by Elnathan John (dailytimes.com.ng)
I have always held that the Nigerian god is far too kind. Too kind to our political leaders in spite of their wickedness, to our religious leaders in spite of their hypocrisy, and to our traditional leaders in spite of their complicity in the mess we find ourselves in. And too kind to foreigners. I mean, you can be a technician from the roughest, poorest parts of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and suddenly become a foreign engineer with servants, a huge salary and a secure mansion in the best parts of Abuja. We are in awe of expatriates. I’ll share a little story: A Nigerian family friend who is a senior engineer with a big foreign construction company went to the mansion of an influential Nigerian politician to carry out some repairs together with his young white junior assistant. As they entered the house, a daughter of the politician gave the white man a seat and ignored his black superior. The white man of course kindly explained that he was not in charge, but his boss who had been totally snubbed. Don’t ask me how the story ended. The moral of the story is that we love you more than we love ourselves. Nigeria is expatriate heaven.
You have left hardship, harsh winters and a horrible economic recession in your nice developed country and are now an economic refugee in Nigeria. Of course, we don’t know this; to us, you are the expat who will save us from ruin and teach us how things ought to be done. You have a job with an organisation or company that has applied for expatriate quota for you and has secured a nice accommodation with a generator, a car and a driver. You have said goodbye to your family, friends, and depressed alcoholic friends and have moved to Nigeria. Maybe you have even come with Hector, your cat. God will bless you for choosing our country. You could have ended up in dingy Togo but you came here. This is how you must conduct yourself while living in Nigeria.
As soon as you arrive, get in contact with other expatriates. There are online groups and you will quickly find whatever it is you need, from stores that sell foreign food to people selling off their furniture and books.
You are here to work and live large, not contaminate yourself with the locals. You can enjoy this country while pretending to live in your own country. Identify hangout spots that are ‘expat joints’. Your expat friends will tell you which joints are suitable for expats – joints with food so expensive it scares the locals away. If there are any locals, you can be sure they belong to the safe upper class. You don’t want to get lost in a crowd of locals and catch some deadly disease like malaria or dengue fever. Do nice expat things like jogging with fellow foreigners through the nice safe streets of Abuja and having a nice picnic afterwards. Of course, there will be the odd local but that is alright – makes it nice and colourful.
When you are able to muster the courage to go to a non-expat joint, go in a group and dance with members of your group in a corner. The important thing is you have done something revolutionary: risked kidnapping by going to a local joint. Have a local guide, a nice junior local staff from the office who understands the pecking order. Drink as much as you can and party as often as you can. Where else in this messed-up global economy can you enjoy this much luxury?
Do not learn a local language. What’s the point?
Complain about everything in the country. Complain about how you can never find the kind of cat food that your cat, Hector, enjoys. Complain about how nobody cares about animals. Talk about how rude the locals are and how sloppy everyone is. Complain about how bad the driving is and how loud (except if you are American) everyone is. Complain about how nothing works in this country. Complain about the heat, because in your cold, civilised, recession-hit country, everything works.
Have a nice upper-class local couple who can agree with you when you talk about how horrible things are. Invite them for dinner occasionally. This proves you are cool with the locals and are not racist.
Avoid the local food. Something terrible will happen to you if you eat the local food that is so low in nutrition and high in cholesterol and bacteria. Hire a cook who knows how to make food from your country.
Expect the locals to respect your culture, even though you are in their country. It is alright to dress inappropriately, after all in your country you are a free to wear whatever you like, or nothing at all.
I hope that you enjoy Nigeria and slowly get used to the heat and the reports of explosions and violence. Not to worry, you are safe. When we kill each other, we usually leave out the foreigners. And the guys who used to kidnap foreigners are busy with more official duties. Stay well and God bless your foreign hustle.
Nakale
July 13, 2012
This article is indeed funny and sarcastic.
George P.
July 13, 2012
An amusing article, and it rings true to my experience having lived as an expat in several countries (though not in Nigeria). But, before you condemn the expat, consider what you would do if you were in their shoes – say assigned by the company to London or Paris.
First, where do you get information to help you settle in –find a place to live, find the shops that sell the food your kids like, or to buy the newspapers, books and videos to keep in touch with home? The obvious answer is you ask people just like you; other expats. Next where do you find new friends? If you are assigned on single-status most of your first friends are going to be the people you work with. If the family is with you, then your friends might also include families of the children your kids meet at school and or that your wife meets at those “expat” stores, coffee mornings or “bridge and bitch” sessions. Again, these are likely to be expatriates, just like you. Perhaps you attend church. This introduces a chance that you can meet a wider community and can make friends outside your immediate work circle. However, in my experience the language of worship (like the language of love) is more meaningful when conducted in your own tongue. That desire to understand the sermon kept me in English language churches and so limited interaction with others who had the same beliefs. I suspect my experience is typical.
Lastly, where do expats relax, play, go-out to eat, etc? I am sure that there are many fun places in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and other Nigerian cities. I suspect many of them would welcome the patronage of strangers and their regular clientele would also be welcoming. But how does the expat find out about them? The name and locations of establishments that are “comfortable” for expats are passed from person to person (or expat generation to generation) like family folklore. A comfortable establishment can be a good restaurant or a raucous girlie-bar. “Comfortable” spans all price ranges and all levels of amenities. It includes safety, but probably just as important, a welcoming ambience, an acceptance of foreigners, an ability to ignore differences of color and dress and a willingness to overlook the occasional cultural faux pas. Moreover, these establishments have continuity – the expat knows what to expect. Sadly, these qualities often include prices reflecting expat salaries. This a source of irritation to both expat and the locals but expats have little choice because they have less knowledge.
So why do they have less knowledge? I agree, many expats make little or no effort to learn about their host country. They “grin and bank it” and those who do nothing be bitch are despised as much in the expat community as they are by the local community. However, if readers think about when they left home, they will remember that breaking in to an established community is difficult. Most of local people have their own life. They have their family and their friends made over many years. There are many local people who are not that interested in developing relationships with a new neighbor, or the new member of the church congregation – local or expat. For the expat, language incompetence compounds these difficulties and adds a level of isolation. I have tried Norwegian, Arabic, Farsi, Spanish and Japanese. I can order in a restaurant, find the bathroom, answer the telephone, shop in a supermarket and generally be polite when invited to a party almost anywhere in the world. But I cannot hold a conversation or discuss the evening news except in my native tongue. I admit that this is my fault but I think I may have been a typical expat. It was hard work for me to make friends with my neighbors and equally as hard work for them. In the majority of cases, we agree to take “friendship” to the level of casual acquaintances and generally live our separate lives.
So, is this article true? Sadly, many of the negative observations ring a bell. Could the expat do more? Undoubtedly. Will things change anytime soon? Unlikely, if only because integrating into the local community is very difficult. Remaining isolated is a viable option because as the article recalls, the expat is there to “work”. (providing for employees to live “large” is part of the business model for most companies – even those who might employ a “technician from the poorest parts of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets”.
George P.
July 13, 2012
Aggghh – There is a Freudian slip in that last sentence – it should read: “(providing for employees to live “large” is NOT part of the business model for most companies – even those who might employ a “technician from the poorest parts of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets”.)