When Budget Turns 30 (Part II)

When a Budget Lifestyle turns 30

(part 2)

The Need for Privacy - Living Accommodations 

I have just reached the age of 30, and of all the things good and bad which can be said about finally having the number ‘3’ as the leading digit in one’s age, I would like to pick a few big differences in my day to day, things that have changed over the past decade, every-day-life-things which, living overseas, keeps things interesting.   I moved from Nigeria to the USA at age 5, quick experience in Canada at 10 (just 1 year) but then moved to Kenya at age 11, Kenya to the USA at age 18, and finally from the US to Thailand at age 23.  Living many years on each of these 3 continents, I am lucky to have some unique memories from which I can learn, laugh, share… definitely laugh :)

I smile over these things when they do come up, when some obvious differences emerge showing how I used to do things… in plain English - basically how dumb I used to be (I would argue that it took me far longer to ‘grow up’ than it does for someone who does not move countries during their teenage or early-20s years of life, this is a longer and prettier sounding way of saying that I was just very slow to mature :) ).  Well, its sometimes just fun to write about these things, just for myself, but this blog is public so I can hopefully enjoy some funny or smart (but the best is funny AND smart!) comments from those who read the online version.

So now I continue to part 2 of the “5 Differences in the Life of the International Budget-Minded Teacher, growing from age 22 to 30.”**

I started writing these thinking of only one story for each, but I was having so much fun writing!  I couldn’t pick just one, and each point might be worth its own post.  Let me know some of your memories in this phase of life as well!  I think these are far and away the best stories from life, but specifically living abroad makes some things much more obvious - but its the around-the-home stories, the daily life stories, these things paint a much more full and ‘real’ (real to me) picture of modern life in developing countries, but also in developing humans :)  Ok, here goes!

Part 2 - Privacy

As many of us know, and many more are currently on the journey to find out, modern life in developing countries is fun, more fun than I have had in modern life in modern countries.  The third category may not exist in the year 2016 (developing life in developing countries? but I have read articles about the last few tribes of hunter-gatherers still living in the Amazon Forest…) so I will just stick to these two.

Why is it fun?  Because its unpredictable!  In a nutshell, this says it for me.  Life is never boring!  I am kept on my toes pretty much on a daily basis, surely this does occasionally include not-so-good things as well as the good, but in my opinion it is always more good than bad.  I don’t mean ‘on my toes’ as in one facing danger (but life is of course dangerous sometimes), and I don’t mean ‘on my toes’ as in I have no idea what is going on around me (but of course, that can also happen on certain days…).

I think it is simply that life in the developing world incorporates ideas of change and a need for fluidity at a fundamental level, I guess it is a part of the word ‘developing’ to begin with in various respective cultures around the world, and this need for adaptability gives rise to a much greater number of daily life situations where, to say it in short - life necessarily includes ‘chance.’

This is not only about having or not having money, there is that too, but I guess if I can pick one reasonably brief thing to say in order to explain myself, the way that people receiving a wide range of salary amounts are forced to physically interact with each other on a much more regular basis causes life to undergo pressure.  What happens with that pressure is everything, good/bad/humourous/interesting… its the multi-level social interaction that is a little harder to come by in the more wealthy nations.  Of course there are indeed large, secluded, walled in communities in Thailand and in Kenya, places where the ‘rich’ can live without ever having cause to lay eyes on the ‘poor,’ these exist in pretty much every country on Earth by now, but its just there are so many less of them here.

Civilization (which means pretty much the same as Capitalism-Level to me now) has just not had enough time to take hold here, there, any of the still-developing countries.  Or maybe its not an unstoppable force, maybe there is something at work in the East that works in people’s hearts to counter this feeling, and still feel a need to stay close to the land, stay closer to each other, not totally turning one’s back from still relying in some small part on one’s community and on village life.

Sorry for the long sentences, but hey everyone must see by now that we live in a world where very little still exists in Black or White.  I use a lot of compound sentences... Everything is gray (or grey :) ), everything and everyone demands an explanation.  We go far out of our way in order to not step on toes, remain politically correct… But if we all just loved each other, truly loved... Well.  I guess I write the way I do because I like to explain things more fully, more philosophically, giving respect to ‘the other,’ trying to show that I do try to respect both sides of any statement I make, most importantly of all, I try to show that we must remain aware that we cannot know all the angles (ever), no matter how hard we try, our brains are simply wired in such a way, and so anything I say can be very open to change, as soon as the next day, as my own life experience leads me to change and to see change. 

  

I haven’t yet mentioned privacy, but that word experience just now can be used to end the intro, and start with some stories of Privacy.  So to stop here, I will say that my overall experience with life to the age of 30 has led me to say that as far as I can see - Life is not full until one can find oneself living for the day AND for the future.

