Leaving Austin Archives - Nancy Wesson Consulting

Lift off! Embracing the grand adventure…

Nancy — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:54:00 +0000

It’s happening – we are loading up. You’ve never seen so much luggage! About a third of the group of 46 is “older” and the age range is probably early 20s to about 70. We’ve been told there will be NO internet or phone access for 2 – 3 weeks – so that means no Posts! We’ll be assigned to Ugandan host families within a week and spend about 6 hours a day learning a language. Our host family will speak NO English, so that should speed both learning and frustration! Excited finally! Up ’till now it’s been about the mechanics of leaving. Ate great Thai food last night, had my last Starbucks for a while this morning and sending a last post… Seven+ hours to Brussels, 11-ish from Brussels to Entebbe via Kigali.

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Stretching the umbilical….

Nancy — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:05:00 +0000

Already feeling disconnected. That gasping sound you heard last night was my cell phone breathing its last breaths before AT&T cut service at midnight. I felt immediate panic, but got in a few last minute calls. Oh nooooooo! Deep breathing was required. The umbilical is thinning…… Still have e-mail for another day. Let’s get every bit of value possible out of it before also becomes an unknown. After schlepping stuff around airports yesterday, my immediate thought upon arriving at 10:30 last night was “what can I unload.” Turns out I am not alone. My twenty something roommate for training brought even more. So I’ve already done another round of re-packing and have lightened my load. Working on her suitcase now – old habits die hard. First of many such episodes I suspect. At training we will get even more stuff!

What I want now is more sleep – but 22 hours on a plane should take care of some of that.
N

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Whew! Closing One Door, Opening the Next…

Nancy — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:50:00 +0000

Well – it’s here. The night before leaving. What a fire drill! I can’t believe how much help has been offered, given and ever-so-gratefully received. It really does take a village to get someone out the door to Peace Corps. Closing down the accumulated possessions and detritus of 63 years is daunting. Add to that the new requirement to get a house ready to lease and you have the perfect storm. Still – it is done and what is not – well – I suppose that’s part of the journey: to learn to let go and trust that it will work out. It will work out with a lot of help from my friends and systems put into place – and once again that translates to friends. Thank you one and all.

Two 40 pound suitcases and one carry on later (all have been weighed and measured to conform to Peace Corps regulations) it’s been a challenge to think ahead to what one will need for two years away.
And I’ve had to get more techno-savvy to go to a country without technology. Go figure! Enough of that tho – here’s the schedule: fly out tomorrow for Tuesday staging- where we will get lectured on safety, get Peace Corps passports, sign papers, etc. Wed. morning we check out of the hotel and climb on a bus a head to JFK for a 6:25 PM departure on American Airlines to fly to Brussels. Then from Brussels to Entebbe – 22 hours. I’ve been able to discover there are 46 of us on the flight.

Now you know about as much as I do! In Kampala, we will be matched to Ugandan families with whom we will live for the first three months during training. They will try to get us oriented to life in Uganda (bucket baths, latrines, Luganda language, customs, food, etc.). I’m nervous about learning Luganda or Swahili!!!

Up ’till now it’s been mostly the mechanics of getting out the door. Tomorrow it gets real!

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Fixin’ to get ready

Nancy — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 03:15:00 +0000

In Louisiana there is an expression, “Fixin’ to get ready.” You’re not really actually getting ready you’re just getting ready to get ready. so the house is getting packed up – as it has been for the last several months as I think about it. But this is in earnest and in preparation for the estate sale that happens this weekend.By Monday the dust will have settled (or be so deep I will have to dig out) and the final stage begins.

Partly I’m posting this to see if, with a new posting, folks are notified in email of a new post. So let me know – would ya? Still figuring this out… , while I pack, sort, pack again, finish the course on Teaching English as a Foreign Language and oh yes re-pack, say goodbye to friends and last but not least – sell the car. Is it un-American not to have a car, insurance bill, credit cards, phone, TV????

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Musings on leavings

Nancy — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:59:00 +0000

I have left many times – left places I’ve made a footprint, a home, a community. In the 60’s I left Louisiana behind for school in Texas In the early 70s I quit a husband and a perfectly good job and went to North Africa.

In the late 70’s I left an administrative job and went sailing (right) for a year aboard a 29-foot sloop with a new husband. In the 90s I quite another husband and ushered myself and two sons into a new history. When the nest emptied, it was a soul-bending experience and I felt the need to recalibrate and moved to what the locals call West-by-God-Virginia, but I just couldn’t turn it into Austin – so I came back. When I grow up, maybe I’ll settle down…

Austin has always felt the most like home, the familiar, the place closest to my heart and way of being in the world – the place that always pulls me back. Bluebonnets! I’ll miss bluebonnets in the Spring. But each departure has been a lateral move, simply moving my belongings, account, utilities, business and passions to another place. This one is altogether different – not a transfer of things – but a release of many of the externals that have identified me. This is a total jettison of the trappings, taking just the essentials and who ever I am at the core – without the identifiers of business, friends, clothes, make-up, hairdryers, electricity, running water – to see how I can contribute to a larger world and a larger me.

It’s three weeks and counting: still not knowing whether the house will sell or lease or how to bridge the gap between this stage and the next – operating on total trust, the goodness of friends and the universe at large and the belief and experience that life evolves in divine order. Fortunately, we don’t always know what this is – so part of the adventure is discovering it along the way.

If you’d like to join me on this quest, come on along. I’ll post when I can, answer e-mails when I have the luxury of a connection and have a cell phone at some point in the future. It may – or may not – work. But I’m not on the moon – just gone-ta Uganda!

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