January 18, 2005
Not all those who wander are lost (1)
Yesterday, my "Mommy group" had a good-bye dinner for one of our friends -- she is moving to South Africa with her family next week. We had excellent Indian food, quietly brushed some tears away, and gossiped about our kids. We all promised to visit M. in Johannesburg one day -- and I think we all were aware that it was unlikely anyone of us would actually live up to that promise, as honestly meant as it was. Expats say good-bye all the time, and we know that friendships often taper off with a move, despite best intentions.
Being an expat is mostly a chosen way of life. The people who live abroad are as diverse as any random group of people -- they are missionaries, high ranking CEO's, diplomats, impoverished language teachers, engineers, aid workers, military personnel. Some have a vision, some don't. Most are curious about the country they live in but many live in bubbles, barely touching the outside world. A large percentage is moving from country to country, while others just venture outside their homeland for a year or two as some sort of family sabbatical.
However, expats also have a lot in common. One of the elements less talked about is the loneliness.
It's you and your family alone in a way that not even those who coined the term "nuclear family" could envision. Consider for a moment a typical nuclear family: wife, husband, child. Consider now the context within which that family system functions when it has lived in one place for an extended period of time. Ongoing relationships have been cultivated: friends, colleagues, neighbours, doctors, teachers, religious leaders, shopkeepers... These extended relationships surround and enfold the nuclear family. In most societies, and often even in the United States, you can add relatives to that web of relationship: parents and grandparents, siblings, nephews and nieces, aunts, uncles and cousins live nearby. The geographically-stable nuclear family is part of a larger relationship system that nurtures and supports the family as a whole and is available to help its individual members.
Consider now a typical internationally-mobile family: wife, husband, child. No relatives nearby. No web of ongoing relationships -- except those renewed on home-leave, those cultivated at a distance via annual holiday greetings, or, for the multi-mover, those expatriate friends from prior postings encountered again in the new location. The larger support system available to the internationally-mobile family consists of the wage-earner's employing organization, the school(s) the children attend, and the expatriate community itself. This support system, however, has some fundamental limitations.
[..]
Thus, given these realities, the internationally-mobile family is the ultimate of nuclear families. Members must rely foremost on one another: spouse on spouse, sibling on sibling, child on parent and even parent on child. In the final analysis, an internationally-mobile family must sink or swim on its own.
www.worldweave.com
Visitors often complain about the expat community. It's so tight, they say. Why don't you interact more with the locals? Why do you keep to yourselves so much?
Well, it's because other expats understand. They understand the stress of home visits. They understand that if you don't keep in touch with relatives and friends, connections will break. They understand the guilt about ripping the kids out of school, planting them into yet a new country, a new language, a new culture. They understand the importance of maple syrup and cheerios. They understand $600 phone bills. They understand the frustration of seeing eyes glazing over when you start a story with "when we...".
Let me explain this a little.
Keeping in touch. It's a rule of life -- the one who goes away has to keep in touch. The simple truth is, life goes on without you. You're just one person missing from a big social net, that's barely noticeable. So you, as the expat, are the one to make those phone calls home -- that's why we have $600 phone bills. Asking relatives and friends why they don't call us sometimes, we often get the answer it's so expensive, we didn't have a calling card, we didn't even know they have phones in Romania (I really did hear that once). Hm. Most of them don't even read our blog, although it has started out as a source of information for the family (the focus has shifted since, partly also because the family isn't reading it anyway).
