A year is a long time!

Suddenly it is almost December 2018. My goodness! My sons are now 4 and 2 years old. My wife is nearing a milestone birthday next year that ends in zero (shhh, whisper it, because she lives much younger, despite the toll of being with me and my progeny!) More than a year ago, I last updated my blog when we had just arrived in Oxford for me to begin my Masters in Education. A lot has happened since then, although in other ways not too much has changed.

 

My MSc in Comparative and International Education was challenging, stimulating, and lively. I studied with a great group of people. Among us the 12 of us we included: at least three former teachers (apparently this was pretty unusual), a former Minister of Parliament, an education consultant, an engineering graduate, a foreign student placement expert, a member of a royal family, an entrepreneurship and social enterprise aspirant, and even some students studying a second Masters in consecutive years. Our cohort hailed from the UK, America, Russia, China, Australia, Malaysia, Italy, the Middle East and a couple of global citizens who’ve lived in several places. While academia can tend to be quite a left-wing place, we had viewpoints spanning a wide range of political, age, religion, sexuality and gender, and other identities. This led to some wonderfully feisty discussions in our seminars. As tends to be the case in social science courses at Oxford, a significant portion of our work involved reading and summarising texts and viewpoints of others. We tackled education from several angles, including understanding and evaluating various Research Methods and also considering and debating key issues in Education from a comparative perspective, including comparing disciplinary approaches to education – politics, sociology, history, development studies; comparing the development of education in different parts of the world (Western Europe and USA, Russia, China); and evaluating different aspects of education vertically (early years / preschool, literacy and primary school, secondary pathways to academic or vocational qualifications, higher education, transitions into the world of work).

In the first term the Research Methods part of the course included an optional term-long introductory course in Quantitative research methods (otherwise known as statistics). This course reminded me of my experiences of being the dumbass in accounting classes again and reinforced for me that I am clearly a qualitative researcher (not one of the world’s smart people sadly…) In the second term, for my optional paper (there wasn’t a huge range of choices) I chose Qualitative Research Methods, which looked a lot at educational sociology, ethnography, action research, and other more descriptive and ‘touchy feely’ types of research. Most of the papers were assessed using long essays that we submitted at the end of each term, but we did have one sit-down three hour examination at the beginning of the third and final term.

People ask me what I learned and the answers are unfortunately difficult to give without having the person in front of me glaze over and eventually begin to drool in boredom. Academics tend to waffle on (I was reminded of this a great deal on my course reading at times), so my short snappy answer (heavily paraphrased from far wiser people) is that education is both a window to the future and a reflection of where a society currently finds itself. What works in one place could potentially work in another, but the context of education policies is crucial, as a society with a different political system, or culture of learning, or socio-economic relations, may respond very differently to similar policies (e.g. an equitable education system may be very difficult to foist upon a very unequal society). The most lasting impact of my studies so far however, has been that it has brought my family out of South Africa, and into a new chapter in our lives. That, and the fact that I seem to have developed a series of muscular tensions and sensitivities all the way down the right side of my body from spending too long sitting at a desk, using a mouse and keyboard. My weekly routine often involved a bit of Sunday work, or taking the boys out for a fair chunk of the day to attempt to give Helen some much-deserved time off, a full day on Monday from 9 until 10 at night, a few rushed hours on a Tuesday morning before lectures started at 9:30 (if needed when essays were due), and at least some work after lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Lectures and seminars on Wednesday mornings and then on Wednesday afternoons in the first term I managed to referee some local university and schools rugby, but this sadly clashed with lectures in the second term and fell away. Fridays were supposed to be my first full day of the new academic week after lectures finished on Thursdays, but were often filled with unfortunate procrastination that sometimes saw me working on Saturday mornings too.  Helen was a rock through all of this, often single-handedly looking after both boys even when it got too cold and miserable for them to do much outside and they started to go a little crazy cooped up in our rented house that was decent-sized by English standards, but a lot smaller than our previous home (some of our stuff simply stayed in boxes all lined up on one side of Mackenzie’s room for the entire year). 

In December we went back to South Africa for some much-needed vitamin D and to see sorely missed family and friends. When I first arrived in Johannesburg in early 2011, I knew about 5 people there, but I was lucky enough to make some good friends over time, and as many of you who have moved countries will know, not being able to easily connect with distant friends and family is often one of the hardest things to cope with. Although our holiday was in many ways a typical summer getaway including beach time and swimming pools, it did include the significant milestone of Helen and I having our first and so far (to the best of my memory) only whole night away from our boys when we attended a friend’s wedding and were able to leave the boys with Helen’s parents. We also joined the rest of Helen’s family on the Wild Coast at Morgan Bay, in addition to our usual jaunt to St Francis, adding a bit of variety to things and the company of cousins on the beach for our boys. Admittedly, however, I did not stray too far into the ocean in Morgan Bay, given the reputation of that part of the world for toothy wildlife swimming in the seas. At the end of the first week of January Helen and the boys stayed on in South Africa (missing preschool isn’t really a very big deal thankfully) while I returned to the UK and was able to squeeze in a pre-term road trip to visit a possible PhD supervisor, and to see various old friends in Bristol, as well as refereeing a rugby game on exchange to the county of Gloucester.

