Uninvolved

- Mala, I heard you're moving to Kenya?
- Yes. I'm excited and terrified! I've got a place to live, but I don't know what my general security will be like.
- Are you going through an established organisation or company? And will you be living with other ex-pats? In Ghana I lived with a Ghanaian and had a nightwatchman sleeping in front of my window every night, and had no problems. In Istanbul we had three ex-pat women in one apartment, no security, and had big problems. But that was like 10 years ago.
- I didn't know you lived in Africa and Turkey! Don't you ever feel like you just can't relate to people anymore because of all the experiences you've had? I'm worried that normal life just won't be possible anymore after living abroad for so long.
- Mala, I'm married, own a condo, and just had a baby. Every one can relate to me.
- Ha, true.
- And yes, there were definitely chapters where I couldn't relate to my friends back home, but then 6 months later in a different context in a different life, you can't relate to who you were in those un-relatable chapters. We are constantly feeling involved in something, and uninvolved in something else. Life goes on, we adapt.

What I didn't have the heart to tell Mala was that every time you leave a place, you leave a piece of yourself there. And every time a friend leaves you, you retract just a little bit more in the next friendship. So the life of a nomadic ex-pat is one of slowly retracting yourself into a self-sustaining island, slowly becoming less and less involved in your surroundings.

- Guy's brother just had another baby.
- How many is that now?
- 5 children.
- How do they cope? And in the diplomatic corps, don't they have to move every 5 years? How do the children build reliable friendships?
- Exactly. That's why you need to have such a large family. You sort of breed your community.

I think army families have it even worse, because they know they have to move every 2 years. I was listening to an interview with an army woman on the BBC, and she said in her first week in a new place, she joins a minimum of 3 clubs. That's how she feels like she "lives" there, like she's involved, rooted. And then after two years of getting the house just right, when she's starting to find serious character flaws in her "friends", and as the clubs change and aren't like they "used to be", it's time to move on anyways. And the cycle repeats itself.

With virtual communication, you can build a sort of virtual community these days too. And in Amsterdam, there are months of the year when I don't have any time to see my local friends because I have so many visitors that they keep me occupied. So it's a sort of international community of travel-a-lots and we get to see each other more than our local friends at times. But it's not a real life somehow.

This is the longest I've ever lived in a place since leaving my hometown almost 13 years ago, and this is the least I've travelled too. When I was pregnant, and people would ask if I was planning on putting my child into Dutch school or international school, I was completely dumbfounded. The thought of knowing where I would be when my unborn baby was going to primary school was completely alien to me. And now as I research childcare options I have to keep reminding myself that I need to think through to her needs as a walking, talking child, and not just as a still baby.

I've joined a neighbourhood group. I'm planning on joining a choir in the new year. And I'm actually learning about the personal business of my neighbours. I'm becoming involved again.