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I suppose you could call me an expat in training. I’ve dipped my toe in by purchasing property in another country (Honduras) and have even begun to build my island dream home. But I’m years away from actually chucking it all and living there full time.
A few weeks ago, Matador Abroad featured an article called, “The Expat Conundrum: The Longer You Stay, The More you Complain.” It’s really stuck in my head, because I’ve noticed that some expat acquaintances of mine often complain about things: how hard it is to find stuff, how irritating it is when people walk so slowly and you have to get somewhere right NOW, and how some of “these people” [Hondurans] could really do better for themselves if they showed up to work on time.
With my acquaintances, I must admit that I usually keep my mouth shut when these topics come up (although the “these people” comments get me to quit the conversation immediately). While it may be easy to tell them how much they sound like hypocritical jerks who moved to a country for its laid-back vibe yet complain when things don’t conform to the rules back home, I’m not exactly in their position. But I certainly don’t want to catch that attitude when/if I become an expat myself.
That’s exactly why I enjoyed the article, as well as the comments that followed, examining whether it’s just human nature to complain—no matter where we are. But the best advice to stave off the expat conundrum was to remember why we fell in love with a place in the beginning. All the little annoyances tend to fall away in sight of the big picture. If they don’t, is it time to move on?
@Backpack Foodie & Kim:...
November 6th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
This reminds me of what Ryszard Kapuściński, on a related tangent, noted in The Other:
“[Polish-born anthropologist Bronislaw] Malinowski discovered to his amazement that the white people who had been living in the islands for decades not only lived far away from the local villages, but what they said about the native population was a load of nonsense, nothing but false, absurd stereotypes. In short, the white man in the tropics is the worst, least reliable source of information about local peoples and cultures.”
I don’t mean to bag on expats (I have, in fact, met some amazing expats in various places over the years), but there’s something about expat sub-communities that fosters a kind of self-reinforcing negativity. It’s as if there’s nothing better to do in paradise but whine about the locals.
November 7th, 2009 at 1:35 am
Yeah but, these articles on whiny expats always seem to ignore the fact that there’s not shortage of whining at home. Turned on cable news lately? Or listened to talk radio? Or gone to a PTA meeting at your kid’s school? Sure, you can say it’s silly for someone to move somewhere else and complain that things don’t work right, but odds are those people complained twice as much before they moved.
November 7th, 2009 at 11:04 am
That’s exactly why I can’t listen to talk radio. All the moaning and complaining. Yes, there’s plenty of whining everywhere we go.
November 8th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
At risk of sounding cliche, I’ll invoke the following sayings: Familiarity breeds contempt and absence makes the heart grow fonder. Once you have lived in an area long enough, the novelty wears off and all the flaws of a given area or culture come to the surface. I used to live on Miami Beach, and the pattern was the same for many newcomers. They would explore tiki bars, hit the beach constantly, ogle the models (male and female) sunbathing in various states of undress, laugh at those in the Northeast digging out from yet another snowstorm, etc. As one got used to the surroundings, the hideous traffic, noise, drunks, low tide smell, poor job prospects, and total lack of parking would come to the forefront. Somehow people missed all that when the signed the paperwork for their new condo. At the same time, these newcomers would eventually miss their prior home’s public transit (Miami’s was awful), honest city workers, decorum in politics (even NYC was more sane politically than the Miami area), etc. I was a guilty of this as any of my friends, but I did enjoy my time there. Eventually I found an equilibrium and took the good with the bad.