Revelations of a rogue travel writer, part II

There's a seduction to the expat life, the promise of a world filled with ... close calls with Indonesian rebels, midnight conversations about Vietnam with men who've been there, and a miraculous sense of lone-wolf independence that somehow exists alongside a uniquely intense bond among comrades.

The insider's knowledge of a strange place elevates the man abroad above the hoi polloi of his home country, and particularly above the tourist, whose appearance in his adopted country always comes as an unwelcome shock. The romantic attachment to place, even a difficult place, is almost impossible to break.

All expat life is limbo. Lurking behind every discussion, the Return Home, whether it's one or two or ten years away, provides the fundamental tension to every moment you live abroad. Then, one day, you commit to going back to the States, and you either succeed there or you don't. And if you don't, you leave once again, to roll the dice on some other place that requires of you only a passport and the gambler's faith in long odds.

- Pg. 112, Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer,
by Chuck Thompson

People at the station are starting to bring up the fact that I'm leaving soon. Actually, let me rephrase that: I'm no longer laughing dismissively when people at the station mention that I'm leaving soon. The Kalleone reporters have been spouting off about this for months, which I suppose speaks to the truth of Mr. Thompson's claim that all expat life is limbo, just a hiatus away from one's real home.

And home really does inform a great deal of your thinking while abroad, from daydreaming about events upon your return, to conversations with expats about the things you miss most. I'm trying very hard, with minimal success, not to romanticize Kitchener-Waterloo beyond anything it could reasonably live up to, so as to avoid crushing disappointment.

For me, all these thoughts of home have existed parallel to the fact I had no strong desire to actually go home; it's only been in the last week or so that I've started to feel ready to return to Canada. It has always been a return, however, that I viewed as an inevitable and pleasant experience, and it was accorded the appropriate level of thought as such.

I remember one conversation that I think illustrates nicely the bizarre intrusion of home in the midst of a very different living situation. A couple months back, sitting in our living room, Bryna, Patrick and I had a very important, hour-long discussion. About hamburgers.

Merits of the Wendy's Spicy Baconator were weighed against the entire Harvey's fleet. It was generally agreed that A&W makes a damn fine burger, albeit at the highest cost in the fast-food business of dead cow. Talking to West Coasters brought with it fond remembrances of my January '07 dalliances with Vancouver's Fatburger. And I ultimately concluded that I still won't eat ground chuck from McDonald's.

Indeed, this was a conversation of near critical importance. Three of my top aspirations for my return to Canada remain simply the consumption of an A&W mozza burger, a Harvey's double original bacon-cheeseburger and, alongside a cold pitcher on the Ethel's patio, the 16-oz. delight that is the Big Ethel.

And while I'm sure the joy of my 'return firsts' - from my first trip back to the WLUSP office, to my first game back in a Selects' uniform, to my first time seeing all my friends' lovely faces - will likely regain the familiar sheen of the commonplace remarkably quickly, that doesn't mean I look forward to them any less. Or that my colleagues and I don't talk about them often.

For, as Mr. Thompson astutely observes, ours is a strange existence. There's something peculiar about living somewhere for seven months and knowing before you even arrive that you will never truly define it as home. And yet simultaneously taking it as an affront when someone assumes you don't know anything about this temporal stopover on your life's road-map.

Back in December, I encountered a Jamaican-American from New York who was hopelessly lost in downtown Freetown. He noted his strong distaste for all things Sierra Leone, complaining of unfriendly people (whom I've yet to meet) and the stifling heat. I responded with profound smugness that he was here during the two coolest weeks of the year.

It was an exchange that left me at once outraged at his nerve in decrying a country he didn't even know and delighted at not feeling like a tourist, that most unfortunate of descriptors. Nevermind the unpleasant reality that I am, in fact, little more than a tourist.

I've certainly been seduced by the allure of life abroad which Thompson speaks of. I've always wanted to travel, but viewed myself as more the type to see a place for a couple weeks and return to my charmed life in Canada. This experience has exposed the folly in that approach, as you obviously gain a much deeper appreciation for a place when you put down some roots, however tenuous. Necessity will dictate that most of my travel continues to be of the extremely brief variety, but I certainly wouldn't rule out more time spent living abroad.