The past year has been an interesting one for my refereeing experience. Refereeing in England required some significant adjustments, from purchasing boots with longer studs for wet, muddy fields in which my short studs led me to slip and slide without getting very far, to wearing considerably more clothing (in one exceptionally cold game in February when there were snow flurries and an icy wind blowing into my face, I wore 3 baselayers and a thick tracksuit top underneath my referee shirt!) The norms of refereeing are also very different here – on the bright side, players and teams while still tending to blame the referee somewhat when they lose, are generally more gracious and respectful (certainly no-one has threatened me with bodily harm in a way that was sadly more common than it should have been in Johannesburg), and they offer the referee a beer and a hot meal after the game (although that is also a result of the fact that amateur rugby players here tend to be reasonably well-to-do office and managerial types). It took me a bit of adjustment to get used to how much referees are encouraged to talk and to actively communicate verbally throughout the game, rather than simply expecting players to comply with the laws, and I still haven’t really adjusted to the fact that it is extremely rare to get more than one game in a day, and the referee is often expected to be at the grounds at least an hour and a half before a game, which makes a very long day out of a single match when you add eating afterwards.

The structure of refereeing in England is also quite different – each county has referees beginning down at Level 12, and rising as far as Level 6, which is the highest level of purely amateur rugby. These level 6 clubs play across several counties typically, so on a given Saturday there may none or only one or at most four or five Level 6 First Team games taking place in a particular county (although some powerful clubs and universities’ Second Teams may unofficially count as Level 6 teams too). Counties then put referees forward for consideration across their local ‘Federation’ – giving referees exposure to games across different counties from Level 8 to 6, in what are called ‘exchanges’ which are particularly important for a referee’s evaluation (as it is by an outsider with a supposedly impartial view). Those who are perceived to have done well at Federation are then considered for ‘Group’ Level, which includes games at Level 5 and even up to Level 4, where clubs play across a much larger region of the country and referees similarly are expected to travel much further. The games at Level 5 are still usually refereed by a single official with no Assistant Referees, but these are semi-professional clubs that pay their players and need a substantial budget to cover the travel costs. Above this Group level are the National Panel referees, with these referees being appointed directly by the national Rugby Football Union (Level 3 is National League 1, Level 2 is The Championship, and Level 1 is the Premiership, which is on tv every week). Whereas South Africa’s national panels have no more than about 20 referees in all, the RFU panel is over 180 referees – forming a pipeline of potential talent so that a stellar referee can gain several years of experience through the various leagues, culminating in several seasons in the Premiership, before they are put forward for international test experience and ideally able to referee at international level for a number of years before they retire (which is probably around their mid to later 40s). The downside is that in England it is very difficult to consistently get to referee highly competitive games unless you are on the panel, and if you don’t keep moving up, they turf you off with very little parachute back to the lower levels of the game. As with all things in sports and the arts, it is a very steep pyramid with plenty of tales of what-might-have-been, and more than one prospective career decided by luck, injury, or the particular affection or enmity of someone in a high position (or just a fashion, such as the current fashion for ex-professional players going into refereeing, who skip most of the amateur levels of refereeing and often therefore seem to lack the time-earned understanding of the game as it exists below the professional levels). Where once it was typical to first play for many years and then referee, it is now generally acknowledged although never formally stated, that no-one who is over 30 years old who is not a former professional player themselves, is likely to be considered for the panels, unless they opt to go the route of becoming full-time Assistant Referees, who may run touch but do not actually blow the whistle in games at the highest levels. So, there is a definite glass ceiling in some ways, but I have been doing my best to make the most of the opportunities available to me and although we are no longer living in Oxfordshire, I have continued to be a member of that society as they have been good to me. In fact I have recently become one of their primary referee development prospects (most of Oxfordshire’s top refs are savvy veterans in their late 40s to 50s who can no longer be considered for Federation or Group), so I’m just going to make the most of the experiences of different locations, types of games, and clubs, and to push myself as far as I can go.

At the end of my second term, having slogged our way through a harsh winter that included some snow, and plenty of cold and mud, we needed something to look forward to. Helen in particular had suffered some trying times with the boys as she discovered that many outdoor venues simply close during the darkest, coldest months, and that play parks are often too wet and the ground too muddy, for little children to enjoy themselves for long without getting cold and miserable. So we booked ourselves a little break for several nights to a British holiday institution – a family holiday park called Butlins, which included half board buffet (a real pleasure after months of one of us vacuuming the kitchen floor every night after two boys dropped all sorts of food everywhere in their attempts to master using cutlery), a water-park with slides and all sorts of splashing things, and an outdoor fairground including some smaller rides that our kids could go on with us. There were even daytime shows including the tellytubbies, and night-time shows with various entertainment acts. Despite there being an on-site coin gambling arcade, and a quite heavily tattooed and often obese clientele throughout, we made the most of the experience (despite some very dodgy early Spring weather) and enjoyed it for what it was.

A major component of my Masters course (and about 50% of the mark) was the required research dissertation of fifteen to twenty thousand words. After going through several other potential topics, I eventually decided to study “Risks to education in elite secondary schools in South Africa” – using my contacts at some of the best high schools in the country to conduct surveys and then face-to-face interviews. In this process I managed to interview nearly 40 principals and teachers as well as other staff in top schools across different parts of South Africa. My fieldwork took place in late April to early May – in order to straddle the availability of both 3 and 4 term schools while still being in Oxford for my exam at the beginning of the Summer term. I did, of course, also manage to squeeze in some refereeing as well as catching up with many friends and family members across the country. The findings of my research certainly won’t change the world, but it was a really interesting trip for understanding the different pressures facing these institutions and the society they are located in. The precarious state of education in South Africa outside of these elite schools was emphasised by many interviewees, and many also expressed significant worries regarding both the anti-elitist sentiment of the government and populist politicians, as well as the seemingly wilful ignorance of many students of just how privileged they really are and how totally unequal South African society is. I was away for nearly a month, during which I missed both Helen’s birthday and our wedding anniversary – so I’m not holding my breath on any ‘husband of the year’ awards. Helen’s mum did come over to the UK during that time, which I think made things slightly easier, or at least made me feel slightly less guilty. My parents and my brother and brother-in-law also made a big trip out to Oxford to celebrate Helen’s birthday with her and the boys, which I think she thoroughly enjoyed. But in all it was simply too long to be away and the research trip helped me to realise that it would be quite tricky to have a job or any business that leaves me halfway between the UK and South Africa, and that it is time for me to move forward and not to look back over my shoulder.

