0:00
and I got homesick now I'm homesick for Ethiopia okay yeah and it wasn't right away chro or pisto from Spain oh Pisto
0:08
is nice wow you're good at this so the overseas was really like wherever it is
0:14
lived in Bundi Ethiopia and now Greece he's born down in Bundi like what the ah
0:20
you want the fire the working culture and Bundian work culture is more similar to US work
0:28
culture it's direct hierarchical blah blah blah night life i don't I don't know i'm 45 now
0:36
welcome to Expert Experts today I'm joined by Kelly Howser a passionate
0:41
humanitarian and expert who lived in multiple continents originally from the United
0:47
States Kelly lived in Brazil Spain Burundi Ethiopia and now in
0:53
Greece with a background in NGO and development work in this episode Kelly
0:59
shares with us her international journey and challenges from studying abroad to
1:04
working in challenging environments and finally choosing Greece as a more stable and safe place to live so sit back relax
1:12
and let's explore this expert experience together welcome everyone to a new episode of Expat Experts uh recording
1:19
again from Athens episode three of this second season um with the new structure
1:25
with the new uh ways again recording live uh with audience here so really
1:30
happy to have you all around here guys thank you for
1:36
coming and of course having a new guest and really happy to have you here Kelly
1:42
welcome to to the show to the Thanks Mark happy to be here i hope um I can
Guest Background & Expat Journey
1:48
provide some insight to your audience that's helpful to them i'm pretty sure like knowing a little bit of your life
1:55
like it's one of the biggest parts that I I don't know how to start you know like you lived in so many countries like
2:02
um and maybe just like we start from the beginning you are originally from from
2:08
the US mhm um where did it I was born in the suburbs of Washington DC and I also
2:14
lived during my childhood in Jacksonville Florida for the Americans listening you know those are very
2:20
different places yeah so it's kind of like moving to a different country so Washington is where you live and Florida
2:26
is where you retire or not exactly jacksonville is actually in the northeast part of Florida so it doesn't
2:34
even have the the south as they call it yeah okay gotcha so it's not even good for retiring okay I get it
2:43
um you lived in Brazil Spain for some time for
2:49
studies also Brazil for studies Burundi Ethiopia and now Greece yes so that's
2:56
five countries on on the go so far um how this whole thing started like it was
3:03
a dream of you of living abroad or it's something that it happened that's a good question i think from early on I was
3:09
very interested in the entire world and not just my country and what was in front of me i
3:15
remember when I was a kid my grandparents had a a coffee table that
3:21
had a a globe in the center and I would just spin it and be like "Okay that's
3:26
where I'm going to live when I grow up." So that's how Bundi appeared that's no actually when I interviewed
3:33
for the job in Bundi I had to Google where is Bundi
3:38
i mean I get it it's not the most common country in Africa either like it's just
3:44
like okay when you say Ethiopia you can more or less place it or like you've heard from from it before but maybe
3:50
before that I know that you first time living abroad was due to studies it was
3:58
Spain or Brazil madrid so when did that happen like what is the moment of So
4:04
with Spain I became in I didn't originally well okay I had a family
4:10
vacation to Mexico um when I think I was 19 or 20 and there was a little bit of
4:16
uh family drama we split ways for a few days and then came back together and during the few days I was apart I met so
4:23
many lovely Mexican people and made just really quick friends and I started
4:29
speaking some Spanish and I fell in love with the language and the culture and so I when I went back to the US I enrolled
4:36
in the Spanish classes at the university and I um yeah that's what started my my
4:44
journey on foreign languages and I wanted to study abroad to improve my
4:51
Spanish in Chile for some reason I chose Chile it was just like this random far
4:57
to me it was this far away place with a huge desert and uh somehow earthquakes
5:02
earthquakes and and I wanted to do that i had a Chilean Spanish professor she said no you have to go to the original
5:08
the the origin of the Spanish language to Spain i said "Okay." Well you went to
5:14
Madrid there is I went to Madrid i don't know if that's most populated with South American immigrants in Spain yes but uh
5:21
so I'm maybe a few years older than than you Mark i know that a decade and a half
5:27
older so so back then in uh 20 25 years
5:32
ago uh Spain was or Madrid was not so full of immigrants it was very different I think i think so yeah yeah because I
5:39
went back for the first time last year on sort of a nostalgia tour and yeah I
5:45
know that was the number one thing I noticed was different yeah I think I mean there was tourism but there was not
5:51
much more of what we call now expats or like people who immigrants who move from one country to the other i don't know if
5:58
in other places of Europe and United States for sure like the whole immigration started much earlier i think
6:06
Spain kicks a little bit later also because um yeah our recent history that
6:11
it's not that far away so uh we were not really there's an ocean between the two
6:16
yeah and a and a dictatorship fascist one that it's also dividing things a little bit more also like close borders
6:23
and the fact of we col colonized half of South America and I don't think that it's the most lovely thing to do either
6:30
so as a culture but yeah and so how for how long were you in
6:36
Madrid then I was in Madrid for eight months okay and I was very much focused
6:42
on the study of the language um I had a Spanish boyfriend which is very
6:47
interesting um I lived with a Spanish family for a few months as well also
6:53
very interesting uh yeah
6:59
when does there a lot of stories there but I won't Yeah I can imagine when does Brazil comes into this whole
7:06
thing like because you also went to Brazil you lived in Brazil afterwards as an expert but you also studied there or
7:13
I didn't actually study i did I did some I did an intensive Portuguese class i guess that's studying but not the formal
7:19
studies i um so after one of my friends in university she studied Portuguese and
7:26
then moved to Brazil um for an internship after university fell in love
7:33
got married there a group of us went down for the wedding i fell in love with the culture with the music and um when I
7:41
came back to when I went back to Washington DC I where I had been living at the time I enrolled in Portuguese
7:49
classes and started doing some remote volunteer work and met a community that
7:55
way that was based in Brazil and um after a couple of years I I was working
8:00
at um an accounting firm i was traveling around the US doing audits for labor
8:06
unions and so that was kind of exciting but it was kind of boring as well and the travel was nice the work not so
