Dear Reader, dear Jane-Your-Younger-Self,
I hope you are well.
We are strong, stable, proud parents entering a new phase of parenting.
Rory, our 15-year-old son, leaves this week for boarding school in South Africa. A big step for him. A big step for us.
A small, selfish part of me wants to break down in tears at the thought of saying goodbye. Many people who have never been to boarding school will tell me: “But Jane, you’re not saying goodbye. He’ll be back.”
Looking back on my own boarding-school career, when I left home, I never really returned. I came back only as a weekend and holiday visitor.
Thankfully, the bigger part of me - the proud parent, alongside JP - is incredibly excited for Rory and his next adventure.
Imagine having a child who never wanted to leave home; who always wanted to play it safe, stay comfortable, and avoid the unknown?
I went to boarding school from the age of eight, very much against my will, and it traumatized me.
Obviously. What child would not be traumatized by leaving home, leaving their single parent and only childhood protector, and going to live with a bunch of strangers who often resorted to bullying? It is Lord of the Flies out there. No jokes.
On the bright side, boarding school is one big life lesson in physical, mental, and social survival.
My overriding memory is of being hungry. I am sure they fed us enough, but I played a lot of sport, and the girls received smaller portions than the boys. That is one detail I remember vividly.
My mum was a single parent and, in retrospect, she made the right decision. She sent me to boarding school, where I was safe; where I did not have to wait for her to collect me late after school; where I had three meals a day; and where someone oversaw my schoolwork and homework - something she could never have managed while working full-time.
Rory’s choice at 15 is nothing like my forced boarding-school experience at eight. He has maturely weighed up his academic options and decided this for himself.
JP and I are enormously grateful that we can give him that choice. Back in our day, we went to school where we went because our parents stipulated it, and because that was often the only option available.
Education - much like freedom of speech - is a privilege. The choice of education, even more so.
2026 has taken a very big and unexpected turn for our family.
By August 2026, I expected that we would have bought our community clinic property after an intense six-month €350,000 fundraising campaign. I expected both our children to be living under our roof in Madagascar until they completed their schooling.
Instead, our clinic land purchase fell through in the sixth month of international fundraising. Rory leaves this week, and Mykayla (13) intends to follow her brother to boarding school in two years - three years earlier than we expected to have our children at home until 18.
Suddenly, we are half an empty nest - and two years away from completing an entirely new clinic build.
If I asked my older self to advise my younger, whinier, slightly self-pitying self, she would tell me to appreciate the privilege of both the choices and the challenges.
And to choose my hard.
As a brief update on our search for land to buy and build our clinic on: it has been a fascinating observation in human behavior.
This week alone, I visited no fewer than ten plots of land. Along the way, I have heard many stories about how their owners came to possess them.
Often, it was through inheritance, the settlement of bad debts, or simply as a way to spite somebody else.
What has become obvious is that many who have land do not want to sell it. It is their birthright; their legacy; their pride and the thing they want to leave their children - who, ironically, will most likely never return to Madagascar.
It leaves me asking one question: Do they own the land, or does the land own them?
Our search for suitable land to buy and build our clinic on continues!
Kind and mad regards,
Mad Madagascan Mum & Medic,
Jane
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