Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the West African nation formerly known as Dahomey: it is infrequently mentioned by the international press in a continent where no news is good news. A French colony until the 1960s, Benin is a tiny nation tucked under the Elephant Ear of West Africa, and is best known for being one of the continent’s stronger democracies.

I live in the city of Cotonou, whose name in the local language (Fon) means “River of Death.” And regardless of what Cotonou is today, it will forever retain the soul of a slaving hub at the mouth of a river that carried an unfortunate cargo down to the waiting slave ships.

For the moment, Cotonou is my home, and this message comes to you live from the River of Death.

In the three years I’ve lived here I’ve drunk whiskey with kings, been the victim of a mob throwing coconuts, surfed a couple of decent waves, and rubbed elbows with a culture that three years later, I still barely know and perhaps never will.  This is, of course, the thrill of travel and of living in a foreign country.

The expat life in Cotonou isn’t bad. Benin is essentially a safe country, especially compared to Nigeria, our neighbor to the east.  Here, you are at constant risk of annoyance, hassle, and occasional petty theft, but physical aggression is rare, very rare and frankly, I’m safer here than I would be in any large American city (see exception at end of article).

Cotonou is less a city than a large village; large parts of the streets off the principal arteries are sandy and potholed. “Downtown” is little more than a few dozen shops and a traffic jam, and most Africans do their shopping in the sprawling, chaotic Dantokpa Market, at whose heart lies a vibrant Voodoo fetish market.  We can get better tasting croissants and pastries here than in Washington DC, but we’ll wait for weeks before one of the local supermarkets has cream cheese.  We’ve got talented leather workers, tailors, and artists, but can’t get the parts to fix the air conditioner. And though we successfully dodge the bullet of the European winter, it’s frequently so hot outside that we sweat while toweling off from the shower.

Cost of living

Benin is expensive. The country produces little in the way of agricultural products, and as a result, most of what we consume has been imported at great expense. I’m speaking about expat staples like milk, wheat flour, jam, butter, breakfast cereal, cookies, and such: they’re not cheap. The dependence on imports makes just about everything expensive, from gasoline to bread to shoelaces to butter: it all comes in on ships.

We also have the option of the local food.  The Beninese diet is similar to the cuisine across much of the continent: starchy pâte, a sticky, doughy blob usually made of pounded yam, corn, or manioc, over which a spicy vegetable or meat sauce is poured.  It’s spicy, and too heavy for every day, but not bad when I do eat it.

Dinner parties, orange sand beaches, and infinite minor hassles

Cotonou’s two biggest defects are that (a) everything is harder to accomplish than it should be, and (b) there’s not a whole lot to do.  We don’t even have a movie theater (and never will, given the thriving market for pirated DVDs).  As a result, the expat community takes care of itself in the old way: endless dinner parties, cocktail hours, and invitations.  I’m not complaining, and it’s a healthy reminder of how communities behaved in the days before everyone sequestered themselves in their personal pleasure palaces with their video game consoles, broadband Internet, and other toys.  It’s a revolving community as the expats rotate through, but participating in such a diverse and friendly community is pleasant.

Weekends I’m at the beach surfing (there’s a halfway decent bar break along the coast), or relaxing on the orange sand beach. Evenings I walk the dogs around the neighborhood’s sandy streets, read and write. It’s a simpler lifestyle than the one I lived back in the States, but it has its advantages, and I personally find elegance in simplicity. I also experienced the Harmattan for the first time here, an awe-inspiring meteorological phenomenon born in the Sahara desert: the wind turns 180 degrees during two months and comes from the Sahara, bearing a fine sand that settles everywhere and darkens the afternoon skies.  I sometimes think that experiencing things like this are why I travel, although putting down a shot of whiskey with a king is a pretty cool reason too.

The fact that everything is harder than it should be, though, is the one that slowly eats at your soul: parking, driving through chaotic traffic, arguing with the same people over the same prices every single time, dealing with lousy service, bureaucratic processes that seem both pointless and endless, and the infinite minor hassles that accompany every single transaction is tiring.

Tiring, too, are the repeated power outages, water outages, cell phone outages, the system resets at the Internet provider, the fast broadband that’s actually slow, the saturated cell phone networks, and the phone lines that don’t permit easy calls.  I think back to the days before these services and remember I should be grateful.  But the constant outages are wearing, and in sum lead to the only remedy possible: travel to someplace else once every 4 months.

