I just read an article ten minutes ago.
Expats are subject to alcoholism, pedophilia and burning out.
Alcoholism it's true. when you go home and you have to digest all the work you have done is felling apart, that you built an aqueduct based on community cooperation , and now people is chopping neighbor fingers off with a machete to have some more drops of water, you drink.
You are stressed. You work 14 hours a day and then you go home and still you have to reply emails, then you go to sleep and you think about all the problems waiting for you tomorrow, and to escape from all this, you drink.
You pass all your week in the field, with no water, no electricity, no girlfriend, you come back to the city and you drink.
You often live in places with no cinemas, no theaters, no TV, no bookshops, no parks, so you meet with the few friends you have (temporaries and selected by necessity), and drink.
Moreover alcoholism is a wide spread problem in most of the ex-violent or still-violent countries. Drunk men do not do the revolution, at the most the beat up wives and children. But those categories are not famous to have their right recognized. So alcohol is usually very cheap. And very bad.
And because not everybody has time to open a bottle and share with good friends, they often sell surrogates of gin or whiskey in plastic mono-dose bags. If you have a couple of coins in your pocket, you can drink at least a sip. You have no ideas of the thousand of those small plastic bags sold in the last small village lost in the savanna. So everybody drinks because it's easy.
But the alcoholism of the in-country people is different and much more bitter than the expats' alcoholism. Expats run away from the stress, people run away from their lives taking the only path available.
You don't care if you turn yourself into a sub-human monster unable to speak clearly and to walk to the toilet. In a year or two you will change country and you can start fresh to ruin your reputation again.
Or, worse, become the king of the expat social life.
I was unable to drink before starting this job. My friends made fun of me saying I was getting drunk with a coke.
And then happened Tajikistan. At the beginning I though was funny to be received in the villages always with a vodka. At the beginning.
Everything it's funny at the beginning.
Expats are subject to alcoholism, pedophilia and burning out.
Alcoholism it's true. when you go home and you have to digest all the work you have done is felling apart, that you built an aqueduct based on community cooperation , and now people is chopping neighbor fingers off with a machete to have some more drops of water, you drink.
You are stressed. You work 14 hours a day and then you go home and still you have to reply emails, then you go to sleep and you think about all the problems waiting for you tomorrow, and to escape from all this, you drink.
You pass all your week in the field, with no water, no electricity, no girlfriend, you come back to the city and you drink.
You often live in places with no cinemas, no theaters, no TV, no bookshops, no parks, so you meet with the few friends you have (temporaries and selected by necessity), and drink.
Moreover alcoholism is a wide spread problem in most of the ex-violent or still-violent countries. Drunk men do not do the revolution, at the most the beat up wives and children. But those categories are not famous to have their right recognized. So alcohol is usually very cheap. And very bad.
And because not everybody has time to open a bottle and share with good friends, they often sell surrogates of gin or whiskey in plastic mono-dose bags. If you have a couple of coins in your pocket, you can drink at least a sip. You have no ideas of the thousand of those small plastic bags sold in the last small village lost in the savanna. So everybody drinks because it's easy.
But the alcoholism of the in-country people is different and much more bitter than the expats' alcoholism. Expats run away from the stress, people run away from their lives taking the only path available.
You don't care if you turn yourself into a sub-human monster unable to speak clearly and to walk to the toilet. In a year or two you will change country and you can start fresh to ruin your reputation again.
Or, worse, become the king of the expat social life.
I was unable to drink before starting this job. My friends made fun of me saying I was getting drunk with a coke.
And then happened Tajikistan. At the beginning I though was funny to be received in the villages always with a vodka. At the beginning.
Everything it's funny at the beginning.
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