Do you have an expat escape plan?

“Get out, the building’s on fire!”  What would you do?  What would you grab?  How many of us have given that serious thought, much less planned for it?

When we moved to Baku we were advised to always have a wad of cash on hand (in an easily convertible currency) in case we had to leave in a hurry.  This was 1996 and incoming BA flights diverted to avoid flying over Grozny, just the other side of the Caucus mountains and Azerbaijan itself had only relatively recently signed a truce with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

We called it our “running way money,” and we kept it under the ice cream in our chest freezer, the only place in the apartment with a lock and key.  One thousand dollars of cold hard cash (quite literally) in new bills.

Fortunately we never had to evacuate for security reasons.  In fact Baku turned out to be a very safe place to live, but there was a morning when we did have to get out in a hurry.

At 6am one Tuesday morning we woke to a loud pounding on our door.  A quick glance through the peep hole revealed my American neighbour, clad in her nightgown.  “The building’s on fire, we need to get out.  Now!”  I could already see tendrils of smoke drifting up the stairwell and the alarm in her eyes told me this was serious.  I shook my son awake (he’d sleep through WW3).  My husband grabbed the passports and the running away money.  I grabbed my jewelry roll in the bedside drawer together with our coats and we headed out the door.

The source of the smoke was an electrical fire in a single storey garage attached to the back of the building.  Hardly surprising given the poor state of the wiring (click on the photo to enlarge it and you’ll what I mean).  In fact it’s amazing we didn’t have fires every day.  You’ll be glad to hear it was extinguished before it did any damage to the main building and soon we were able to return to our apartment and get on with our day.

But this episode highlighted for me the importance of always knowing a) how to exit my home quickly and b) exactly what to grab and take with me.  We started keeping everything in one place (passports, money, important documents), together with a bag we could quickly scoop it all into.

While this is good policy for anyone, it’s particularly important for expats.  Passports usually contain your residence visas and important documents issued in your home country may be impossible to replace without showing up in person.

Present day technology, including cloud storage and mobile devices has given us many more options for keeping things safe.  Documents can be scanned, photos, music, videos and even books can be digital and stored online.  My mission in 2012 was to make my life as paperless as possible and I’ll be sharing some of my favourite tools and experiences in upcoming posts.

A Middle Eastern Christmas

They say the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and that certainly seems to be true in our household this Christmas.

Christmases overseas were spent pursuing the British traditions of my childhood – a decorated tree with gifts piled beneath it and dinner of turkey with stuffing, brussel sprouts, roasted potatoes and of course mince pies and Christmas cake in abundance.  None of which was an easy achievement when living in Muslim countries and often involved shopping for vital ingredients and supplies while on summer vacation (Christmas crackers and mincemeat in August?  Hmmm).  It also involved learning to cook a lot of things from scratch, as there were no microwave stuffing mixes or pre-basted turkeys in Baku in 1998.

When we first returned to Canada I enjoyed the convenience of having everything to hand just when I needed it, but this year, having cooked a turkey dinner at Thanksgiving, the thought of doing it all again so soon seemed, well, blah.  A foodie friend (who will also be my guest on Christmas Day) suggested a lamb tagine and the idea caught my imagination.  Why not a Middle Eastern themed Christmas Dinner?  After all, Mary & Joseph wouldn’t have been tucking into turkey and cranberry sauce all those years ago, more like hummus and tabouleh.

So now here I am again tracking down elusive ingredients like tahini paste, sumach and rose water as I prepare for the big day next week.  I’ve pulled out the cook book which friends in Dubai gave me as a leaving present and I’m chopping and blending as I cook from scratch, just as I did in my days in Baku.

Seems no matter where I am, I’m thinking of someplace else.

There’s a special place in hell for expats …

… who don’t help other expats.*

When I first moved to Azerbaijan in 1996, the online world was in its infancy, and although the company provided us with practical help (housing, school, shipping, etc) there was no orientation or cultural training. I was on my own. The first expat women I met were wives of my husband’s colleagues working for his company. Another mother of two of the western children at my son’s school was working at her embassy. I frequented the handful of stores catering to westerners and never saw another western woman. In the end I assumed there probably weren’t many non-working expat women like me. Many afternoons were spent staring out of my apartment window, happy my husband had a good job, happy my son was settling in school, happy to be having the adventure of a lifetime, but desperately lonely.

