We Left South Africa With a Full House and a Heavy Heart
My husband Peter and I moved to South Africa in 2007. We spent seventeen years there, built a life, fell in love with the country and its people, and made friends who became family. Leaving was not a practical decision. It was an emotional one, and it took a long time to make. In the end, missing our family and friends back in the UK tipped the balance, and we made the hard decision to return home. The move was from Montagu in South Africa to Oakham in the UK, and it involved a full house worth of belongings, a container, and a company we came to trust completely.
That sentence does not begin to cover it. We had built a real life in South Africa. Walking away from it, from the friends, the landscape, the pace of things, was not easy. But family pulls in a direction that is hard to resist, and eventually that pull won.
I started with a Google search for international movers and Sirelo came up. From the five companies recommended, I contacted three after doing further research and checking reviews, including HelloPeter. All three responded in one way or another, but Robeck was the only one that answered each and every question immediately, by phone and by email. And there were a lot of questions. That responsiveness was what decided it for us. When you are moving a full house across two continents, you need to feel that someone is genuinely paying attention.
The items we needed Robeck to handle were a specific concern, particularly anything with corners or edges that could be damaged in transit. We had worked in this type of industry many years ago, and we had seen what poor packing looked like on the other end. So we paid close attention.
We also had one question that sat at the top of our list from the start: would the container come to the house to be loaded and sealed there, rather than at a depot? That mattered to us more than almost anything else, and it shaped a lot of how we planned.
The container arrived before time, which set the tone. The crew arrived on time too. From there, the day moved fast. Everyone was efficient and hardworking, and the items we had asked Robeck to pack were handled with real precision. Corners were wrapped carefully. Nothing was rushed. We had seen enough of this industry to know the difference between a crew going through the motions and one that actually cares what arrives at the other end. This was the latter.
The crew in Oakham were professional and friendly in equal measure. Before they brought anything in, they covered the carpets and floors to protect them. Every item was positioned where we asked. Our house is still being renovated, so unpacking is an ongoing procedure rather than something that happened in a single weekend. That made the care the crew took with placement all the more important. Everything arrived in the same condition it left Montagu.
We are still in the middle of it. The renovation means the house is not finished, and the unpacking is happening in stages. What we do have is everything we arrived with, intact, and the beginning of a home in a country we left nearly two decades ago. Getting back to family has already made the hard parts of this decision feel worth it.
Beyond that:
We moved to South Africa with a life ahead of us and left with seventeen years of one behind us. Robeck answered every question, arrived early, packed with care, and delivered without a single item out of place. When you are already carrying the weight of a move like this one, the last thing you need is to worry about what is inside the container. We did not have to.
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