expert novice

All these moves have made me practically expert at being new, so wonderfully experienced at being inexperienced.  Irony and contradiction, both. I’m writing to work my own way through how I’m feeling about the latest bout of repatriation and maybe help some others who are trying it for the first time. It’s the new ones who look for input from the outside and thus will follow whatever tags led them here. Those of us on our umpteenth new home know we have to look inside ourselves, there's more help there than we might imagine.

The circumstances of being new have shifted since my own first moves. Starting out in Kosovo, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Bangladesh, my initial contacts were torn stubs of paper with scribbled telephone numbers. Vietnam, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Doha had various levels of online groups to join.  With this one somehow I’m back to having no online group and with social media-based connections that seem more flimsy than those penciled phone numbers.

It’s hard every time in new ways, partly because the kids and I are all at different stages in our lives, partly because moving is hard work, no matter what. I read this article recently that I liked, about how it feels to repatriate to a place that you felt was home and how it won’t be, it can’t be. Making it work requires lowering and shifting expectations. I do love it here and I suspect the bouts of struggling with it are just phases. I’m hoping intensely that it’s just a phase. Isn’t that the base of so much? Trying to decide if whatever you’re dealing with is worth it to work hard on and pass through or if you should abandon it because staying’s worse than leaving. Three years is our max in one place, let's see if we can beat that this time around. 

What follows are some loose suggestions and ideas for you new ones and you experienced ones who want to commiserate, and for me to read every once in awhile if I'm losing perspective. Really they apply as much to new expat homes as to being a repat, though remember that as a repat community-building and friend-making go soo muuucchh mooorrrre sloooooooowwlllllyyyy than in the speedy expat world.

Rules

There’s only one, with a twist: accept all invitations, complicated by the combination of remembering that you don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not while trying to keep conversations going with people to see where connections can be made. I suppose it comes down to “stay interested but don’t lie.”

Choices:

A few weeks ago I had a choice: drive a couple of hours to go skiing with people I have known for a long time, with whom I know I have things in common, or go to a village event where it’s likely I will meet new neighbors and just maybe some of them will eventually turn out to be friends. Against my own rules I opted to meet up with the old friends and was glad. We skied, we caught up, and I reconnected with fellow Vermonters, even if they live two hours away.  Lessons: make time with people who share some of your history, and break your own rules once in awhile.

Roots

I don’t think the roots are a given, that you can do those on purpose. I think those grow and then after years and years you just realize you have them.  I thought I had them here- I grew up in this state after all and worked here and finished undergrad and went to grad school here and I love it. Isn’t that enough? I’m starting to think no. On this return I’m feeling like an imposter, ready to hand in my Vermonter credentials and pretend I have to learn everything from scratch. But I shouldn’t, right? I know where maple syrup comes from and how to get around Burlington on foot, bike, and in a car. I know back roads in three counties. I remember when the Nordic ski center at Bolton Valley was a little shack with a woodstove in it. It’s confusing to be both native and foreign at the same time. I’m not worrying about it too much. 

We serial expats benefit by letting go of our identities being tied to any one place, and that becomes most clear upon repatriation. There has always been some contention over who gets to be American, with the most recent arrivals being the ones who are least welcome to claim it, as though it’s a single continuum of arrival. Those of us who started here and then left and came back and left again, or stayed away for a long time, may have USA on our passports but feel less American than some who have most of their lives here and aren't yet citizens.

Reading about it

You can read all the blogs and memes you want but really you are the one who has to make it home. Reading just puts it off so don’t overdo it.

There’s a genre of repat narratives that mostly involve complaining that people don’t “get” us, that they have no interest in where we’ve been or all the places we hold inside of us, and that’s why it’s so hard to assimilate back into our home country and make friends. In my experience a good number of the people who are interested are often more interested in the story, which in Vermont just emphasizes our differences.  It’s valuable to find other ways to connect than just talking about yourself.

Finally I can’t be much help to my fellow recent repats, except for the same old thing I tell myself: that as long as you make some effort and some occasional progress, little by little the new home will feel like home eventually or you will give up and move back abroad. (we have not gotten to this phase yet, so don’t even think about starting to worry, parents and other concerned friends). Big world, lotta people, lotta possibilities, don’t beat yourself up.

a citizen of worlds

A friend posted the following video a few months ago and this was my first reaction to the post, before I even watched the video: Oh please.  Stop telling me what to think and how to say it. When I ask where are you from I want to know where you feel at home. In fact, the question I’ve acquired here in Doha is “what is your country?” which is often the limit of what our language barrier will permit, but still the beginning of connection and exchange.

