Expat Life

When one thinks about the life of an Expat, usually the things that come to mind are living in an exotic location, travelling the world, experiencing “culture” etc…

The past month has probably been one of the toughest months here as far as the realities of an expat life.  On the 11^th an Australian Expat worker here was killed by gunfire while he was riding down the road from the mountains on his way to the lowlands.  The shooting happened in the dark, when unknown assailant(s) with unknown motives fired on his vehicle…probably randomly.  The man that was killed left behind a wife and a newborn daughter.  The following day, a company security officer was shot and killed in the same area while trying to find the shooter from the previous day.  On the third day after the shooting, the body of a policeman was found where the firefight happened the previous two days.

Since the shootings, people have been arrested in connection with the shootings, but the shootings did not stop until a week after the arrests.  The police and military have been unable to apprehend the people shooting at them and at civilians, though there have been many firefights and engagements between them.  In order to protect us, the company we work for closed off the road between the highlands and the lowlands for over two weeks.   With exception to a few helicopter flights, no one could get in or out.  Earlier in the week, the company opened up the road for travel by bus and for supply trucks, mainly because there had not been any further shooting incidents.  Even with a resumption of supply trucks coming up, the supplies up here have been dwindling, and will probably take a few weeks to get caught back up.  We aren’t starving by any means; there is food available…just not much selection.  That coupled with the mental strain of being stuck in the highlands, even though we have no plans to go out in the near future…makes things difficult. 

To be frank, the crime rate here at the job site is probably lower than what you would find in most places in the “civilized” world.  We do feel safe here in the highlands, if we did not, we probably would be trying to go somewhere else.  The difference is how things are handled, and the fact that there is little you can do about the situations that arise.  It is more likely that I could get shot at in some parts of Los Angeles than here.  The difference is that I could attempt to defend myself and my loved ones if I was in the U.S., here only the “bad guys” and the military/police can have weapons.  If I were in U.S., I would have a pretty good feeling that it wasn’t rogue members of the military or police that were shooting at me, and also feel pretty comfortable that the local authorities would find and prosecute the actual people that were shooting at me.  That's not necessarily a valid assumption here.  Being an expat means that you have to accept that you have very little control over the things that you normally would back home, and not everything is as it seems.  You learn that there are many reasons why third world countries…are third world countries.  It’s not always due to oppression from “evil” Western governments or companies.

Cherine and I knew what we were getting into before we came here.  We were very realistic about what life would be like, and so was the company we came to work for.  They have a vigorous screening process that people have to pass before they are accepted to come here.  The reality is that few people are willing and able for this kind of life once the novelties of “travelling” and “living abroad” wear off.  Cherine and I are still content here, it is where we are supposed to be for now (that is not to say that we haven’t had our moments). We’ve had some really good experiences, we’ve been able to do and see a lot of amazing things that we never dreamt of before we came here.  We have also had some rough times, this probably being the worst, but we would not trade these experiences for anything.  Experiences like these will not only make us appreciate what we have when we move back to the U.S., but they also help us understand what the majority of people living in the world have to put up with.  When we do leave here, we will leave as better people, and it will probably be more related to some of these dark days and less related to some of the obvious perks of expat life.