8:13
exciting and I had sort of a quarter life crisis I would call it and I
8:19
quarter life crisis yeah quarter life crisis i said you know what i just need to do something that for me you know not
8:27
I was I felt like I was in a lot of I had a lot of pressure to like you know
8:33
make money save money succeed you know kind of like this success paradigm that
8:39
I think a lot of people at least in my my home country um have and um and I
8:45
realized I wasn't doing it for me i was kind of doing it just because I thought I should because I thought I should be
8:50
financially secure etc and so I I had actually had a panic
8:55
attack on uh an airplane between DC and uh Dallas and
9:01
I I was like "Wow what I'm I'm doing all of this." I I called my dad later and he
9:08
was just like "What are what are you doing with your life like you should do something for yourself like this isn't what you want." Was okay you're right
9:14
and um yes I quit my job broke up with my boyfriend which you have to do before you go to Brazil and then I went to
9:24
Sorry was was still the Spanish boyfriend no it was not still the Spanish boyfriend
9:31
but um I uh yeah I got in touch with I mean I was already in touch with an organization in uh in Baya in the
9:38
northeast of Brazil and I was already speaking Portuguese which is quite easy if you already speak uh Spanish and um I
9:47
got the six-month tourist visa and I I moved there and I enrolled in a Portuguese I did an intensive Portuguese
9:53
class for a month which was great um and I did some volunteer work at a women's
10:01
uh like a women's music school and
10:06
um I helped some helped friends with different projects etc and uh it was a
10:12
really really really great experience I would say yeah it was it was a break
10:17
that I needed you know after working for three and a half years i'm a I'm a strong believer
10:25
in I enjoying life while we're young and not just waiting until you know
10:32
retirement which is was the expectation I grew up with you know you work until
10:37
you work really hard and then when you're 65 you stop work and you enjoy
10:42
life then you relax you travel and all of this which with this like I see now
10:49
with my my dad and my stepmother they do this but they're 75 they can't walk long
10:54
distances they can't see you know if you want to see the world I feel like the time to do it is when you're young or
11:00
middle-aged like older yeah you can still do it but you're not going to have the same mobility most likely
11:07
of course maybe it makes it different it does but I think a lot of people don't think about it that way or they get
11:14
locked into this i don't I don't know there's lots of different scenarios that people get locked in of course but at
11:20
the end is also what you were saying know you're coming with a stigma or like a society pressure or like family
11:25
pressures of being inside of this I don't know stable job uh easy money like
11:30
having savings buying a house taking the next step each time yeah and and if if
11:36
you are focused on that you cannot be focused on discovery maybe sometimes um
11:41
you touched one point though that it was interesting and I I I want to ask you a little bit more about that and it's the
11:48
whole volunteering world volunteering work that you've been doing and I know that you work also in Africa and and in
11:54
multiple NOS's and everything was that the moment that you discovered that you like that it's it's really your passion
12:00
or where where does the whole volunteering uh approach work that's a really interesting question because even
12:07
when I was in Washington DC I was doing not necessarily volunteer work but my
12:12
work has always had sort of a a social mission so with labor unions I mean that's quasocial I would say and then um
12:21
I really the first job I had wasn't so much but I yeah
12:26
um no I I guess it's a really good it's a good question i think in my family
12:33
there's always been a sense of um you should be contributing to the
12:39
world and you should be contributing to society like a sense of social and civic
12:45
responsibility like a lot of my family is in government or medicine and so it's sort of um that I think it's just like a
12:51
value that I have and I've um continued with in
12:59
um yeah The work that I did in in Brazil
13:05
wasn't I don't know if it was a turning point it wasn't that fulfilling to be honest
13:11
to be perfectly honing women learn some English it
13:18
wasn't uh I wasn't terribly like I mean I think learning a foreign
13:24
language is important in helping people but um I don't know i think you know to
13:34
really be engaged in something and to have get fulfillment from that like a
13:40
longer period of time and deeper deeper engagement is for me it's what is
13:47
necessary but yeah it did get me started actually it was great for my CV I mean if we want to be honest like it was it
13:53
was really good because then I had this international thing on my CV it's not why I did it but in retrospect it helped
14:00
helped me get my next job in international policy work and then it
14:06
helps me later on get the job in Bundi that I had and start working anyway
14:12
start working in international development because you can't do it without so you came back sorry like you
14:17
came back to United States yeah between Brazil and Bundi you even go from Brazil to Bundi no from Braz so after sounds
14:24
like a song from Brazil to Bundi would be a very good rigy I'm sorry from Brazil too
14:31
so when my my visa expired in in Brazil and I returned to the US but I really
14:37
wanted to return i really wanted to go back to I wanted to immigrate to Brazil because I loved it and um so I was like
14:43
okay I will but then I was like well I want to go backpacking in Southeast Asia for a couple of months first before I
14:49
settle down somewhere so I was working at a bar anyways I fell into um through
14:55
a friend I fell into an internship um at an an NGO an international a big
15:02
international NGO in in DC because had data analysis skills so that was very
15:07
useful for them in their research and policy analysis department so I started with that and I was pretty good at it i
15:14
was like fast writer etc so I kind of stayed in that field for about five years in in DC and I I didn't end up
15:22
immigrating to Brazil um but I I did go on the backpacking trip to Southeast
15:27
Asia and uh for two months which was really cool um and then I went I I
15:34
um yeah after about f I did the the policy thing the international policy thing but after about five years I was
15:41
kind of I you know I was writing a lot about African agriculture in the end i
15:47
was an expert in African agriculture but I had never worked in African agriculture in Africa
15:54
i mean that's how the international policy stuff works um and so that wasn't
15:59
very satisfying to me i like the process of writing i love the research process but that that aspect of it wasn't so I
16:07
started looking and I always knew I wanted I From when I finished university I knew I wanted to live overseas so I started
16:13
