Home is where your nest is

Serial expat Catriona Turner details her life on the move.

Photographs: Iana Chtefan

Text: Michaela Medveďová

Do you keep track of how many times you have moved in your life?

Catriona Turner, a Scottish author, does. In fact, she recorded her journey of being a serial expat in her book Nest: a memoir of home on the move.

Fourteen years. Seven moves across France, Uganda, Congo, and Denmark. And one incredible story.

Going anywhere

Growing up in the west of Scotland, near Glasgow, meant living in the typical vision one might have of Scotland - rolling hills, lochs, and living on the river. But already then, Catriona was keen to move and experience something new. She headed north to Aberdeen for university, and at that time, it was a big culture shock. She was aware of cultural differences, different accents - and a different landscape. “The first time I came up to Aberdeen on the train, it was really weird looking through the window because something seemed strange. It was the North Sea, and I realised there was nothing on the other side. Just the sea. Well, I guess it was Denmark on the other side,” laughs Catriona.

Whenever she went back home, people would comment on how she sounded more like an Aberdonian. After she finished her teaching qualification, she also got her first job back in Aberdeen - but she wasn’t set on it. She would have considered going anywhere. Well, anywhere within Scotland.

Needless to say, that later turned out to be a significant underestimation.

Catriona met her now-husband online. “There was no swiping then. We had a website and a profile and would send emails. My God, it feels old-fashioned now,” smiles Catriona. But they only chatted online for a few days, met up - and it was a good match. Actually, they talked about travel on their first date, as they’d both just been on big trips that summer.

When they started dating, Mike was working off-shore in oil and gas on rotation. “I was enjoying the best of both worlds at that point. I had a boyfriend who would come back on shore and take me out on dates, and then live the life I’d been leading the rest of the time. But there was always the possibility he might get offered an opportunity to go abroad.” So when an offer to go to France eventually came up, they were ready for it.

By that point, Catriona had been teaching for ten years and had a career path in mind. But she was also quite excited by the idea of taking a break from it - a break she thought was only going to be three years and then back home to Scotland.

Stages of life

“I loved being in France on one hand, and on the other, I was very limited in my mindset. I thought: this is too foreign, this is not home, this is not normal, this is too difficult. I was enjoying it - I love the language, and I got to study it for a year. But I was probably not enjoying it to the fullest. And by the time I left, I think I was ready for a change.”

After three years in France, Catriona’s husband was offered a job in Uganda. They already had a son together, and she was pregnant again. Catriona couldn’t join him in Uganda from the start as she didn’t have the required yellow fever vaccination - and she couldn’t get it while pregnant. So, she ended up spending nine months back in Scotland while her husband went to Uganda. “At the time, I thought it’d be a great reset. I’ll get to be back home again where everything is normal. But I ended up living with my father-in-law for nine months, where it wasn’t really home and I was a newcomer again.”

After their second child was born, Catriona joined her husband in Uganda and stayed there for a year - much less than they initially thought. Her husband’s company wanted him to change careers and sent him back to France for a year of training. “We went to the same place where we’d been the first time. So, this really did feel like a homecoming, ironically. We still had friends there, spoke the language, and could pick up on the connections that I’d had there. Even though it was only for a year, this is when I started to relish being where I was at that time and not thinking: this is too difficult - everything will be easier when I move.”

The next destination ended up being the Republic of Congo for three years - and by that time, a three-year stay was starting to feel like a luxury for the young family.

“Probably more in Congo than anywhere else, I had learned so much about our idea of what is normal when it comes to cultures. It’s not a default thing - it’s where we come from. When we’re in it, we don’t see it at all; culture is like water or air. Only when we step outside can we see what it is like.” She learned to open her mind to the things in her that are particularly British or Scottish - and realise what she can keep or let go of.

Naturally, each of the countries comes with a set of memories. In the French chapter, Catriona likes to remember the friends they had there who made up a family away from home - an expat family. They’re still closely connected. Uganda carries beautiful memories of travel - going on a safari crossing the Nile. The community in Congo, where she also found a close-knit theatre group where she performed for the local audience. And then a memory of the summer of 2020 in Denmark, where, because of the pandemic restrictions, they spent the entire time travelling across the country, exploring Denmark.

Keeping a record of all these different experiences and memories isn’t hard at all for Catriona. Each of her eras was also a threshold for her - becoming a mother for the first time or her children starting school. “Each country is more than just a place. It’s a stage of life.”

Writing your own story

One of the thresholds Catriona crossed was in Congo, where she started writing.

It was always in the back of Catriona’s mind - she’d done an English degree and did a little writing as a hobby. “The reason why I wanted to take it more seriously was that I became very frustrated. I had done a bit of teaching in France, and then I was having children and couldn’t get child care. I was waiting until I got to Congo, and the kids would be in school and I would be able to pursue work again. But I was frustrated by the idea of - wait and see what opportunities are available. Doing that every two or three years was not a career. I wanted to do something I could just take with me everywhere and continue at it. So once I landed in Congo, I decided I would write about my life here. But it became much more about the general experience of a serial expat.”