Our two boys enjoyed their year in Oxford once they settled in. Calvin was in a lovely touchy feely ‘organic’ little Montessori nursery school right near the centre of Oxford that Helen cycled in to drop him off at three days a week. Mackenzie was not shy about getting stuck in with the toys there until his mother took him off when actual school started and they often went to toddler groups where kids could play with toys and sometimes mums could get a cup of coffee and a snack in return for a small ‘donation’. Calvin’s school was very international which meant that he was readily accepted, but also that he was among a small minority of native English speakers (with the only English born teacher soon going on maternity leave) and his adoration of his Japanese-born teacher was such that he actually started to pronounce some words in a slightly unnerving Japanese accent! For the most part however, Calvin has gradually adopted a slightly English accent. In the autumn I tried taking Calvin to Sunday morning tots rugby in an outlying Oxfordshire village called Witney, but I think it was a bit premature, and he didn’t enjoy the mud or being bumped into by much bigger and older boys, and although they were keen for me to join the coaching staff, I realised that it was really a bit too far out of Oxford for me to forge friendships with parents I would actually be able to see with any regularity. In the new year we tried taking both Calvin and Mackenzie to a soccer club called Little Kickers – which was only somewhat soccer-related and mostly about following instructions from the coaches, usually badly and with much distraction and necessary intervention from parents at times to keep their little people on the task.

Each of the boys is already quite different from the other, and they continue to develop their own styles and personalities (and quirks). Calvin is a little bit highly strung – he sometimes has a nervous habit of chewing his nails and biting his lip, some of which is probably related to anxiety about our various moves from one country to another and one house to another, but he has become much more readily adaptable to this. Calvin is quite particular about how he likes things done (e.g. food, bedtime routine), he has an amazing memory for details, and a fondness for reciting word for word or even re-enacting stories - ranging from Peppa Pig making perfume out of leaves and garden refuse, to Superwings flying with sudden exhortations of “JET SPEED!!” at the top of his voice round the house, to re-enactments of entire scenes from the Lion King. Apparently, my parents used to have a child just like him (cough, cough…) Calvin can be completely unyielding sometimes if it is just a battle of wills. When he was little this was often around trying to cut his nails, or more recently I had an epic battle to try to get him to take worm medicine he didn’t like – eventually after several rounds of reasoning, pleas, threats, exhortations, and even physical attempts to pin him down and force him to take it and having him spit it out, we emerged with any possible intestinal worms still quite comfortable and the both of us exhausted and unhappy. There are times when, as a parent, I have to prevail over his refusals, but I’ve come to respect his firm principles and even admire his inner resolve and resistant spirit. Calvin loves to talk non-stop and doesn’t stop to listen to others over-much (again, this doesn’t remind me of anyone else, cough…), and he really enjoys music, dancing around, and performing as characters in stories. He’s also shaping up to be a fairly masterful manipulator of people and Helen and I have to keep on our toes to avoid being pitted against each other (even Mackenzie now tries on the ‘but Daddy says yes’ when Helen tells him he can’t have something). I think sometimes I’m too hard on Calvin because I expect him to lead and to be more responsible as the first-born. Overall he has a good heart and a very sweet nature and he is generally very quick to make friends with both other children (especially older, blonde girls) and also adults.

Mackenzie is more physically expressive but also more emotionally tender. He can be quite rough and very tactile, which is perhaps not surprising given that he’s almost the same weight as his brother who is two years older, and he has a head that doesn’t fit through normal shirt and jersey collars (I have to undo three buttons of his school shirt to get it over his head and he often gets his head stuck in the collars of jerseys that are for kids a year or two older). On one holiday he ran into a curtain and wall leaving a deep scar on his forehead, which had him howling for a few minutes, then he shook it off and simply seemed to forget about it completely. Yet when scolded he can be very hurt and turn into a blubbing little wreck. In many ways he is like a big puppy – he doesn’t mean to be naughty he just forgets five minutes later and he does the same thing again! Mackenzie’s boep (South African slang for a protruding stomache, often caused by beer or brandy consumption) may also have some connection to his lifelong enthusiasm for food. Mackenzie is naturally very warm and cuddly, but he has less self-control and would definitely fail any marshmallow test!

It has been a tough year for Helen but she has been intrepid and adaptable. Oxford has a substantial population of transient people, and even though we had no idea whether we’d be there for more than a year, it became easiest to pretend that we intended to be there indefinitely in order to avoid being shunned by locals. It has not always been easy for us to get out and spend time together as a couple rather than just on the couch at home – especially when a dinner or a movie suddenly includes 7-10 pounds per hour for someone to be at home in case the one of the boys wakes up. We also found ourselves feeling older than many other students at times, for example the St Antony’s College Bar only opened at 9pm, which for those of us with children who were getting up at 6:15am, wasn’t always that enticing a prospect. Because I was so busy studying and also reffing on Saturdays (which I am eternally grateful to Helen for recognising as my mental release, something that allows me to not think at all about work for a while) it was quite lonely at times for Helen, and she made some great efforts to see various extended family around the UK and over the year she took the boys away on some fun weekend trips (Calvin only attended school on Tuesday to Thursday). Sadly I was largely absent from these excursions and must have made some of her family wonder if I still exist. Making friends in a new place can be really hard, and Helen persevered fantastically, but found it a tough nut to crack in Oxford, although we still haven’t worked out if that was partly because of how transient many people are in the city. I am still concerned that although Helen manages to get out for some active fun (gym, tennis, swimming) she is not really meeting up with a group of women for a chinwag and I’m hoping we can make that more possible as I think it’s important to have friends in the neighbourhood for a woman to talk to about her children and husband and whatever else is proving to be a pain! Helen has been a wonderful support to me and the boys and without her, none of our family’s adventures this year would have been remotely possible.