When I learned that an expat neighbour (also working) belonged to an international women’s club I asked her how to join. She said she’d enquire but came back and told me they weren’t accepting new members at that time. I was devastated. Later I learned that the club had a byelaw about maintaining a balance between local vs expatriate members  and that for a while they suspended taking new members. To this day I don’t know which is worse, that a club for expats should ever close its doors to new members, or that my neighbour didn’t at least offer to introduce me to some of the women outside of club meetings.

Five years and two countries later, I found myself in Egypt. By then, I was a much more experienced and self-confident expat wife.  I thought I knew the ropes.  I joined a thriving expat community centre, took language classes, joined craft and bridge groups, volunteered at my son’s school, did everything to put myself out there and meet people. And while I certainly met lots of people and had a busy life, in the year I was there I never found a group I really wanted to hang out with, or someone I could truthfully call a friend.

Four months after arriving in Azerbaijan a new child arrived at the tiny international school. His mom, a veteran expat wife, quickly sussed out where the other women were getting together and soon I had a circle of not just expat but also local friends, some of whom remain friends to this day.

After a year in Egypt we were transferred to the UAE and a kind company wife immediately phoned and invited me to join a craft group, which became a springboard to all kinds of friendships and opportunities. I never looked back.

These experiences, good and bad have left me forever aware of the importance of support for expat spouses. It needn’t be complex or expensive and sometimes it’s best left to the spouses themselves.  Back home now in Canada and working, I have less time to devote to real-world expat groups and yet I’m finding new ways to connect online. Next example of successful online support groups, coming up ….

*Adapted from Madeleine K. Albright’s quote “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

English As She Is Spoke*

When I first arrived in Canada it came as quite a surprise to me to discover I spoke a different language, despite having emigrated here from an English speaking country (the UK).  Aisha, a more recent arrival, wrote a great blog post listing the new words she’s had to learn and I made the following comment.

“I will always remember my first day of working in Canada in 1979. I was sent downstairs to the coffee shop to buy coffee and muffins. I looked high and low for “muffins” but all I could find were “buns”   Returning without them, a patient but amused colleague had to take me back down again and explain what “muffins” were in Canada.”

Like many immigrants I was determined to pick up the lingo as soon as possible in order to become “Canadian,” and I quickly learned to say “tomayto” and “garbage” instead of “tomahhto” and “rubbish.”

While this was my first encounter with another form of the English language, it certainly wasn’t the last.  In Baku I discovered a surprising number of locals were fluent in English, even though they’d never met a native English speaker.  All their studying had been done from textbooks written in the 1950s and long playing gramophone records of similar vintage from the BBC.  As a result they all spoke like the Queen   You can imagine their confusion when they encountered English speaking oil workers from Aberdeen and Houston.

I frequently found myself playing the role of interpreter between the English speaking expats.  “I’m going for ma messages, hen” (I’m going shopping, dear) would baffle the Texans, while any American reference to “fanny packs” would turn the Scots pink with embarrassment.

Amaliya, my Russian teacher, once asked me how to pronounce “ask.”  Was it a long “a” as in “park” or a short one as in “pack?”  She wasn’t happy with my answer that both were correct.  In fact even within the UK both are correct, depending on which part of the country you’re from, and don’t even get me started on my Louisiana friend who would say “Can I aks you a question?”

In Dubai there were South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders with their breezy slang, “no worries, mate” and “come for a Barbie” as well as the Indian tailor who made me “a trouser” (pair of pants), the Pakistani taxi driver who picked me up from the “backside” (rear) of my building, and my young Filipino friends who went “malling” (shopping) at the weekend.  This funny blog post lampooning “Dubai English” which it describes as a cheerful combination of Arabic, English, Hindi/Urdu and Tagalog spoken with a sing-song accent will make you smile if you’re familiar with any of those cultures.

I love the fact that so many people have taken English and changed it to suit their circumstances, whether as a first, second, third language.  Not only does it make life much easier for me, lol (my attempts to learn other languages haven’t met with much success) but it also makes for a bubbling hot pot of words and phrases that tickle my senses.

Now that I’m back in Canada I’m doing my best to speak “Canadian” again, but find I’m reluctant to give up all the fun vocabulary I’ve picked up along the way.  Perhaps I’ll settle for speaking a bit of everything; it suits my new hybrid identity.

*”English As She Is Spoke” is the title of a 19th century book intended as a Portuguese/English phrase book, notorious for its dreadful but humorous translations.

Expat Kitchens – the good, the bad and the ugly

Miss Footloose’s post on her bizarre new kitchen (and bathroom) in Moldova, got me thinking about the sheer number and variety of kitchens I’ve lived with while we were overseas.