That is what I thought and then I watched the video. I loved it.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. And now it’s International Week at the kids’ school again. My youngest came home with this sheet and a paper doll figure to cut out and decorate. The questions on the back of the sheet asked what language people speak in our home country, what kinds of food we like to eat there, and what special holidays we celebrate.

Forget about "Where are you from" -"What is your home country is even more difficult to be honest about. 

“We would like to help the children develop their awareness and appreciation of the diversity of the classmates with whom they work and play each day. One way of doing this is by discovering the many different countries that the children call home.”

Funny that the American school, of all schools, would try to simplify this so much- the United States is one of the hardest places to choose a national costume and one single language that people speak. The first food my daughter chose to draw in the box provided was sushi. For languages we ended up answering “English plus more than 300 others,” as we learned from a quick google search. We also learned that 14 million American households have a first language other than English. What would be our national costume? Sure we're American but we’ve lived in Vermont, Georgia, and California… Snowsuit? Jeans and a t-shirt? Gun?

“We would like to suggest that you focus on one country only. Perhaps next time your child has a homeland project to do, they can focus on the country of the parent whose culture was not explored this time.”

As if all the parents here had one homeland! As if each country had one single culture of its own. One woman I know resists the “where are you from?” question because her parents are from two different countries, she grew up away from both of those, her husband is from yet another country and they are raising their children in Doha. What is their country? Or parents could be from the same country but from different ethnic groups or within that country.  Or like Taiye Selasi, they are from countries that didn’t even exist when they were born. So many possibilities.

What if the school talked more to the kids about culture in terms of rituals and relationships? What if the worksheet said “think about where you feel like you’re from- talk to your parents about where they feel like they’re from. Where is home? What would you like to share about that place? What are you most proud of there? What are you most looking forward to doing the next time you are there? What cultural practices (foods, clothes, music, values, family traditions) have you added as you’ve lived in different places and/or met people from other cultures?”

I think we can do better. Let’s celebrate the school as an intersection of people with a vast diversity of cultural experiences and not limit that to “what country are you from?”

“She is not a citizen of the world, she is a citizen of worlds.” –Taiye Selasi

beyond belonging

This bird in the cafeteria at the kids’ school made me start thinking about belonging:

My first thought was oh no she must be miserable inside a man-made space without any other birds, she is so out of her element! Then... maybe she likes it- she’s out of the heat, has access to food and safe places to perch, maybe there are more birds living in there than I thought- who are we to say she doesn’t belong?   

The next day I went for a walk (early before the streets got too hot) and saw this: 

It was about a week after I’d returned to Doha after the summer break and it made a lot of sense. Of course I don’t belong there, obviously I belong in a place with green and hills and rain. Humans only survive in Doha thanks to air conditioning, desalinization plants, imported workers and imported food, though I’m pretty sure that’s not what they meant.

I never expected to belong in Qatar, and ultimately Qatar decides whether you belong or not anyway. There was an article this summer in the Doha News about a man who put together a film of Doha, where he was born and raised, and it described him as an expat (Qatar expat produces 'mega' time-lapse marking nations development), which was shocking to my American self. Several days later there was another article about the performance of a Qatari athlete, who will almost surely be stripped of his Qatari citizenship and sent back home to Sudan when his contract is over (Qatari athlete becomes first national to reach IAAF World Athletics Finals).

The news is full of people deciding for others whether or not they belong, for example this story about a boy with Down Syndrome who was asked to leave his school, and this story about a boy in Texas whose teacher decided he was a threat because of a science project he brought in. 

And clearly any concern I have about belonging is completely insignificant alongside the apparently never-ending crisis of refugees fleeing impossible situations around the world to seek haven in places they cannot be sure of welcome (here's an article about mixed receptions in a town in Germany). They are trading belonging for safety.  It’s completely different to be my kind of expat, because we chose this, have the resources to work with it, and know we’re welcome.

It would be such a relief to stop thinking about belonging, which implies requirements and approval by a group, and replace that with working on welcoming and including. I’d like to think we’ve moved beyond the primary and secondary school social scenes, where the popular kids decide who’s in or out, but replace "popular kids" with "rich countries" and it just keeps continuing (read Who Qualifies for Asylum, from the New York Times)  On a personal level, it’s taken longer to stop caring whether people will accept me or not than I thought it would, especially with this moving every few years and having to start new in a neighborhood, at school, and in jobs over and over again.  Here especially the heat and traffic can be so isolating. We “non-working” expat spouses in Doha have to be deliberate about connecting with other people and so it feels like there’s much more at stake in making a positive first impression.  I don’t want to worry about how people are going to react to me as long as I'm interested and respectful, and I don’t want my kids to worry either.  I want them to care about making connections with people but not if they feel that would require presenting a fake version of themselves.  I want us all to think about how to work to make everyone feel welcome.

between worlds: remembering and forgetting

At the beginning of the summer, not long after I arrived in VT, I wrote this:

I’d forgotten what it’s like to be cold, how green the plants are, how soft grass can be on my bare feet, the beauty of sun streaming across the green hills and fields and lighting up a dark thunderhead. So much color.

