proof I haven’t had my teachers registration revoked; proof I pay my taxes (yes - copies of my 2021-2022 financials were requested!); proof of life … basically.
I also applied for my teachers registration in Ontario, Canada, seeing as it was a Canadian school.
This would mean higher pay.
Yes please.
And then, the pack-up began; the endless sorting of what stays and what goes. It is amazing how things suddenly take on meaningless value when left to sift through what really does get to stay in storage for my return some 18 months later.
If.
And what really is “valuable” anyway? I knew that what was valuable to me was what would not fit in my suitcase - my kids; my cat; my maunga.