My parents were both born in England.

It still took over 2 years. We knew we'd need to return to England a couple of times a year to see my mother, but when we budgeted in the cost of that travel, we couldn't make it work.

We just took a taxi to the Desert Inn in Beersheba. Even that was like coming home - we'd stayed there many times before.

We didn't want to spend money shipping furniture, or things we could replace here. So we sent just the minimum, only things like books that couldn't easily be replaced.

We had three young children. We weren't prepared - not for finding work, schools or for dealing with Israeli culture and all that entails. We loved Israel, but we had to return to England. It was a very difficult decision.

As a small child in England, I had this dream of going to Africa. We didn't have any money and I was a girl, so everyone except my mother laughed at it. When I left school, there was no money for me to go to university, so I went to secretarial college and got a job.