London (14 Dec 2025 - 10 Jan 2026)

We arrived in London on 14th December, after six weeks of continuous volunteering work in Zimbabwe and Tanzania. In the original planning of the trip, we had planned to come back home in anticipation of Div being very homesick, the girls probably needing a reset and me wanting to check back in with work around the year-end processes. Plus London is a wonderful place to spend Christmas and still the hub for most of our close friends and family.

In reality, I was probably the most homesick of the four of us and Div was not yet ready to leave Africa (and particularly the Women Empowerment group in Tanzania). I think the girls were fairly exhausted and ready to be with their people and be back home.

Our time in London was the best kind of craziness – a pile-up of love and warmth and affection from family, friends, colleagues and everyone around us. We are so blessed to be surrounded by so much support and to have such strong roots in our relationships.

One thing that played on my mind during our return was how I was balancing our time. In normal circumstances the contact-switching that we do between work and home (and even the contact-switching within work when there are often many problems to tackle concurrently) can be really challenging. I found jumping between coming back from volunteering/travelling to trying to balance being present at home and at work really jarring for the first time in a long time. Part of it was definitely an over-exuberance of “catching up” I wanted to do on all fronts – but in hindsight I could have managed this much better. A good lesson to learn to be more discerning and disciplined with my time, energy and attention when back from the trip.

Being back home and seeing family, friends and colleagues was overwhelmingly positive, and having absorbed so much love and good wishes we are ready to go again recharged.