Before we talk more about our first few weeks here in Accra, let’s rewind a bit back to our last few weeks in Yangon. The last few weeks of any school year are a crazy blur of activities, but when you are leaving somewhere the craziness is exponential. Luckily Gav and I anticipated this and from way back in January decided that we would try to not put a lot of pressure to do things or go places in the final days but instead to take advantage of time that we had the whole semester to enjoy our favourite places in Yangon. In the last two months or so, every time we went anywhere we mentally said goodbye to the place in case we didn’t get a chance to visit again. That worked pretty well and we had some really enjoyable times and lots of great cocktails!
As we started to get down to the wire, with about a month and half left before our big departure, things started to get a bit stressful. 90% of the stress revolved around Nell and her departure from Yangon, but that is a whole separate blog post that Gav has all prepared for your enjoyment. The summary of that is that we could not buy our tickets to fly out until we knew when Nell was able to fly and we did not know that until 2 weeks before we were leaving! I know logically that if we had not been worried about Nell we would have been focusing our worry on something else but honestly if we could have gazed into a crystal ball when we were standing in Battersea Dog’s home in January of 2011 we might not have pulled the trigger on getting a dog because I am sure I have lost some years of my life stressing about this dog. I have definitely lost lots of dollars from my back account hauling her around the world!
On to happier topics. The end of the school year always bring lots of parties and gatherings. Gav and I had a happy hour for all of our colleagues one Friday after school which was a hoot, and then the next week the school had its end of year celebration. My colleague and fellow tech integrationist finally let me wear his coveted Utility Vest. Thanks Ian!
Eventually we had our last day of school, which is always a bit bittersweet. It’s weird when you leave a school because although the adults find out who is leaving and who is staying, the kids mostly don’t think about it, they all assume that everyone is coming back the next year. It feels weird to make an announcement but also weird not to because what, you just don’t turn up the next year? So the last week or so, as I was seeing classes for the last time, I told the kids that I was moving. They were mostly concerned about who would take care of the birds on the bird camera now that Mr. Ailes was leaving, so that was really great for my self esteem. We had our last Friday Beers at our beloved Horn with our close friends and everyone started leaving for the summer that weekend after school let out.
First day at ISY, last day at ISY, last Friday drinks.
By the time the end of school rolled around we finally knew when we were leaving, when Nell was leaving, and when we were having our stuff packed up by the shippers. Nell flew out Saturday morning, we had the day to get organised and finalise what was being shipped (and we wouldn’t see until October) and what we were taking with us for the summer and our first few months of work in Ghana. Sunday morning the shippers arrived and slight chaos ensued. Unlike when 2 guys came to pack us up in London, this time an entire army of packers swarmed in and got to work wrapping everything we owned in 56 layers of paper.
Seeing them write “Ghana” on all of our boxes was pretty surreal. Also, a few hours later when we surveyed our pile of stuff (all 74 boxes!) we were slightly horrified by how much we own.
It’s strange now to be looking at those photos because we are living in our new place with just the things we put in our 4 bags and seem to be getting on pretty well, so what IS in all of those boxes??? I guess we will find out in October. Once all of our stuff was boxed up and taken off to the shipping container we had the (always larger than expected) job of getting rid of all the extra stuff we didn’t want to take with us. We had arranged to give away some of our things to colleagues, but we wanted to use them for as long as possible. Which meant we spent a (very rainy of course) day delivering all of the things we had sold or given away to people’s houses. Most of the things were too big for our car, so we arranged for a big truck and a few guys to come help us deliver things. We got everything in the back of the truck (BBQ, some furniture pieces, lamps, a couch, etc) and got on our way. At the bottom of the hill on the way to our first delivery point, the truck broke down. In the pouring rain. The guys managed to use a dolly to haul a massive bougainvillea and the BBQ up the hill and just their brawn to get some other things delivered, but we still had to make another stop to drop off a couch and a bookshelf. Luckily school helped us out with a much smaller truck and I think the delivery guys enjoyed a small bit of relaxation on this trip.
