That’s it! It’s (un)official. Hubby and I have decided to move back to my country Côte d’Ivoire 🇨🇮. I’m Patricia. I am an Ivorian and I have been living in the United States for 13 years now.

It’s been a surprisingly easy decision to make to return back to my country. We’ve been toying with the idea of taking a sabbatical year to live in Abidjan, for a few months now. But it always seemed like a 2-3 years down the road project type of thing. And then a few weeks ago, we were chatting in the kitchen, and I just asked hubby: what do you think about starting our sabbatical year in January 2022. His answer: sure, let’s do it! And it felt right! It just felt so right!

So why did we decide to go back?

Tired of the rat race

I work full-time in a big hospital in South Florida as a pharmacist. And as much as I love my job, it is not perfect. In my current schedule I work mostly in the evening, from 3 pm to 11.30 pm (yes, y’all! Hospitals are open 24/7, so some of us have to work those weird hours!). In addition to my full-time job, I also work part time in a different hospital, because guess what: daycare ain’t cheap in ‘Merica. And between bills, mortgage, groceries, clothes, etc, there’s always a good reason (excuse?) to spend (more) money!  My schedule has offered me a lot of flexibility and has a lot of perks (hello, time differential!). But, with my girl starting daycare this year, that means I can only see her a couple of hours the days I work, which is not enough for this mama! Which brings me to my second reason for wanting to slow down. 

I want to see my baby!

Personally, I had been in this weird space at work, when I felt like I was missing my daughter so much. I just wanted to work less hours and spend more time with her. And yet, here I was starting another part time job in addition to my full time. If you’re a parent in the US or another developed country, you know what I’m talking about. The feeling of always running, never taking a break to breathe and to enjoy family.

Raising multicultural kids

Another important reason for me is that I truly want my girl to be multicultural and multilingual. Raising a French speaking African kid in the US is hard, at least where I’m at. The dominant language in my neck of the hood is Spanish. Then you have English. Sure, we have books and YouTube and Netflix that have content in French. But, we are surrounded by English and Spanish speakers. My husband and I communicate in English. So really, babygirl is mostly exposed to English. I want her to be able to communicate without any issue with her Ivorian side of the family (none of which speaks English), and I really want her to be able to connect to her Ivorian heritage (whatever that means). What better way than to immerse her in the culture by living there? Bonus point: hopefully hubby will finally learn French too!

So, here we are, months away from moving back to the (M)Other land (you see what I did here?). I’d love to take you on this journey with me. When doing my research, I have found tons of blogs about the expat experience, and those were great, inspiring and full of information. But I couldn’t always apply that information to my situation and I didn’t see myself in those people. I didn’t find nearly as many blogs on African repatriates and their stories, the day to day life as an African repat back in their country, the process of how one unroots their whole lives to move across the world. And that is how the idea for this blog came.

My vision for Back to the Other land

I want it to be a mine of resources for African repats or those like me who are thinking about it but haven’t made the journey yet. You, my friend, can expect a glimpse into my life as I am getting ready to make that journey, what questions, issues, challenges I will go through with my family as we prepare. The good, the bad and the not so pretty. And then hopefully, in a few months, what will be our new life in Cote d’ivoire, and how reality will compare to expectations. 

What to expect

There will be posts about the preparation process before the big move, life as a repat, interviews or guest posts of other repats and all the information that I will gather along my journey  to make your repat journey smooth! So come along if you’re an African living outside of the continent, daydreaming about one day going back (I see you!), or if you’re just here to enjoy the show. Everybody and their mama is welcome!