Benin: birthplace of Voodoo (aka Voudoun)

I mentioned Voodoo. It’s Vaudoun, actually, but yes, Benin is the birthplace of the world’s most misunderstood religion.  Haitians are the second most populous followers of Vaudoun, but it’s because the slave trade carried Beninese to the Caribbean island that Haiti gained the religion.  If you’re thinking “Serpent and the Rainbow,” you are way off; Vaudoun at its roots is an animist religion with strong ties to the natural earth, and a belief in good and bad forces that would be recognizable by anyone who ever watched a Star Wars movie.  Large parts of Benin believe in Vaudoun, but there are lots of Christians and Muslims as well, and everyone seems to live together in a peace much of Africa (not to mention the Balkans!) should envy.

Legacy of the slave trade and modern-day slavery

But there’s no escaping the legacy of slavery here.  You see it in the disorganization, the mistrust, the difficulty with which the Beninese work together toward common goals.  As a white American who experienced the story of the slave trade in middle school textbooks and who thought of the whole story as ancient history, it is eye-opening to see the impacts of slavery in the 21^st century, and to learn that slavery is in no way ancient history in one of the countries that experienced it first hand.

In fact, slavery continues to this day, and not just in Benin.  Throughout Africa, families “lend” their children – sometimes permanently – to construction projects in the city.  These children are poorly paid, sleep on the ground, and remain uneducated for their entire lives.  Call it what you like, but slavery in some form remains a real part of life here.

An elegant austerity

But let’s go back to the fact that three religions and a half dozen ethnic groups have been able to live in relative harmony in one of Africa’s stronger democracies. Benin: quiet, mostly unnoticed, little understood.  It has suffered mightily, and never makes the headlines. Life as an expat here can be frustrating, but not necessarily dangerous. It’s expensive and somewhat boring, but in its simplicity and sparseness it brings elegance to austerity. And from the point of view of a foreigner trying to get a job done, I’d say that being at the center of such a whirling, swirling mass of humanity trying to better its situation is amazing. Life at the mouth of the River of Death is actually pretty peaceful.

Will we next see vacation home for swarms of winter-evading European retirees?  Not likely.  It’s the kind of place that sends you eventually on your way with more questions than answers, and the conviction you understand less of the world than you did when you arrived. In short, Benin will change you, as it has changed me.

——-

(1) There’s one notable, horrible exception.  Peace Corps Volunteer Katie Puzey was assassinated in her sleep in March, 2009.  A stellar volunteer, well-loved by her community and extremely well integrated into the village where she lived, the motives for this atrocious murder are not yet known, and to date, justice has not been rendered.  We will not forget!

Randall Wood is the co-author of Moon Handbook Nicaragua and Moon: Living Abroad in Nicaragua.  He currently manages a $300M development program in Benin and has lived overseas for over a decade.  This article appeared simultaneously at www.therandymon.com).

The U.S., for example, is the only industrialized country to tax its overseas citizens on income earned abroad. That income is often also taxed in the country where it is earned, which means the incoming stream is dipped into not once but twice.

Double taxation is not the only problem for American expats abroad. New banking regulations have made it harder for expats to keep bank accounts in the United States and in some cases abroad. The regulations are intended to curb tax evasion and (under the Patriot Act) to help prevent money from flowing to terrorist groups. “Some U.S.-based banks have closed expats’ accounts,” according to an article in the New York Times, “because of difficulty in certifying that the holders still maintain U.S. addresses, as required by a Patriot Act provision.”

The numbers

In the last quarter of 2009 (the most recent period for which there are statistics), 502 expatriates gave up their U.S. citizenship or permanent residency status. Though it’s a tiny percentage of the over 5 million Americans the State Department says live abroad, the number is more than twice the total for all of 2008, when just 235 people gave up their citizenship. For all of 2009, the number was 743. And, reports the New York Time, “waiting periods to meet with consular officers to formalize renunciations have grown.”

What about you?

If you’re a U.S. citizen living abroad, have you ever considered giving up your U.S. citizenship?

First, they chose the place, driving the length of the Nicoya Peninsula, looking for a beach town with enough tourist infrastructure to run a business but without the overbuilding and overreaching that can spoil a place.

They came equipped, with backgrounds in business, real estate and construction, and a chunk of savings that would let them take a good shot at their dream. Rosy spoke Spanish, and Doug was learning.