Ok, jobs (mostly) done and now we had a few days to just wrap up everything. One major thing we wanted to do is to visit the Shwedagon pagoda one last time. We have always been at sunrise to avoid the worst of the heat, so we wanted to go for sunset. Despite it being rainy season we lucked out with a beautiful evening and even managed to get their for when they were lighting all the candles, which we had never seen before. It’s always beautiful to visit the Shwedagon and I’m glad we made time to go and say goodbye for now.
And then there were were on our last day in Yangon. Our flight was not until the evening, so we had all day to get ready and say our final goodbyes. At this point there were no people from school left in town, but we did have to drop off our beloved scooters at school for their new owners (honestly, that was one of the harder goodbyes-my gosh we loved those things!). We also wanted to pay one last visit to the Horn for a beer. Five years before, in January of 2018 we had our first beer in Myanmar at the Horn. We wanted our last beer to be there as well. We tried to tell this story to the owners, a very sweet Japanese/Myanmar family but I think some of the details were lost in translation. Apparently when our friends returned last Friday for after work beers the people were shocked as they thought we had said everyone was leaving. Never fear, your Friday income is still guaranteed!
Now the only thing left was to get the car to the airport. That poor driver-I cried most of the way, he must have thought I was a lunatic. It was more emotional than I imagined saying goodbye to our house. The first month we lived there I also cried quite a lot, but that was from being overwhelmed by the constant power issues, weird tiny generator that didn’t work, and the rats that lived in the ceiling. You could not have convinced me then that I would grow to love this weird, janky, giant columned house.
We got to the airport and got all of our bags checked in. Thai Airways allows 30 kgs checked luggage per ticket and we knew we were cutting that pretty fine. I was obsessed with trying to get the heaviest things into our hand luggage to take some pressure of the bags that were actually being weighed. We actually had 65 kgs of checked luggage at the end but the check in lady was very nice and just ignored that. Whew! We went through passport control and thought great! Very smooth sailing. Just one last security check and we can go to the gate. I put my hand luggage through the x-ray and was astonished when the man pulled it off the conveyor belt and asked “whose bag is this?” I knew there were no liquids in there! The security guy said “Ma’am, do you have scissors in this bag?” Ooops, yes I did put some kitchen scissors in there. “Do you have a corkscrew in this bag?” Oh crap, the scissors they could throw away but the corkscrew was Gav’s beloved Laguiole corkscrew that was a present from his brother and had already been back to France once for repair, it was not optional to just toss that. Now I am sweating profusely. “Is that….a giant bag of chilis? Ma’am, this whole bag is a no. Go check it.” I don’t know what to say, it’s like I totally forgot the whole concept of not being able to take certain things on board a plane because I was so obsessed with the weight of the bags. It never even crossed my mind. I am going to blame stress.
In any case, the security guy told me to go back downstairs and check the bag. The problem was that I had already cleared customs and gotten my passport stamped, etc. Now I had to swim upstream like a salmon, trying to explain what was happening each step of the way. People kept telling me, no you can take that bag on board, and I had to explain that it was what was INSIDE that was the problem. I finally made it back to the check in counter where the lady took my boarding pass and then said “oh, you already checked 4 bags. You would have to pay extra for this.” At this point I said fine, how much? And she told me $70. A KILO. What? She looked at me and said “that is too much money, too bad you already sent your other bags through.” And I said “oh, can I get a bag back?” She looked annoyed but unbelievably, she said yes! And called a guy over to go dig through the checked in bags to find one of ours. They did, brought it over and I put all the contraband in there. Only in Myanmar would something like this happen. They are really the nicest people on earth.
I reunited with Gav, we continued on to the departure lounge and before we knew it we were flying out and our five years in Myanmar had come to a close. It was certainly an interesting five years to be there. When we arrived in 2018 the future seemed so bright. Covid and the political upheaval has taken its toll but we have nothing but fond memories and will always cherish our time in this beautiful country. Thank you to everyone who made our lives there so special, especially our Myanmar friends and colleagues. We will be back!
Gav and Schubie's Adventure Blog 