 

As it became clearer that we would not be staying in Oxford and with no immediate job prospects on the horizon (more on this below), Helen and I began to discuss the possibility of undertaking the kind of holiday that is often simply not possible if you are both working or have other commitments. When we first got married we often spoke about wanting to experience life in another place, perhaps even for a few years, and as a first step in this direction, as well as a way to give context to our year in Oxford and in England, we decided to take a family voyage of exploration to look at some other parts of the world where we could potentially consider living (and where I might be able to pursue academic or professional opportunities). So our objectives for the trip included cultural exploration, some research into academic and work prospects, to glean better understanding of the lifestyle and living costs in various places, and of course, to have a fun and memorable trip.

In the end we decided to explore a few places in the USA and in Australia as a way of comparing these with our experiences of England and South Africa. We tried to narrow things down to places with reasonably warm climate, and medium-sized cities with more reasonable property prices and shorter commuting times, preferably fairly accessible to our two sets of family in the UK and South Africa. In the USA this meant looking at a couple of places just south of the Mason-Dixon line: the research triangle area around Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill and also Charlotte in North Carolina, Nashville in Tennessee, and Denver and Colorado Springs in Colorado. We did also spend a few days passing through San Diego, California although we had already ruled out the West Coast of the USA as being too far from either grandparents. We stopped in Fiji for several nights in order to acclimate ourselves to a complete change of time-zones (a whole day simply vanished as we crossed the international date line – departing on a Sunday night and landing on a Tuesday morning!) Then in Australia we briefly stopped in Sydney for a few nights to see some friends, before spending some time exploring Adelaide in South Australia and Perth in Western Australia. Then we flew home with a one-night stopover in Singapore to see my old friend Jin and to give the boys a break before another long-haul flight. In all it was a two month long trip with too many memories too count. Below I will try to recall only some of our experiences.

Our trip was made much easier by the fact that my parents sensibly convinced us to take a nanny with us, so that we could actually spend some time exploring the parts of the world we were in. Helen had luckily met in Oxford a fantastic young Lithuanian woman named Greta, who was just finishing up working for a family and potentially interested in travelling to America. Greta got on incredibly well with the boys and both of us from the start, and she arrived in London in the last week of July after we had moved out of our rented house in Oxford, to help to look after the boys while I finished writing up my dissertation and continued making logistical plans for our accommodation and for my meetings while on the trip. Helen went to New York City a week in advance of the rest of us for some much-deserved time off, exploring the city with an old South Africa friend of hers who came over from Thailand. The week in Harrow was fine but I think the first few days of our actual trip were a bit of a baptism of fire for Greta. We woke the boys at 12:30am to get into our taxi to Gatwick Airport in order to board a 5am flight that landed at New York’s JFK airport at 9am Eastern Time. From the airport we caught a taxi into Queens where we picked up our 7-seater people carrier rental car (it worked out about 40 pounds PER DAY cheaper to hire from a rental location not at the airport). We then drove through New York city itself, then New Jersey, Pennsylvania, where we stopped at a diner for lunch, and then on through Maryland, finally arriving at the motel I had booked in Winchester, Virginia. It had an outdoor swimming pool, and was convenient to the highway, and was very cheap. The price probably having to do with the fact that it had a magnificent view of a shopping centre carpark and smelled quite strongly of curry, probably cooked by the apparently very large extended family of Indians who owned, managed, cleaned, and repaired the place.

Our visit to the US was in August, which worked well as a test of the most brutally hot and humid time of the year, particularly as this was what many people warned us about in this part of the world. For the most part we found that our experiences of South Africa stood us in good stead for the climate, although there was one Sunday morning in Chapel Hill when I took the boys out to a playground in a local elementary school and I felt as though I was about to melt, even in the shade! In each place we visited I tried my best to get us guest passes to a local gym chain so that we could get some exercise and also so that the boys could swim in the pool and use the play areas, we even found that some gyms offered complimentary child-minding for up to two hours while parents used the gym. Apart from a few nights on the road, when we stayed in generally ok but never very nice motels, we usually rented Airbnb accommodation and found this was a great way to experience living in a neighbourhood and shopping and eating locally. I had also made plans with local estate agents in several of the areas we visited, and Helen and I had a very interesting time seeing how far English pounds could go when buying a house in many parts of America (yes the houses are made of plyboard, but the scale of the places was unbelievable, especially after our year feeling a little bit cramped in Oxford, we were now seeing houses with walk-in-wardrobes bigger than any of the bedrooms we had). I also arranged meetings with various people in Education, including members of faculty in Education departments at several universities – exploring both PhD and potential lecturing opportunities, as well as meeting with staff at International Baccalaureate schools in a couple of places in order to learn more about both the schools and the IB in America. Meanwhile Helen and the boys (and often Greta too) explored kid-friendly museums, play parks and indoor play areas, as well as various community pools.

 

North Carolina was a really interesting mix of contrasts: some parts felt quite cosmopolitan while other areas were much more rural and ‘Southern’. The research Triangle was a series of different towns that were all very inter-connected but each had a different feel to them: Cary was probably the most suburban experience we had of anywhere we stayed, while Chapel Hill had much more of a leafy university-town feel. We managed to meet several people living in the area, including the mother of an old school friend whose grandchildren were roughly the same age as our boys, and also my former high school principal and her husband (who was my Theory of Knowledge Teacher), who have retired to the state. We also did a fair bit of exploring ourselves, and had a lovely afternoon along a lakeshore beach that was quite close to Durham, which was definitely a fairly working class recreation spot (a lot of Hispanic people, a certain style of dress and automobile, and at least one ankle tag for someone in the clutches of the justice system – although statistically in America it would have been more surprising not to encounter someone in this position). In Charlotte I was treated to a fascinating day at a prestigious private school where the international exchanges coordinator explained a lot about the school’s attempts to expose their kids to other countries both through their studies in the IB, and also tours to other countries. I had a chance to meet his counterpart from one of the other prestigious schools that evening at a dinner he arranged for all three of our families to join. It was a fascinating encounter, with some interesting discussions of the difficulties for schools in seeking to broaden the horizons of their students while also facing significant risks of litigation if anything were to go wrong.