I found that much harder to do while living in USA, and I am much closer to feeling in line with that statement while living here.  But I don’t mean only here as in Thailand, I mean here as in here in the 3rd world.  I feel just as ‘at home’ when I travel to the surrounding countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, as I do when I am literally at ‘my house’ in Maha Sarakam Province, Thailand.  May sound funny but I have at least 3 honest and true ‘homes’ right now, and a 4th may be coming soon…

I care about my own Privacy a little bit more now than I did when I was 22, definitely more than I did at 18 as a freshman in a dorm with 119 other males, and I have noticed that I am willing to pay a little bit more for that Privacy as well.

For the first 3 months in Thailand, I lived nearly for free at the extreme generosity of a friend in Bangkok, my good friend Mark and I slept in our sleeping bags on the floor of his studio apartment… and we were not the only people being hosted either!!  He had adopted (for a time) the son of a Chinese refugee family, and so the 4 of us shared a single room for more than 10 weeks.  Yes it was cramped, but the hilarity only increased when the occasional Couch-Surfer would stop in, making it 5 single guys, all of whom had graduated college, living in a 16 foot by 14 foot space.  Things could only get easier from there living-situation-wise, Mark and I enjoyed another unit in the same building for the rest of the year, switched apartments a few times, and after almost 2 years of this I moved out to the countryside of Thailand - the home of the Esaan people.

In Esaan, I took a job as the first full-time English teacher yet hired by a certain lovely government school, in the town of Chumpuang, and I lived in the teacher’s housing (free except for water/power) within the school grounds.  Being not only the first foreigner to live in these units, but also the first foreigner that most people knew to speak Thai, and beyond that, when people realized that I was wanting friends and didn’t mind the lack of privacy… well, ‘Privacy’ was instantly non-existent.  It did get on my nerves occasionally, some days I would have to just leave town and go travel alone somewhere, maybe go to visit a friend (usually another foreign teacher) working in one of the neighbouring provinces.  Coming home though, I had to get ready for students to knock on my bedroom door on any school day at pretty much any time from 7am to 7pm  (my house didn’t even have a front door let alone a lock and key, nothing was ever stolen, no harm ever came my way, and I still remember to thank God for this today :) at night I would wedge my broom between the door handle and door jamb, it wouldn’t stop anyone intent on entering but I thought I would at least hear them coming)…

Come to think of it, there were plenty of nights where I scared myself, and 2 times in particular that I was sure I was seeing a ghost.  My house was also directly next to the school's shrine, a place where people would come to pay tribute to the founding fathers of the land on which the school stood (yes, the deceased fathers, whom the teachers believe still inhabit the area)... and did I mention that I lived alone?  Even if I would have had a problem, who knows if anyone could have heard me yelling for help.  But!  Nothing bad ever happened, incredibly, extremely thankfully, I lived in this truly dilapidated 40-year old wooden house through 2 floods, the foundation cracking (3 different times, until there were an entire family of scorpions living among the cracks in my 'living room' floor), and one time the roof in my 'extra bedroom' partially collapsed (stayed liked that for almost a year with me there, and remains that way today).  It gave me quite a smile, and maybe broke my heart a little as well, when on a recent trip to visit Chumpuang, my former workmates told me that everyone still refers to it as "Kru Joel's house."  No one else wants to live there, the house is in such bad shape, and it gives me quite a laugh when I think about how much I liked that house, and also how many little things I just learned to accept as life.  My toilet for example, worked only for the first week of my entire time there, and I would walk (yes sometimes in the middle of the night, avoiding snakes and praying) 50 metres to use the Boys Toilet in my school.  It was not all hardship however, not at all!  Although the school's wifi was not the quickest, at night I had it all to myself!  Free as well!  Another thing, here in Maha Sarakam I have to take a 40-minute journey, usually full of traffic, in order to get to our bus station (to go anywhere outside of my province), while in Chumpuang I could probably have reached the one and only bus stop (but still had a bus direct to Bangkok, passing our town after beginning its route nearby) in under 40 seconds if I was in a hurry! :)

Literally a 1-minute walk would bring me to the town’s central market, I didn’t mind standing out but the fact remained that I couldn’t go unnoticed if I tried.  Years later, I have even had the experience of riding my bike wearing full skin protection (from the sun), not an inch of whiteness showing, and people still yell out, “Hey, foreigner!”  How can they know??  Hah!  Our bodies are shaped differently?  I stand differently (I am not even standing, I am riding a bicycle…)?  Anyways, I had no privacy until I was in my room, door shut, turning off my light at night.