In our life, there are only three exceptions to this general rule -- and those are my family, my mother-in-law, and our cybernet friends. My family lived as expats themselves (strictly speaking of parents and brothers here), so they know the feeling and especially my Mom is very good about keeping in touch -- we talk once a week, at least. My family also regularly visits our blog to see what's up. My mother-in-law writes emails on a regular basis. The cybernet friends, who often became friends in Real Life (TM), are an exception because our friendships started off with emails and chats, so it's not awkward to continue staying in touch that way. They also read our blog and even comment (my family usually comments to me on the phone). I really appreciate this interest in our lives. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
However frustrating it is to be the ones doing the relationship maintenance, we are keeping it up. Sometimes, we get annoyed. After years of sending out 80+ Christmas cards, and getting five or six back, we finally decided to send fewer cards in 2004. Invariably, we received three "firsts", felt guilty about it, and will probably resume to send out mass mailings again this year. We're calling relatives and friends for their birthdays, we send presents and cards, we call when we haven't heard from someone in a while. $600 mean a lot of time on the phone, even with international rates.
But even so, often friendships don't survive an international move. They just... cease to exist. Or they take on a different dynamic. I have a friend who I talk to once or twice a year, but then we talk for hours. We still are friends and I value those rare talks. It's very different, though, from our daily phone calls when we still lived in the same city -- and saw each other almost daily.
(I also have to add that although we try, we are by no means perfect at this relationship upkeeping. We do forget to answer emails, we do drift out of touch with people not out of malice but out of sheer laziness. But overall, the points made above do apply.)
[Tomorrow: the stress of home visits, eyes glazing over, and how to get excess luggage on board without excess fees.]
Posted by claudia at January 18, 2005 12:05 PM | TrackBackInteresting post. As one who has for some time dreamed about trying the expat life, it made me stop and think.
For several years, we lived in New Orleans, 500 miles from my wife's family, and much farther from mine. But, New Orleans being what it is, we never knew we had so many friends! We had company all the time, and it was great. However, I guess that heading to N'Awlins is a different beast than traveling to Europe. With aging parents, and a close circle of family and friends, it's tough to think about expat-ing.
Now, I'm very unhappy with the political situation here. We have a 16 year old son, we feel a draft coming, and so we've started thinking again about........... something different.
I've also enjoyed your links to Eric Gordy's blog, and to The Glory of Carniola.
Posted by: Doug in Alabama at January 18, 2005 05:34 PMDoug, don't despair. On the whole, we think there are more good than bad sides to the expat life -- that's why we're living it, after all. I grew up a so-called Third Culture Kid and to me it seems very normal. It's just not all honey and cream, is all.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you want to shoot my way. I also have some book recommendations on the expat life (and raising expat kids) if you like. Let me make a suggestion: Read the whole series (it will take me about 3 or 4 more posts, I think), and then ask away.
Best wishes!
Posted by: claudia at January 18, 2005 05:57 PMStupid time difference. -- Natalie
Posted by: Natalie at January 18, 2005 07:51 PMThe first comment wasn't exactly clear. I meant stupid 7-hour time difference between here and there. Not an excuse, just an observation. :-)
BTW, the Schott book arrived. Larry and I were reading parts aloud and trying to stump the other one.
Signed,
a long-distance email friend
"They understand $600 phone bills."
Speaking of which, we just signed up with Vonage. Don't suppose anybody's doing VOIP over there yet?
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at January 18, 2005 09:17 PM"We have a 16 year old son, we feel a draft coming"
I don't mean to mock or belittle your worries, but I have to say that a draft is extremely unlikely. Draftees wouldn't help at all in the conflicts the US is now involved in, and voting for a draft bill would be instant electoral suicide.
Posted by: Gareth Wilson at January 18, 2005 10:52 PMGareth,
I hope you're right, but I worried that you're not.
Common wisdom always held that Social Security was the "third rail" of politics, i.e. you touch it, you die. Yet here we are with our president pushing for radical changes to a program that is, IMHO, the most successful govt program of all time. Are letters to the editor flooding in to local newspapers? Are people up in arms? Apparently not.
So the paradigm of what people will accept without complaint seems to have shifted. Add to that the ambitious military plans that we seem to have. How will we staff that? I'm very concerned.