The first one in Azerbaijan had a magnificent floor, and the cupboards weren’t bad, but the oven didn’t work and the fridge wouldn’t get colder than 13C in summer.  And let’s not talk about the cockroaches and those ghastly pink wall tiles which were covered with layers of grease when we arrived.

Kitchen number 2 in Azerbaijan was a huge improvement.  It was literally the apartment above the old one, so essentially the same layout, but soooo much nicer and with brand new appliances that actually worked!

Kitchen number 1 in Dubai was in villa and certainly was large enough.  But which bright spark decided on the white floor tiles?  With a constant trickle of sand blowing in under the ill-fitting door, all it took was a few drops of water to turn it into mud.  That floor was never clean for longer than 5 minutes (during which this photo was taken).

Our kitchen in Cairo was as lovely as it looks . . . apart from the complete lack of air conditioning.  The landlord told us we were supposed to have a maid to cook for us, hence no need for air conditioning in this room.  Unfortunately it was me who was literally sweating over a hot stove.

Dubai kitchen number 2 was the largest kitchen I’ve ever had.  It was so big that I never did fill all the cupboards and so some were given over to spare bedding and hobby supplies.  It had a great view facing west with some fabulous sunsets.

Dubai kitchen number 3 was a lot smaller, but open plan to the living and dining room, which I liked.  I hate being shut away in another room when I’m cooking as I like to be able to chat and socialize while I chop and stir.

Last one – kitchen number 4 in Dubai (yes, we moved a lot).  This was the smallest of all.  So small in fact that there were more appliances than cupboards.  It’s a good job the supermarket was only a 5 minute walk away as I really couldn’t store more than a day or two’s food at a time.

Interestingly, whether well or poorly equipped, large or small, I still managed to turn out pretty much the same meals without too much difficulty.  A valuable lesson learned, now that we’re contemplating renovating our kitchen in Canada because now I know that spending thousands on fancy layouts and equipment will do nothing to improve my cooking skills!

How expat living changed the way I cook

I wouldn’t say that I love to cook, but I do love to eat.  Last night I hauled out a recipe book which was an expat leaving gift.  As I chopped, stirred and simmered I thought about how expat life has influenced the way I cook.

Variety:  Although everyone eats more internationally these days than they used to, I’m sure that living overseas has broadened my tastes.  It’s not just been the cuisine of the countries we lived in, but also that of the many expat friends we made who have introduced us to their favourite recipes in restaurants and in their homes.

Cleanliness:  For a number of years we lived in countries where the tap water wasn’t safe to drink and food handling was questionable.  I quickly learned to sterilize fruit and vegetables by adding a baby bottle sterilising tablet (or a teaspoon of bleach) to a sink full of water and soaking for 20 minutes.  One of the joys of repatriation is not having to do that any more, but I do continue to wash things a lot more carefully than I used to.

Cooking from scratch:  Living without North American convenience foods was a blessing in that it forced me to learn how to cook many things from scratch.  Now I know how, and also how much better the food tastes, I’m reluctant to go back to bottled sauces, packet mixes and take-out.  Cooking “properly” does take more time, so I’m so grateful I can work part-time and indulge my passion for fresh vegetables and home-made dishes.

Substitution:  Although it wasn’t much of a problem in Dubai, chasing down ingredients in Azerbaijan and Egypt was almost a full-time occupation; the “hunter-gatherer” approach to shopping a friend once called it.  As a result I became a master of the art of substitution and must admit I use it still when I can’t face trekking all over town for an unusual spice, or find I’ve run out of something half way through fixing dinner.  Here’s a list I made for myself of some of the more common ones.

Eating less meat:  In 2004 my husband was being pursued for a job in Kazakhstan.  After 3 years in Azerbaijan I suspected the meat there would be equally problematic – of dubious provenance and tough as old boots – so I decided to add a few vegetarian recipes to my repertoire on the assumption that dried beans, lentils and legumes seem to be available most places.  In the end he didn’t take the job, but by then we found we enjoyed eating lighter, healthier, meatless meals.   We’re by no means vegetarian, but do eat a lot less meat than we used to.

Of course, I was very much influenced by the particular countries I lived in, so I’m interested to know if people who lived in different countries also found their cooking style changed.   How did living overseas change the way you eat?

Meet Father Frost

I first met Father Frost (Ded Moroz – Дед Мороз) in the early 1990’s.  My husband brought him home from one of his many business trips to what was then called the FSU (Former Soviet Union).   I was enchanted; I loved his “orthodox” outfit and typically Soviet naivety.  Of the many gifts my husband was given during his travels (which ranged from exquisite china to a shovel built for a midget) he was my favourite.

