The beginning 2

Back in SA we had to break the news to everybody and get this huge gigantic ball rolling. Of course it was December and with SA going into shut down mode we couldn't do much until January. December was spent telling everybody and making lists and lists and lists. The lists got written, re-written, underdone, overdone and re-done, again and again and again. The colossal task of packing up a life began to dawn on us and there were many times when we thought we were crazy, and if we weren't yet we feared that we were soon to become complete nutters.

January 2012 came and we shot out of the starting blocks quicker than Hussein Bolt on his best day. Within the first week we put the house on the market and visited an emigration consultant. With the help of  this consultant we got all the unabridged birth certificates, passports, unabridged marriage certificate, letters from the Department of Transport and Police Clearance Certificates within 2 weeks. What sterling service we received from this guy!!

By the end of January all the papers were collected, stamped, verified, copied and scanned and on 31 January 2012 Kobus handed the lot in at the Canadian High Commission in Pretoria. Now the big wait started. On 17 February we went for our medical examinations and on 20 March 2012 we collected our passports, all ready with work permits for us and study permits for the boys. It was exactly 7 weeks since we handed in our applications until we had our passports back and ready to go.
Our plane tickets got booked with D-day being 6 April 2012, exactly 360 years after Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape. He arrived on a Dutch boat and we were leaving on the Dutch airline, luckily the plane's a bit faster than the Drommedaris!!

During this time we sorted out the house. It is absolutely ridiculous how many things one can accumulate in 11 years of living in the same house!! I’m sure stuff is actually an as yet undiscovered life form that breeds and slowly and surreptitiously creeps into every available nook and cranny when your back's turned. Forget pest control, scientists should devise ways to curb stuff distribution, perpetuation and accumulation!!
This is just the go away stuff from my clothing cupboards.....see what I mean?

We gave away anything that we weren’t going to need or no longer wanted and divided the rest of the stuff up into two categories, those that we still wanted/needed but can do without for the 2 months that it's going to take the container to make the Atlantic voyage and those things that we were going to need during those 2 months. The plan is to stay in a hotel in Guelph while waiting for our container during which time we will hunt for a house, get connected with phones, get the boys into school, get cars etc.....
In between all the big decisions the rest of the small things that form part of your life needs to be cancelled, transferred, changed etc. DSTV, insurance, cars, cell phone contracts, e-mail addresses, Post Office, Mweb, Telkom, municipal accounts,clothing accounts, school, work,....the list goes on and on and on and on......
The difficult thing for me was the fact that your life did not suddenly grind to a halt. We were both still working full steam and the kids were still going to school and having all their usual demands for attention and the household still had to keep on running. Now suddenly there were just a thousand extra things that needed doing. Very quickly I learned to do only what needed to be done on that particular day and not think about what needed to be done on the following day or following week. During this time I would go stark raving mad and in serious need of some wine and sedatives if anyone even dared to tell me how busy their lives are!! You, deary, have no idea what busy means!