Our road trip from NC to Nashville took us through Asheville, which unfortunately we barely saw, as both boys were extremely cranky and Mackenzie was suffering some nasty effects of a spider bite. While the area has a reputation for some lovely restaurants, as was fairly typical of the trip, our experiences of cuisine were quite limited because our two boys tended to behave abominably in any place that did not have a built-in play area. It was not as much fun as it sounds seeing how quickly bored kids start throwing paper serviettes, pouring out the complimentary sauces, trying to eat food off the floor, using the table as a climbing surface, or in one spectacular case at Applebees, Mackenzie returning from the restroom shouting ‘BIG POO!’ at the top of his voice to each table he passed (well, that was the achievement he was proud of at that moment). In fact the Applebees night was so bad that I ‘grounded’ the kids by taking them outside and putting them in their seats in the car while Helen ate some of her supper, but I couldn’t leave them in the car after all the horror stories we had heard of parents being arrested for not being ever-present with their children, so it was my punishment too to stand outside the car in a shopping mall parking lot. With Calvin in particular spurning most of the foods on offer at restaurants because he doesn’t like yellow cheese, or French fries (it is remarkably hard to find a restaurant that will serve toast with cream cheese!) we ended up frequenting Chick-Fil-A more than the food itself would have rendered entirely necessary. We then stopped over in Knoxville, a very unremarkable place but for the fact that our motel was built with the rooms set around an indoor water park with little slides and waterfalls that our kids absolutely loved.

We spent some time in Nashville, which was more southern (ok, so I think I actually mean racially and economically ‘segregated’ when I say southern) and much more ‘urban’ and concrete feeling than anywhere we’d been in North Carolina (it was also quite a bit more spread out and expensive in terms of properties). Helen and Greta had a fun night out in the honky-tonks and country music bars; Helen and I managed to get on a country music walking tour of the city; and the kids loved the science museum. We really enjoyed seeing an old South African friend Rob Dold, who has lived in Nashville for many years, as well as my high school classmate Mark Harris and his wife and kids, who are both nearly tweens but were remarkably kind and patient with our two little boys playing with their toys. I enjoyed taking Calvin to a local high school American Football game on the first Friday night that we got there, although I think he was mostly interested in the cheerleaders and the pom-poms they had. Again we saw a huge range of houses, including some on fancy golf estates and ‘community’ property developments where we wondered how kids would ever know the diversity of the ‘real world’, as well as a very large multi-storey home with 5 acres of woods that we both thought would have been a wonderful place to go and avoid pretty much the entire world (apparently Justin Timberlake had looked at it as a possible guest house for people coming to stay with him a few miles away).

 

Colorado was probably the best part of our trip from a family perspective: in Denver we spent quite a bit of time with Jackie Malone, a childhood friend whose family moved to the USA in the early 1980s, and our kids thoroughly enjoyed playing with her two, who were a similar age, and Calvin was most enthusiastic that they had ‘nice toys’ to play with. Similarly, in Colorado Springs Jackie’s parents Chris and Ann were also incredibly warm and welcoming, they spoilt the kids and us and regaled us with some entertaining stories of the ups and downs they had experienced when moving to America, with Chris very kindly also showing Helen and I around the town and explaining the pro’s and con’s of life there. Climatically I think Helen liked Denver as reminding her of Johannesburg, although it would be unthinkable in Joburg for it to snow suddenly for a day in early Summer, whereas it has been known to happen in Denver!

From Denver we parted ways temporarily with Greta, as she went for 10 days of holiday in Mexico, while we headed for San Diego. We had a lot of fun exploring the world-famous San Diego Zoo, as well as other museums, but our four nights sharing one motel room with two queen size beds was not amazing – when the boys were in bed, Helen and I retired to either the communal motel pool to chat or took turns to head out and do something while the other stayed in the lobby and used the motel WiFi to make arrangements for further ahead on our trip. On our final day we knew that we would have to check out of our motel and drive through to Los Angeles to fly out at midnight, with nary a shower or place to just relax in sight. We cheekily contacted the son of some old family friends from Port Elizabeth, Wayne Jepson, who lives in Redondo Beach. Although he’d last seen me probably 30 years before when I was a little boy and he was a teenager, he and his family very kindly welcomed us into their home, with our boys having a whale of a time in their swimming pool and us all being thoroughly spoilt by sharing in their smoked ribs barbecue and the beer and wine Wayne had on tap. It turned a potentially very difficult day into a really good one, and reminded me that those linkages to where you are originally from can be remarkably enduring.

 

Our six night stopover in Fiji was a welcome rest after quite a hectic schedule in the USA. We had opted to stay in a fairly low-key resort that was known for being particularly child-friendly. While we unfortunately found the ‘kids club’ to be somewhat inconsistent in its offering (and requiring at least one parent to stay with children under 4, as both of ours were at the time), we very much enjoyed the beach, the pool, the buffet breakfasts, some snorkelling over the coral reefs, the library of trashy paperback novels to borrow, and a generally more relaxed tempo. Fiji reminded me of Malawi in many ways: economically what we saw of it was clearly very underdeveloped, with many people reliant on agriculture and small-scale trading, while the people were very warm and hospitable but also very relaxed and casual about things (including time-keeping and maintenance).  