Looking to Buy

Once they settled on Playa Samara, halfway down the peninsula and with a sweeping half-moon beach washed by waves gentle enough for swimming, they had local realtors show them what was on offer.  They looked inland, “in the jungle,” but it was too hot. Places in the town of Samara were “too noisy—roosters, cars, and chain saws,” says Rosy. And when they liked the location, the building didn’t seem right.

They remember that one realtor showed them a hotel, assuring them, “If you buy this, I guarantee you’ll make your money back in 5 years.” Being familiar with the ups and downs of real estate and business, Doug and Rosy knew that a realtor should never in good conscience make such assurances. They put their guard up even higher.

Howler monkey at the Hideaway Hotel, Playa Samara, Costa Rica; photo by Doug Ancel

One day, after months of searching, they turned off the coast highway onto a one-lane road that ran straight to the southern end of Playa Samara. Wouldn’t it be great, they agreed, to have a place within walking distance of the beach? But there were no hotels for sale on that road.

A little later, in April 2004, they heard through the grapevine that a German woman was selling a 1-acre parcel of land on the very road that inspired their ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ musings. It wasn’t listed with any realtors.

Doug and Rosy looked at the land and loved it. But it had no structures on it; their dream had been to buy and renovate an existing hotel.

The location, however, was perfect, and the price wasn’t half-bad. And so, after checking to make sure they’d have easy access to water, electricity, and phone line, and after some back-of-envelope calculations and late-night soul-searching, they decided to go for it. They did what most people moving to a new country or starting a business have to do at some point: change the master plan in order to accommodate an opportunity that may not come your way again.

Building a dream, from the ground up

Anyone who’s ever built a house or a hotel knows what comes next. It took Doug and Rosy a little over four years from purchase of property to opening the Hideaway Hotel in July 2008. I’m sure they could write a book about those four years, but here are a few high (and low) points.

Building the Hideaway Hotel in Playa Samara; photo by Doug Ancel

They knew what they wanted-a clean, contemporary design, high-quality construction to North American/European standards, and about a dozen spacious rooms. They wanted a pool, landscaped grounds, and a modern wastewater system that would allow them to irrigate the grounds with gray water and to give North American guests the privilege of flushing toilet paper instead of putting it in a waste container next to the toilet, which is the Tico style.

They got a good lawyer (key to getting anything done in Costa Rica), who introduced them to an architect who had a good reputation. “But he didn’t deliver,” says Rosy, so they set up meetings with several architect/ builder pairs, chose their favorite, and got to work. “The design process took some time,” continues Rosy “We wanted to be sure to choose the finishes, tile, granite, etc. ourselves.”

The permit process was also challenging. “We were held up in SETENA for 6 months,” Rosy says. “Apparently SETENA [the Secretaria Tecnica Nacional Ambiental] was backed way up at the time.”

“We were ‘next in line,’” adds Doug, “for a good 5 or 6 months.”

The web site costaricalaw.com explains, “the sole mission of SETENA is the administration of the process to review and evaluate environmental impact considerations. Builders and real estate developers cringe when they hear the word SETENA.”

“But our building permit didn’t take much time,” says Rosy. “You just present plans to the municipality and pay the fees.”

The pool before it was a pool at the Hideaway Hotel in Playa Samara; photo by Doug Ancel

Once construction got underway, Doug stayed on site as much as possible to oversee the work. The builder went over budget, and there were construction delays. But when the Hideaway Hotel opened its doors in 2008, it all seemed worth it. “Local realtors couldn’t believe it,” says Doug. They said, ‘You guys actually opened! So many projects end up unfinished ruins.’”

Their hotel is indeed no ruin; it’s a lovely place with the sort of amenities you really appreciate after having been on the road for while, from the spacious shower to the mini-fridge to blackout curtains for the times you need to adjust to jet lag or turn in early to make a wee-hours flight the next day. A hundred feet from your poolside breakfasts are trees often full of howler monkeys.

Advice on opening a B&B in Costa Rica

I asked Rosy and Doug if they have any advice for opening a B&B or a hotel in Costa Rica.

“Find one that’s been built,” Rosy laughs ruefully, although she also says she feels proud of how well their from-the-ground-up building turned out.

“It takes time to grow a business,” says Doug. “So you need operating reserves to tide you over. We planned not to make any money the first years,” he smiles, “And so far, we’re right on plan.”

But even in the months after I visited, their was an uptick in guests, and the hotel is getting great press in guidebooks and online-when I last looked they were the #2 Samara hotel on Trip Advisor. I have little doubt that the next few years will bring even more visitors and a return on their investment, both in financial and life-satisfaction terms. After all, they dreamed a dream and then, with hard work and imagination, they made it happen. It’s all part of the (somewhat flexible) master plan.

