There is something creative about moving job, country and city. It’s like the start of a new year multiplied by a factor of twenty. Out comes the notepad for resolutions. During this month of goodbyes, you have so many opportunities to reflect on what was good, what was special, what was worth doing, and also where you should have done things differently. In short, it’s a time for resolutions, reflections, and sometimes regrets. My arrival in Dubai is in the not so distant past, so I still have a sense of how I felt on arrival, what I’d aimed to do, and how things worked out.

Moving around so much really helps you to auto-correct and be self-reflective. I certainly have quite a few ideas for my new life in Freetown; two years down the track it’s almost déjà vu, and when history repeats, we can seek to apply lessons learned. Perhaps it’s even a life reborn.