How do you kickstart a new career by volunteering abroad full time? Step one: Make the decision

Do you see the rhino in the background?

Making decisions can be analytical, emotional and/or intuitive – my decision to move to Africa was made 100% intuitively - I had no idea what I was doing.

Do you know what a pounding in your head feels like? – always there, thudding with every heartbeat, slowly beating at your brain until you give in and take a painkiller. This was how my urge to go to Africa felt, beating at me, for years, until I finally gave in February 2024.

You see until March 2024 I was a practicing lawyer. I started practicing in 2017 and had progressed from junior lawyer, senior lawyer to principal solicitor and business owner in seven years. From the start of my law career, I had moved cities (Hamilton to Wellington), bought a house, got engaged, got married, got divorced and became a business owner of a successful little business that I ran full time.

I had a good life - I got to travel around New Zealand defending people who really needed it, I got to do immigration research and lecture immigration law. I was living a career that I had the ability to tetris into existence – not having to run anything past the boss because I was it. But remember I mentioned the pounding – my life was on an upward trajectory, but I felt the thud of the need to go to Africa nearly constantly – and despite me trying to shove it down it wasn’t going away, until it came to a head one night in February 2024.

It happened like this – I had just finished teaching summer school, Advance immigration and refugee law, at a University in New Zealand. I had been living in Hamilton with my mother for 6 weeks at this stage so I had quite a few pieces of luggage. After flying back to Wellington on 5 February 2024, I got out of the uber from the airport and slowly transported my bags into my apartment, taking two trips up and down the first flight of stairs to get them all to my room. My room was medium sized, a nice queen bed pushed up against the top left corner of the room, spacious, it had light green walls which I always thought were calming and a little balcony where I used to smoke religiously. After scattering the last of my bags around the edges of my bed I flopped onto the mattress to take a moment before I started unpacking – that’s when it happened.

It’s like the pounding turned into one hard slap and in one second the thought that flew into my head with the certainty of a brick was - “if you unpack, you will never leave”. As the blood drains out of my face I realise that I had always believed that I would someday move to Africa, to do what, I didn’t not know – but this moment was the last time that I would have the opportunity to seize this dream, at least for a decade or more. It didn’t even take me a split second, the feeling of not seizing the opportunity made me feel physically sick, I knew that not going was not an option – I was going come hell or high water – and I knew that both would soon meet me when I told people of my decision.

At first I didn’t know why I made the decision – I just knew that I had to do it.

I rolled off the bed, went downstairs to the garage to collect the moving boxes I had stored just in case I needed them. I didn’t have any tape and even though I knew these boxes were going to get heavy, I folded them closed and used them anyway. That night I started to go through my wardrobe dividing the clothes I was going to sell or donate putting them in their respective boxes.

I wanted to keep very little of my life in New Zealand, at the time it was important that I sell everything. In hindsight I may have gone a bit overboard, since March 2024 there have been multiple instances where I have gently admonished myself for selling this or that thing that would have been helpful in my journey. Because when I say I sold everything – I mean that I sold everything. Over the preceding 8 weeks I emptied my room, selling or donating everything I owned including my art tools, my car, my clothes, my jewellery – down to the point where I have two boxes of things at my mum’s house – 2 boxes that represent my 23 years that I spent in New Zealand.  

I waited one week after making my decision before I told anyone, I wanted to process what I’d decided and continue to prep without the pressure to change my mind. I told Celia first, my very good friend in Wellington who was all for it and I went into the zoom meetings I set up for my found family and biological family emboldened.

When I told my found family, they were incredibly supportive, asking questions but being supportive of my decision – they knew that I had always wanted to go and were happy that I was finally taking the steps to be able to do it.

My biological family was quite a different story. As part of my writings I will write about what pushbacks to expect when you make a decision like this – but for now I will just summarise that it was not pleasant. The lesson is that although people express care in different ways, the fact they are expressing care becomes irrelevant if they are expressing it in an unhelpful manner.

The whole preceding 7 weeks after telling everyone, I was terrified – I was winding up my business, declining a government contract, leaving my family and friends, but even more than that – I was scared that the pounding that I had heard for 23 years was going to go silent, and my bravado was going to go silent with it.

I was acting so sure of myself, like this had no chance of failure. But I was scared and without my friends encouraging me, and my forced self-confidence – I think getting on that plane would have been a lot harder – but there is one thing I do know – I would have crawled onto that plane bloodied and bruised, that’s how much I wanted this.

If I can recommend anything when you do something like this is believe in yourself. It may not work out, but it’s not going to work out if you don’t back yourself, even if you do get on the plane. But you are allowed to be scared – as Blinky said in Trollhunters series:

“Never forget that fear is but the precursor of valor, that to strive and triumph in the face of fear is what it means to be a hero. Don't think. Become.”

Life is not a fairy tale - but I like the quote anyway because it makes you believe that your meant for more.

Give me a follow to keep tabs on my journey and if you want to learn how to full-time volunteer abroad to kickstart a career from someone who is learning by her mistakes - use my experiences and lessons to help save you money, pain and improve your experience.