Photo of finished version of the Hideaway Hotel by David W. Smith

Some Costa Rica expats are satisfied with Caja (public) care; others opt to supplement or replace it with private care, paid out of pocket or through national or international health insurance.

One whole-hearted and one half-hearted fan of the Caja (Costa Rica’s national healthcare)

San Ramon-based expat Stephen Duplantier, 65, is a Caja fan. “We are very happy with it,” he said recently. “It’s US$18/month (a discounted rate through Association of Residents of Costa Rica–the ARCR). We go to local EBAIS (a neighborhood clinic), where there’s an excellent doctor and excellent nurses, plus all pharmaceuticals are free. Recent surgeries, diagnostic tests, ER use, pharmacy, etc.–all are totally free and high quality, and the waiting time is equal to our experience in the States.”

I agree that the Caja can be great for routine care, but when I found I needed surgery, I moved from the public to the private realm. I’d been part of the Caja system, paying around $60/month at the age of 41 and happily using their neighborhood clinics for routine care, tests, and medications. But when it became clear that I would need a major procedure, I defected to private care, opting to pay out of pocket (I’d let my U.S. insurance lapse). I was happy with the care at private Clínica Bíblica, though the final price for my stay, while quite low in comparison to U.S. prices, was still more than twice what I’d been quoted in a formal estimate.

Two that had bad experiences at public Costa Rica hospitals

Others are not so happy with the Caja.

After a motorcycle accident in Costa Rica, Matt Hogan sampled both public and private hospitals. Photo: David W. Smith

Take Matt Hogan, 35, co-founder of Finca Bella Vista, a sustainable treehouse community near the Osa Peninsula. In late 2009 he had a motorcycle accident, and was taken to the newly opened public hospital in Ciudad Cortéz. “All the newspapers had been boasting about the brand-new, state-of-the-art facilities and medical equipment, 300 clean new beds, and the rest,” says Matt. What the newspaper accounts failed to mention, according to Matt, was that all those new beds were serviced by only a few doctors who showed up only once in a while.

Matt says he suffered serious neglect and misdiagnosis (they told him he was fine). Feeling anything but fine, he had himself driven by ambulance to San José and checked himself into private Clínica Bíblica. There he was found to have one collapsed lung and the other in mid-collapse, as well as severe internal bleeding in his chest cavity. The doctors at Bíblica said that if Matt had waited another day to seek proper care he most likely would have suffocated.

Matt was very happy with the care he received at Bíblica, adding with a smile that “all the nurses were very attractive young Ticas.”

Alex Murray after being released from a 20-day hospital stay.

In another example, Alaska native Alex Murray, 72 at the time of a fire that burned over 20 percent of his body, endured an extended hospital stay that also allowed him to compare private and public care in Costa Rica.

“While expat friends with residency have had important procedures successfully performed at slight cost in the public system,” he says. “I recommend avoiding it in life-threatening situations if at all possible.”

Alex was burning garden trash at his home in the Lake Arenal region when he spilled some gas, causing the fire to flare up and burn him over much of his body. Alex spent the next 20 days in two hospitals in the capital city of San José, first at the public Hospital San Juan de Dios, and then at private Clínica Bíblica.

“Of course,” he admits, “it’s a foregone conclusion that such a comparison is unfair to the underfunded public hospital, but the devil’s in the personal details.”

Alex was first picked up by a Red Cross ambulance and taken to a clinic in nearby Tilarán. Then he was moved to the public hospital in Liberia (about an hour north), where the doctors decided to send him to the burn unit at San Juan de Dios (a public hospital) in the capital city of San José, 4 hours away.

“Arriving in San José,” says Alex, “we should have directed the driver immediately to Bíblica or Clinica Católica [two private hospitals], but, ignorant of the quality of the public hospital and anxious to get treatment, we let the driver take us to the teeming mystery that is San Juan.”

Hospital San Juan de Dios in Costa Rica

Three days at a Public Hospital: San Juan de Dios

“In our three days there,” says Alex, “no doctor ever consulted us, though one led a group of students into my room each day. The nurses, male and female, sometimes seemed like the proverbial five or six workmen who stand around a pothole gabbing while one guy fills the hole. For the most part, they were not dedicated, not attentive, not very competent, and not sympathetic. They seemed the dregs of the nursing schools. A friendly nurse assigned to draw blood samples spent three days drilling mostly dry holes all over my landscape, partly due to my extremely low blood pressure. One rough middle-aged nurse told me that I was not much hurt nor in pain. I finally had to yell at her, “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.” She desisted, smiling to herself, it seemed.