When we’re living our life, it becomes normal to us - it’s not remarkable anymore. But Catriona realised that her everyday life is remarkable - and she had a lot of stories to tell amongst the everyday challenges of frequent moving and transition. “When I wrote about these experiences, these challenges, people were reading the blog saying: That’s it. You found the words to express what I couldn’t. I found that validating and invigorating.”

It all came together for Catriona, and the path was clear - if she wanted to be an author, she would start with a memoir, something that would help others in her situation understand the experiences - and maybe themselves - in a new light. “I did not want to put myself out there as an expert on anyone else’s experience. I wanted to show my own. Any good memoir is not just about the person’s story, but about others seeing something of their story in it, too.”

Nest: a memoir of home on the move came into the world in 2023. As a writer enamoured with language, she was focusing a lot on the structures of a narrative arc and was trying to structure her life story in a similar way. The more she worked on that, the more she understood what had happened to her. “I could see that over here - that is a turning point. This helps explain why, for example, I had a hard time with my mental health when we moved to Uganda. When I structured my story as a narrative for other people, it was crystal clear to me: leaving my home life, my career, and my family, getting married, becoming a parent twice, moving again and again - all of that happened in four years. So, no wonder I was having a mental health struggle. But I could only see that because of the way I was writing my own story.”

"Probably more in Congo than anywhere else, I had learned so much about our idea of what is normal when it comes to cultures. It’s not a default thing - it’s where we come from. When we’re in it, we don’t see it at all; culture is like water or air. Only when we step outside can we see what it is like."

The Danish flag is still on the table

By the time Catriona and her family moved to Esbjerg in 2018, she was an experienced expat. She’d already been through the usual struggles before. What made the move into Danish cultural waters easier was the fact the family knew that this was temporary - that they’d only be staying in Denmark for three years, and she felt less pressure to integrate.

“The Danish culture and language are brilliant, and they are so proud of them, and rightly so.” There’s a lot of the culture that Catriona’s family took along with them. The birthdays would now be incomplete without a Danish flag on the table, and they try to have some flæskesteg for Christmas.

After Denmark, the family went back to France for two years. But while the French culture is strong, Catriona thinks Danish culture is bound to be the most distinctive of all they’ve lived in, and they carry a lot of quirks with them. Even things they weren’t exactly mad about before. “Royal Copenhagen never really was my thing. But as soon as we were leaving, I was like: Oh, we need to have it in our house. I’m going to try and order that.”

And, of course, there’s the famed Danish independence and trust. “The one thing that I definitely carried with me is that I instinctively trust people more than I did before. And my children? Denmark is probably their favourite place.”

For Catriona’s two children, growing up as expats was their normal - although a three-year-long stay can be a lifetime for a small boy. “My younger son was five when we left Congo to move to Denmark. He didn’t remember anything before; Congo was just home. After a few weeks in Denmark, he started asking: but when are we going home? We had explained we’re moving to a new country, but he hadn’t quite gotten his head around it.”

As they grew older, moving frequently was very much the normal thing to do - even though it was harder and harder to make friends and then leave them behind. However, they got to grow up in different cultures and with different kinds of people.

There’s no hurry anymore

As time went on, the kids started to ask about Scotland. The family bought a house there when they still lived in Congo to have as a base. The kids were starting to understand the importance of having such a base because they weren’t sure where they were from. They thought they might be French because they spoke the language, and they thought they might be English. “But once we had the house, we would come back to Scotland a bit more often, and they started to understand and feel that they are from here and started to ask when they could live in Scotland.”

Returning there in time for secondary school had always been the family’s intention - and the timing worked out perfectly.

They moved back to Aberdeen a year ago, and it’s for the foreseeable future. Not forever - that’s a word Catriona would never use.

Going through repatriation can be a bittersweet thing. “I just saw pictures the other day of the summer fair at the school in Paris where we were a year ago. All the same, people were still there, still living my life. So there’s a bit of FOMO. But I’m also really enjoying the knowledge that I’m not moving. In a few months, I’ll still be here. In a few years, I’ll still be here. I can start things that will continue.”

Catriona’s been getting impatient in the last few months, worrying that she doesn’t have new friends or connections yet. “But I’m getting to know them - it just does take a year to get to know people in everyday situations, unlike when you’re in that intense international community. I always have this panic at this time of the year - it’s summer, and we need to do all of it and see everyone before people move away.

“But there’s no hurry now. They’re all going to be here in September, and we’ll catch up again. And then the September after and the one after that.”

Catriona will be spending some time in Denmark in August:

Date: 27 August - 10:30-12:00

Location: Social Brew on Kultorvet (the new one)

Come along and join Catriona for a coffee chat.

Date: 28 August - 17:00-19:00

Location: International House, Torvegade, Esbjerg

A meet the author event with a reading and discussion about encounters with Danish culture. Sign up at newcomer@esbjerg.dk