Blazing A Trail

Dear Iris,

You don’t know me. You don’t recognise my face. You don’t remember my name. But I have known you my whole life.

You used to know me. You knew me when I was a pudgy baby who rarely smiled. You knew me when I was a curly-haired toddler always clinging to a cuddly elephant. You knew me when I was a shy, quiet 10-year-old who sat in the corner and read books all day. You knew me when I was a teenager starting to venture out into the world a little more. You knew me when I was a uni student discovering my path in life. You knew me when I was an adventurous young adult who, like you, decided to take the leap of starting a life in a new country. But you don’t know me anymore.

When you were 18, you waved goodbye to your family farm in the countryside and moved to London to become a nurse. The Second World War had not long ended, and the city was still in a bad way. Rationing of food and clothing would continue for nearly ten more years. In those days, country girls would marry the farmer’s son from down the road and stay in the same village their whole lives. How did it feel to leave behind the green fields of the shires and arrive in bombed-out, war-torn London, a city you had never even visited before?

When you finished your training, you joined the army and were posted around the world, caring for Brits and locals alike in army hospitals. You spent a few years in South East Asia before ending up in Kenya, where you married a man who worked on the tea plantations. You moved from Kenya to Uganda to Malawi, at this point with two young children in tow. At a time when many people never left their hometown and long-haul holidays could not even be imagined yet, you blazed a trail.

You chased off terrifying baboons who threatened your baby son one day. You kept a stick outside the back door in case the leopard came into the garden again while you were out there. When your husband was away with work, you drove yourself around the unpaved roads of East Africa in a beat-up 60s car with nothing more than a box of tools, a map and some rudimentary Kiswahili. At a time when women in the UK were told to stay in the kitchen, you went out into the world, planting in your garden, birdwatching in the hide, or trekking in the bush to see the hippos at the river.

After many years in Africa, you took on a new adventure in Papua New Guinea, a place wild and unknowable and one of the least explored and least understood countries on the planet, even today. And when you retired, you moved back to the UK. Was it strange to come back here after all these years, to a Britain so different to the one you had left 50 years ago? Yet you took on this challenge like you did all others: confident, brave, determined.

Even now, in these twilight years, you remain as strong as ever. Last January, when your husband got sick and was moved to a nursing home after weeks in hospital, you insisted you could care for him. “I’m a nurse,” you insisted indignantly. “I’ll look after him.” “But you’re 91,” replied your daughter, slightly exasperated. “Oh yes, I am, aren’t I?” you said, laughing. You had forgotten your age, and the fact that you haven’t been a nurse for many years.

After many years of struggling against the troubles of old age, you now live in a care home. You don’t know where you are. You don’t know who the lovely people are looking after you. You don’t remember what happened to your husband, who has gone on to the next life. Despite how terrifying this must be, you keep going. You keep laughing. You keep chatting. You still have the memories of when you were happiest, and you still talk for hours about your beloved Malawi.

Granny Iris, though you don’t know me anymore, I am so grateful to have known you. You inspired me to make my own move from the country to London, to live and work abroad, to learn new languages, to visit far-off lands, to leave my comfort zone, to follow in your footsteps on my own journey through East Africa. You inspired me to live a life less ordinary, less expected, and to create my own path through the world.

Though you have forgotten me, I will never forget you.

Your granddaughter

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