“A night crew came on and half-heartedly started to bathe me and change my dressings. Three stood on one side of the bed and made little come-hither motions with their fingers. Two stood on the other side and made little shooing gestures. Finally, they decided to help me turn.

“They would not let my wife sleep in one of the three extra beds crowded into my room. Instead she spent her nights trying to sleep in a plastic chair. In the not-very-clean bathroom, she found bloody bandages in a corner.”

Clínica Bíblica in Costa Rica

Seventeen Days at a Private Hospital: Clínica Bíblica

Alex and his wife decided that they needed to move him to a private facility. “When I was admitted to Clínica Bíblica,” he says, “I recognized immediately that here was a competent staff. The emergency room nurse quickly found a vein and soon had a set of color-coded vials filled with my blood. All staff were purposeful and attentive.

“The next evening I began to rave and tried to tear off my bandages and leave the hospital. A doctor soon arrived and said my actions were due to a lack of oxygen to the brain. I was then moved to intensive care where a coma was induced and I was intubated, remaining thus for five days, not a reassuring sight for my four daughters who arrived from points around the globe.

“I doubt that these measures would have been taken at San Juan de Dios. Three doctors tended me at Bíblica, one a burn doctor, one a plastic surgeon who moved skin from my thigh to my hip, and one a staff doctor. They each came by almost every day to talk with us. The nursing staff was a no-nonsense but friendly and attentive group, evidently the better graduates of the nursing schools. Midway through my stay, physical therapists began visiting daily to exercise my wasted muscles. When I left, I had lost 14 pounds and could walk only a few steps unassisted, but I was recovering.

“And throughout my stay, my wife was permitted to sleep on a narrow built-in bed or cot in each room. “

For more information on health care in Costa Rica, see Living Abroad in Costa Rica by Erin Van Rheenen, or visit www.livingabroadincostarica.com.

She’d been very active in a few local nonprofits, and she scaled back her commitments, quitting boards and letting people know that she’d be putting her energies elsewhere for a time.

And dammit if she didn’t write that book! In a year. I’m beyond envious—I’m positively inspired. I keep looking at little huts on the side of the road or up on top of mountains, thinking, Now there’s a good place to hole up and write.

The book is Evelio’s Garden: A Memoir of Costa Rica. It centers around a garden on her land on the shores of Lake Arenal, an organic garden a longtime friend, Evelio, tries to create out of nothing. Evelio is a local, born and bred in the Arenal area, and he has a natural talent for planting and tending. But trying to garden organically, and on a plot ravaged by the winds off the lake, turns out to be more than he–and Sandy, as his enabler/landlord/cheerleader–bargained for.

Sandy describes the ups and downs of the gardening project, but more than that, she details how the achingly beautiful land around the lake is at risk of devastation. Not incidentally, a portrait of expat life emerges, as we learn of Sandy’s neighbors from Europe and North America and Costa Rica and see how they all coexist, sometimes peaceably, sometimes contentiously.

It’s a book about how we live on the land, how it nourishes us and how we should nourish it. It’s beautifully written and has a strong sense of place. I’m honored that Sandy let me read it and that she’s allowing me to publish an excerpt here.

Excerpt from Evelio’s Garden: A Memoir of Costa Rica, by Sandra Shaw Homer

All land has a history, and the history around here goes back a long way.  Satellite images have picked up old roads all over this canton, long grown over, made by the indigenous peoples of pre-Columbian times.  One of these roads runs along the south shore of the lake, uphill from the current road and downhill from the ridge that links Tilarán with the tiny villages of Silencio and Río Chiquito.  I have ridden my mare along one stretch of this old road that runs behind San Luís and Tronadora, much washed out and crowded with second-growth forest, and it took a man on horseback with a machete to cut open a way for us to pass.  Artifacts of the native people show up everywhere.  When the lake is low, you can go out in a kayak or canoe and explore along the naked shoreline for pottery shards.  In town, there’s hardly a house that doesn’t sport a metate, or corn-grinding stone, that turned up when the foundation was being dug.  It usually has a potted plant sitting on it.

