The Good Expat: 5 Steps to a Successful Expat Experience

05/07/2015
Montaigne once said: “The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts: and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.”
I’m no expert on the great art of life, but having lived on four different continents, I know that Montaigne is on to something when it comes to expat life. As an expat, you have a choice: You can be miserable because nothing in your new life works as it did before, or you can enjoy the wonder of exploring a new culture, even if it’s a culture where “just now” means “later, tomorrow, definitely not anytime soon.”

I won’t ever forget the low point of our expat assignment in South Africa. It was March 2010, we had been living in Johannesburg for a week, and I was sitting on a chair in our empty new kitchen with my head on the table, letting a wave of self-pity wash over me. The kids hated their new school. Plus, I had no car and no cell phone (and neither one seemed possible to be acquired without the other). An army of ants had marched up my arm that morning, angrily swarming out of the electric kettle as I was pouring my tea. And I had hardly closed an eye since we had arrived, because every night I was woken by a blood-curdling scream. The sound, it turned out, emanated from a flock of hadedas, a South African species of bird with vocal chords 10 times stronger than any rooster. I’d come to like them, people assured me, but I wanted to strangle them one by one. Forget the crime I’d been warned of. Getting hijacked at gunpoint sounded more promising than dealing with the non-human predators invading my house.
Thinking murderous thoughts, not pleasant ones, I was in desperate need of a good dose of Montaigne. But how to get there? What steps can you take to achieve a successful expat experience?
Step 1: Drop any pretenses about how things ought to be
“We had our best experiences when things were completely not how they should be,” says Dave Abel, whose family of five recently repatriated to the U.S. after several years in South Africa. When there was load-shedding (scheduled power blackouts by the local utility to conserve energy), he dropped his habit of working from home at night, something that would have made him uneasy back home, but became one of the most cherished parts of his day, he says.
It’s funny how taking away a convenience can lead to previously unimagined bliss. I, too, remember most fondly the days when our internet connection was down, and instead of calling the provider to complain – something I learned quickly is of little use in Africa – I would settle on a sunny lounge chair and read my book all afternoon. Pure bliss, so easy to be had, but something we almost never experience anymore due to our hectic and technology-driven lives.
Letting go of Western-style ideas of how things ought to be also helps us shed prejudices. When you’re in a new country with very different customs, you quickly realize that you know nothing. Who better to help you acquire the needed skills to navigate this new and slightly scary world than the locals who’ve been born into it? Even if some might not have a Western definition of an education, even if their English is rudimentary, chances are they still know a whole lot more than you. Let locals be your teacher. Respect them. Respect is the enemy of prejudice.
Besides, “how things ought to be” might not actually be the gold standard. Most Americans think of their country as a hotbed of convenience, but we are still clinging to the archaic custom of exchanging scribbled pieces of paper (aka checks) as a form of payment. Try that in the remotest corner of Africa when you pay the propane delivery guy, and they’ll laugh in your face and give you their bank details so it can be done electronically, 21st-century style.
Step 2: Get busy and reach out
Kobie Pretorius, a native South African who arrived in Nashville together with her husband in 1996, found herself home alone in a strange new country without a work visa, looking out the window “not recognizing one plant or bird,” she says. So she decided to do something about it and signed up for what she describes as “absolutely everything,” including nature hikes, ballet, English classes, tennis leagues, and a cooking with okra class. Her advice: soak it in, reach out, and enjoy the ups and downs. When you meet Kobie for the first time, it’s impossible not to be infected by her energy, her curiosity, and her zest for life. As the founder of Friends of South Africa in Nashville, a thriving and growing community of South African expats from all walks of life, she seems to have a hand in almost every local happening, whether it’s a breakfast meeting with the mayor, a sold-out performance by Rodriguez (the iconic but long-forgotten musician of “Searching for Sugarman” fame), or the annual dragon boat race where her “Team Vuvuzela” has consistently been a top contender.
Getting busy and reaching out is also what pulled me out of my funk soon after that doleful morning in Johannesburg. I started talking to some parents at school, pestering them with a million questions, and before we’d even unpacked our container we’d taken scuba lessons and hit the road with a local family heading to Sodwana Bay, one of the top 10 diving locations in the world. Both scuba diving and those first friends we made became integral parts of our life in South Africa, and beyond.
But reaching out isn’t a one-way street. “A good expat knows that to get support, you have to give it, unconditionally, whether it’s going to the baby shower of the woman you just met, or offering to watch someone’s kids for a weekend,” says Jennifer Dziekan, an American mother of three who has made her home in Switzerland for the last three years. If you “know when to listen – to the shop clerk, the teacher, the bus driver, other expats,” advises Ms. Dziekan, you’ll build a good support group around yourself. And if you have to “pay it forward” because often you won’t be in the same place anymore when it comes to return the favor, that’s okay too.
Step 3. Go local