Posted by: Doug in Alabama at January 19, 2005 12:23 AMNice post on the ex-pat life. I'm a recovering ex-pat myself, having lived two years in Japan (one of those rare English teachers who were not impoverished) and have been thinking about going back. At times I miss it, but then I read posts like this and I remember that it wasn't all honey and cream. But man, what I wouldn't give to go to an onsen, walk around Fukuoka (best-Japanese-city-EVER), and be *special* for a while.
The point about keeping in touch with ex-pats friends really got to me though. It's been months since I talked with my Japanese buddies. I really should give them a heads up.
I e-mailed my Japanese ex-girlfriend just the other day though. Odd that, as when I left Japan I would have thought it would be the other way around.
Are you guys planning on living the ex-pat life indefinitly?
Best wishes,
Mike Ralls
I've been an expat more than a few times. I was better at keeping in touch with folks back home during the first couple of years, even without e-mail. Now that I'm actually going to be living in the US I'm planning to be much better at keeping touch with my family.
Posted by: Ivy at January 19, 2005 04:06 AMI understand all of the issues in the post. When I was an ex-pat I hated the word "ex-pat," and with one exception I didn't have much contact with other ex-pats. Speaking the language made a critical difference in this respect. Being an American in a country that speaks a good American language is a whole different experience than being an American in someplace like Japan or England. Although English is relatively easy to learn, I admit.
The ex-pat experience slices on a second dimension: between those who are living abroad for a set period and a set purpose, and those who are in it for the duration. After five years abroad I had an epiphany --- I had no planned exit date. Did that make me an immigrant instead of an ex-pat?
I didn't want to become an immigrant. I just felt too many ties with the U.S. of A., as increasingly insane a place as it was. I missed having the guy in the street really care who won the World Series. I missed bars with video shoot-'em-ups and jukeboxes with rap-rock. I missed the Daily Show, strong coffee, and No-Doz. And I cared, I really cared about the Big Picture stuff that happened in or to the U.S. of A. in a way that I just didn't for Mexico.
Within a year of beginning to contemplate whether "permanent expatriate" was an oxymoron or just obnoxious, I was back in the U.S. of A.
It was a quite deliberate choice.
Admittedly, I do miss the video music channels back in Mexico, and the D.F. bar scene. But ni modo. It's all worth it when the Pats beat the Colts and I'm *in* Boston. I also miss Botts Dots and I hate HATE real weather, but I'm not going back to Cali anytime soon either.
Of course, if I understand it correctly, you and Doug are in a third category: migratory expats. With the additional caveat that you can't both simultaneously decide to stop and go live at home.
Best,
Noel
Posted by: Noel at January 20, 2005 12:06 AM"The ex-pat experience slices on a second dimension: between those who are living abroad for a set period and a set purpose, and those who are in it for the duration. After five years abroad I had an epiphany --- I had no planned exit date. Did that make me an immigrant instead of an ex-pat?"
Thanx, Noel, that's what I was just thinking. I booked the return ticket when I left my country for the first time. The second time I didn't. I can imagine anything: Staying here, going back, going to a third country.
I have international friends here, but my closest friends were born and raised in Vienna. And it's they whey I am still here.
When I go home I don't visit everybody anymore. I refuse to and pick somebody different each time I ago. That way we all enjoy it more.
Posted by: novala at January 20, 2005 07:15 PMPound for pound - more honey and cream than stateside.
If this post's author is married to a guy who actually knows what "Hafa dai" means, then I can confirm the existence of a silver lining to the cloud that hangs over the lives of Ex Pats as they so often must part from communities and friends they treasure. You see, I too am an Ex Pat -formerly of Saipan - who every once in while unexpectedly runs into long lost friends that I once broke bread with in an entirely different part of the world. There is something very Kismet about the experience.
Here's hoping that my instincts are correct and it is about to happen again.
Dovidenja,
John Furnari
Posted by: John Furnari at January 21, 2005 06:03 PM