Why I Am Building a Life Between Britain and Africa

People sometimes ask why I would want to split a life between two places, as if one home should be enough. It is a fair question. The honest answer is that Britain and Kenya each hold a different part of me, and I have stopped trying to choose between them.

Britain is where my working life, my friendships and my everyday routines live. Kenya is where the horizon is wider, where family roots run deep, and where a piece of land near Lake Victoria is slowly, patiently becoming a homestead.

What each place gives me

Britain gives me structure, familiarity and the comfort of a life I know how to navigate. It is where I learned to work hard, to plan, to keep going through grey winters.

Kenya gives me space, light and a different relationship with time. Life there moves at a pace that reminds me that urgency is often a habit rather than a necessity. The lake, the garden, the long evenings: they are not an escape from real life. They are a version of it I want more of.

The practical side of two worlds

I will not pretend it is simple. Building from a distance means trusting other people with your plans, accepting that progress happens in seasons, and learning patience whether you like it or not. There are phone calls across time zones, lists that never quite end, and long gaps between visits where everything waits.

But there is also something quietly wonderful about having a long-term project that is bigger than a single year. It gives the future a shape.

A life between two worlds is not a divided life. It is a wider one.

Why now

The middle years have a way of clarifying things. I no longer want to postpone the life I actually want to some vague later. The homestead, the garden, the slower days by the lake: I want to build them now, alongside my life in Britain, not instead of it.

So that is what I am doing. Slowly, imperfectly, and with a great deal of hope. I will share the journey here, the lovely parts and the complicated ones, as it unfolds.