Anatomy
Of An Ex-Pat
Thoughts On What It
Is To Be An Ex-Pat ~ By Peter Lamb
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discovered two curious facts this week. British people are moving
to foreign countries in greater numbers now than at any time since the
Second World War, and the international space station is going into it’s
third year of permanent occupancy. Taken in isolation these two facts
hardly answer life’s great questions, but together they add up to a small
revelation. Well, they did for me. They explained why I lost
valuable social points for not knowing the name of an Albanian chef.
It’s not possible
to write a short practical guide to moving abroad without simply stating
the obvious, and surely most information is location specific. I
shan’t tell you that you need drive, determination and adaptability because
you know that already. You know that talking to ex-pats (your would-be
new neighbours) and learning from their experiences is also fundamental
stuff.
But wait.
Is it fundamental stuff? Is it possible that simply talking to an
ex-pat is more difficult than it seems? If you go about it properly,
the information you’ll get from these people is priceless. But the
approach is usually handled badly. To understand why, you have to
understand ex-pat mentality.
Advice for
people thinking of moving abroad focuses on the foreignness of the new
surroundings - the legal aspects, medical, schooling and work-permits.
You are encouraged to contact ex-pats who live in the area and ask them
detailed questions. That is the extent of advice regarding ex-pats.
They are useful people. They speak your language. They have
made all the mistakes that you wish to avoid. They are a wealth of
useful information. All this is true, but what you may not realise
is that you are making contact with an extremely complex social group and
making sense of the information they give you may require a PhD in anthropology. |
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So how do
moving Britons and floating astronauts/cosmonauts explain a situation concerning
an Albanian chef? Lets examine the first curious fact. More
Britons are moving abroad now than at any time since the Second World War.
Why is that? It cannot be that Britain has suddenly deteriorated.
Greater prosperity, early retirement opportunities or travel confidence
perhaps? Or changes in technology making it possible for people to
work at a distance? I’m sure all these things play a part, but they
are not the reason. They are the means. We want to move somewhere
completely different and we always have. It’s genetic. Ask
someone if they ever wanted to be a lumberjack or sell a kidney and they
will say yes or no. I suggest that no would be the most popular answer.
Ask someone if they ever thought of moving abroad and the answer will be
yes, or a whole range of excuses why they couldn’t. Rarely do they
give a simple “no”. That would seem like they were missing some basic
human desire. Some of the oldest evidence of modern man comes from Olduvai
Gorge in Africa, dating back three million years. Without this desire
- this genetic need to move to other locations - Olduvai Gorge would be
getting pretty cramped by now. Even if we moved away simply for the
sake of elbowroom, would we really have felt it necessary to occupy the
lands within the Arctic Circle?
Why has the
international space station gone into its third year of permanent occupancy?
Will it get burgled if left unattended? Will it develop the musty
smell of an old caravan? I suspect that we humans have a genetic
need to inhabit different and preferably difficult places. Why else
didn’t the prototype Eskimos turn back at the Arctic Circle and head south?
There was plenty of room in warmer latitudes. JFK said of the race
to the moon, “We are not doing this because it is easy, we are doing this
because it is hard.”
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We
are proud of ourselves for occupying space for such a long time.
It’s difficult, and we’ve done it. And that’s what ex-pats are -
proud of themselves. Proud of being in a small select group that
is doing something that others would like to do, and fiercely proud of
all the associated difficulties. Moving a hundred miles in your own
country and surviving for ten years doesn’t impress anyone. Moving
from England to a tree house in Patagonia and surviving ten years does.
A basic need has been fulfilled: to live somewhere difficult and make a
success of it. Back home you can feel invisible. On foreign
shores you join an elite club and are qualified to use the phrase “I live
here, actually”.
Ex-pats not
only feel superior, but they increase their status by doing things the
hard way. Britons moving to Greece, Bulgaria or China score more
points than moving to France or Spain because the languages sound difficult:
we don’t normally learn them in UK schools and, the real clincher, they
have a different alphabet. Not only is it hard to speak, it’s hard
to read. People moving to France are slightly let down by several
factors. It isn’t too far away, most people know some French and
it’s easy to commute back to the UK. To make up for these embarrassing
shortfalls in the kudos rating, Francophiles buy properties with no running
water. Better still, they buy properties with no water or electricity.
A house with no roof is a good proposition, especially if the property
boasts a completely unmade track and a total absence of local amenities.
Buying an air conditioned flat in up-town Lyon isn’t a challenge at all.
The British are spending large amounts of money on properties that the
French think should be bulldozed. The French may be laughing at us,
but there are primeval factors at work. |
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These primeval
factors turn a disparate and diverse collection of human beings into a
cohesive, if not coherent, troupe. Rather like monkeys. There
is a structure to it, a hierarchy. Competition is rife. Two
opposing forces are at play. A common language and shared nationality
force them together in an alien environment, and the difficulties of sharing
a life with so few people not of their own choosing tries to force them
apart. When you ask an ex-pat for advice, you are not simply asking
a normal person for directions to the post-office. You are asking
to join the group, and he may give two different people two different pieces
of advice. An ex-pat has formed very strong social bonds with a select
group of people who, most of the time, he finds irritating. Think
of it this way. If you plan to move to Bulgaria, don’t think that
you are going to live amongst Bulgarians. You are going to live amongst
maybe ten strangers from your own country who have also chosen to live
in Bulgaria. That is a different situation.
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hierarchy of the group depends on many factors. First and foremost
is how long they have lived there. Someone who has been there for
ten years will be higher up the scale than someone who has been there for
only two. That is why ex-pats are so helpful to newcomers.
Newcomers put them all up a grade. It would seem impossible then,
for a two-year person to outrank a five-year person. Not so.
There are many tricks available. One is the language trick.
A grasp of the language can send you straight up the scale and seriously
annoy other people. Picture the scene. A group of ex-pats in
Greece are sitting drinking coffee and one mentions that he’s popped out
to his nearest skoopythenikes and, well, would you believe it, it wasn’t
there! Heaven’s, they all exclaim, and raise their eyes as though
they know what a skoopythenikes is. They immediately rush home, thumb
through the dictionary and inwardly fume at how someone who’s been there
less time than them seems to know more Greek. The simple technique
of learning a word for a totally obscure object throws the whole colony
into panic and the subtleties of social ranking suddenly change.
A skoopythenikes is, by the way, a wheelie-bin. |
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Another way
to score social points is to claim a greater number of friends among the
indigenous population. Get invited to a local wedding and your fellow
countrymen will speak of you in revered, hushed tones. They speak
of you, but may never again speak to you. If locals acknowledge you
but not another ex-pat, you gain points. That is how I lost points
by admitting that I didn’t know an Albanian chef. I hadn’t appreciated
how important it was. I had slipped down a snake in this game of
snakes and ladders by failing to integrate fully into the local community.
Language is
hard. Integrating into the local community is hard. Getting
things done is hard. An ex-pat will grab any chance he can to outdo
his competitors is this genetic game of “doing difficult things well”.
If you consider
the anthropology of an ex-pat colony when seeking advice about your intended
new home, the information and practical help they will give can make the
difference between success and failure. Never tell them that you
are fluent in the language, because they can’t play the language trick
on you. Never tell them that you have good friends among the indigenous
population because they need to have more local friends than you.
Never tell them that you spent ten years up the Amazon because that sounds
hard and you will be instantly hated. They need to be respected for
their achievements, and they will expect you to start life in this group
at the very bottom. Give that impression and they will become a formidable
force, swinging into action with help and advice. They will become
the most important, useful, and irritating part of your new life.
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