I’m remembering what it feels like to walk on the street in shorts and tank top, skin exposed to sun and breeze. Seeing my arms from shoulder to fingertip, my legs from mid-thigh down to my toes reminds me how strong they are, how much they can lift and how far they can carry me.

I’m feeling between worlds: the joy of being in the US when they make marriage legal for everyone, the horror that someone would go blow people up while they are praying in Kuwait, shoot people while they’re on vacation in Tunisia, while here I am taking advantage of a few hours of childcare to organize shelves of food and get stuff done. In Doha I can stop, read the news, have time to think about it and I have a very international community- Tunisian neighbors, friends who have lived in Kuwait. Here I am in my happiest place surrounded by green and hills but I miss my people of Doha. I just admitted for the first time that I would be sad if I heard that we weren’t returning after the summer, no matter how much I hate the traffic and the construction and the social system there, no matter that the sadness would come with relief.

And at the same time I wrote this, which I now realize applies to both Vermont home and Doha home,  especially these first days after returning:

It is so strange every time to be somewhere utterly familiar and totally foreign at the same time. These first days back in a previous home are so hard and so illuminating.

And then today, a week after arriving back in Doha to start our third and final year here, I wrote this:

I’m remembering again how it feels to be shut up inside on our life support of AC because outside the sun is trying to kill us. I’m remembering how covering up isn’t simply out of respect for my hosts, it’s also just good sense in this climate. I’m remembering that there are other colors for the sky than blue- dimmer, dustier colors.  Soon enough I’ll forget that clouds and hills can be normal too and how you have to think ahead about dew if you don’t want your shoes and cuffs all soggy for the rest of the morning. I’m already forgetting about what it feels like to have a constant stream of company in my kitchen, people who thank me for my work and offer to wash dishes. I’m remembering the peace and quiet of my house, cooking for five instead of forty, with the view out the window of my daughter in capris and a t-shirt sitting on the curb with girls in abaya and hijab.

I've realized that there is more about Doha that I liked than I realized.  I worked so hard at Doha this year. The summer before this one I went to Vermont with such relief to be away for a couple of months- I needed a full-on Doha-detox and I got it, so much so that I had a very difficult time returning. This past summer I missed it. The places that are the most challenging become important to us in their own way. Two years ago, after I’d only been there a month or so I posted this on Facebook: 

I still hate malls, traffic,  and indoor life in Qatar but there are also, surprisingly, plenty of things that I like, projects I’ve started and to which I looked forward to returning.

They’re impossible to compare, my Doha life and my Vermont life, but each one makes me appreciate aspects of the other, especially at these points when I haven't quite shed the one I was just in or fully rejoined the one to which I've returned.  

The African Village

The first time I went to the waterpark here I noticed that the area for the smaller kids is called the African Village.  It has a shallow pool and slides and sprayers with a wild animal theme: elephants, snakes, giraffes, a frog. One of the elephants has on a blond wig and a blue bikini.  Another wears a fez. Another, the one with the biggest smile, doesn’t wear anything at all. It’s a mythical version of Africa that has friendly wild animals and bright colors, but no humans apart from the lifeguards.

If this was at an American waterpark someone would sooner or later take a picture and name and shame to point out, and rightly so, that Africa is a huge continent with numerous complex and diverse human societies, and that making this corner of the park a jungle-themed  "African Village" was just another in a long line of ways in which Africa is marginalized, minimized, and generally disrespected on a global level. There would be an active campaign to put it out of business or at least rename and redesign it. There are so many layers to be offended about if you feel like causing a ruckus.

I've also noticed that most of the lifeguards at the water park are African, though I don’t know their nationality. A few days ago I went back with my kids and made a point of asking the lifeguard by the African Village one of the most common questions in Doha: “what is your country?” She said Kenya. I asked her how she felt about the African village, if it resembled her home at all, whether she lived in a city or a more rural place. I expected her to be offended by the Aqua park’s representation of an entire continent as a few wild animals. She said no, she didn’t mind that it bore no relation to her home- she was happy to see something that mentioned Africa at all. 

I agreed with her that it must be nice to have a pleasant reference to one’s home, as an American bomber roared overhead after taking off from the nearby air base.