At one meter seventy-nine tall she also looks older than she is and sometimes people expect too much of her. I hope I wouldn't be asking too much of her to move home and only hope she'd find her feet here soon enough. Although Napirai is happy enough to be on her own she's a great communicator and prefers to have people she likes around her. She's creative, paints, writes letters and listens to music for hours on end. She has a good ear for music and sings wonderfully. On the other hand she's not really into sport. The only physical exercise she's really up for is dancing; she's got no lack of energy for that. All in all I'm proud of my adorable, sensitive, carefree girl.
We'll cope with the change and be happy here, I'm sure, because I feel deep in my heart that it's time for a change from our old home. The biggest problem is going to be the Italian language, particularly for Napirai in school. But other families manage a move abroad, sometimes with three or four children. Why shouldn't we? In any case Napirai has a phenomenal memory and is naturally good at languages. Later she'll be pleased to have an extra language.
Initially Markus isn't too thrilled by my plans: he's afraid he won't find a job in Ticino and for that reason says he doesn't want to go. After our first two weeks on the language course, I bring Napirai home to go back to school and then return to Ticino to finish the course. I find I'm managing to retain my basic Italian and all of a sudden I find it incredibly difficult to leave and go home. When I get back I'm unsettled and make up my mind: I absolutely have to move. There's some role waiting for me in southern Switzerland.
Markus is marvelous. In the meantime he's actually managed to find a job in Ticino and moved into a holiday let down there so he can start work straight away. Napirai can stay on in school until the summer holidays and then we can move into the new fiat we've at long last found. There was a lot of luck involved there too. I had scoured every newspaper in Ticino, searched the Internet and was driving the six-hour round trip twice a week, only to realise that all the flats I saw were either too small or in the wrong location.
I ended up finding our dream apartment by a chance glance through a Zurich newspaper. I would never have thought of looking in this paper but with Markus down there on his own for two months already and having been let down once more on another flat because the owner wanted to let to a local family, I was scouring everything that came to hand. And there under the heading Ticino I found a single advert, inserted for one day only, as it turned out. It was the flat we wanted and was free to rent immediately.
Now that we knew our new address, I was eager to get Napirai registered for the local school at the end of the holidays. I used my meager Italian to arrange a time to go and see the school and get to know the teachers, because I think it's important for Napirai to get a glimpse of the area and her future classmates. Two days before the end of term we head down to Ticino feeling really just a little bit nervous. But the teachers are so friendly and kind that Napirai is immediately reassured. Now she can look forward to the new school year in a happy mind and with just a tinge of curiosity.
Back in German Switzerland I start organizing the move straight away. Markus can hardly help me now that he's already living in Ticino. When I realise how expensive a professional mover is going to be, I decide to do it all myself. I nip down to a car rental firm and look out the biggest van you can legally drive with an ordinary car license, and decide there and then that it will have to do. Whatever we can't fit in over the next couple of days we'll simply sell off or give away. We pack up only the most important stuff and that's already more than enough. We can't even find people to take some of the other things. All the furniture for Napirai's bedroom which we've had for more than five years finds no takers. We do a deal with a nearby charity clearance warehouse, a place that takes unwanted furniture, sells it off cheaply and hands over whatever cash comes in to local good causes. They agree to come the next day and take what-ever's left.
The big day comes ever closer and Markus and I still have no idea who's going to help us pack. I don't believe in hassling friends to help me move; the real friends will volunteer. And that's what happens: four days before we're due to move, Anneliese volunteers to lend a hand, and on the day itself Anna turns up with her grown-up daughter and her son who's a big strong lad now. Even my father, with whom I've had little contact since his divorce from my mother, turns up to help, which I find very touching. Two friends of Napirai turn out too so by the end of the evening before our long drive south, all our worldly chattels are safely packed up.
Everything we haven't been able to fit in or find a taker for will be picked up by the charity clearance people after we've gone. We spend our last night in the flat sleeping on blow-up mattresses. The next morning Markus sets off in the van along with my father. I follow behind them with a packed car, while Napirai goes off for her last day in school here.
When we get to Ticino we unload everything into our new flat in an almost tropical temperature of thirty-five degrees Celsius. As we're sweating away carrying everything inside my mobile goes off. It's a man from the charity clearance people saying that they don't want the stuff we've left behind after all. When I ask why not, in an irritated voice, he coolly tells me that the child's bed won't sell without a mattress and that the wardrobe has a hardboard rather than proper wooden back to it. Their customers have higher standards! Oh yes, and another thing: there are two stickers on the bookcase. He has complaints about everything else too as if the only furniture he'd accept is stuff that's completely unused.
When I make some sarcastic comment, saying I wasn't exactly living in squalor, he tells me unapologetically that they'll take it away for me, but only if I pay. That makes me really mad and I tell them to get out of the flat and leave everything there. To this day I've never understood what the point of their so-called organization is.
Still in a bad temper about it all we start the long drive back to return the van. But before we can do that we have to dismantle all the furniture and everything else in Napirai's old room and load it up. She's disappointed to find that not even a charity warehouse would take away all the things from the room she loved so much. We pile it all into the van and drive over to a friend in Wetzikon who understands the situation we find ourselves in and has promised to take it all to the tip on Monday. It's ten p.m. before we've unloaded it all into the storage area next to his house.
Just as we're getting ready to drive off I spot a group of Africans in the garden next door who've been having a party and are watching us with curiosity. An idea hits me and I say to Markus: ‘Run on over to those people and tell them they can have any of this for nothing.’ When he does they nod enthusiastically.
Exhausted but proud at having managed everything, we take the van back and half an hour later drive by our friend's storage area again in our own car. We're delighted to see that everything we left there has found a new owner. The next day I tell Napirai that an African child somewhere is sleeping in her old bed and enjoying all her old furniture, and her eyes gleam.