Although the roots of Father Frost go back to pagan beliefs, over the years he adopted traits from Saint Nicholas and latterly has essentially become the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus.  The main differences are that he brings gifts at New Year, rather than Christmas and is accompanied by Snow Maiden, his grand-daughter.  All this was explained to me several years later when we moved to Azerbaijan.  A group of university students used to visit me once a week to practise their conversational English and from them I learned a lot about Azerbaijan and Soviet Union traditions.

The first two years we were in Baku we travelled to spend Christmas with family.  But the last year we decided to celebrate “at home.”  It was a bit of a challenge as all our Christmas decorations were in storage in Canada and there was nothing in the local stores.  Azerbaijan is a Muslim country and even the few Russians living there who were Christian would not be celebrating until January 7, the Orthodox Christmas.  Fortunately a departing expat gave me a small table-top tree, but I think my students realized that I was missing many of the traditions from home.

The few expats who were in town got together on Christmas Day for a pot-luck dinner at a friend’s apartment.  Afterwards we lit candles, dimmed the lights and sang carols. It was a simple yet memorable evening.  But the icing on the cake that year was a knock on my apartment door on New Year’s Eve.  Yes!  Who should it be but Father Frost himself and Snow Maiden.  Bahruz, one of my students and his girlfriend had travelled across town, carefully donning their outfits in the stairwell of my apartment building.  We laughed and hugged as I let them in.  I was so impressed that they had gone to all that trouble to surprise me.

Every year as I unpack my Christmas decorations they bring back happy memories – the tarnished baubles from my childhood, the beautiful blown glass ornaments I bought in Egypt, the clumsily sewn decorations I made at Stitch ‘N Bitch in Dubai – yet the one that makes me smile the most is Father Frost.

Help at home

Ask any expat about household help while living overseas and they’ll have a story to tell you, often not a good one.  For many westerners, going overseas is the first time they employ a maid, a gardener or a driver and our inexperience shows.  We’re uncomfortable with strangers poking through our physical and psychological dirty laundry and usually end up expecting less and paying more than the going rate, making ourselves unpopular with the locals. But every once in a while there’s a happy story . . .

Tania was my cleaning lady in Baku.  After a disastrous first attempt with a woman sent from my husband’s company, I smartened up and asked my new expat friends for a referral.  Tania cleaned for the American family upstairs and already knew we westerners liked hot water, lots of detergent and different cloths for the toilet and sink – hurrah!   She was hired.

At first I thought it was a disadvantage that she didn’t speak a word of English, particularly as my Russian was non-existent at the time, but we managed with lots smiles and pantomime.  However as my language skills slowly improved with lessons, I began to see the benefits.  You see Tania loved to talk.  She came to me in the afternoons, and as I knew she’d been working all morning, I’d sit her down for a few minutes in my tiny kitchen, we’d have a cup of tea and a slice of cake and she’d chat away to me.

She talked to me in very basic Russian, like a mother talking to a toddler.  Soon I began to understand at least some of what she was saying.  She’d tell me about her family, her husband who couldn’t get a job and her son who she wanted to go to university so he could avoid military service (she was worried about the prevalence of TB in the army barracks, a not unwarranted concern).  She’d tell me about her church, their services and Sunday outings.  She was a born-again-Christian and her conversation was peppered with “Слава Богу” (praise God).  But best of all she’d tell me the gossip about all the other western families she cleaned for, who was untidy, who spoiled their children, who treated their driver badly and what new purchases they’d made.

Fortunately I didn’t have many skeletons to hide and was happy to answer her many questions about what I was cooking for dinner, my house in Canada and what to her seemed like an apartment full of wonderful gadgets.  All this was a considerable linguistic challenge and we were constantly running to my Russian dictionary, but it was a great boost to my growing vocabulary and fluency.

Convinced we weren’t eating properly she’d sometimes bring me huge cauldrons of borscht, enough to feed an army.  In return I loaned her videos of Mr Bean.  She taught me the local tradition of keeping a row of cheap slippers, just inside my front door, for the benefit of visitors. When I threw out my son’s socks because they had holes in, she humbled me by retrieving them from the bin so should darn them and give them to children in her building.

Her eyesight was weak, but vanity (and perhaps economy) held her back from wearing glasses.  As a result her cleaning wasn’t always top notch.  But no matter, she had a big heart and as a teacher of language and local culture, her value to me was without price.