looking for for jobs and um I I had a a partner for like I had I
16:21
had a boyfriend for like three months or so and I so basically told him like "Hey look I'm going to do this i'm going to
16:27
move overseas are you in or are you out?" And he said "Huh well I want an interesting life sure let's do it." So
16:34
three months in after three months in because it was basically like hey we either end this now or like let's embark
16:39
on this it was pretty it was pretty quick um did he know where Bundi was though or Well it took me about six
16:46
month I think it took me about Okay okay yeah it took a while to find the job in in Burundi um and we did live together
16:53
before before we moved but um I mean I was looking at jobs in China you know like teaching English in China or um we
17:02
a few so the overseas was really like whatever it is and I remember we had
17:07
this piece of paper and we were just like writing down the names of countries like would you live there okay yeah I'd live there oh there what about there i
17:13
mean there's this whole brainstorming process but in the end you're just like if you need a job you're just applying for jobs that you find you know it's
17:20
like clearly in the piece of paper Bundi was not there no Bundi was not on the paper yeah neither was Ethiopia I mean
17:26
Sagal was South Africa you know the the countries that you've heard of in Africa that are like they're somehow alluring
17:33
or whatnot but I think uh yeah I'm I I loved Burundi I really really loved it
17:39
and how did you end in Bundi that's what is the process from for an American to
17:45
request a job in Bundi and what is the process to get accepted to the job and
17:50
ending like being there for I wrote a letter to the president i'm just kidding i'm just kidding no I was back in the day uh the
17:59
US president or the burund one the Bundy president no I I started asking every
18:07
like everybody in my network that worked for large NOS's because I wanted to continue in the NGO field
18:13
um if you know if they had work if they had jobs or looking basically saying okay I
18:20
know these people let me check the the website of the organizations they work
18:25
for see if they have any interesting open jobs then go approach the people so I did it that way and um the
18:31
organization I found it's it was called the oneacre fund I worked for them for 11 years um I knew basically their
18:40
policy uh person and so she said "Yeah let's uh let's talk let's um let's I'll
18:48
set you up with an interview and blah blah blah." And uh so it worked like like that and then they were more
18:55
interested in my finance exper and accounting experience at the beginning to be honest and the first job I got the
19:01
job I had in Bundi was it was finance and managing the loan database so it wasn't exactly what you think of of like
19:09
NGO work you know where you're just like helping people or like doing these program things it was very much like in
19:15
the administration and very technical behind the computer but working with the team
19:21
um and uh yeah it was I lived in a little not a village a town of about
19:27
20,000 people um the organization provided housing and then on the weekends I'd go
19:34
down to the capitol and um do the things you do in capital cities and that was
19:42
that was kind of the life for a couple of years what was the first impression that you had when you arrived to Bundi
19:48
from US when I arrived to Burundi from the US so I had been to Africa a few
19:54
times already so I think that as and also I went via Sagal because I did a
19:59
quick intensive French program to brush up on my French which I had studied in university or in high school and
20:06
um so for and I I visited also for an interview so I had been I had been there
20:14
but it's an incredibly poor country it ranks with the you know when you have these uh lists of countries by
20:20
statistics it's always down there with um nger uh for example for poverty levels
20:29
Somalia for like the efficacy of the state this sort of thing so um it's one
20:35
of the poorest countries in the world where people are the farmers I think the
20:40
average income per capita is something like 150 euros those per year is
20:47
extremely extremely poor it's it's hard to it's hard to imagine that um I
20:53
remember we Yeah uh I'm not sure what I can say about my
20:58
profession i don't I don't talk about my prof i'm wondering like what can I say
21:05
avoid that you get anyone saying anything to you that's that's the policy
21:12
um but in that in that sense like you just did the interview pass the
21:18
interview and they tell you like in one month you need to be here what is it's a negotiation process um so I think I I
21:26
can't remember maybe it was a month or two okay and your boyfriend back then he
21:32
stayed in the US for four months and then he followed me later okay yeah and then after a few months he got a job at
21:39
a coffee company in in Bernundi the first I mean his story is more
21:45
interesting he had never traveled to a developing country before to Africa or anything like that and so he was in
21:52
shock the first two month first two weeks he was um like wow cool d but then it kind of
21:59
set in he was in this little town he didn't have anything to do i came home from work one day and this guy he was
22:05
staring at the wall staring staring at the wall of the bed like I was like and
22:10
going like this on the other wall i was like uh John are you is everything okay
22:18
i was like I think we need to work harder to find you a job or something so I mean being a a following spouse I
22:25
don't know if you've had this you or your partner I followed my burner here but I work remote but you you work
22:31
remotely so it's different but to follow somebody and not this was before the era of remote work also we didn't have
22:37
internet at our house at that time we had the saddled light dish at the
22:42
country director's place um but yeah he was he was a bit in shock upon arrival I
22:50
think with um just that there's not that much to do if you're not if you're not
22:57
working and you were not like I was I was surprised also because it's like
23:02
culturally wise it's for me I was just thrown into the deep end of work there was like a huge backlog of work because
23:08
I hadn't had the position filled for a few months and so I was at the beginning I was working so many hours I think I
23:14
was working like 10 hours a day six days a week or something I mean it was it was very intense and and that's Especially
23:21
like with NGO work if you work for a medium or largesized NGO a lot of times
23:27
it's a very intense work schedule especially in human we weren't in a humanitarian context or like a war
23:33
context but in those context people are working like crazy hours it's not volunteer work yeah it's not volunteer
23:40
work um when does Ethiopia comes on all of this like when in when in this timing uh
23:49
it's difficult to put the timeline no like how how much time you stay in Bundi when did you move why did you move to it
23:57
uh after two years in Bundi so I had signed a two-year contract essentially and after two years