About two months ago, I was offered another seven-month JHR contract, in Sierra Leone, Liberia or the Democratic Republic of Congo. From the sounds of the email, I would've even been able to skirt the application process completely. Given the uncertainty of the job market back home and the enjoyment of my time thus far, reason would dictate that I should have been mighty tempted by such an offer.

Still, I never really considered it. I responded to the email the next day, respectfully declining and promising to pass the posting on to any friends I thought might be interested. Mostly because the less talked about yet equally real rejoinder to the seduction of the expat life simply scares me too much: rootlessness.

I've come across many an expat that doesn't feel an especial attachment to home, and it's something I don't want to let happen to me. As with so many other things, my approach to living abroad is all about balance.

Part of the reason I accepted this job is that I never want to grow so attached to K-W that it prevents me from doing cool things for fear of the unknown. But in the same breath, I deem it absolutely crucial that I retain enough of a link to Ontario that I don't find myself completely alone in a country of strangers on my 35th birthday, with a long list of "friends" back home that I never even speak to anymore.

In truth, though I don't give it much credence in the more logical parts of my mind, I do have minor anxieties about the intrusion of emotional distance in some of my friendships on account of a mere eight months of not seeing each other, let alone anything longer.

So, would I consider another JHR contract in the future? Absolutely. Ideally, I'd like to take up a post on another part of the continent or even in Cambodia, as a member of the inaugural group in one of JHR's new project countries (assuming funding can be found to expand to more countries). I'd like to do it with one of my journalist friends from back home, with whom I could share a flat. And as long as we're speaking in ideals here, I'd like said hypothetical contract to coincide with another Canadian winter.

But not right away. It would have taken a considerably more lucrative opportunity to keep me out of Canada in the immediate aftermath of this contract.

Still, it is nice to know that, if the financial crisis keeps me from landing a job after the Radio Laurier gig, I can grab my passport, hop on a plane and land in a country where opportunities I could only dream of back home suddenly fall in my lap. As Canadians, we really did win the lottery at birth.

Revelations of a rogue travel writer, part I

This year, my Christmas gift to myself was a package of three CDs and three books sent via Amazon to a house in Florida owned by a woman I don't know. Fortunately, that woman happened to be the mother of one of my JHR colleagues, Kari, who then delivered said package to my house in Freetown after her holiday back home. Pretty convenient, no?

Thus far, though Jurassic 5, The Hold Steady and Bloc Party have dominated my playlist in '09, I've read only one of the books: Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer by Chuck Thompson.

The praise on the back cover invokes comparisons to another Thompson and another Chuck, namely Hunter S. and Klosterman, who himself has to be the writer most commonly compared to the late, great Gonzo king.

In fact, if the book shelf at 19 Smartfarm Rd. is any indication, anyone who dares to write in a blunt, truthful yet entertaining matter can pretty much bank on comparisons to the man who made the phrase "Fear and Loathing" famous.

This Thompson's searing indictment of the travel industry, and the drones that typically spew uninspired prose about it, is a quick and enjoyable read, and I breezed through it. But I have since returned to portions frequently, especially in the highly relatable fourth chapter, entitled "Lost Among Expats: The Shiftless, Debauched, Tedious, and Necessary Existence of Americans Abroad."

Consider this the first of many posts inspired by the writing of a man whose insights into life abroad are far more prescient than anything original at ol' fortytwopointsix. And so it begins ...

Like most institutionalized instruction, teaching English in a foreign country is "easy" because by and large the requirements and expectations are so low, but it's also "hard" because it's nearly impossible to remain interested in the task. It's like trying to stay intellectually engaged for an entire afternoon with someone else's six-year-old. Then going home to a dingy apartment and wondering what the hell you're doing wasting your life in a country where no one will ever really know you. Then popping a beer at four even though you promised yourself that today you were going to wait until four thirty.

