Becoming an "Unknown”,  Becoming “Disown”….. 

Realities of an expat life

Any idea what's expat life really like after the initial enthusiasm fades away? For many Sri Lankan citizens living abroad, being Sri Lankan is about so much more than simply being resident in our country. It doesn’t matter where they live, Sri Lankan's are still a part of Sri Lankan society, retaining strong cultural and social ties with their families at home and helping to build businesses abroad. For some of us it’s a big adventure comes after ages of researching, planning and dreaming of living somewhere faraway place.  For many of us it is a job transfer or a new opportunity. But living the expat life is not always glamorous as most of us thinking.  

Over the past eight months different people including my friends, students, co-workers and sometimes unknown people from different backgrounds from different continents have questioned me about the experience or the realities that I have discovered living in a new country.

Some directly asking: How I am making a life for myself in Bangladesh? How is my job? Was I scared to give up my career and my entire life to start this new journey? How did I make my mind finally to make this big move? And how my family and close once reacted to my decision?

Its similar the questions came from all the parties. It’s similar the way they word it. It’s similar the curiosity they have to know my answers. Even these people are from different parts of the world, literally hundreds and thousands of kilometers away from each other and even some of them have no clue about each other they all had the same enthusiasm to know what I am going to say. So I think it’s time for me to open my heart about how I really feel about being an expat.

I’ll try to be honest as much as possible in shearing my experience. These are all my personal experience and how I perceive things, people and incidents not the general experience of all expats living in Bangladesh. There are people who are living here nearly 20 years and they might have totally different experience than mine.  But I am sure that we all have/had the same natural reactions to all this worry, confusion and anxiety of spending first few months here. And I am sure we all had that one gut feeling in our heart when we made this decision. That this is my “Big Move” the life changing adventure where I am going to change my entire life or that I am going to find something new.

After completing my higher studies to a certain extent and after passing few life events I really wanted a break. I was wondering that is this the life I wanted.  Automatically it came in to my consciousness that I can do better and this is not exactly what I wanted. I felt an explainable void and an indescribable need for new air, new scenery, new people and new everything. And to be quite honest I didn't want some of the part of the life that I had and I really wanted to get over from those such as my boasting neighborhood, from dirty office politics, badly from cracked horrible female bosses and from so called Sri Lankan social and culturally timid mindset. Though if it meant giving up a lucrative career, a strong financial and professional safeguard and for a certain extent all my social and family interactions and bonding. I was prepared to start all over again and was willing to start again from the beginning. I am sure most of you will agree with me and u might say “yes that is ok”.

This is about the temporary expats in South East Asia and Middle East region. Those who have rented their houses and properties back in homeland and who have doing jobs in somewhere in Middle East or South East Asia with the hope of they will go back to their mother land one day. It’s an excellent opportunity in life for kids to experience the life through different eye. They can experience the new culture and the vibrant colors in life but it’s almost a night mare for adults who are stepping to a completely new place in the middle of life with a fully blank state. In that case few of following incidents are highlighting.

• If the country is commonly use English as a communication medium then that will be little bit of relief for any expat at the beginning. Because we all have common idea of how to manage things and where we can get language help when necessary. But if you move to a country, where you don't know the language, you will feel as if you're starting life over from the beginning of adulthood. It’s like going back to school to learn things again to earn credentials to open up the work possibilities of your adopted homeland. So it’s a must that u need to take language lessons and collecting the essential ingredients to hold on.
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• Moving to the newly found job: Your way of “earning for living”. That is hilarious and jobs are jobs in everywhere and bosses are bosses all the time. Even if you cross oceans and risk every single thing in your life, job having the same nature in everywhere. It might be worse than your previous experience because your new job prospects might not only consider the local context but also be very alarming about international context such as global financial crisis and commercial trend changes.  So now you are a part of a global problem not a local problem.  Try not to trick yourself into thinking, "I hate my desk job so I'll move abroad and never enter an office again." Or the other great misconception: you'll walk right into the same standard of living that you enjoyed back home. In reality, you will probably revert to 10 years earlier and plant your roots in the soil of a younger you and you will work 12 hours a day and 6 days per week. You will most probably regain your standard of living but it’s questionable that you really earning the self-satisfaction you badly wanted.
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• If you come to a country where you don't speak the common languages, then you will not only prepare yourself from the beginning but you'll also have no friends or family. If you're like me, you'll know no one, not a single soul, when you walk off the plane. Periods of extreme loneliness are unavoidable. The key is to get yourself out of your apartment and just keep going: get up each day, and get outside no matter how frightening it is to walk into a world of confusing jumble all around you. Most of us are here leaving family and friends back home. We are watching their lives move on through FB and Viber, emails and telephone calls. So we can’t them to visit us whenever we want. We need to be prepared ourselves to miss the close ones and the things we love to do.
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•  You need bit of flexibility. You will need bit of humbleness and modesty because becoming a part of another culture is quite different experience thus it’s a unique process. You have to redefine your set mindset about people, culture, and society, how life should be lived, and your own perceptions about yourself. Just imagine an individual who have experience the love, affection every day then just woke up another day in a small apartment or a studio, in a strange place where nobody knows that you exists.

At the end once the excitement and fear is over we all hope we will start a new life and we will be free from our old one but that is wrong. We all will still wake up with ourselves everyday with all the memories of what we have taken away and trying to run for an escape.  Your broken relationships, missing children, memory of someone so close died so young, broken promises, messed up career, your family: those things will not disappear magically or within a second. It's easy to get lost 2000 or 4000km away from everyone you've ever known. And you will get homesick, even if it's your family from whom you've run away. With time sometimes you'll build a new family, you will meet new friends, find a better job than what you did previously, and live a life. But remember you still have to clean the bathroom floor every once in a while, you have to mob the house every week, take out the garbage in the morning and pay the bills no matter where you live. Life, at some basic level, is the same everywhere.

Starting over at 25 or 45 or 55 after your retirement - young is as much about realizing more of yourself than it is about seeking new adventures in a new, unknown, unfamiliar far off destination. Always…always you have to let go of your former built up self to an extent and you have to allow changes to happen, all the while holding on to what is essentially you. What you are giving up in progression and stability, you are gaining in life experience and adventure. That's the reality of it. And we tolerate all unpleasantness while hoping that time heals all wounds.