24:04
um we wanted to move to a bigger city where we could both
24:10
live in uh like we could live in a bigger city um and so I found a transfer
24:17
internally at the organization I was with and moved to Bahadar Ethiopia which
24:22
is a town of somewhere between 300 and 500,000 people depending on the sensor i
24:29
did get the estimate um but still rather agricultural and about an hour flight
24:35
from Adisaba which is the capital of Ethiopia how different is the life between Burundi and uh Ethiopia if you
24:43
can compare it because this is something that probably us as as Europeans or people from United States you don't have
24:49
a reference and you know about okay difference between Italy and France and whatever other countries or like a state
24:55
or another but in Africa if you've never been there you don't know yeah I think
25:00
on a superficial level they probably look very similar at first glance
25:06
but except for the the clothing and whatnot but once you dive into the
25:13
culture is a bit very very very different um I think the biggest differences for me and I spent most of
25:19
my day in the workplace was the working culture and Bundian work culture is more
25:24
similar to US work culture it's direct hierarchical blah blah blah in Ethiopia
25:31
it's uh very different it's people prefer decision by consensus everybody
25:37
really needs to be heard it's more horizontal like there's it's not horizontal the power structures are hidden i mean it's a whole Anyways I
25:44
won't get into that but um it's also a
25:50
um it's an old it's a beautiful country i mean I think Ethiopia is a wonderful place to visit um in in terms of culture
25:59
and also terrain etc because it's it's it's a very old Christianity in the the Bible abiscinia
26:06
is is Ethiopia and so you have a lot of
26:12
just like deep deep tradition Christian Orthodox um traditions from a long time you also
26:18
have a large Muslim population it's very diverse it's a huge country bundi has 10
26:23
million people it's about the size of Greece uh but smaller and then Ethiopia
26:29
has 120 million or so and like 50 languages
26:35
bernundi has one language um yeah Ethiopia [Music]
26:41
has you yeah has I think it's 2,700 millionaires something like that is the
26:47
latest figure so yeah and there's um so there's the robust like middle and upper
26:54
class so actually as an expat in Africa one thing that um I think e I've really
27:01
liked about Ethiopia is that there are a lot of Ethiopians with money so like
27:08
when you go to nice restaurants etc like for international food it's not just
27:13
white people essentially you have like Ethiopians you have more uh more chance to I think meet people and then of
27:20
course if you go to local restaurants you find local people always um which is
27:26
I think nice because Ethiopia um yeah it's I think it's different from
27:32
a lot of African countries in that way when it comes to meet people like in both Burundi and Ethiopia
27:39
what is the common approach I mean I you are a foreigner there you're clearly white you are out of context sometimes
27:47
probably uh you need to adapt to a culture that you don't understand a
27:52
language that probably It's not even close to anything that you have heard before um how do you meet people how do
27:59
you like especially with the locals especially how do you relate with them
28:04
so my strategy for meeting people when I has has been um more around activities i
28:12
like to have community around activities in Bundi i had one thing I was missing
28:18
in my life there in general was community i had friends and I still good
28:23
friends I'm still friends with today but they were kind of one-on-one friends and I didn't have other than at my my office
28:30
and my job we had a nice work community i didn't have a a community in Ethiopia one thing that I did that I that was
28:37
really great for my social life in the first few years is I made like I made I created a trail running group so every
28:43
Sunday afternoon we'd go for a run we'd go to different places close to the city and then go for juice or beer dinner or
28:50
whatever afterwards and that was wonderful like it was a mix of Ethiopians and foreigners and I made
28:57
some like yeah some very good friends that way and I mean I knew them before
29:03
they were everybody in the group was an acquaintance but it was once you have that kind of regularity and you're doing things together it it's it's really nice
29:11
um I think also learning some of the local lang people other people on
29:16
your shows have probably said this learning the local language is really important even if you just get to like the A1 level it shows so much uh respect
29:25
and so much enthusiasm and people really like that how many languages do you speak i speak a lot of languages poorly
29:32
i speak six languages poorly right in English like Okay
29:40
what what languages did you learn in in Bundi and CP like so in Bundi the
29:46
national language is Kirundi so I was able to probably like A1 level Kirundi
29:52
like just no not even just get I could get by um you know with buying things
29:58
and taking taxis and stuff like that and then uh but I could understand a lot
30:04
because um with work you know I was exposed to a lot so I understood a lot of agricultural language to go to meet
30:11
farmer meetings and understand what was going on like the main idea um but if
30:16
you yeah you the number one the first thing that my team taught me to say in
30:22
Kirundi was dut we could say it at the end dut
30:29
it means let's go home ah it's better than I expected smart
30:34
crew i was expecting something worse cool um how many years then did
30:42
you spend in Ethiopia like seven years in Ethiopia doing the same work or it was like same the same organization and
30:51
um my work evolved over time and I after a couple of years I became the country director so I was managing everything
30:57
that was happening in the in the country um so it's a little bit of all of the different departments that you can
31:02
imagine and programs and stuff so I really loved that job that was wonderful and I um You still had the boyfriend
31:10
there sorry he was there for about a year okay
31:15
he came to Ethiopia ethiopia never did the next step he was working yeah he was
31:20
working remotely but yeah the next step didn't work out for us okay yeah um but
31:26
what's the next step was Greece no I mean I don't know i was referring to the next step you were talking earlier yeah
31:35
and uh but the Amharic language I learned to speak Amharic pretty with a
31:41
very limited vocabulary to say a lot because when you're in a pl in a place for a while um yeah you just get good at
31:49
using the words that you know and it's a lot of years oh yeah it's a lot of years yeah so I could have like a you know
31:55
like a 20-minute conversation with a taxi driver from the airport to my house
32:00
but like if we had gone you know to like my friend's house 10 minutes further i don't
32:06
know you have the same introductory conversation over and over yeah where are you from what are you doing here
32:12
