Writer, EFL teacher, trainer, and translator, I was born in Tanzania, have lived in a dozen countries over three continents, and describe myself as an ‘expatriate sin patria’. Wherever I go I make it my business to learn the language, get to know the local people and customs, and discover the country’s remotest corners. I became interested in writing in mid-2006, did a short Open University creative writing course and a Writers’ Bureau course, and began getting articles published in 2007.

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Our youngest was two when we arrived in Barbados. We spent five weeks in a hotel, house-hunting. She was like a Labrador pup: on three occasions in our first couple of days we happened to be walking past the hotel pool and she just leapt in – and I leapt in after her. The third time her hat was floating on the surface and she was at the bottom of the deep end. After that her armbands became a part of her daily attire – she was not allowed to leave the hotel room without them on. My priority became swimming lessons, and she swam well before she was three.

We found a house called Xanadu.

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This unpacking is revealing some amazing stuff. Just found my university finals question papers from 1977 - typewritten. Now tell me how this question (which I circled and so presumably answered successfully, but which reads about as clearly as Mandarin to me now) has helped me in my life over the last thirty-one years:

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When the new baby was only four months old, Ugo noticed that Maria was not well. Examining her, he found that she was pregnant again, but had dangerously large cysts on both her ovaries. She needed a major operation – one he could not perform on the island.

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Ugo was – and still is – a man of many talents, and a perfectionist. He made most of the furniture for the house, as well as cots for newborn babies at the hospital. He drew accurate copies of cartoon characters to decorate his own children’s room. And he took photos. Hundreds of them, which he developed and printed himself, so we are extremely lucky to have a visual treasure of this period, with every photo dated and neatly labelled.

One striking photo shows a saucepan, which was his sterilizer. Another shows half a dozen scalpels and pairs of scissors – his entire medical kit. A favourite photo, taken by Maria, shows him holding a newborn baby up to his ear to check the heartbeat.

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You can see my 'move in the snow' photos here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=86103&l=0c19d&id=664241054

Tomorrow our boxes arrive from Uruguay! All 125 of them! And what am I looking forward to having?

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Ugo’s memories of the Catholic missionaries on Ukerewe Island are not pleasant. He found them intolerant towards members of other Christian denominations, many of whom were Maria and Ugo’s friends. The missionaries preached that the only way to salvation was theirs, and the Protestants could have led them to perdition. On their arrival on the island they found that a special personal pew had been reserved for them, separate from those of the Africans. They immediately refused it.

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I dislike Christmas shopping. I dislike the hype, the canned carols, the tacky decorations - and above all, the crowds. Just the thought of going out to get the annual gifts terrifies me. Actually, I dislike any shopping. Especially in a new country. The stress of just going out to get the groceries this morning nearly killed me.

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Ugo left Maria and the children with her cousin in the village of Urambo, in the middle of Tanganyika, while he went job-hunting. This was not easy: Italians were not welcome in the country so soon after the war. But eventually she received a telegram from him: ‘Paradise Island awaits you.’

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