Wish I Was There..........

Did you hear that the Argentinean Government said that the English-born priest Williamson would have to leave the country within 48 hours and return to the UK because he’d made statements denying the Nazi holocaust? They put him on a plane and sent him straight to London yesterday.

Apparently today the local TV channels and newspapers have been flooded by thousands of other British citizens saying they were prepared to make similar statements denying the holocaust if the Argentinian government would help them to leave the country as well.

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Today I went with Daniela to a doctor’s appointment. Whilst we were seated waiting in the crowded reception area, Daniela whispered to me that there was a guy next to us who looked just like one of those crazy mass-murderers that you know from the movies. I looked to my immediate right and saw a man with crazy frizzy hair, bloodshot staring eyes who was sweating profusely whilst rocking slightly back and forth and whispering under his breath. Yep, I thought, he really does look just like a mass murderer. John Malkovich eat your heart out.

I turned back to Daniela and whispered “Yea, what crazy hair!”

She looked surprised and said “Hair? But he’s bald!” And cleverly pointed with a hidden finger to another man, seated to her left who was very, very bald and extremely frightening.

Ah yes, I thought. Argentina. Where else could you find more than one person looking like a psychopathic mass murderer in one Doctor’s surgery?

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Today’s entry is a travel blog with a difference. It’s not about how wonderful a time I’m having. Instead I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve as I share my frustrations at settling into life here in Argentina and face up to rolling waves of homesickness.

The travellers curse, they say, is to never feel settled in one place. As soon as the sufferer has been in one place for any amount of time, they feel more and more unsettled until one day they decide to up sticks and travel again.

I want to propose another curse, not the traveller’s curse, but the curse of the person who wishes to live in other countries and absorb their cultures, as I have done off and on for nearly twenty years now. It’s the curse of the long-term ex-pat.

I’ve lived and worked in Israel, Australia, Germany, Italy and now Argentina as well as the UK over the past twenty years. Each and every one of these countries has enriched me, added elements to my lifestyle, likes and dislikes, or helped me acquire language skills, meet my wife, have a daughter and start a new job teaching English. I’ve enjoyed the snow of the Alps and the summer sun of the Mediterranean, swum the great barrier reef, camped out in the desert and enjoyed Munich’s famous Oktoberfest. All sounds great, doesn’t it?

I feel that I have strings to my bow now which I’d have never had if I’d remained in the UK and hadn’t mixed with foreign people and learned from them. I’ve been very open to learning from people and situations in the countries I’ve lived in. For example, my DIY skills came on a lot while I lived in Italy from doing up old houses which I’d bought. My Mediterranean cooking isn’t bad either. Try my pesto.

However, at the moment I’m having big problems settling into life in Argentina and this is leading me to think long and hard not just of the great advantages of living abroad after many years of doing so, but also the disadvantages.

Most of us are familiar with problems that Brits have when living abroad, from programmes such as ‘Home in the Sun’. These problems are usually down to unrealistic expectations and culture shock. Normally a group of Brits go abroad thinking it’ll be all wine and parties and instead find it’s about hard work learning languages and adapting to other people’s cultures.

My problems are similar, but different due to the length of time that I’ve lived outside of the UK, nearly 10 years now. During this time I’ve already settled pretty successfully into Italian life and now I’m trying to do so here in Buenos Aires. My ‘veteran’ status brings some unusual and very specific problems.

Let me explain. I’ve lived abroad for so long, that when I get homesick and go back to the UK I soon realise that I’m missing a memory, not the present day reality. The UK’s changed as a country, my friends are mostly married and/or have their own kids and a host of practical problems. They have also moved on and changed (although the old friends are always the best ones-thanks). Although I love spending time there, after a short time in the UK I’m aware of why I chose to move away and reject the prospect of a secure but stressfully boring life as a local authority social worker, because I can see that Britain has severe limitations for me. When I lived there I was always amazed that other people couldn’t see its weaknesses (not just the weather, but peoples attitudes mainly) and living abroad has reassured me that almost all of the rest of the developed world shares my previously held opinion of the UK. Having said that, especially in Italy, people like and respect the UK greatly. They have a balanced, critical view of the country.

