When I was nine, and my sister was eleven, we travelled from Zambia to boarding school in Zimbabwe. Although I loved school, going home for the holidays was the most amazing and wonderful thing in the whole wide world. Sometimes I’d wake up in the mornings, expecting to hear the clang of the rising bell that the matron tried to wake the city with, and then I’d feel the soft sheets and remember I was home. What beautiful, delicious relief.

It was the ‘70s and we lived in Mufulira, on Zambia’s central Copperbelt. Travelling to boarding school involved a simple bus trip, but after Zambia closed its borders with what’s now Zimbabwe, our bus trip became tricky. It meant travelling to the bridge at Kariba, where our bus stopped in front of the line that divided the two countries. We got off our bus and walked over the line to get on the other bus, while the drivers exchanged our trunks and bags, and then we continued to Harare.

After that we had to fly to boarding school but we couldn’t fly directly, so had to fly via Malawi. And then, when we moved north to a small town called Kasama, close to Lake Tanganyika (where we holidayed once – what a beautiful, unspoilt paradise), our journey became even more complicated: one or two flights in tiny aircraft took us from rural airstrips, with small, dome-shaped, corrugated iron airports, to the relative hugeness of Ndola Airport and, from there, to Blantyre and on to Harare.

At Blantyre’s Chileka Airport, we two little girls would sit for up to six hours waiting for our connecting flight to Harare. The only airport shop closed between arrivals and departures, so we’d sit on a wooden bench and swing our legs and talk about our holiday memories and our friends, and what awaited us at boarding school. My sister would often imagine her next home-theatre production that she would write, produce, direct and star in, and I’d maybe get a bit-part in. Our world felt infinite.

And finally, we’d land in Harare, meet our matron and start the final leg of our journey, by car, to school.

The journey home was equally circuitous, but somehow, when your hearts are filled with hope and longing to be home, to see your family and your dog, the journey feels so much shorter.