yeah you have sisters like what do you work yeah yeah yeah exactly i see yeah
32:18
when does coming here comes in this whole why where is the moment in your
32:24
life that you say I lived in Bundi Ethiopia and now Greece
32:31
Greece is kind of fell off to the side uh yeah it's a it's a good question so
32:37
it I mean it was a process um I loved my job um I I eventually moved to the
32:43
capital to Adosaba um And there was COVID there was a war the
32:51
Tigray war which some of you might know about um and there yeah there well there
32:57
was a regime change then there was the COVID then there was the war and I think
33:04
at some point also I was in the country director role for about five years and to me that seemed about sufficient i was
33:12
starting to get a little bit bored you know it's like the same problem the same problems you're either you solve them or you just manage them but like you're
33:18
managing the same same stuff so I wanted to change professionally i was like okay if I'm going to change professionally I might as well change countries because
33:25
I'm getting very after seven years in a place you know you you really start to like take on
33:33
you change quite a bit you you start to change quite a bit and I was like okay do I want to stay in Ethiopia forever
33:40
because I'll keep changing it'll accelerate you know or do I want to you know break out and do something else and
33:46
I think I was I was also I had a lot of stress built up just from like the war
33:53
in insecure environment etc so I wanted to go somewhere safe make a change da da da and uh yeah so I put in a year's
34:04
notice and I was lucky in some ways I was lucky that I couldn't fill my position during that year so I said
34:09
"Okay I'll continue but I want to work remotely." And uh they said "Fine you
34:15
can work remotely until we find somebody and then well you can train them blah blah blah." And uh so I made a I
34:25
remember when uh yeah one morning I just woke up i made a a list of possible
34:31
countries like in I wanted to live in Europe or the the Mediterranean i made a list of the countries a list of my criteria across the top and like scored
34:38
them on these different uh criteria and then I made a short list of five countries and then when I went to work
34:44
remotely I visited all five countries different cities that were appealing to me
34:50
and I Greece had been number one on the list of places but I wasn't sure but
34:56
then I came to visit and I just I love Athens i found it really easy to meet people and I also I just like the vibe
35:04
of the city there's always people outside on the streets like during uh I
35:09
visited in September which is a great time of year for Athens yeah probably the best uh there's music everywhere
35:16
festivals and um I said okay this is and and it's safe it's very safe so I felt
35:23
like it was a place that I could um I I continued to travel and then I said you
35:28
know I'm tired of traveling i really hated the the digital nomad move every two weeks kind of lifestyle so I was
35:35
like just somebody get me back to Athens so I came back and that's how
35:40
that's how I made the decision how long have you been here i've been here for two years now
35:46
maybe a couple of questions before we close the call i I have thousands of questions to be honest but timewise I
35:53
just need to close a little bit um you've been in you lived in a lot of
35:59
places is what of these countries has resembled more like feeling home like so far like something that it's like inside
36:06
of you that you say okay that's my place uh I mean when I when I got homesick now
36:13
I'm homesick for Ethiopia okay yeah and it wasn't right away ethiopia was
36:18
actually the hardest country for me to get used to living in when I arrived to Ethiopia to to Bakraar I was like "Where
36:24
do I I can't find milk where do I buy milk?" You need to know somebody with a cow i need somebody with a
36:31
cow you know I mean it was and then also in Ethiopia you have um they have a
36:37
different time system so it's like a six hours different the
36:44
day starts like 6:00 a.m is zero it's 12 6 a.m is 12 okay so you always
36:51
have to specify like international time or Ethiopian time in the for meetings and
36:57
stuff and I remember I was very excited to a colleague invited me to New Year's
37:02
Ethiopian New Year's which by the way is September 11th which is at 6:00 a.m also no he said he said three the party's at
37:09
3 come to my house at 3 i said "Okay great." And then at like 11 in the morning he called me and he's like
37:14
"Kelly where are you?" I was like "What are you talking about?" I'm like "I'm at home i'm having coffee." Like it was 3
37:22
like 9 in the morning was 3 their time so I mean there's all of this it's a
37:27
very very unique place it's Yeah it was so hard to really get into but once
37:33
you're you're deep in it you know you're you're kind of in this uh secret it's
37:39
not so secret 120 million people but it's a lifestyle yeah different it's a very different
37:45
lifestyle it's a different world and um yeah and I mean the food is totally
37:51
different and the um yeah the rhythm of life one thing it has in common with
37:57
Greece is the coffee okay nice um maybe last question
38:05
biggest challenge that you have living abroad like what is the most difficult
38:10
thing for you of living abroad and living in different countries and moving from every now and then
38:17
the biggest ch at the beginning the biggest challenge was feeling a sense of belonging so in Bundi I had quite a bit
38:25
of anxiety not when I was at work but after work I had quite a bit of anxiety
38:30
I think because I didn't have this like a like a community like I mentioned
38:37
um and so I kind of had to learn how to
38:43
build that and that was like for myself which was something really I think
38:49
really important um that I learned and I would say that was the biggest challenge
38:54
but it's not anymore now I living living outside US is not Greece is Greece is so
39:02
nice it's so easy
39:07
yeah the language of course the language is is tricky if you could give a life hack an advice
Expat Life Hack & Advice
39:14
a tip uh to anyone who needs to immigrate or go out or like uh become an
39:20
expert in the countries that you live but also in general if you have something more generic
39:26
for people that haven't decided yet or people that have decided
39:32
i don't know i would I've decided maybe yeah I would probably
39:38
just what I said uh a minute ago i think the community is really important and
39:43
not being afraid to reach out to other people because I've met expats here in
39:49
Greece and and elsewhere who kind of stay stay in their stay at home and they
39:56
and they get lonely right and I think it's important to remember
40:02
that everybody want like nobody's going to be offended if you invite them somewhere you know most likely they're
40:09
going to be happy if they don't like you they might be like a like 1% annoyed but
40:14
it you know who cares and I think reaching out to people and building community and just kind of being brave
40:20