“We loved finding fellow Americans, but our experience was greatly enriched by our local friends,” says Mr. Abel. He found that his family had the best experiences when opening up to the world around them rather than “locking down” in their “expat enclave.” Like us, Dave and his wife Julie sent their three children (now 13, 11 and 9) to a South African school and “watched them become local kids with funny little accents,” as he puts it.
There’s nothing wrong with an international school, of course, but my husband and I found that the connection to the local school was the key to our happiness in South Africa. We avoided the constant comings and goings within the expat community, our kids learned Zulu and Afrikaans, and we were exposed to customs we would never have discovered on our own. You might debate whether participating in an “impala poop spitting contest” is a desirable activity, but it was certainly a memorable one.
Going local often starts with the most obvious thing: food. “If you opened an expat’s pantry and stood me in it, I could tell you within five percentage points their degree of happiness, based on their food selection,” says Ms. Dziekan. She has seen fellow Americans receive monthly shipments from Target, and more often than not, these are the same people complaining and comparing everything. Her advice: “Just try the Swiss ravioli. You’ll live without Chef Boyardee.”
Sometimes having a skill you bring from your home country can be a great way to connect locally. When trying to find a baseball team for my boys in South Africa, I stumbled upon a baseball program for disadvantaged children in Alexandra, a Johannesburg township we were warned, before our move, to never set foot in if we wanted to live. Needless to say, we lived, and my experiences driving through Alexandra – swerving around the occasional goat, chatting to the tailor who’d set up his sewing machine right on the sidewalk, and helping our team manager with “just one more errand, ma’am” to hustle up food or transport money or whatever else was needed that week – turned into my most cherished memories of our expat experience.
For some, going local isn’t much of a choice. Stephanie Bolstad, who is originally from Oregon and has lived in many places and called them home, currently lives in Umhlanga Rocks on South Africa’s eastern coast – as beautiful a place as you’ll find – with her husband and three small children. “I think I’m a little different because my spouse is South African; this isn’t a three-year commitment so I have to adapt and make the most of it,” she says. Making the most of it, to her, means being a doer, getting involved, and lobbying the local councilor to get playground equipment installed. “The grass is greener where you water it” has been a philosophy that’s served her well, she says. Is there a better sentiment about expat life?
Step 4: Write a blog
Granted, not everybody is a writer. But you don’t really have to be if you just want to share a few pictures and experiences with your friends back home. You’ll be amazed how quickly this can turn into an all-consuming hobby, if not a vocation. And if you’ve lived through any harrowing experiences, then writing can be the best (and cheapest) therapy.
When people ask me what prompted me to write a certain story, my answer is almost always: “I had a really crappy day.” Think about it: A vacation at a five-star hotel where everything goes smoothly is rarely memorable. But the time you were lost in the Namibian wilderness and had to change not one, not two, but three flat tires in one day? That story will practically ooze out of you before you’ve even stowed the jack in the trunk. The more truly awful the day, the better the story – this became my mantra as an expat blogger. We all know that trying to get a visa sorted out, applying for a driver’s license, or opening a bank account can be trying endeavors in a foreign country. But the knowledge and anticipation that they’re providing you with a great story make them so much easier to deal with. My blog gained quite a following when I reported on a succession of traffic stops, each one with some variation of a cop asking for bribes while threatening me with jail, and I began to feel perverse stirrings of pleasure each time I came across another road block, hoping, despite sweaty palms, for an even more outrageous story than the last.
Writing a blog also provides an incentive to repeat Step 3 and reach out even more, creating a self-amplifying loop of adventure begetting story. Once your readership grows, you might find yourself looking for new things to do so you can report about them, even if they take you out of your comfort zone. I don’t think I’d ever have summoned the courage for a walking tour of Braamfontein, formerly one of Johannesburg’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods, if the idea of providing my followers a colorful blog post about Johannesburg’s fabled street graffiti hadn’t been so alluring.
Step 5. Laugh often
Living in Africa, our family has learned, will infuse you with a healthy dose of humor, if you’ll only allow it. My favorite story is that of my friend Phil, who upon his return from a grueling one-week hike up Mount Kilimanjaro – Africa’s highest mountain capped by the iconic equatorial snow – was standing under the long-awaited shower back at his hotel. Alas, only a cold trickle of water was coming out and just as he wondered what else could possibly go wrong, the power went off and he was left shivering and filthy in the pitch dark. As frustrating as it was, he started laughing uncontrollably because it struck him as funny; life, really, was good! If you can cry when things are wonderful and laugh when they go wrong, you’re on the right track.
Which brings us back full-circle to Montaigne. Perhaps figuring out “the great art of life” is exactly the same as figuring out the best way to become a successful expat. Nudging our thoughts from murderous to pleasant takes repeated practice, and somehow expat life seems to provide the perfect training ground.
Those hadedas I wanted dead our first week in Africa? I did indeed come to love them. I miss their lovely wake-up call.

Fonte:http://blogs.wsj.com/expat/2015/07/05/the-good-expat-5-steps-to-a-successful-expat-experience/?mod=e2tw

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