Soon after moving there in 2012, I began having dinner at fellow teachers' houses, students who would invite me, every single night of the week.  I would come home, play guitar or read a bit, and then crash.  The teaching hours were long, I asked for it though, and at the time I felt like I had so much energy that it was my obligation to use it, these kids said they wanted to learn so why not?!  Not only English either, I taught a free Science tutoring class, several different groups of students learning guitar, and even one for running/training (was fun while it lasted!)  Anyways, my massive energy lasted for about 20 months.  In the end of the 2nd year there, I noticed I was starting to slow down, and maybe even want a little more time for myself as well.  It was around this time I started cycling, maybe that necessitated both more sleep, more free time (which then had to come from the teaching, because I was basically sleeping, eating, teaching, eating, and sleeping, for 6-7 days a week).

There could be many more stories told about just the most normal of days in such a town, so different than anywhere I had experienced before, but I will get back to Privacy.  At the age of 28 I took a job at a University, I was given a room to myself in a dorm about 10% full of students (the rest of the rooms empty), I guess I still wanted more privacy than that, because now here I am at 30 - I still have kept to the budget lifestyle, trying not to use my A/C unit, still taking showers with the water at whatever temperature it comes out of the tap (not using the heating unit, saves a few baht on the electricity bill), my appliances are still limited (and I am still using the same blender :) 7 years running), but the fact is that I am now paying specifically for a room that is my own.  Very few people know where my door is, they may know my building but could not find me without some work… and that makes me quite comfortable!  Probably not surprising, and maybe many people would ask why I hadn’t done this already.  Its not like this room is very much money (2700 Baht including utilities (I also have a small refrigerator now! :) ) totals to about 80$ a month, so just a bit more than 10% of my monthly salary), I definitely could have afforded this before if I tried… but I just didn’t mind.  It was all part of the experience, and I guess I am saying that I am ok for that experience to be in the past :)  

So for all of you who remember my years of stories including animals of every kind making their way into my house whenever they wanted, they are for the most part, finished.  I still have lizards and insects, but no more of the larger animals.  I live on the 4th floor, and both of my doors can close completely, AND have locks on them :), and my windows are all lined up, no slats missing, no hinges broken off...

Something my friend Mark and I have discussed before, a great friend and an extremely special friend for me personally as he is the only friend I have who has also spent several years of his life on the continents of Africa, N.America, and now Asia, and pretty much the same amount of years on each as I have too.  I have not forgotten something cool he once said to me, something that goes exactly along the lines of what I am trying to do with my own life (or trying to avoid doing with my own life!)

He said something like “the problem with the focus of life in Kenya, was that people spend too much time looking only at the past, and do nothing to prepare for the future.  The problem with life here in Thailand, is that we spend life focusing only on how to enjoy each day, and fail to plan for the future, and finally the problem of life in the USA, was that the focus was mainly on how to someday work things out so life in the future would be an easy one, but with all that pressure people struggle to find happiness on a day to day basis.”

Read that, and let me know what you think!  Even if you haven’t lived in Africa, haven’t lived in South-East Asia, haven’t lived in North America, well maybe you don’t even live in any of these places, but I thought it was a very meaningful argument he introduced that day… I still think he is more right than wrong, and I still use those very simple but (in my experience) true words to remind myself not to fall too far into the social tendencies of any of my 3 home cultures.

Finally, if you haven’t ever moved to another country, these same principles can be applied in other ways (just maybe not to such extremes).  For example, life in the countryside will definitely differ from city life in any country anywhere, as will someone from pretty much any country’s life differ when they move from a life as an 18-year old helping relatives carry goods from the back to the front of the family shop, and their life as a 27-year old, maybe a college graduate, working for a much higher salary in some company slightly to more than slightly larger than dad’s home business, even if that person didn’t physically move the place where they sleep each night.  The same principles can apply - don’t spend too much time looking back, or you may wind up lost when change rushes in, don’t spend too much time living only for today, you may wind up unready when life presents one of its precious few major intersections that could be either your lucky break or just more of the same forever (which for many, the boredom that develops will not bring more good than it does bad), or finally one must watch out to not only look forward to the future, or you may wind up wasting life, wasting the gift that life each day does bring (even though it may be small, may be tiny, they do add up and each day is still a gift).

I am lucky to have the experiences out here that I have, each day now as well as those great years (my 3rd -6th years in Thailand) living in a smaller town.  Gotta remember the life lessons, as well as remember to keep my eyes up and not spend too much time missing what my brain might call 'the good times,' when actually today is just as good, if not better!  Just need to stay positive.  All the best, God bless!  Take care - Joel

Here is the link to Part 1 -
http://godmadethedurian.blogspot.com/2016/06/when-budget-turns-30.html