in that sense is probably I think the life hack I would give i don't know if
40:26
that's really a life hack but um it's your own life hack and that's good
40:32
enough no I suppose I I I take it also like I get it hey there everyone i hope
40:37
you're enjoying this episode so far remember that the best way to stay tuned with the latest episodes of the podcast
40:44
is by clicking on subscribe in YouTube and in your favorite audio platform for extra content and information follow
40:51
like and comment on our social media and visit our website expatexpertodcast.com thank you for
40:57
supporting our podcast and let's continue with the episode i would like to jump to the next section and I'm
Cultural Deep Dive & Fun Comparisons
41:04
pretty afraid of it because you speak very different languages that I don't speak at all for example and that will
41:09
be funny uh I suppose or I would be very very
41:14
roasted in the comments uh because I don't pronounce anything properly but uh I want to do a little bit of like game
41:22
but cultural deep dive let's say like this trying to discover a little bit of uh of the culture language sandwiches
41:30
food drinks and everything that comes with the countries that you that you lived in uh and for that I want to
41:36
propose you a couple of uh of mini games as I call them um starting with one that
41:42
I called guess that phrase and basically in the guest phrase
41:49
I will uh test your language skills and my language skills because I need to
41:55
pronounce it so um the dynamic is pretty simple like I took phrases uh on the
42:03
original languages of the countries that you lived in and I would like you to
42:09
guess what they mean or what you can translate that into
42:16
English let's start with a maybe easy one Greek
42:23
uh disco you know this one all of
42:28
the marriages are difficult correct wow not bad two years here so well as soon
42:37
as I switch to Oromo or Kirundi or all of that that will the next level because I don't
42:44
pronounce it properly no um all of them are paraphrases of course and they are like more or less known uh okay
42:53
sentences in Oro they say hint I don't speak any aroma can you
43:02
guess no I like I can it they aroma language I I know when it's a Roma
43:07
because there's always like a lot of vowels that repeat so it's a a I I a
43:13
crazy a lot of ya like y aa I have pronounced it very bad probably anyway but um
43:20
although hinabatin it's not even like closer to any other of the of the languages that
43:26
you learned in in in Ethiopia it means don't touch what you cannot
43:32
handle up to you
43:40
brazilian Portuguese
43:45
wait
43:52
stay wait stay with the cheese that fell like fall into old cheese not qu
44:01
X ah like
44:07
um the complaints that your Yeah it means to be jaw-dropping surprise when
44:13
your mouth goes like ah ah okay
44:21
kirundi you learned i know I never took a class in Kirundi but you speak with
44:26
taxi drivers no that was Namhar i mean I can speak like I could I used to 10
44:32
years ago I could speak uh where to go okay then I how many tomatoes I want to
44:37
buy what price i don't know if it's skipping this one because it's even difficult to pronounce try it try it
44:49
you have to say like there's Yeah I don't have the tonalities here i don't either
44:56
and it basically means it translates directly to he who doesn't know what
45:01
lies beyond his home is cursed and it's meaning that the ignorance of the wall
45:07
outside your own environment might be harmful to you right right right makes a
45:13
lot of sense no yeah no it is for sure i mean it's a it's a country of hills right bundi has a ton of hills and uh
45:21
villages that are really a lot of really remote places although it's a has a good
45:28
deal of of roads but yeah okay
45:33
nice um in
45:39
anharikel you know
45:45
this No carry the burden on your head ah
45:53
I come from the the day of French into this but I I don't think it's coming from that i write the burden on your
46:01
head which means it's just like taking care of your own
46:06
responsibilities I suppose okay sense and now the only one that I can properly
46:12
pronounce it's better now than never yay finally
46:18
finally I can pronounce something that you can understand uh cool um for the next game I would
46:26
like to suggest you a quick top country for let's say like this so I will tell
46:32
you a couple of topics or things and I would like you to tell me which of the countries that you lived in has the best
46:38
of that one okay starting with coffee
46:44
[Applause] ethiopia the origin of coffee about by the way cultural festivals
46:56
oh Brazil come on life music
47:05
oh that's hard cuz every country has like their own Okay
47:12
wait that you go there and you're going to enjoy in life not not cultural music
47:17
in general but concert wise it's either Ethiopia or
47:22
Brazil oh or with you mean the the local music or the the cultural music or just
47:29
live the scene of of being able to go and enjoy music ah I mean Brazil
47:37
street food
47:43
in Brazil lifestyle
47:48
Greece welcoming people
47:53
bundy Brazilian people Brazilian people Brazilian Brazilian Brazilian
48:02
Ethiopian country for doing
48:08
sports m Greece security as a woman
48:19
Greece nature
48:25
I think Brazil city vibes city
48:31
vibes grace night life
48:37
I don't I don't know I'm 45 then I don't
48:44
know um I mean my Okay let's let's just focus on my experience i think my night
48:51
Brazil back when I was like you know 28 I had the best yeah it's not a
48:57
fair question it's flirting and dating another one that it's probably not uh um
49:04
flirting and dating bend this out because of a boyfriend i have no experience flirting and dating
49:11
in in Berni
49:17
yeah Ethiopian guys are very nice
49:24
chris flirting and dating at Brazil come on let's go to Brazil might also have to
49:30
do with age too i mean when you're 28 all of that's much more fun
49:35
kindness kindness oh
49:52
I would have I would have to say Ethiopia the last one beer
49:59
ah beer
50:05
i mean the US we left the off the US but come on the US is we have like so many great
50:11
craft beers that's I have a last game for today which is
50:20
going foodwise and I needed to do a lot of research on this one because what the
50:25
like how many countries you live in and how many dishes I don't know like um
50:31
I call it foot fish and face off and it's rather a simple this or that uh
50:38
game so it's a versus one food dish versus the other and I mixed foods from
50:44
all the countries that you've been or you lived in including United States of
50:49
course and I would like to find what wins at the end of this round what I
50:55
prefer yes okay we start with uh going to Spain with
51:02
tortilla oh it's nice versus spanagopita
51:07
from Greece wow tortilla
51:14
tortilla versus Brazilian asai bowl
51:19
oh I'm in a healthy mood right now so I'll say asai
51:25
asai versus mac and cheese from United States i'm I'm still feeling healthy i
51:32
think I'll Asai that's a very good that's delicious
51:38
makes sense but mac and cheese is well that's the whole point of the game
51:44
um for the Ethiopian zamburundi dishes especially if if you don't know what it