 

We landed in Sydney, Australia, where we met up again with Greta. We spent a few days with some old school friends of Helen’s in their house in the northern suburbs, as well as catching up with my cousin Jenny and my old school friend Josh and his new bride Jill. Among all of this, we also dug out long trousers and sweaters for the first time in about 2 months, as it was only spring in Australia and still quite cold at night. A personal highlight for me was a somewhat chilly but gloriously sunny swim at Manley beach. From there we flew to Adelaide in South Australia, where we stayed in an Airbnb with a fantastic view straight out over the beach. Unfortunately the weather did not co-operate, and our time in Adelaide was particularly cold and wet, with one day where it was so bad that we simply stayed indoors and didn’t leave our flat. Helen and I had some nice runs along the beachfront (there’s something very liberating about having an open skyline on one side), and we had a lovely family day trip out to a German-settler town called Hahndorf where the boys enjoyed visiting a farm and seeing live cows, goats, guinea pigs and all sorts of other animals, while Helen and Greta very much enjoyed the white wine and a wurst platter (I enjoyed making them both blush with tawdry innuendo about the gusto with which they both enjoyed sausage). I had an interesting time trying to find a pub where I could watch the Springbok rugby team play the All-Blacks, with South Australia primarily being an Aussie Rules Football place. I spent the first half watching in a ‘sports’ bar that was actually a betting shop with a bar as well – it was a bit weird as there were computers along the walls for people to place their bets on all sorts of events (mostly horse and dog racing on the main screens), and the punters were not a particularly sophisticated bunch (says me, hardly likely to win cultural ambassador status any time soon). At half time I gapped it (having gulped down my overpriced ‘pint’ of heavily taxed Australian lager) and ran about a kilometre to another hotel bar where Helen later found me glued to a tv screen in a booth that I had persuaded the bar staff to turn to the rugby. The Springboks managed to pull off an historic win on New Zealand soil (only the second I’ve ever personally witnessed and probably only the third in my lifetime), and the dying moments of the game were so frantic and desperate that when the final whistle went, I let out a roar of triumph that unfortunately left the a great portion of the patronage of the hotel bar and restaurant staring in the direction of some madman who clearly lacked social graces.

In Adelaide we also managed to look at houses and were struck by how small the properties tended to be (given how big Australia is as a country), and how spread out the city was because of the bungalow style of nearly all suburbs. This made for quite long driving distances from one part of the town to another, despite the fact that in terms of population it really isn’t very large. I had some interesting meetings: one with a member of the education faculty at one of the best universities in the region, and another with the headmaster and IB co-ordinator at a prestigious independent school that offered the International Baccalaureate, in order to understand more about how the IB appealed to schools in the area, and how the local education system works. From Adelaide we flew to Perth, Western Australia, where we spent time with several members of Helen’s extended family in both Perth and Bunbury, as well as seeing some old friends of my parents, Ian and Patty Jepson. Again we were reminded by many of the stories we heard, of how difficult it can be to move to a new country: many of Helen’s family were forced out of Zimbabwe by the farm invasions there, and had to become entrepreneurs in order to get their visas, even if this meant running a sandwich shop or something else rather unsuitable for a couple of years until acquiring permanent residence and then being able to go back to their real expertise in farming or accounting. Although there was a wintry wind at times, Perth was much warmer than Adelaide and the boys thoroughly enjoyed some time at the beach and also on a smallholding ‘farm’ out near Bunbury.  

 

Perth is also a much bigger city, again incredibly spread out, and again with very compact 1-2 storey houses built to take up most of the plot of land, with very limited garden and outdoor space. Perhaps in part this is because there were many very nice public parks and recreation facilities available. We had a one night stopover in Singapore where Helen and I enjoyed seeing Jin and sampling the delights of Singaporean cuisine. It reinforced for us again just how far away Australia is though – we had a 5 hour flight to Singapore, and then it was still another 14 hours from there to London. By this time the boys had gotten the hang of long distance flying a bit more, and we were lucky that the flight wasn’t full so we could spread ourselves out a bit more and rotate the boys around between our seats a bit so that at least one of the three adults could sleep. Calvin thoroughly amused himself by re-watching the same episodes of Peppa Pig multiple times, as well as a couple of episodes of Superwings which were only available in Chinese, but that didn’t seem to bother him at all, while Mackenzie has a much shorter attention span for television and he did a lot more wriggling and attempting to run away down the aeroplane.

So what did we learn from all of this? The short answer is that every place has both strengths and weaknesses, and we found that everywhere we went, people tended to make the best of where they were and to use what was on offer there. For us personally, there were things we liked and disliked about both the USA and Australia. It was really interesting for us finding (and this may partly be the weakness of the pound to the dollar but I think it is more than that) that America really wasn’t particularly cheap: whether it was grocery shopping, mobile phone costs, internet and cable tv, medications at the pharmacy, or the costs we gleaned from estate agents of things like having a cleaner or getting someone to mow your lawn. America is a fine place to live if you have lots of money and are willing to spend it, but it seems that large companies have taken control of many markets and that the oligopolistic conditions are actually harmful to consumers. We loved the large, comfy houses and the feeling of space and privacy many of them offered. Certainly compared to the periphery of London the smaller quieter cities we looked at offered a lot more property for your money (mind you, so would Bradford or Sheffield). Helen was quite disturbed by how American suburbs seemed to buy their privacy from anyone from other socioeconomic groups (and often from other ethnic groups) – although I argued that at least in economic terms, South Africa is very much the same picture of segregation. The total lack of public transport infrastructure in most areas was another noticeable feature (Charlotte was probably an exception to this, although the light rail had a limited choice of routes), along with limited public recreation facilities (and those that existed tended to be frequented by lower socioeconomic groups, with wealthier neighbourhoods having built their own private recreation facilities – again keeping out the ‘riff-raff’). Although the heights of summer may have had some influence, I was also quite disturbed that I saw very few children and young people outside playing, or riding bikes. I am still uncertain about the extent to which this may be a digital divide, as I heard many reports of young people all now being firmly ensconced indoors gaming and using social media rather than ‘doing stuff’ as I was lucky enough to do when growing up in South African and Sweden. I have to admit that I very much enjoyed the omnipresence of basketball, particularly in NC but also in Tennessee, which meant that at a local YMCA I could just do a bit of shooting practice or even join a recreational game of basketball. People in low positions of authority, whether it be immigration or the YMCA pool lifeguards, were dictatorial and rule-bound. Fear of litigation was remarked upon in a couple of different contexts, and it unfortunately seems to have become a driving force in American life – to the point where school exchanges or tours are shaped by the need for ‘safe’ destinations that minimise risk. I do wonder at how this seems to be a betrayal of the pioneering spirit on which the country was founded, and creates a different risk: that young Americans will not be sensitive to or adaptable to the differences of people in many other parts of the world, particularly Asia, where the world’s economic and cultural axis is likely to shift over the coming decades.