Modern local history dates from the late nineteenth century, when there were gold mines south of here in Las Juntas and Líbano.  It was rough country then, virgin forest, and the only way in was by horse or mule.  The gold was shipped out in ox-carts.  (More recently it was taken out in helicopters!)  Gradually settlement drifted north, and people carved farms out of the ancient forests, establishing a fiercely independent, frontier life-style.  Even in the 1930s, it could take the better part of a week to get to San José – from Tilarán on horseback (oxcart took longer) to Cañas, where you waited days for a small boat to take you down the Bebedero to the Río Tempisque and the port of Puntarenas, then by all-day train up to the Central Valley.  The Inter-American highway wasn’t completed along its northern reaches until the sixties.  There was no paved road around the lake until the eighties.  (It’s still not finished.)  I have met retired school teachers in Tilarán who remember four-hour treks on horseback to get to their one-room school houses on the lake, sometimes in mud up to the horses’ knees.  The niece of one of these teachers told me that her grandparents owned our farm in those days, and that it was a much bigger property.  A lot of the farms around here were broken up when ICE acquired the land for the reservoir.  Since then, the process of development has been inexorable.  As long as there’s someone to buy, sooner or later a farmer will face the economic conditions that force him to sell, frequently just a small piece at a time, enough to give him ready cash to get along until beef prices go up, or the weather improves enough to let him get a good crop in.  There are still some fair-sized farms around the lake, but since the early nineties development has speeded up and been gringo-ized. (At least in Tilarán, the word gringo can refer to Europeans as well as to non-native-Spanish-speakers from north of the Río Grande. Our nearest neighbors are Germans.)

Earlier this year an 18-wheeler parked its trailer by the side of the road just uphill from Cinco Esquinas, smack in your face where the first grand view of the lake should be.  It was a mobile office with the name of an international real-estate company painted in large letters on its side.  This was beyond ugly, but it never opened.  Instead the world-wide recession brought local real estate sales almost to a halt.  Still the trailer sat there, month after month, until finally some locals couldn’t resist jacking the thing up to steal a pair of off-side tires, leaving it listing crazily on a slender pile of cement blocks.  Just the other day it finally disappeared.  How it was moved, nobody seems to know.  But nobody was sorry to see it go.  This little story – especially the part about getting that trailer out of there – is no doubt already brewing up into a local legend.

We’ve been here long enough to see people come and go.  Some can brave the remoteness, the vagaries of the weather and the strangeness of the culture, and some can’t.  Some people get attached to the land, and some don’t.

When I was growing up, my family never lived long enough in one place for me to become bound to the land.  We lived in some beautiful – and not so beautiful – places, both rural and suburban.  From my early twenties until I came to Costa Rica, I moved almost as frequently, living exclusively in cities.   It was a little shock to realize, when we started building this house five years ago, that I’ve lived on Lake Arenal, and on this particular plot of ground, longer than I’ve lived any place else in my entire life.

You can’t get attached to the earth in Philadelphia or New York.  How many millions of people never do?  It’s this attachment that fires my desire to protect it – but not just my attachment to this particular plot of ground, but to the whole thing, the planet.  It’s not such a giant leap of the imagination from the sight of a growing young forest to the image of a tiny blue speck in the vastness of the universe.  So, finally, it is the sense of place that has captured me and pinned me to the planet.

It is gratifying to be part of the history of the land, to be growing a farm instead of shrinking it, to be building a forest instead of cutting it down.  Here, in one tiny corner of the planet, the question becomes obvious:  do we add something by our tenancy of the earth, or do we take it away?

He asked doctors and public-health experts what they thought of how expats fare in China, where, according to World Bank estimates, 750,000 people die prematurely each year just from air pollution. “Alarming upsurges in birth defects and cancer rates are reported even in the state-controlled press,” notes Fallow, in his “How I Survived China” in the November issue of The Atlantic.

The air quality is so bad, writes Fallow, that he and his wife joked with friends that now was the time to take up smoking, since their lungs would never know the difference.

A foreign-trained doctor in Beijing told Fallow, “Just using your eyes, you know this can’t be good for anybody.”  Fallow continues,

Another way to know this is via a clandestine air-quality station that the U.S. Embassy has built in Beijing. The Chinese government does not report, and may not even measure, what other countries consider the most dangerous form of air pollution: PM2.5, the smallest particulate matter, tiny enough to work its way deep into the alveoli. Instead, Chinese reports cover only the grosser PM10 particulates, which are less dangerous but more unsightly, because they make the air dark and turn your handkerchief black if you blow your nose. (Spitting on the street: routine in China. Blowing your nose into a handkerchief: something no cultured person would do.) These unauthorized PM2.5 readings, sent out on a Twitter stream (BeijingAir), show the pollution in Beijing routinely to be in the “Very Unhealthy” or “Hazardous” range, not seen in U.S. cities in decades.

