longer an insider back home, I’m an outsider looking in. I join expatriate networks, people like me, ‘misfits’ all, except they are the ‘real’ expats, foreigners in my home country. I’m the ‘local’ now, and the day it dawns that I no longer fit in there has me in open-mouthed shock.

There is a powerful force at work in children. They can adjust to a change of culture, country and language faster than adults can. Children have the power to play. Daily all the children went to school in the centre.

During these random interactions, it usually comes to a point when you can get so completely lost you begin to form two looks: one is pretending you understand and the second has pursed lips, neither smile nor frown. After all, you have no idea if she is telling you her son had just died tragically or whether her grandchild just took her first

I sit up with a start. That’s it! I feel comfortable when I am in the unfamiliar. Now that I have returned to the familiar I feel uncomfortable. I feel totally displaced being here in Melbourne. And it occurs to me that this is the first time ever that I have returned to the same place, the same house even. I am so out of my comfort zone.

I so very much want to be wanted, to belong, to say, “Yes, me too!” to all the lucky ones who can identify their forever home. So I will park my expatriate history in a suitcase and store it on the far corner of the topmost shelf of my heart, take a deep breath, and dive into my present.

For the hotel business is accommodation on the run, a career choice perfectly suited for the restlessness within which my soul comfortably resided.

The heat and humidity was stifling and the amount and size of the insects were enough to drive any sane person mad.

For at least three years prior, we had been having what I call the ‘expat talk.’ Similar in discomfort to any deep ‘where are we going in our relationship’ talk yet unique to multilingual, multicultural and multi-confused families.

Kumasi’s trees were tall and lush in comparison, broad-leafed avocado and mango, cocoa, and a wide variety of palms, including royal, traveler’s, coconut and oil.