Departure from Cape Town

The flat was filled with the drone of busy excited voices, the door buzzer had not stopped for the past hour. No one was really talking about the reason for our gathering, but the body language was there. Every time I would make eye contact with Lizelle my wife and any of my children there would be a rush of emotions that I would try any suppress as not to upset any of them. Why? our lives are build around emotions. Get them out there, I think that is half the problem in life we are always to scared to share what and why we really feel about things and when we do it is often too late. Tamlin one of my daughters was in George Town 500km from Cape Town, about midday she could not bear the thought of me leaving and she not being able to be there with me. Her mother arranged a friend to drive her down to join me and be there for the final day at home. This meant so much to me , as a family we have been through a few hard months and this bonding time was so important to me to be able to focus on the task ahead of me and to be able to bid farewell to my children as a unit

I had collected Hans from the airport the previous day, and what a flight he had been through. Flying via Heath throw after the terrorist scare and the heightened security checks, he nearly missed his flight. Arriving at Cape Town international all that he had of his 6 months worth of kit for China was a plastic bag with an Austrian to English dictionary and an Austrian to Chinese one. What a great start were off to (the main problem after the past two days the Austrian had started to brew in his lederhosen). This was to carry an for 2 days, finally 20 mins before we were to depart for China the luggage finally arrived.

Each hour that passed with no news of his gear, I could see the concern growing on his face. Xander, my son, offered to get Hans to the airport at 6:30 the next day to see if anything arrived on the next flights from the UK. We finally got a call from Geoff, the project director, that he had located the baggage and that it would be on the 10:30 flight from Heathrow. This was going to be a close call as our flight for Beijing departed at 12:00.

We left for the airport and it was now time to move on. It had been about 4 years in the making and we were at a stage that we had done everything that we could to make this project a success and it was now out of our hands, we had to do it.