“Looking forward to the weekend?” Ahmed asked. I actually was! Because I like to know about people and I like to talk, so making friends has always come naturally to me. On the other hand, Ahmed is awkward, especially when it’s with someone he worked with; A dad of one of his pupils. So, imagine my astonishment when he came home and told me, “Babe, we are going to a BBQ this weekend!”. Mr Quiet had accepted an invitation to a friend’s house.
Ahmed’s two sisters and nieces were visiting for Christmas, so naturally, I was worried we were invited to a BBQ and the rest of the family weren’t. He had already taken care of that too! Apparently, we were ALL invited. “The more the merrier!” And in usual Jalloh form, the whole gang turned up. The four Queenslanders, along with me, Ahmed, our son, daughter and soon to be son-in-law rolled in like the squad we are lol.
An afternoon of bliss. Honestly, what better way to spend the afternoon than with new friends, in the sun, eating great food. Ahmed is still trying to make friends in his 30s, which he is finding difficult being that he’s so quiet and finds it difficult to keep conversations going. I must say, he is getting better.
All jokes aside, Ahmed’s new friend kindly opened up their beautiful home to us and our family for the afternoon – actually, for the whole day! Their house was located 3 minutes from where we are and set beyond the trees off the main road. We have driven on this road for nearly a year and didn’t realise there were houses there. We’ve been looking for properties and one of our demands (our son)
Upon our arrival, we saw three other people (two of them were very familiar to Ahmed – parents from his class) so, we thought it was going to be a quick lunch and home or shopping which we had planned to do. However, as more guests (more parents and children from the school) arrived, we knew this was an all-day affair. The adults spent the afternoon over the grill or around the food table, chatting away. The children played in the pool (yes, there was a pool) and on the swing set.
The family decided that Ahmed would go into the pool with the kids! Whilst Ahmed was in the pool with his niece, I sat on the wall by the pool talking to one of the other mums (we’ll call her C). We chatted about growing up, kids, friends and property. In particular, some land C and her husband had bought years ago and have started to build on. The dream was to finish the barn house and move in. All this is being done together with her husband and children. They go to the land to build during the weekends and school holidays.
Great family goal I thought as I reflected on our dream…
I sat, listening attentively to each word. It could see the happy dripping off her! All I could do was smile and nod along. She was talking about building her dream home and sharing it with the man she loved; I realised that we were on the same journey, but the sat-nav has decided to plot us a different route for the same destination.
Oblivious to our conversations, the children continued to splash, screech, dive and cannon-ball into the water. J Boy insisted he could swim, then nearly drowned… twice. Ahmed’s niece insisted she wasn’t cold as her teeth chattered with every jump into the water. The children played, got hurt, cried, got checked for injuries, argued amongst each other, solved their problems, then continued to play as nothing happened.
“How would you like to live?” This is the question often ask ourselves and our children. We’ve migrated to the other side of the earth to invest time for our family. We wanted to highlight that London was only a small part of the world, so we are mostly limited only by the boundaries we place on ourselves.
As I saw Ahmed play with his niece in the pool and our son play with his new friends, without a care in the world, I smiled and said to myself…
“You have made it…”
Next step is to lay some proper roots down! Buy a home with some land around it. We are working on this and will be sure to capture our journey in our blog posts in the not so distant future – 2020.
Peace, Love and Happiness
As a reward for reading all the way to this point, here is a Mystery Link that summarise how Ahmed looks when making friends. He’s getting better.
Please leave a comment and share.
The Jalloh family
The Jalloh Family 