In many ways Australia made me think of Scandinavia: high taxes, good public facilities, a fair bit of unspoken emphasis on social conformity but with significant exceptions for sporting competition and artistic expression. It felt very safe, and we saw kids walking and riding bikes to and from school and socialising together without their parents. Ironically, there seemed to be a marked social divide between born-and-raised Australians, and more recent immigrant Australians, who make up a substantial portion of the population, and it was not hard to pick up clear racist undertones in many Australian attitudes. It will be interesting to see how this plays out given that Australia’s economy has clearly gravitated to being a satellite of Asia, and China in particular, yet Aussies really aren’t that keen on Chinese people and have quite mixed attitudes to immigration generally, particularly when it involves people not of European descent (although that seems to be a global theme, whether it be Brexit, President Orange-face, or any of the far-right movements growing in Europe). Australia felt more like Europe (with sunshine though) in that houses were smaller, communities felt less segregated (indeed society was more equal generally), and public transport was much more available. Housing was however very expensive and not particularly appealing – it still baffles me that a country with such vast space has people somehow living on parcels of land that tended to be only just bigger than their house (we saw one fairly expensive house where the main view out of the kitchen-dining area window was the neighbour’s wall, probably 2 feet outside the window, in another very expensive and actually quite spacious house the sum total of the back garden was an area about twice the size of a large dining table), yet in towns that are extremely spread out, creating longer commutes. Even in our short few weeks there, we were also struck by the difficulties of communicating with both Africa and Europe from such a distant time-zone, and by just how far it was to fly from Australia to pretty much anywhere else.

Now we are back in the UK, and while I am pleased to have obtained a distinction for my Master’s in Education, I am still facing quite a bit of uncertainty about what direction I should take for my future. I was accepted to study a PhD in Education at two well-rated universities here in the UK, but I have several concerns. Firstly, my proposed research at Sussex University centred on the growing prevalence of private schooling among middle-class South Africans of all races (effectively privatisation of education) while at Bath University my proposal focused on researching the lack of success of the International Baccalaureate in South Africa. In both cases, my selling point would be my ability to access contacts and schools in South Africa, as I did with my Masters thesis. But this is niche that would see me developing expertise in South Africa from afar, despite not wanting to base myself there any more, nor having ever actually taught in the International Baccalaureate. Like anyone who emigrates, I have effectively sacrificed a significant wealth of expertise and contacts that I have left behind, but I think I need to move forward and to let go of these things, to begin anew and to develop new expertise in either a different education system or even a completely different field.

My year spent studying a Masters was in many ways a year of exploration of whether going into academia is a route that I would like to pursue. The appeal is that you work with motivated and highly intelligent people, and that I would get to teach what were the stronger students at school, in a setting where I would not be responsible for students’ moral and personal conduct in anything like the same capacity that a school teacher is expected to be, and could also expect significantly more independent thought from the students. However, I have realised over the past year that academia is overwhelmingly driven by research and publication and chasing after research funding, not by teaching, which while enjoyable for many conscientious academics, is not a primary driver of their career success. I also found, as I did in my undergraduate degree, that this need for publication leads to a lot of quite theoretical and definitional rather than truly innovative work, much of it really intended for discussion among a small circle of friends and enemies who are using the same abstruse jargon. I haven’t ruled out academia in the future, as I think I’d find lecturing and engaging in some research (but not too much) quite enjoyable, but I’d first need to find a problem that I’d really want to sink my teeth into, in order to be wiling to commit to the 3 years of full-time research needed to complete the thesis (and the loneliness and isolation that is part and parcel of this research journey – mental health is a significant issue among doctoral research candidates). Particularly as whatever problem I chose to research, and the discipline in which it is located, would likely be the springboard for any future academic career and research specialisation.

I have also been exploring some other possible avenues of opportunity. Unfortunately it appears that education consulting is largely driven by the two areas where there is the most money (and that most scare schools into seeking outside help) – testing and school inspections. These are things that are antithetical to my own education philosophy – I think excessive focus on these top-down, results-oriented measures are actually very harmful to education, which should be built on recruiting and developing quality teachers and investing in all-round education not just academic yardsticks. Unfortunately, it seems that with government budget cuts, these sorts of things are seen as luxuries that schools cannot afford. By contrast, as part of my Masters we had a trip to Paris in February in which we visited several major inter-governmental and non-governmental education organisations, including UNESCO, the OECD, and IIEP. For me this felt like a return to my old days at ActionAid or my very first few weeks in auditing when I audited the United Nation’s Nuclear Test Ban organisation – bloated organisations beset by internal politics that I have long-called “government without elections”, with nebulous outcomes and limited recourse in the event of failure to deliver.