Other doctors and fellow expats told him, “you get over it” (bouncing back once they return to more healthy settings), and that he should “worry about something else.” A Chinese doctor told Fallow, “I tell my patients, the most important ‘medical’ step you can take is to put on a seat belt in a car, wear a helmet on a bike, and run for your life in crosswalks.”

But Fallows ends on a high note, quoting a Western-trained doctor pointing out that China “is an exciting place. It’s a historic time. People seem to feel alive.”

“That made sense when I heard it,” writes Fallow. “In China I had felt terrible, but alive…and that makes me say that foreigners who want to go should not be deterred.”

Photo: atlasnetwork.org

The movie Outsourced features a relationship between an American man and an Indian woman

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go all tabloid on you, but South Carolina governor Sanford and his Argentine honey’s high-profile affair shines a light on something most travelers and live-abroaders already know: that cross-cultural romance can be more than tricky, even if you’re not a governor.

Sanford and Belen Chaper should head over to the web site Expatwomen for some cautionary tales (and success stories). Take, for example, the Danish woman and her Japanese boyfriend who met while he was working in Denmark. The woman writes that when the couple moved to Japan, everything changed—and not for the better.

‘It seems that the man I fell in love with has transformed into a different person. He acts differently, he dresses differently and worst of all; he treats me in a different way. I feel I have been put in a different role since we got here, and somehow it seems I don’t fit into his life anymore. To make matters worse, I am not working here and feel completely disempowered about the whole situation.”

The move abroad stories are all from a woman’s point of view,  and are often set up in advice-column format, from My teenagers aren’t adapting to the move to Pregnant in Vietnam, who’s worried about the medical system there.

the woman of the hour: Maria Belen Chapur

During the last week of June 2009, no one could locate South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, a Republican in his second term. Aids said Sanford, married and with four sons, was hiking the Appalachian Trail, but even they seemed unsure. Then the cat clawed its way out of the bag—Sanford was in Argentina, with his Argentine girlfriend (the press used the old-fashioned word “mistress” to make the story juicier). His wife, it came out, had known about la argentina, Maria Belen Chaper, for a few weeks, and had given Sanford the boot.

“The mistress” is 43, divorced, with 2 children of her own. She works at a multinational agribusiness corporation and is fluent in Spanish, English, Portuguese, and Chinese. She lives, the press reported (with photos and google maps!) in the upscale Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo.

Belen Chaper sounds like a woman of substance and accomplishment. But even if she weren’t, she has, to Sanford, one other enticing allure: she’s foreign. She doesn’t look, smell, sounds or taste like the women in Sanford’s South Carolina home. The very way she thinks, moves, and scrambles an egg is decidedly unfamiliar. And he, in turn, is foreign to her.

Anyone who’s had a foreign fling knows that
ho-hum + foreign accent = doable
& appealing + foreign accent = utterly irresistible

What happens when the fling steadies into a real relationship? Well, then things get tricky. The same foreignness that first drew you in is now, subtly and not-so-subtly, pushing you away. It’s the same thing that happens in every relationship—what draws you in starts to drive you crazy. But with a cross-cultural relationship, the differences are wider and deeper. Those who can manage it end up with a wider frame of reference and a deeper understanding of the varieties of humanness. Either that or they go stark raving mad.

If Sanford ends up staying with his ‘mistress,” let’s check in in a year or two to see how things are going.

They moved abroad because there’s no legal way for them to remain together in the U.S. Unlike heterosexual couples, they can’t marry and then apply for a green card for the foreign spouse. An estimated 36,000 Americans are in the same boat, says Immigration Equality, an advocacy group.

“I left a home,” said Lown. “I left a ranch. I left a promising political career.” Lown, whose mother was Mexican, holds dual citizenship allowing him to live legally in Mexico.

Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

The last winter Alaine Berg spent in her native North Dakota was the coldest on record. Fleeing the snow, she moved to Houston in 1995 to work for the Earth Foundation, “the only environmental job in that big polluted city,” she says.

But Houston wasn’t far enough south for her tastes and in 2001, she headed to Puerto Viejo on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast.

