On Being an Expatriate - Part 1

I am an expatriate (expat), a person who lives in a country that is not his native land, a country in which he is not a citizen. Many people choose to live this way at some points in their lives, some for almost their entire lives. While most expats are just ordinary people, some very well-known people have been expats at some points in their lives. 

The Famous and Not-so-Famous

For example, the American author Ernest Hemmingway lived in Paris, while his contemporary, Henry James, chose to live in England. American actor Johnny Depp splits his time between France and the Bahamas, and British actor Roger Moore (James Bond of the 1970s) has lived in Switzerland for years. His predecessor as James Bond, Sean Connery, left his native Scotland for the more agreeable weather of Spain and then the Bahamas. American actor and producer Orson Welles went into self-exile in Europe for much of his life.

Those are just a few examples of famous expats. There are many others.  But the majority of expats are not famous at all. Since the second half of the 20^th century, more people have become expats for business reasons. I knew a number of guys – Americans and Australians – who chose to live in Peru or elsewhere in South America, mainly because of the work opportunities they had in engineering, environmental science or other fields related to mining. As you might expect, many met and married local citizens and decided to stay for love.

Why Live so Far from Home?

So, besides strictly for business, why do people choose to live an expatriate life?  For many, it is the lure of curiosity and adventure.  It is interesting to see new places, experience new climates and geography, get a feel for different cultures and ways of seeing the world, and of course, to meet and get to know diverse kinds of people.

Some thrive on the challenge of overcoming language barriers and cultural unfamiliarities to make their way. It bores them to do things the same old way at home. When they get to know a place too well, they might again feel the need to move on to a new place with new customs and new challenges.

There are those who decide to live in another country because they are fed up with their own country. Usually it is because the government has gone in a direction that they find distasteful. Many of these are people who put a high value on personal freedom, and when they feel that liberty is being suppressed at home, they seek it elsewhere.

A number of people leave their native lands because they feel lost in some way. They feel that they don’t exactly fit in or that there is something important missing from their lives. And their search to “find themselves” spurs them to see if their answers might be discovered in a mysterious foreign land.

A lot of famous expats have been artists or writers in search of inspiration or ways to expand their creative perspectives. Hemmingway might never have produced such significant works if he hadn’t spent his years as an expat in Europe. And I suppose a lot of hopeful artists and writers live the expat life seeking similar inspiration.

In more recent years, most expats are people who have been sent to overseas locations by their companies, or who took jobs with companies in foreign lands. A number of American and European executives and technical experts live in China or other countries. And the vast majority of the population of the thriving metropolis of Dubai is made up of expatriates from countries like India, Pakistan and the Philippines.

Expat or Immigrant?

Expatriates don’t give up their native citizenship; if they do that, they become immigrants. This is why we normally think of expats as those from advanced countries who live in less developed ones. People who go the other way are almost always immigrants looking for a better life. 

But an expat could well be someone from one advanced country, say, Canada, choosing to live for a time in an equally developed country like Japan, Germany or New Zealand. In fact two of the top expat destinations are Germany and the UK. And at the same time as the UK is a top expat destination, Brits are among the most common nationalities living as expats in other countries.

My Curious Case

So I am an expatriate. I’ve gone to some great lengths since early 2013 to be able to stay in Ukraine legally, but I am not about to give up my USSA citizenship. Things may have degenerated a great deal under the current socialist regime back there, but I have confidence that the nightmare will end eventually and my homeland will bounce back (meaning I’ll be able to drop the second “S”).

So I do expect to return… someday. Perhaps next year, maybe the year after. I could decide not to return to Ukraine from my vacation to Colorado next month. Who knows? Anything can happen.

But WHY am I an expat? Which of the reasons I listed apply to me?  Do any of them apply? Maybe I have a unique reason. Or maybe it’s some combination. Or maybe I don’t have a reason – maybe it’s just a matter of circumstance. Sometimes I think that I had a reason at first, but now I’m just here because I am here, and it seems to work. Or maybe I just haven’t thought of a better alternative recently.

Living Abroad

I’ve spent a good deal of my adult life outside the USSA. My first experience was living for 18 months on the lush, tropical island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t exactly an expat life, however, because I was assigned there when I was in the U.S. Navy and lived most of the time on a Navy base (although I did live off-base for a few months in a little village). Plus, Guam is an American territory, so although the culture and people are quite different from what I had known before that, it was officially still the United States.

