A FEW WEEKS AGO I READ WITH INTEREST an editorial regarding people leaving South Africa and the varied opinions this was attracting – especially the negative ones. Now I do not even want to get into the debate about the reasons people do leave as these are varied and certainly very specific and I can attest to the fact that it is not an easy decision to make. The only thing I will say is that to call these people “traitors” is not only absurd it certainly highlights the narrow mindedness and ignorance which accompany such nonsensical utterances.
I wonder if anyone even stops to think how difficult it is to leave a country in which you grew up, where your entire family and support base will remain, whilst you have to make the move to a foreign country, where everything is different and where you will start again, from the beginning. I can only share with you our personal experiences and I can tell you it is damn tough.
I come from a very traditional close knit family. When I was still a child the entire family used to congregate on Sunday’s at my grandparents’ house, which was an event in itself. It would total 40 people with aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces. This tradition even continued when I started my own family, until we moved away to Cape Town. But the distance between Cape Town and Johannesburg didn’t stop us from visiting or the family visiting us and support or advice was only a phone call or even plane ride away if we needed it.
Then we moved away to China and at first it was an incredible adventure. Advice was still only a phone call away but we had to create a new support base and luckily we could find this in the expat communities. When you move to a place like China most foreigners there will stick together because we are all in the same boat. It is also not a move you make permanently – or at least for 99% of people it isn’t, but there are some people we met and became close friends with, who have now lived there for more than 10 years. The adventure and excitement make up for how difficult things can be, but it certainly doesn’t make things easier.
And then there was the move to the Netherlands. I must admit that we were totally and utterly unprepared for how difficult this would be. China at least was set-up to deal with foreigners coming to work and temporarily live there and as I said the expat communities provided unbelievable support for “newbies”. The Netherlands however was a totally different experience all together.
The European Union had recently tightened all its regulations with regards to knowledge and migrant workers, not only from EU countries but especially from countries outside of the EU. You will by now have read about our administration nightmares and in the end it took more than 7 months for us to finalise this process. During this time of course we had to settle and begin a new life and again, in the beginning it was an adventure, but pretty quickly reality started to set in and you began to understand how difficult it is to leave everything you know behind and start all over again (for the 3rd time in as many years).
Here there are no real expat communities to talk about and you are forced (and rightly so) to integrate with the local communities where you live. Integration is not something which just happens, you have to work on it and in the first year it is a constant process and it really starts with the little things.
This is not South Africa and thus all the shops and the products used are totally foreign. What do you do if you can’t find many of the ingredients you used to use in the recipes for dinners? How do you suddenly change the eating habits and preferences of your family? For my genetic rugby playing sins, I have shoulders which force me to wear shirts starting at size 50, what do you do when the largest sizes in the shops are 45’s and trousers are made for people with skinny legs, not someone who used to cycle 40km’s per day?
My job is not a 9 to 5 office job and thus every week I am in a plane on my way to a different office in a different country in Europe. What do I do when my wife calls me complaining that the electricity in certain sections of the house does not work and you then discover there is no such thing as a main switchboard but that we have three different boards, all working with fuses which look like globes and you cannot discern over the phone which one to change? Or you discover suddenly there is an interruption in your gas supply and the people on the other end of the phone cannot speak English. Or you have to buy new furniture and you suddenly find out delivery is not tomorrow, but 5 months from now (unless you buy from IKEA), or even worse, you need a car but this has a delivery period of 6 months or more…
We cannot simply pick-up the phone and call my parents to pop around and help, even with small things like baby-sitting. I cannot even ask my dad or one of my friends to watch my family when I travel, to assist if things go wrong in the house or if they need any help. Nope, you have to start all over again with nothing to fall back on.
These all sound like little inconsequential things and they are, if you are living in a country where you have grown up and everyone understands how things work and your family and friends support network is a simple car-ride away. Believe me they become HUGE when these little things start adding up and you can very quickly fall into a pattern of negativity where nothing is as great as the country in which you were born.
There is of course always an upside and mine is that I have discovered what an amazing family I have and how quickly we band together to face all of these “mundane & inconsequential” aspects of life. We have a can do attitude and although there are constant challenges, we understand that this is the price one has to pay. Sadly we have also met “expats” who have literally given up and who cannot adapt.
It has now been one year since we have moved here and I think we are beginning to settle quite well. We love it where we live, the people (once you get to know them), the environment, the town and now that we are getting to know the shops and how things work, life has become much easier. We have even now begun to look for a house to buy, and boy is this a process and a half, perhaps I will give you some insights into this in the future.
Bottom line is that it is an exceptionally difficult thing to leave the country in which you were born and to leave behind everything and everyone you know. This is not a decision which is taken lightly and it can either totally ruin one’s family or if you are willing to do it with a positive can-do attitude it can really strengthen it beyond your wildest dreams.
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