Why Costa Rica, and why the less-visited eastern coast of that country? Alaine had studied Latin American culture at North Dakota State, and Noble, her “husband figure,” as she puts it, had a longstanding connection to Puerto Viejo, having visited his father there every summer since 1975. So on their one-year anniversary, Alaine and Noble moved to “Old Harbor” – Puerto Viejo.

Almost immediately both became involved with ATEC (Asociación Talamanqueña de Ecoturismo y Conservación, or Talamanca Association of Ecotourism and Conservation; the southern Caribbean coast area is also called Talamanca. ATEC’s office in Puerto Viejo is also a bookstore, internet café, and a place to arrange for eco- and community-friendly tours to nearby national parks and indigenous reserves.

Miss Move Abroad asked Alaine about ATEC and about her life in Puerto Viejo.

Tell me about your involvement with ATEC.
Noble’s Dad, Mel Baker, was one of ATEC’s founders. He wanted to retire from running the show. For a couple of years he looked for someone to run the office, but could find no locals with the right skills who’d do the job for so little money. The position was one 3/4 time job for $400 a month. That 3/4 time job would mean a 36-hour week as the work week in Cost Rica is 48 hours. But the job can be a 170-hour work week when things get going.

Noble and I interviewed for the position over beers at a local restaurant and were both hired to fill the one position, for the one salary. Noble is the computer geek–running the internet café part of the office, and I guess my title is Project Manager. A local woman, Ivette Grenald, is office director, so I work mainly in environmental education. For instance, last year another local lady (Susana Schik) and I had a grant through ReciCaribe, the Association for Recycling in Talamanca. We invited 12 schools and community groups into the recycling center in Patiño, gave presentations on the three R’s and responsible consumerism.

Right now my main projects are with ReciCaribe (working to get another grant to expand the recycling center and do another push of environmental education) and ADELA (the Action for the Fight against Petroleum; www.grupoadela.org). With ADELA we’re trying to put a positive slant on the organization. Rather than keep on saying NO NO!–No to petroleum exploitation, No to pollution–we’re trying to say Yes. Yes to job growth in Talamanca. Yes to a bio-fuel project called Klean Air Fuel, a technology developed by a Costa Rican that uses leftovers from the banana plantations to produce a clean bio-fuel.

With the Talamanca Institute (www.talamancainstitute.com), ATEC is designing courses for visiting students in Sustainable Development, Migratory Bird Monitoring, Sea Turtle Conservation, and even one in Comparative Religion.

Do you travel much, or get back to the U.S.?
Noble and I go back to Texas for three months every spring to help with his mother’s project, Eve’s Garden Organic B & B and Ecology Resource Center (www.evesgarden.org). It’s in the high desert, so we can dry out for while [the Caribbean coast gets a lot of rain and tends to be humid]. Without a little break from here, I wouldn’t appreciate it nearly as much.

What do you like best about Costa Rica?
I love Talamanca. It’s tranquilo [peaceful] and green. With the national park, the wildlife refuge, the indigenous reserves, and the private reserves, 82 percent of Talamanca is protected! And Talamanca has the most cultural diversity in all of Costa Rica. People here are real. For example, I come back from vacation and they tell me I’m fat, or when I vex the women I work with, they tell me. I love my work here and the people who work so hard together to protect this place.

What do you like least about Costa Rica?
I don’t like so much change so fast. Yes, I’m a stranger here too, but I lived here for years before I thought about buying land, and I still haven’t bought land. One of the reasons ATEC formed was to help local people survive with all of this foreign investment coming in. Foreign investment has changed things dramatically and rapidly for the people here.

Foreigners come in and expect gringo-landia. They fall in love with the tranquiloattitude, the amazing forests and the uncontaminated sea. They end up getting pissed about how slow things go, or get frustrated with the mañanaattitude. They fall into the corruption, they try to do things the quick way, use the wrong type of lumber in building, for example, make un-smart choices, get thieved, get fined, and get angry and leave a big chunk of land that they were in love with all destroyed. I’m trying to get over my “holier than thou”-ness. But people need to just come and rent for a while, get to know things, and to learn that there is no paradise on earth.

Any advice for people thinking of moving to Costa Rica?

Oh yeah. Here’s a start.

• Rent first.
• Hire locals and pay fair wages–better than fair even. Support local business.
• Examine your intentions for wanting to invest here. If you’ve got an idealized image–rethink it, or you’ll get disappointed.
• Learn about the area, the language, customs, history–it shows respect.
• Cultural Sensitivity!  English is not the national language.
• If you want to come here and make it just like home–just stay home.