But those 18 months were an amazing experience. I changed so much during that time, partly because of living there but mostly because of events that happened around me. I probably had more experiences and lived life more fully – for better or worse – during that time than during any other period before or since. It certainly gave me an appetite for living in a totally different kind of environment.

After a year and a half spent mostly in California and Texas, I embarked on my six-year assignment to Japan. Again, this was not a true expat experience. I was still in the Navy and lived mostly on military bases. I did interact with local people quite a bit (I even taught English) and had a number of Japanese friends. But everything I needed, I could get on the American bases, any problems could be solved by the American authorities, and my usual, day-to-day life was pretty much American.

Again, an awful lot happened during those six years, and the experience changed me in many ways. Both of my daughters were born there. I climbed to the top of Mt. Fuji (twice) and spent 10 days motorcycling alone around the northern island of Hokkaido. And I lost a dear friend in a stupid, horrific car crash. I had a lot of highs and some terrible lows.

After a long stint living in Colorado (which is still mostly American) broken up by a couple of years in Massachusetts (which I think is still fairly American), I began working periodically in South America, mostly in Peru. Usually, these were working trips of about two or three weeks, but there was a time in 2004-05 when our team had an apartment in Lima, and I spent a month or more at a time.

I also had the opportunity to travel far and wide across Peru and to visit other places, like Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. I experienced the thin air high in the Andes, found myself surrounded by a huge herd of llamas in a high Andean valley, ate alpaca on a stick, braved the cold and snow of the windswept Patagonian plain, soaked up the sun on a Chilean beach in Jaunary (their summer), and attended an amazing, all-night Peruvian birthday party. This was closer to the expat experience, but because it was short-term, and I still maintained a home in Colorado, it was not truly the expat life.

It has been in Ukraine that I have truly become an expat. Between May 2007 and May 2008, I spent about half my time in Ukraine, and since May 2008 I have lived in Ukraine exclusively with only a couple of vacation trips back to the USSA to visit family and friends. That’s more than six years. Some of my closest friends are here, my work is here and my community is here.

It hasn’t always been easy. In fact, at times, it’s been very tough. But I’ve grown a lot here (and not just around my waist), and I know that I am a richer, wiser and better person for the experience. At this time, it’s hard for me to imagine living anywhere else. Yet I sense that my time here might be very close to the end.

What’s Next?

Of course, it usually IS hard to imagine something else until you have made the change and experienced it. I’ve thought about returning to the USSA, but maybe not until I can remove that extra “S.” And I’ve also thought that maybe I’d like to move to another European location. I’ve long dreamed about trying Ireland, and from my visits, I know that Switzerland is nice. But… I have no idea what I would do for a living in either place (or in the USSA, for that matter). Thus, I remain in Ukraine, at least for the time being.

Several times this year, Ukraine’s turbulent troubles have had me considering whether it was time to go. At one point in the spring, I even started making some contingency plans, because it wasn’t looking good in this part of the country. But the Kharkiv region has managed to remain calm, even as Russia and their “separatist” surrogates have brewed up a terrible war to the east of us.

Thus far, it has seemed that the danger has been kept far enough to the east that I don’t really need to feel any urgency about it. But things can change, so I do keep my eyes open and stay abreast of the latest news.

But even with all of this, I still think about the future here and what I can do to improve my work and life. I’ve been thinking about how to improve my own teaching skills, expand the reach of what I do, and bring new vitality to one of my client programs. And I’ve been considering how to renew my writing work, which has languished badly. More frequent blog writing has been a step in that direction.

There are many factors to consider in deciding “what’s next.” Perhaps the most important of these is people: family and close friends. But you can’t please everyone, so you just have to find the right balance. But most important, you have to do what’s best for yourself. That might mean staying here for years to come, or it might mean just not returning from my planned visit to the USSA in September. I'll know when I know.

Pros and Cons of the Expat Life

There are so many things to say on this subject. And this post is already quite long enough. So I’ll have to leave that for another time (Part 2). Actually, that was supposed to be one of the main themes of this blog, and I haven’t written too much about it. So I need to get cracking. I have started writing a piece about Ukraine (or maybe it will be about Kharkiv), that I am tentatively calling “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” It’s sort of a cliché name, I know, but it is very fitting.  That will be coming soon.

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