51:49
is just uh take uh it's okay I'll correct your pronunciation don't worry I'll know um take the previous one and
51:57
that's all or from Nerat 100% it's a spicy lentil
52:06
stew seasoned with verb spice and served with inera yeah inara is Ethiopian it's
52:14
like a a not I don't want to say flatbread but it's kind of a big pancake but it's a fermented spongy bread and
52:22
the food is served on top of it and it is both your bread and your utensils
52:31
you can buy it here in Athens and Mr yes mot from Ethiopia or Ugali from Bundi
52:40
mr mvot from Ethiopia or Braavas from Spain
52:45
mr mer or an American burger meat
52:52
meer or fasada from Greece
53:01
mr more healthy m or from Ethiopia uh shirro
53:11
shiro from Ethiopia or piou from Brazil oo very
53:19
differenti from Greece shirro or
53:25
plantains from Burundi the depends really depends on
53:30
how they're cooked so I'm going to say the average shiro is better than the average uh bananas shirro
53:38
shiro or grilled cheese sandwich from United States
53:44
oo that's like the ultimate comfort food i'm gonna still go with Shiro okay
53:50
shirro or pisto from Spain oh Pisto is nice wow you're good at this you could
53:55
be like a my my own personal like restaurant menu designer
54:04
uh Pisto does the pisco have an egg in it of course of course always okay
54:13
i don't know i'm just so loyal to the Shiro i can't I Yeah shirro or Brazilian
54:20
fara fried flour i'm gonna go with shiro
54:26
i had to try uh no offense to the Brazilians out there but it's not a meal
54:32
shiro or Ethiopian inro no but Shiro has ina served with
54:40
ina or dolmades from Greek this
54:52
Oh Dormales is prefetting Ethiopia that's interesting i like to I like to a
54:57
lot okay but shirro I can eat every day so
55:03
shro or cornbread shirro shirro or gaspacho oh gaspacho is nice too i could
55:10
eat gaspacho every day too can I have shed with a side of gaspacho we can do that so Ethiopia Spanish combination as
55:18
the winners che with some cho which by the way it's a a chickpea stew with it's
55:25
like a chickpea flour and then um the spices yeah and gaspacho on the side on
55:31
that for whatever reason course one gaspacho course two
55:36
cool uh so with that I would say that uh I can ask you a couple of questions from
Audience Q&A
55:41
the audience that has sent questions to us all right for you so I have a
55:47
question from uh Amina do you have the feeling of missing
55:54
out on stuff that people experience who are settled down in a country and don't move so frequently as you did
56:02
uh yeah I think the thing I miss out on has to do is the same reason I left
56:12
Ethiopia conversely but it's um a sense
56:19
of just being like really deeply a part of something and um understanding like
56:26
inside and out a culture and a society and I feel like now I have I'm spread
56:34
out even US culture and society I don't I'm not so in touch with right because I'm following other ones and
56:43
um yeah I would say that's the something I miss that one makes
56:50
sense from Gabrielle in which language do you think english
56:56
unless I'm in Greek like in a last Okay last week I did a an intensive Greek class it was five hours a day no but I I
57:05
think I started speak thinking in Greek towards the end and and then at the very end I didn't think at all
57:14
from Lena what advice would you give to a younger self who just started working
57:20
with NOS's
57:26
i would say just work 40 hours stop stop at 40
57:36
from Sam what are some aspects of the Greek culture that you admire or find
57:41
fascinating ah aspects of the the Greek culture that I find fas I mean
57:51
I really like that it seems like to me and I'm not an
57:59
expert in Greek culture that um people are der seem to derive their
58:08
identities from outside of work like it's not so no maybe Andreas is like
58:14
what I don't know but people seem to like have lives outside more life lives outside of work and I I think that's
58:20
important and I like that i think that's uh I don't know about the identity thing but at least I see that people
58:29
uh are working to live as opposed to living to work which is the case in my
58:35
origin country of origin again from Gabrielle what is your secret
58:41
to learning languages by secret I
58:51
mean there's there's there's there's no secret there's teachers just do what the
58:57
teacher says come on do what the teacher says watch the movies uh try to speak
59:03
like don't like just be okay feeling like an idiot those are my Gabriel those are my those are my insights
59:11
another one from summit was "What were some of the biggest cultural difference you noticed when you first arrived from
59:18
Greece coming from Ethiopia?" Oh people are very direct here they will
59:26
okay so I I I brought my dogs from Ethiopia and I was walking the dogs in
59:31
the neighborhood i didn't They pee on like one of them is a male he pees on uh
59:36
you know buildings and stuff and I guess he was peeing on this one
59:42
building beneath a couple's window or something and they smelled it but at one point I I come out of my door and I'm
59:48
walking the dogs and they're like "Hey hey." And I couldn't understand them at the time because it was early on and they're like "Your dogs they smell the
59:56
beard smells like stop walking them like take them somewhere else go away dogs are bad." I don't know something like
1:00:01
that i'm not sure exactly what they said but it was definitely about the dogs and I was like like they were mad and I was
1:00:06
like "Oh my god." like somebody just like yelled at me in the street about my dogs and their their that they smell and
1:00:13
uh like in Ethiopia no everybody is um very composed and it takes a lot for somebody to like tell you what they
1:00:21
think directly like it's a very indirect um it's a very polite controlled
1:00:28
reserved culture until I mean until it blows up but it's generally literally
1:00:35
Yeah okay the last question is from Michael the diversity of places you've
1:00:42
have been uh it's amazing but it's
1:00:48
harder now than 10 years ago to keep the zest and curiosity for traveling and experience new places for you so this
1:00:55
year I took the year off from work this year it's 20 years working i decided to take a break and um okay except for the
1:01:03
six months in Brazil i traveled I used Athens as my home base but I was traveling like 30%
1:01:11
of the time I would say 25 30% around Greece and other countries as well and generally I
1:01:19
I really enjoyed it i enjoyed it most when I was visiting friends I think and
1:01:24
then they were kind of taking me to the deeper into their into their
1:01:30
culture and yeah their studs to the food my mician friend of mine is food fanatic
1:01:36
we was basically for two weeks I I think I gained five kilos in Maitius because we were I think I tried like everything
1:01:43
like from her childhood in in Maitius which was great um and so that was
1:01:50
really cool i think gener Yeah general tourism i mean after this year I'm I'm
1:01:56
kind of like okay that's trouble i I just want to chill for for a
1:02:02
