The journey to Lamu island remains an adventure. Kenyans love to organise a queue so we queue outside terminal 1D at Kenyatta international, mixing with bewildered looking tourists and resigned East African nationals before being permitted entry where we queue again to scan our bags before standing in a queue at the Jambo airline check-in desks. Then we queue to get through to the security scan – scanning shoes here is still a thing. All shoes. Flipflops, trainers, boots, sandals- no one escapes the shoe police. It’s now 07.30. I haven’t had coffee and miraculously Craig is still breathing.
It would be fair to describe the domestic terminal as unchanged in the quarter decade when I last sat on the hard plastic chairs.
Thankfully the wee Safari Express coffee shop remains, still serving great tasting coffee, so I slowly emerge into humanness as the Kenyan sun appears, the caffeine hits and Craig, sensibly, remains mute.
It’s an hour flight in a twin prop plane – a two by two- similar width to Concorde, without any of the razzmatazz . We fly just above cottonwool clouds and I think of Denis Finch Hatton; no wonder he was bewitched, this is a fabulous way to see the vast beauty that is Kenya. 
We are travelling to Lamu at my request. 10 years ago we were in Cape Town for my birthday celebration- now I’m returning to Peponi’s where I can authentically pretend that I’ve found the halt button to the passage of time.
The speedboat from Manda across to Lamu jolts me from all these romantic notions. Upon landing and as out suitcases disappear into the verdant hotel greenery, our host offers a welcome aperitif and I find myself agreeing to a gin and tonic. It’s 11am but it’s 5pm somewhere out there. As the island is 90% Muslim, Peponi’s is one of the few places that serves alcohol so the bar is always busy- no matter the time of day or night.
I’m not alone as Craig also joins our early happy hour and we appreciatively sip while catching our bearings.
The view across from the new bar is much different from 27 years ago. What was once pristine empty beach and many verdant trees is now full of holiday resorts and private villas. It’s like looking at an upmarket Benidorm circa 1995. I had previously walked Manda beach in private contemplation and solitary sadness however this wouldn’t be possible today, such is progress.
Some would say progress is allowing the boda-bodas to ply their trade between Lamu old town and Shela, with their irritating beeping and motors roaring. Others would tell you that despite the UNESCO heritage status, the rising modern seafront buildings mark progress. Then again, is progress the increased profusion of Tanzanian styled dhows rather than the traditional narrow Lamu dhow? Or the motorised speedboats which now make charge between Shela and Lamu old town? Progress is the polite word used to describe, “it’s not like it was”. Of course, it’s not. Am I turning into an ‘old duffer’?
We spend a day wandering the old town in the company of a young guide, weaving through the cool narrow streets, the width of a donkey and its load. We climb to the top of the old fort, which the British used as a Maui-Maui prison, and from up here, hidden solar panels soak up the sun juxtapositioned between newly washed sheets billowing in the ever present breeze. I silently watch two women, free of burka and hijab walk across a bridge high up between two familial buildings. Life below moves unknowing. Up here, it’s another dimension.
I return to Lamu old town by myself on two separate occasions- it’s 1500 shillings for a one way trip and on both my journeys, I sit as a queen in my own private water charter. It’s a lovely way to observe life on island where unsurprisingly everything revolves around trade and water. 
As a Muslim island, guests here are asked to respect the culture and for women in particular to cover their shoulders and knees. I come with a suitcase packed full of all my Barbados flowy frocks and apart from a strategically placed scarf to cover any peaking cleavage, I’m able to move without causing offense. Unlike some wealthy white Brits who land at the hotel, loudly proclaim that it’s a known hippy place and then peel off their short frocks to reveal skimpy bikinis underneath. They sit at lunch with all their flesh on display and my inner snob becomes outwardly sniffy.
Me and my nose stare into the distance and into focus comes island wildlife; the donkeys silently plod along, carrying sand,bricks,water, people.
The Peponi camels take up residence when the changing tides allow, carrying heavy provisions for Shela citizens. Palm trees, laden with coconut fruits sway in the cooling breeze. 
Wooden sail boats jostle for trade and pleasure. Honestly, how many more descriptions of tropical paradise can I inspire you with?
The day I’ve tried to ignore appears. For all of the remembering and forgetting, time steals abeyance and here I’m thrown into subdued celebration, on a private, luxurious dhow boat, bobbing in the Indian sea. The straining wood creaks as the prow of the boat carves through the water, the sails snap in the wind, flying fish jump ahead of us. There’s no music, no WiFi. Just the captain, his mate, Craig and me. It’s a perfect day, a perfect birthday. 
