The expat subculture or where the hell is home?

During most of my career I’ve managed to avoid what I will term as the “expat subculture” when I live and work in countries, but this time around for many reasons, which I will elaborate on in another post, I find myself mingling more and more with expats from a range countries (e.g., USA, Ethiopia, Switzerland etc.) and getting to know how they operate and network with each other. Yesterday, I went out to lunch with several chiefs of party (read: project directors) from a mix of health and agriculture projects. All of these guys were in their late 40s to early 60s and between them had covered several continents and many countries during the span of their careers. Interestingly enough, about ¾ of the conversation revolved around their experiences in Latin America and who had worked in what USAID mission back in 1990 blah, blah, blah.

After 15 minutes of bemused observation I finally interrupted their "Remember back in Rio?" conversation and asked them why they were in Zimbabwe when it was clear that their hearts were in Latin America? All of them sheepishly confessed that they were married to Latina women they had met while working in Latin America and that they felt more connected as both Spanish and Portuguese speakers with the cultures of Latin America than they ever had in all the years they worked in Africa. When I went on to enquire how their wives liked Zimbabwe I was surprised to find that only one had relocated to Harare. The rest were mainly in the USA and one was in Costa Rica. I should note here that all of these guys are on 2 to 3- year contracts so I was a bit shocked to find that they were willing to be separated for that period of time from their families.

Later in the evening, I went to dinner with another, mostly male, contingent of expat workers, and found to my surprise the same separation phenomenon. It got me to thinking about this expat lifestyle and how the majority of us have normalized jumping on a plane and going to work 10,000 miles away for weeks, months or years at a time like it was jumping on the local commuter train and going to work in the city for the day! We are all incredibly passionate about the work we do and admittedly we are also addicted to meeting new people and working outside the comfortable framework of 9-5 office jobs. The question for me is: What personal price do you pay for this passion/addiction? Looking around at my expat colleagues, who have been in this business for decades longer than I have, they each have found their own “solution” but it comes at a high personal cost and, quite frankly, a lot of lonely nights and shots of whiskey.

I’ve only recently come to question my nomadic tendencies, passion for work, and direction in life. Question # 1: How much am I willing to sacrifice and/or compromise for another person in a relationship? This came out of a situation where I found myself willing to do that for another person but they were not willing to take any risk or compromise any part of their life for me. Question #2: How much do I want to be rooted and where do I want to be rooted? This came up very recently when I started to date an American guy is who is deeply rooted in Southern California. Suddenly having to say “Sorry, I’ll see you in a month” took on a whole new meaning, even though this person totally respects the passion I have for my work. I don’t have any answers to these questions right now and perhaps I’ll just keep muddling on until I find a “solution” but my encounters with expats here have made me sure of one thing: I refuse to spend many lonely nights sitting alone and sipping whiskey all for the love of my job. Fuck that.