When I was young, I used to go to bars, and clubbing, sometimes.
It's something that almost all the expats do.
If you are not segregated in a remote rural area (as I was in Tajikistan, where was no possibility to commit any sins, even if you were tending to thoughts full of inventive), or on a Mission from God like Jake and Elwood, what you do on Friday night (and if you are very young, also on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, sometimes also Wednesday and if happens a special occasion, you don't segregate yourself on Monday and Tuesday when there is a birthday or a Muslim bank holiday the day after) it's clubbing. Dressing like a prick, like in your hometown is not allowed. I'm talking about flower shirt and cigar or spotted miniskirt dresses with animalier applications. Expats live in a promiscuous world. Everybody is in need of superficial relationship to prove they still (or at least reached) the crest of the wave, and that is better to be exactly where they are instead of a Country with Social Security.To fill like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, if poetry still do count.
I've never been particularly sexy, so, back from the field, taken a shower, dressed with a threadbare T shirt, I was subscribed to the pool table.
And anyway I've managed to have dozen of superficial affairs, enough to stop and mathematically think about the number of similar affairs people devoting to that was having just dressing like a predator.
Anyway, the expats working in cooperation are a small percentage comparing with the ones working in 'others'. The main difference is that the ones working in 'others' usually do not like to talk about it. In a certain way they feel ashamed, at least the smart ones. If talking to NGO people. Otherwise proud.
When you meet another expat in a bar, the conversation always starts whit: "What are you doing here" and "Since when", just to have some coordinates.
Let me tell you: the white African belonging to the second or third generation, the grandsons of the colonialist I mean, are the ones who less speak about themselves. They usually are rich, owner of thousand hectares land and they never worked one lonely day in their life.
"What I'm doing between Tanzania and Kenya...well...have you seen 'Out of Africa'? I'm the grandson of Robert Redford's character"
And that supposed to be a curriculum.
"I'm exporting bio-fuel -one container in three years- to Europe" ("And how many families had to produce Yatropha instead of wheat in the last three years to fill up your container?")
"My fathers owned this land, you know...They built the irrigation system with their own hands, the land belongs more to them than to the Tribes"
And other funny answers from Asia:
"I'm a professional poker web player, but being resident in Shanghai I pay less taxes", or
"I'm just traveling to find one of those", pointing at a whatever anonymous guy, meaning 'boyfriend'.
The best one, the most felt and sincere, was yesterday night, in Kathmandu, in this farewell party (full of children) in the Buddhist area where tourist dress and act like monks for three months up to three years. This lady, Lynda, studying Tibetan Philosophy, with three children from three different fathers, smoking a cigarette with me hiding from his Nepalese husband:
"I was born in here. At that time -she is around her thirties- you were hippy or junkie. My mother had a restaurant and she was hippy, so my father was junkie.
He got cough while trying to import drug in England and was convict to eight years in prison. because he finished two Diplomas in the first three years, he stayed in prison only four and an half years. I was four in that time, and a friend of mine had the father working in Chile, and I was thinking mine was doing the same. Being somewhere else.
When he was released, he told me the all story.
And do you know what he told me?
'It's much more easy to get out from heroine than stop smoking cigarettes' "
It's something that almost all the expats do.
If you are not segregated in a remote rural area (as I was in Tajikistan, where was no possibility to commit any sins, even if you were tending to thoughts full of inventive), or on a Mission from God like Jake and Elwood, what you do on Friday night (and if you are very young, also on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, sometimes also Wednesday and if happens a special occasion, you don't segregate yourself on Monday and Tuesday when there is a birthday or a Muslim bank holiday the day after) it's clubbing. Dressing like a prick, like in your hometown is not allowed. I'm talking about flower shirt and cigar or spotted miniskirt dresses with animalier applications. Expats live in a promiscuous world. Everybody is in need of superficial relationship to prove they still (or at least reached) the crest of the wave, and that is better to be exactly where they are instead of a Country with Social Security.To fill like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, if poetry still do count.
I've never been particularly sexy, so, back from the field, taken a shower, dressed with a threadbare T shirt, I was subscribed to the pool table.
And anyway I've managed to have dozen of superficial affairs, enough to stop and mathematically think about the number of similar affairs people devoting to that was having just dressing like a predator.
Anyway, the expats working in cooperation are a small percentage comparing with the ones working in 'others'. The main difference is that the ones working in 'others' usually do not like to talk about it. In a certain way they feel ashamed, at least the smart ones. If talking to NGO people. Otherwise proud.
When you meet another expat in a bar, the conversation always starts whit: "What are you doing here" and "Since when", just to have some coordinates.
Let me tell you: the white African belonging to the second or third generation, the grandsons of the colonialist I mean, are the ones who less speak about themselves. They usually are rich, owner of thousand hectares land and they never worked one lonely day in their life.
"What I'm doing between Tanzania and Kenya...well...have you seen 'Out of Africa'? I'm the grandson of Robert Redford's character"
And that supposed to be a curriculum.
"I'm exporting bio-fuel -one container in three years- to Europe" ("And how many families had to produce Yatropha instead of wheat in the last three years to fill up your container?")
"My fathers owned this land, you know...They built the irrigation system with their own hands, the land belongs more to them than to the Tribes"
And other funny answers from Asia:
"I'm a professional poker web player, but being resident in Shanghai I pay less taxes", or
"I'm just traveling to find one of those", pointing at a whatever anonymous guy, meaning 'boyfriend'.
The best one, the most felt and sincere, was yesterday night, in Kathmandu, in this farewell party (full of children) in the Buddhist area where tourist dress and act like monks for three months up to three years. This lady, Lynda, studying Tibetan Philosophy, with three children from three different fathers, smoking a cigarette with me hiding from his Nepalese husband:
"I was born in here. At that time -she is around her thirties- you were hippy or junkie. My mother had a restaurant and she was hippy, so my father was junkie.
He got cough while trying to import drug in England and was convict to eight years in prison. because he finished two Diplomas in the first three years, he stayed in prison only four and an half years. I was four in that time, and a friend of mine had the father working in Chile, and I was thinking mine was doing the same. Being somewhere else.
When he was released, he told me the all story.
And do you know what he told me?
'It's much more easy to get out from heroine than stop smoking cigarettes' "
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