Living and working abroad

My first visit home after coming to Rwanda came after just three months, although the trend has since changed. My home visitations have since dwindled down dramatically but I won’t go into the details. That is classified info. State Secrets. Well, tell a lie. Actually those are what are termed karmic debts. Karmic debts are the sum total of all those evil things and sins that everybody has committed against their family like not visiting and not calling home and not caring for what is happening on the family estate and not being bothered which sibling just hauled in the latest in-law or who is the newest baby in the family. So I am full of karmic debts, but so are you, yes, you, sticking a finger at me. One of the more memorable things about that first visit home was the consistent question; “Which flight did you use, RwandAir, Kenya Airways, SN Brussels … which one?” Nobody wanted to hear about Onatracom. You will excuse the verbose intro but the issue at hand today is this growing global trend of people seeking employment in foreign lands. People like me and some of you. If you’re not Rwandan, then why are you here? Why aren’t you deploying your diploma and your degree and your experience in Uganda, in Kenya, in the US, in Canada or wherever it is that you come from? Do you know that to any country you go with your ‘expatriate’ agendas, there are hundreds of thousands of angry jobless youths who are silently baying and asking “why are they taking our jobs?” Do you know that as far as these people are concerned, you are an economic migrant at best, not expatriate as you would have them think? Working in a foreign country is not all rose flowers on a bed because … because what happens when you lose that job? Do you now rush off at full speed to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs–MIDIMAR? What will you do? My late friend Kevin comes to mind. Kevin was British. He was a chemist. An assayer. He worked in Gikondo and lived in Kacyiru, next to me. I knew Kevin by chance. Went to do a story about the company he worked for. He happened to be one of the people I interviewed. We instantly recognized each other as neighbors. From hitherto strangers, we became tight drinking buddies. While I stuck to my Turbo King and Mutzig, Kevin was a tight-rope walker; he went in for the spirits –Uganda Waragi, Bond 7, and Smirnoff Vodka. But Kevin had a drinking problem. As it got worse, he would get suspended from work for it. Like two weeks without pay. His finances screwed up. On a lonely evening Kevin would ask me ‘what’s the point of someone travelling thousands of miles, crossing oceans to work in a foreign land?’ It was a tough question for which we both couldn’t find answers. Often he would turn the heat on me; “Moses, why do you write, honestly?” Then he would provide the answer himself; “You hope to one day be picked up by a large media organization like The New York Times to correspond for them.” When he was inevitably laid off, Kevin took the cowardly route and committed suicide. Kevin was in his late 60s when he died. He had lived most of his working life in Africa, traversing the continent country after country. Clearly, he had nowhere to go at this evening stage of his life.

Lifestyle

Living and working abroad