After two years of amazing travels, it’s sadly time to get back to the real world. But it’s not really my real world. Or at least not how I used to know it.
I’m no longer squatting with my parents. Now I’m squatting in an Airbnb in downtown Auckland, waiting for my all my worldly goods to reach the far side of the world.
If I had to get back to the real world, I wanted my new job to be outside of the UK. To fulfil my dream of living abroad and to be a new adventure. With my passion for Africa, I dreamed of getting a job there but I soon learnt that is virtually impossible. Or at least a job in an emerging economy where I could experience every day the things that I am forever travelling to see. But no. The job turned out to be in New Zealand. A country that has so much shared culture with the UK, that it is really home away from home.
But begin to scratch the surface and of course there are differences. The accent for one. I still think it’s them that sounds funny and have to remind myself it’s actually me. The respect for traffic rules too – standing at a crossing waiting for what seems like hours for the green man to pop up, despite no traffic having gone past in the last five minutes. I was told it would be like going back to the 1960s, perhaps old-fashioned politeness is one manifestation.
Everyone thinks the British like to talk about the weather but the weather here is definitely more note-worthy. Four seasons in one day they say. Well I haven’t seen snow yet (Auckland is equivalent to Gibraltar or North Africa) but I have seen sun, rain and wind. When leaving the apartment ensure you have your all-weather necessities – jacket and brolly for one hour, sunglasses and sunscreen for the next.
And early Spring in Auckland can still be quite chilly. Before I moved someone told me this would be the case and advised me to bring a cardigan. A cardigan? That’s more like mid-summer to me! So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that homes here are built without insulation and heating. A national health campaign has started to change that and modern flats are insulated but not always heated. My Airbnb advertised central heating and a heat pump (that’s air con to you and me) but when I turned up it wasn’t there. So they have provided me with the tiniest little portable radiator I have ever seen. I have been wrapped up in blankets with my hot water bottle and a mug of steaming (herbal) tea. At least it helps me narrow down my house hunt. Sadly no beautiful 100-year old clapboard houses for me. Modern all the way.
When I was offered the job it was hard to understand how much salary I needed to maintain my standard of living. But online cost comparison calculators reassured me that taking a fairly significant salary cut would be doable in the short-term. Not sure what they were basing their calculations on, everything is sooo expensive. My house-hunting budget has gone out of the single-glazed window. But it is food that is the real oddity. As someone who has been used to being able to pop to Tesco and buy whatever fruit & veggies took my fancy with no seasonal variation, the cost of food has probably been my biggest shock. Courgettes for five times the price at home is not sustainable. So it’s seasonal eating and cheaper Chinese greengrocers from now on.
Of course not everything here is inherited from the British. This week has seen the 250-year anniversary of Cook’s ‘discovery’ of New Zealand. Even today it remains a controversial and emotional event. Maori culture is embraced here in a way I have never seen in other colonised nations. But it is a relatively recent embrace. Work-related emails arrived in my inbox with the greeting ‘Kia Ora’ and several place names have changed back to the Maori originals. But the recent Maori language week aims to promote the re-emergence of a language that was only made official in 1987. The reconciliation of the two strands of national history is an on-going process. But with my fascination with indigenous cultures, I can’t wait to explore it further.
Despite the differences in culture, shocking prices and temperamental weather, life settles into a pattern. Walking to work instead of sitting in traffic is a pleasure. Even in the rain. Returning to work has not been the trauma it could have been. I missed the debates and innovative-thinking, being in an industry I love. But short evenings and weekends are a definite shock to the system!
This may not be Africa but maybe that is not a bad thing. The similarity brings comfort. There is enough difference to explore.
This is my new normal.