I still don’t quite know how I got so lucky but somehow I can still be that wide eyed, grateful youngster of those many moons before, particularly when the charcoal appears and they cook the most delicious freshly caught fish – even better than I remembered.
It helps that the captain is married to Bibi, chef par excellence, on Shela. She runs her own cooking school and he shares her method and recipe for the melt-in-the -mouth grouper fish. Craig says he’s going to make it; I’m going to live in hope!
Hours pass, or is it days or years? The bobbing boat is sulpherific – past, present and future merge into the creak of wood, the swish of water, the shine of sun, the jumping fish, the glistening Indian Ocean. We watch bright green-blue crabs scuttle beneath the mangrove tree swamp and the changing tides swallow the land until only the tree tops remain. Twenty years, thirty years, one hundred years- this pattern remains immutable. Time doesn’t change the rhythm of the moon, the winds, the tides. Long before and long again, this is how it was, it is, it will be. This welcome insight provides much needed perspective. 
There is no running from time. No matter where we go to remember. And forget.
Here’s to the decade ahead.
Me? No, this hasn’t been my path. My own recovery hinged on a strong desire to rush back to normality. To prove to myself, I was still here and still capable. Desperate to return to work, motivated to stand on the side of a football pitch, to drink wine and talk rubbish with girlfriends, my focus was on being normal, fallible, worthy of surviving. I knew, unlike the others who didn’t make it, I was so lucky to have normal in my life and I wallowed in it.
This Father-son bond, where they actively want to spend time together, watching copious amounts of sport, talking nonsense, being funny, playful, free – just being my boys; well it brings me immense joy. It’s so different to any family dynamic that I had ever experienced; it feels like its own victory. Let them have these three weeks in their own four thousand; creating a chock-full kaleidoscope of stories and memories that they share or hold just between them. How powerful is this? How joyous!
Blessed with a really kind vet, he went with his head in Craig’s lap, my face close to his, lying on our outside garden sofa, birds tweeting in the trees and the late South African autumnal sun casting a golden glow. His was a peaceful, loving death.
Then the untethering that had started 4 weeks earlier became an unraveling which even now I’m struggling to articulate. I went to member meetings a day early, forgetting members who I’d booked to see in that time slot. I went to the supermarket with my ability to pay left sitting in the house. I spent an extortionate amount on a Lions Mane plant and even more on a glazed pot to sit where his food bowls used to be and then while at the garden centre spotted big yellow metal flowers that had to be obsessively planted in what’s now known as the Monty garden. I obsessively gathered the remaining fluff balls hiding hear the skirting to add to my large bag of his fluff currently tucked at the back of the wardrobe. I started sentences, couldn’t finish them, started work that stayed half done, wandered the house with silent rolling tears, went to meetings, leaving early, listlessly sat in front of the TV, watching all 5 seasons of ‘Six feet under’ (strangely cathartic) in record time. Craig and I would glimpse each other while sitting in the big empty Monty free space and cry.
So we head northwards to Scotland, to my own kind, and I spend 4 months eating all the chocolates and sweeties, baked goods, pies, bread, black puddings, haggis and meats of my childhood. Despite all the walking, I gain yet more weight but the tasty morsels are doing more than satisfying my appetite, they are feeding my soul. And this isn’t talked about in the academic books – the coping mechanisms of dealing with reverse culture shock. Familiar food, re-purchasing familiar knick-knacks, drinking childhood drinks ( hello ‘Cremola Foam’), listening to traditional music, going to places you would avoid if you lived in country. Chasing nostalgia and connection as if it’s a drug. It’s all normal.
Prompted by conversations with my sis-in-law, I sign up for Simon Sinek’s foundation course on finding my why. I’m only part way through and loving it but have found today’s exercise to be mentally challenging. The task is to write at least 6 stories on my life’s peaks and valley’s, stories which elicit emotional highs and lows which I can tell with passion and authenticity. In the beginning this seems similar to the work done on the True North leadership journey but as my depth of self awareness and emotion has increased since my cancer, I’m much more prepared to be open, honest, vulnerable and raw.
I’ve come to realise that my why, my purpose, needs to be based on sunshine experiences so I’m not reacting to negative forces. It’s a real Star Wars insight. I choose to be Luke and reject thoughts of Anakin.