Glasser and Shanghai Bob were good to have around because they'd usually start drinking by three thirty, which took a little of the sting out of my descent into a primary form of recreation that traced its roots to a distillery somewhere outside London. (Pg. 100-101)

It's not important that you know who Glasser and Shanghai Bob are - only that you know my roommates Kevin and Patrick are my equivalents, although we start drinking closer to 8 or 9 and consume significantly less. But I can nonetheless relate to my boy Chuck's sentiment.

Today was "one of those days", to employ hideously non-descript yet somehow common parlance. The expat life has a knack for bringing the highs and lows of one's existence into even sharper focus, and it's always nice to read paragraphs like the ones excerpted above, to recall that trials of sanity are endemic to my current lifestyle and not a unique character flaw.

I left the house at 8:15 this morning, my eyelids still lethargic after a short night's sleep. When I arrived home 12.5 hours later, my eyelids were doing fine, but the rest of my being was sapped.

In between, I endured seven losses of power at the office, almost all of them occurring amidst unsaved script-writing, and watched a very promising broadcast deteriorate into one that was simply miraculous to have been completed at all. I think I ground three years worth of enamel from my teeth in a single day.

Then, of course, whereas catching a poda-poda at 7:30 p.m. is usually as difficult as standing out as the only cracker on a street rammed full of Sierra Leoneans, it seemed there wasn't an empty seat in the city on this night. My frustration must've been palpable, as when I finally did catch a taxi (willing at this point to shell out the extra $0.40), the driver took me right to my street without an extra charge, saving me a half-hour walk.

Though I don't often drink here, I knew long before I got home that I'd be indulging in a couple Beck's tonight to unwind. Just minutes ago, Kevin pushed back his chair and headed for the fridge, saying "I shouldn't have another beer, but I want to." Without thinking, I heard myself say, "Can you grab me one too?" It was my third, and last, of the night, so I think Mr. Thompson had me beat, but I could certainly relate to the urgency he intimates.

Actually, more than a lot of the excerpts I imagine I'll draw out in the future, this one is simultaneously stupidly accurate and rather far off base in summing up my experience. Perhaps that's because he's describing teaching ESL and not teaching journalism, and most ESL teachers probably aren't as passionate about the language as I am about journalism.

Either way, I find his constant derision of ESL teachers hilarious, in part because I know and love so many people that have taught or are currently teaching ESL. I suspect they'd all chuckle at his observations too.

But while I do not find it impossible to stay interested in the task at Kalleone, I completely relate to what he says about expectations being so low they could stultify the ambitions of even the most enthusiastic trainer.

For example, I've uploaded only one story to the JHR site since New Year's even though my job requires me to do one a week, and I haven't once been questioned about this fact.

Of course, at least in my case, that's more a function of working too hard than of slacking; I've been very busy and haven't found time to upload the many stories I have been working on. But while I appreciate JHR's understanding and realistic expectations, I nonetheless wonder if 'realistic' is merely a more pleasant way of saying 'non-existent'.

Lastly, while I've never felt like I was "wasting" my life, I also don't feel as though many people 'get' me here. And I don't mean that in an emo way.

Rather, I mean it in the completely understandable way that living in a place where no one knows my personal history, which is immensely instructive to who I am, necessarily means I'm not surrounded by a social circle that can toss off stunningly on-point insights about me with the casual efficacy of Jeff Hornacek at the free throw stripe circa 1999.

Hell, most people I encounter don't even have a working knowledge of the immense land of my birth, let alone understanding anything about my specific place in it.

Anyway, my meandering observations notwithstanding, the main point of this post is that, if you've ever lived abroad, I highly recommend checking out Smile When You're Lying - not because it will necessarily teach you a whole lot, but because it will make you think, "Oh, man. Totally. TOTALLY!" way more often than most books. And I'm seeing the value in that more and more with each passing day.


Editor's note: Please don't misinterpret this post as me being anything less than ecstatic to be where I am right now, doing precisely what I'm doing. It's all part of the experience, and it merely came to my attention recently that I had a tendency not to blog about the low points as much. I want to remember them too. But I've already moved beyond the long day and will readily embrace the challenges waiting to greet me on the morrow.