We have spent two of our weekends in central Hanoi. Hotels are cheap and it’s fun being here as a contrast to the University campus. On the balcony of the WIFI café opposite the Golden Buffalo Hotel I chat to a guy from Cameroon/New York and discover we are both teaching at the University; he in International economics. He tells me he can get up to 30 kids following him at a time -they have not seen a black guy before. He is exasperated by different things;
‘the expats here they are superficial..living the good life..they don’t care about the country and its development.’
‘perhaps a generalisation..’
But that is interesting to me. I wonder about expats living here and in other amazing countries. It has occurred to me that there is something inherently suited to the extrovert in this life..the buzz, the busyness, the excitement and beauty, the permanent call to exploration; that the umbilical cord is cut to vulnerability generated by real interelatedness. What were the components of the original out, perpetuated now by money, health insurance..what does this capability do to your relationships with others, to local people? For expats there is a permanent pool of people to relate to, people on the move, rootless people. It takes a village to raise a child – I think that I believe that, and perhaps an adult too. A teenager who had lived abroad most of his life said to me that the thing he liked about his life was that as a white person you were special, different. So, no highly developmental wet Sunday afternoons contemplating your own essential ordinariness.. certainly the climate here is not conducive to close contact wrestling with inner demons.
Twenty years ago I was staying at a camp, fishing on a beautiful river on Zanzibar. Huge white birds were swooping across the banks. The man in the boat said to me, ‘they drink, the foreigners that live out here.’
‘Why is that?
‘I don’t know.. I think it is something to do with all the beauty here…they have so much.. money..everything.
Last night Peter bargained gently for a shirt in the market. The shop keeper said, ‘Mister, I know the co’t i’ not important to you. You foreign people.. i’ you want it you have it.