The little school on the Caspian

Looking back, it seems incredibly rash, or perhaps just naive, but we accepted our first overseas assignment to Azerbaijan not knowing if there even was a school for our son, let alone what kind of school it would be.  The career opportunity for my husband and the adventure for our family were just too good to pass up.  “Heck, I can always home school,” I told myself; “he’s only 9.  How hard can it be?”

Fortunately a small international school had been operating in Baku for 18 months.  When we arrived we found there were a total of 12 students, ranging in age from 6 to 12, a mixture of expats and the children of wealthy locals.  It was located just outside the downtown area in a large walled compound used for training the national soccer team.  The school itself was housed in a couple of crumbling outbuildings and had access to a dilapidated gymnasium and a stagnant swimming pool.  But the jewel in the crown was a large grass playing field surrounded by trees which was the nicest outdoor space I ever saw while living in Baku for those 3 years.

What the school lacked in physical facilities was more than made up for by a dedicated staff of American expatriate teaching staff, supplemented by local staff who taught music, physical education and foreign languages.  Dr and Mr Davis were the school principal and head teacher and Ginger their dog accompanied them every day to school.  He’d lie patiently under the desks during class waiting for a mad half hour of running around excitedly when the children went out for recess.

Every September school arrived in a box, quite literally, in the form of a shipment of supplies from the States.  Not just brand new text books and multi media materials, but everything right down to binders, exercise books, pencils and erasers.  At that time Azerbaijan had only been independent from the Soviet Union for a couple of years, former trade had broken down and it was hard to find anything at all in the stores.

The toilets sometimes blocked and power failed frequently, often resulting in early dismissal in winter.  The science room (you really couldn’t have called it a lab) was nicknamed The Far Side Cafe as the older children had decorated the walls with Gary Larson cartoons.

Most of the children were dropped off and collected by drivers and every afternoon they would gather, chatting under the trees outside in good weather, but in winter they would wait inside in the reception area cum dining room, looking like big black crows perching uncomfortably on the small brightly coloured plastic chairs.

Looking back I realize how fortunate we were to find such a gem of a school.  The teachers and students quickly became our extended family and despite the grim surroundings my son blossomed in their care.  He arrived reading 2 years below his grade level, but within 6 months had completely overcome that and couldn’t wait to get to school on test days.  In the three years he spent there he learned how to learn and his self esteem soared.    I am forever grateful to that great little school.

Water, water everywhere . . .

“The only reason there isn’t more bacteria in the tap water is because you can’t fit any more in it” said the doctor in the only western medical practice in Baku when we first arrived.  Water, the lack of it and the cleanliness of it, dominated our lives when we first arrived in Azerbaijan.  At that time (1996) bottled water wasn’t available so my husband’s company provided us with a small distiller, which produced about 3 or 4 gallons a day if we ran it 24/7.  It was just enough for drinking, coffee, tea and mixing up the powdered milk we used.

Bath water was a whole other issue.  We faced daily water cuts, often in the evenings, so we’d scramble to get dinner cooked, eaten, dishes washed and everyone clean and into their pjs as quickly as we could.  We didn’t always make it and sharing one tub of bathwater between three of us became a common occurrence. We lived with buckets of water (just in case) standing around the apartment and if a friend called to cancel a trip out because “the water just came back on” we quite understood.

When we moved to Cairo 4 years later bottled water was easily available but we struggled with the water pressure in the taps because we lived on the 8^th floor.  A shout of  “mafeesh may-ya” (no water) down the intercom to the bahwab (doorman) would usually result in him kicking the pump into action, but still the shower oscillated between freezing cold and scalding hot every few seconds, invigorating but not very enjoyable.

We arrived in Dubai at the height of summer, with temperatures in the high 40s.  “There’s something very wrong with the plumbing,” I announced to my husband, as I emerged from the shower looking like a boiled lobster, eyeing the steam rising from the toilet bowl with suspicion, “I think they’ve got it all hooked up backwards.”  Later I discovered that most buildings had water storage tanks on the roof and in the summer the temperature of the “cold” water supply was hot enough to boil an egg.  Expats already in the know explained I needed to turn off the hot water tank inside my apartment, let the water cool to the air conditioned indoor temperature and then simply reverse the taps I used; use the hot tap for cold water and vice versa.

Today is World Blog Action Day and the topic is Water.  One thing I learned from living overseas is that water is a precious resource and one we take too much for granted in the developed world.  Not only should we conserve it but we should work towards providing everyone with a clean and easy accessible supply of it.  We’re not there yet.  If you check out the Blog Action Day page there are various ways you can support the UN’s efforts to bring clean, safe water to millions globally.