year or so um not do so much travel i think
1:02:07
I'm Yeah I mean but I still I still I still like the idea i
1:02:13
would love to go to like one country a year for you know three weeks or
1:02:19
something maybe cool so maybe for closing the episode do you
1:02:26
have any funny core story about your time being an expert
1:02:31
for this I would like to engage the audience sure the with a word somebody give me a word i need a an inspiration
1:02:42
that's feels like an improv group just a G yeah exactly it's an improv group banana
1:02:48
banana
1:02:53
you You want to play you wanted to play
1:03:01
okay another word this is hard just to give a random
Funny Story & Wrap-up
1:03:07
story i know your place burned down in Bundi leg with the ah you want the fire
1:03:13
story i'll give you the fire I'll give you the fire story yeah so and this is kind this is something if if I don't
1:03:19
know if some of your your audience and listeners are thinking about moving to
1:03:25
Africa or are visiting but it's definitely good and also just other countries in general like to understand
1:03:32
how comfortable you are with the level of like emergency services you might encounter in in a given place um so yeah
1:03:41
in uh two back in 200 uh 14 13 or 14 um
1:03:49
my ex and I my partner at the time and I we were just cooking some dinner and we
1:03:54
were um planning a trip to see the gorillas in Uganda I think or Rwanda and
1:04:02
um I was I remember we had this uh we had um just a countertop stove you know
1:04:09
with the two burners and he was stirring the vegetables and I was stirring the
1:04:15
rice or something and the whole thing just caught fire
1:04:20
i saw like the uh the flame come from like the in like the burner and then go
1:04:26
it was a gas one and then go down to the tank and then a column of fire go up
1:04:31
like directly in front of us yeah it was scary it was pretty it was pretty scary and we had a we had a wooden roof the
1:04:38
countertops were wooden as well because we had them custom built and so it was
1:04:43
like column of fire i was like so um yeah I ran and I I grabbed computers
1:04:51
passports and cash and ran outside left my left my boyfriend i don't know it's
1:04:57
just like my first thought valuable and then the go notifi told the guard that it's on fire the house is on fire the
1:05:03
house is on fire he switched off the electricity and we ran outside and then it was like what do we
1:05:09
do like uh nobody there's no there was no 911 or 112 or or whatever and
1:05:17
so we just started calling like the best connected people we knew and over time
1:05:23
like the house was on fire there's no fire hydra or fire uh extinguisher
1:05:28
anyway um but the the security service
1:05:34
supervisor managed to find a fire extinguisher at a factory nearby there's a small like a mill and then uh I found
1:05:42
one at the hospital they came we had these two fire
1:05:48
extinguishers we called the somebody called the fire department they said "Okay a truck is on
1:05:54
the way." I said "Okay truck's not coming truck's not coming we're worried about these propane tanks blowing up."
1:06:01
And uh the whole town like a lot of the people in the town were gathering neighbors had their pans of water we're
1:06:07
filling up the house that I was living at had no water at the time and so we were next door at the house that did
1:06:13
have water filling up the filling up people's pots and pans from their house throwing it on the house fire the
1:06:21
security supervisor was on the roof with the fire extinguisher trying to put it out yeah it's crazy right and
1:06:29
um yeah and then we're like waiting waiting waiting and then one of my
1:06:35
colleagues she called the governor she knew the governor of the province and he
1:06:40
he was out of town he was in China on some training trip so this No no the
1:06:48
electrical guy was on some training trip the guy that knew how to like turn off parts they wanted to turn off the grid
1:06:53
so that like the I guess the fire wouldn't spread through the electricity the governor was there he said "Okay
1:07:00
well I know where the big red switch is." He turned off the power for the entire province
1:07:05
[Music] okay and then the fire the fire company still
1:07:12
hasn't come at this point the fire department and so but people were inside
1:07:17
the people went inside the house to loot the security guards were in the burning
1:07:22
house trying to protect my things like like there's it's an iPod you know it's 2013 i was like "Guys it's an it's an
1:07:29
iPod it's this and that no please stop." They they wouldn't so I went in that burning house because I wanted the
1:07:35
security guards to leave and I was and I saw oh my god i went in there there's all these people like looking for the cash and the computers and the passports
1:07:43
and they couldn't find them and I was like "Guys everybody else has get the out of my house."
1:07:49
And they left and sort of but there's like you know
1:07:55
like was mostly out there's still some flames here and there and cold anyways then everything kind of settles
1:08:03
down it's kind of calm the house is still like embers are burning and then
1:08:08
the fire truck comes the fire truck pulls up and they get off the
1:08:14
hose to like put the remains out and like it was like dribbling out
1:08:20
[Applause] like they were like "Okay we'll be back we'll be back." So they were driving
1:08:25
around the city looking for water and we were just like "Oh my god we put out this." It was this whole night it was
1:08:31
this whole night i mean this this was a Bundi 10 years ago but I think in in a
1:08:38
lot I remember I went when I did my backpacking trip in Southeast Asia i was in Cambodia and they had received their
1:08:44
first uh ambul like proper ambulance you know so it's just something to be mindful of for people that are are
1:08:50
traveling to different uh different countries etc like how much risk tolerance do you personally have like
1:08:56
for me it was okay um you just lost your house but it's okay yeah for me I was f
1:09:02
I was I was like okay we managed i don't mind crisis but I think you know I hear people here in Greece that are are
1:09:08
freaked out about you know the uh the fact that there are no helicopters to rescue you if you're
1:09:14
hiking or these sorts of things so I think risk tolerance is this kind of goes back to your question about hacks i
1:09:20
mean you want to find you want to feel safe where you go right like and it's really only you personally who can
1:09:26
decide what is safe to you and what isn't um so yeah stay safe folks
1:09:36
cool thank you so much for this last story of craziness and uh burning houses
1:09:42
uh why not and not having water uh thanks again uh for taking the time
1:09:49
having this conversation thanks a lot for all the audience listening and coming today um so yeah for all the
1:09:57
listeners out there uh don't miss out on the next episode uh we there is more
1:10:03
stories like Kelly's one coming up i don't know if so many countries but some uh for sure uh until then keep exploring
1:10:11
stay curious and see you in the next time [Music]