During my Masters I also interviewed (somewhat reluctantly, given that the whole point of the Masters was to change my career trajectory) at two different schools. The first was a prestigious independent school in Oxfordshire – which quite frankly was a horror story of an interview day. They asked me to teach a lesson to a class and sent me 14 pages of notes that the students had been given by their teacher, but then criticised me for delivering a lesson based on the key contents of these (rather windy) notes. Between each part of the interview day I was deposited back at the front desk of the school because adults were not permitted to be on school grounds without an accompanying member of staff (paranoid much?); and they basically told me that they weren’t interested in allowing me to referee, as I would be expected to be at the school every Saturday helping to run the sports and extramurals (even though they request society referees be sent to them for their rugby games because they want someone impartial!) We recently met a housemaster at another prestigious and expensive school, and his wife admitted that she only sees him two nights per week and on his occasional weekends off because otherwise he is working from the moment the students wake up until after they go to bed, further confirming my suspicion that while the top schools here pay a slight premium and have an added 3 weeks of leave across the year, they pump their staff for every drop. I also interviewed at a small international school in London for a position as an Economics teacher, and I really liked the school’s size and internationalism (it reminded me of the American / International school in Hillingdon that I attended for my last three years of school) but given that I only studied first year Economics at university, it did not come as a surprise to me that they opted for a more experienced teacher in the subject, particularly in light of my lack of experience in teaching the International Baccalaureate. I have actually considered teaching in the IB as a bridge to teaching more mature, intellectually engaged students. However, from my investigation of this, it seems that most teachers now enter the IB either via being a part of a school that allows them to expand from teaching the local curriculum to also teaching the IB (requiring me to find my way into a school just as it expands its curriculum, while lacking the teaching familiarity with any other core curriculum or the IB) or by joining a school in China or the Middle East, two places I am not keen to subject Helen and the boys to because I don’t think they are places where our family could integrate culturally or linguistically, and we would instead be living the life of temporary expatriates (in which case there are other more appealing places in the world to live in that sort of limbo).

Another possibility would be for me to join an organisation working in education policy and making changes to the way that education is delivered or practiced. I made it to the final round of interviews at a small education think-tank, but they opted to hire a quantitative researcher (bloody mathsy people!) and someone with ‘grassroots education activism’ experience. I am also exploring some other education organisations that are doing interesting research or running interesting programmes, but for most of these organisations the problem is money, and they often want people to start as interns earning a ‘stipend’ (code for transport and sandwich money) or even less than that. I have found that when people aren’t paid properly, they aren’t utilised or developed properly, so I am quite leery of those situations. In the interim, I have accepted a part-time teaching post at a local academy secondary school that is only three years old and so far only has the first three year-groups of high school but will eventually grow to be quite a big school. I am starting there in January and will be teaching History and Geography three days per week (spread over four days to allow me to referee on Wednesday afternoons), allowing me some time to also explore other opportunities. At the very least it will also afford me some interesting insights into the state schooling sector in the UK and whether the stories of ridiculous bureaucratic hoops ring true. It has been interesting to see quite a bit of bureaucracy already, whether in the health and safety forms I had to fill in describing the ‘risks’ of a desk job, or, despite widely publicised desperate shortages of teachers, the realisation I will be classified as an unqualified teacher because only three other countries’ outside the EU’s teaching qualifications or work experience are recognised by the Department for Education as being convertible to UK qualified teacher status. Everyone else is expected to undergo a process of conversion that costs about two thousand pounds, or you can simply teach as an unqualified teacher for up to three years. As it stands, I would not be able to work at a local authority funded school, but fortunately my school are an academy trust and can make their own hiring decisions.

Geographically we have also been going through a period of significant uncertainty. Having decided

that for the next few years, we want to fully experience life in the UK with a young family and to settle somewhere and make friends, Helen and I spent quite a lot of time in our first six weeks after we returned, searching for and viewing houses in various areas around Northwest and West London as well as Oxford. We quickly realised that there are many more career prospects in London than in Oxford, but other than that, while we enjoyed house hunting, we found that it was filled with difficult to answer questions (how far is a place really from other parts of London at peak rush hour or when you have to find parking at a train station in the morning), and so many different factors to consider (schools, transportation access, recreation facilities, likely future house values, proximity to major roads or other sources of disturbance, access to shops, whether a house would need to be renovated) that it can all become quite bewildering. In the end we have made a deal with my parents: they have moved next door to their recently built house and we have completely taken over The Orchard and most of the costs that go with the house. I don’t think that Harrow would ever have been on our original shortlist of places to live (it’s neither in a medium size city, nor out in leafy countryside suburbs), but the boys are in a nice little local nursery school and they are happy, and being close to London is good when so much is still very unclear and I am exploring many different possible opportunities that are mostly based in London. Committing ourselves to living here also brings with it some stability – having packed up our entire house and moved twice in just over a year, it will be nice to live somewhere and actually make it feel like home. Earlier this week we had a removals crew help to bring all of our furniture and clothes (we have been living out of suitcases for several months) and possessions from the storage unit in Oxford to The Orchard in Harrow. So it has been a hectic week, and we are still surrounded by half-unpacked boxes, but it is starting to feel more like home. Helen is beginning to make friends with other mums at the nursery school, and in time I’m sure things will settle down nicely and that we’ll be able to build new friendships with people here, as well as rekindling old friendships all over the UK and in Europe. I’m less optimistic that my life’s purpose will reveal itself on stone tablets atop a mountain or via a bit of talking shrubbery on fire, but I’m hopeful that I will figure out a path in life that makes some sense to me at least. For now, there is much that is something of a leap into the unknown.