Living away from the UK has shown me that we (the Brits) are often violent, bigoted and snobby. We're pretty repressed at times and can act like barbarians, too. We are extremely obedient. I'm being very hard here and generalising greatly, but I want you to know that I'm also proud of being British (and English) and like plenty of things about my fellow Brits. We believe in rules, drive in a reasonably safe manner, have a strong sense of fairness and justice (I really like that) and usually think a bit before opening our mouths. Our sense of inferiority which we have towards our continental neighbours is probably based on a realistic assessment because they’re often more knowledgeable and cultured than we are-due to no fault of our own but because we’ve been brainwashed into believing that we’re superior to them and don't like to learn about any other countries if they haven't ever been part of our empire or don't speak English as a first language.

While living in both Australia and Germany I realised that they had their appeal but also great limitations. Australia has the sun, but there’s more to life than that, surely? The culture is very Anglo-Saxon. Germany is great, but I feel so sorry for the Germans! What a heavy responsibility they have having to plan everything in such detail (even their holidays are worked out to the minute) and be so rational all the time. I respect them greatly but my God, I’d like to snap them out of it. Italy is a wonderful country full of lovely, charming people but you have to work bloody hard there to survive and risk dying in the process. It's such a paradox. Many Italians are busy trying to be more sly than the others and it holds the country back, it really does. They have no sense of society beyond the family and if you accuse one of them of being sly they will say ‘thanks’, because for them it’s a compliment!

And in all of these countries, if one wishes to settle in, as I’ve done with various degrees of success or failur in my time , one must adapt to the culture and customs of the locals. This process of adaptation is the most tiring part. It’s not just linguistic, about learning the language, although that is in itself a huge challenge. It’s about living life constantly going uphill, not able to do things that come naturally to you, but having to start from scratch and learn how to do things that the locals make seem easy but are actually skills or knowledge learned over many, many years or indeed generations.

This process requires a great deal of energy and because of this is probably a young person’s game. I’m not sure that it can be done too many times by one person, unless they’re truly passionate about living in a foreign country. I was passionate about living in Italy and that gave me a huge amount of enthusiastic energy o help me make a success of things. Italy is still the only foreign country in which I’ve lived where I’d ever consider living again.

What I’m trying to explain is the curse of the long-term ex-pat, to learn languages and heaps about other cultures but never play a game at home in front of his or her own supporters. Always playing away and, if he or she is lucky, making do with the small but vocal support of small band of close family, friends and colleagues, defying the elements to cheer them on in the away end. It’s about constantly striving to understand others, without necessarily being understood oneself. About gratefully accepting any crumbs of their own culture, be they premiership football matches on TV, emails or phone calls, thankfully and with teary-eyed nostalgia.

But the curse of the long term ex-pat means that he or she recognises this nostalgia for what it is, a distortion of reality. The inexperienced traveller, before acknowledging their traveller’s curse for what it is, will wallow in their nostalgia before happily going home and making another ill-fated try at starting over. The long-term ex-pat has to face up to the chilling reality, based on years of experience. He or she knows solution doesn’t lie in milking the nostalgia, nor in a return to a home reality that no longer exists.

No, the long term ex-pat has to accept that they are a stateless citizen, who belongs both to everywhere they’ve lived and will ever live, but also fundamentally to nowhere in particular. Ask them where their home is and they won’t know how to answer, because they don’t have a real sense of home. The long-term ex-pat has to accept homesickness like a surfer accepts waves, they come and go but never last for long.

These thoughts remind me of the old poster from the UK in the 1940s that’s recently become popular as the credit crunch makes itself felt, the one that says “Keep calm and carry on”. That’s exactly what the long-term ex-pat must do when homesickness strikes. No dramatic changes, knee jerk reactions. Remembering that it’s an occupational hazard that can only be permanently cured by moving back to Cleethorpes.

Editor's comment: Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to apologise for the negative nature of the comments in this blog entry. Just to say that the next entry will be much more positive and optimistic. Of course, people who travel and live in foreign countries have a wonderful lifestyle and are always truly happy and contented. They are 100% happy all of the time and so of course they should always write about how wonderful a time they’re having. Once again, sorry about that and it won’t happen again.