We’d Never Heard of Spokane. Then It Became Home.

We didn't choose Spokane from a map. Until our travel arrangements arrived, we'd never even heard of it.

Before March 2026, Spokane meant absolutely nothing to us. We simply didn’t know it existed.

Then our travel arrangements arrived: Spokane, Washington. Naturally, we Googled it. A lot.

At first, it didn’t feel like home

We spent our first few days in a hotel before moving into a basement apartment. That alone was an American experience. South Africans aren’t exactly known for basement apartments.

Everything was new: Walmart, Target, American roads, schools, food, and driving on the opposite side. Even residential neighborhoods looked different, with open front yards, basketball hoops and wood-and-drywall houses.

Then normal life started happening

We bought a car. Eben started working. I started working. Our oldest started school. We figured out grocery stores and learned which products absolutely did not work as substitutes for South African ingredients.

Slowly, Spokane stopped being somewhere we had to Google.

The house changed something

Our next home had something we’d really wanted again: a yard. It had been neglected, so we started working on it. We wanted the girls to have somewhere they could go outside barefoot and just be kids.

Watering grass sounds mundane, but I think that’s when I realized something had changed. You don’t spend your time trying to improve somewhere you’re mentally preparing to leave.

Other things were changing too

The girls settled into school routines. We had reliable transportation. We started making friends. We met other Afrikaans families and could invite people over for a braai or potjie.

There were people here whose numbers were saved because they were friends. That mattered.

Somewhere along the way

There wasn’t one dramatic moment where Spokane became home. It happened quietly: school mornings, Eben coming home from work, planning dinner, having people over, watering the grass and making plans for next month.