Expatriate Contracting in the Tropics
Created | Updated Nov 12, 2002
Beyond Europe
A good number of the pros and cons of working abroad can be found in Guide Entry Contracting in Europe - a Short Guide for Brits. Further afield, things can at first appear quite surreal, until you get used to them :
While these and some of the following observations may seem to paint a grim picture of life in the developing world in particular, there are many rewards to be had, and more than a few Contractors choose never to return home. Well, life's so boring back there, isn't it?.
The guidance below applies mainly to those considering working in countries with significant poverty and associated ills, with a fair degree of exposure to the local community. Many overseas companies with significant expatriate communities attached will supply a fenced and razor-wired family compound with twenty-four hour armed guard, shops, school, medical centre, and food flown in almost daily from Dullsville, USA. Those who think that this sounds like good security from incursions by, say, a bunch of miffed grannies may care to study this little BBC News Item.
Health
Admittedly, the Tropics are not the best place to be if your health is fragile. Most employers will insist that you have an "Overseas Medical Certificate" from an approved Medical Centre prior to mobilisation, and this may have to be renewed every two years or so.
After arriving in good health, the main concern of any sensible person should be to stay in good health. Contrary to popular belief, your life is not in grave immediate peril if you're sixty miles from the nearest supply of refrigerated snake anti-venom; but you should never be that far from the nearest supply of clean water.
On a general level, it is a good idea to familiarise yourself with what the local health hazards are, and research via the internet, the early symptoms, and the standard medical treatments. This is more to guard against under-resourced local medical services than a recommendation to self-diagnose or self-prescribe; you would not be the first person to have been offered pile-shrinking pills to cure a thrombosis.
Before proceding with the following, it is only right to say that you should first seek the guidance of your personal physician. If he can spell Leishmanniasis, he might be able to look it up in one of his books.
Malaria
This is the big one. Any flu-like symptoms must be assumed to be the onset of malaria until proven otherwise, and untreated malaria can kill within 72 hours. No anti-malarial gives 100% protection, and most long-term expatriates do not take them due to reports of eventual organ damage and, with some (especially Lariam) a collection of very wierd side-effects.
Mosquitos are attracted to aftershave and perfume. Think carefully about swapping these for insect repellant, though anything less than 50% DEET will be useless. Get the 95% stuff if you can and this should give you 8 hours protection. Spray it in your clothes as well. The old guides used to recommend permethrin soaked mosquito nets, but turning the air-con down to 20 C also works.
But: if you can get used to all of this, then working abroad gives great opportunities for experiencing people, situations and challenges you simply won’t come across in the UK. Also it is fun, the pound is strong, and the tax is low.
Time to spare? Go by air!
The airlines are now building 20-40 minute delays into their published schedules, even so the London airports run to such tight tolerances that a heavy rain shower at 11.00am will make your 18.00 flight home on a Friday two hours late. Allegedly.
There are a few simple rules which will make taking regular trips marginally less awful.
Do your journey with hand baggage only – if you really want to, you can follow the example of e-prophet Nicolas Negroponte and send your laundry on ahead by FedEx, or ask your hotel to store your suitcase over the weekend.
Better still, do you journey with no baggage at all – why take your toothbrush with you, when you can keep one in each place.
Bags more in business – most airlines permit business class passengers to take an additional item of hand baggage.
Fly any airline except BA.
Or AirFrance.
Use any airport except Heathrow.
Flights from Birmingham and other regional airports use smaller planes, and some of them provide business class meals to the economy passengers.
Don’t use Charles de Gaulle as a hub.
Get tickets for connecting flights with the same carrier, or carriers that operate jointly. If the first flight is delayed, then you remain their problem until the end of your journey.
French letters - if you are delayed overnight on an AirFrance journey, you will find that they include a condom in their emergency freebie pack.
Stack up the miles on a loyalty card. The airlines bump the economy class passengers who don’t have loyalty cards first.
Go home for the weekend, rather than away for the week - round trips are cheaper if they include a Saturday night.
Know your enemy! Heathrow in particular is surrounded by a lot of rat-runs; getting to know them can mean the difference between catching or missing the flight. Likewise life is much better when you know where in the airport you can get a decent cup of tea, and which levels of the car parks will be empty.
And finally: Don’t do it! Stay where you are, do some shopping, sit in the sun drink the kaffee, eat the kuchen, and watch the world go by.
Or get someone else to do it for you - Your wife, partner, or significant other may enjoy the trip away, finding it exciting or – god help us - fun.
Language Lessons
One of the best things bout working abroad is the opportunity to learn another language, or improve one you stopped learning when you were 16. But don’t think that you can pick up a language by osmosis. Unfortunately you only get one free language voucher, and it ran out when you were eight years old.
What sort of language school?
Get a language school that caters to expats and business people. (Ask the HR department for help on this one). This sounds snobby, but as one contractor reports: “I didn’t do this, when I was working in Hamburg, and I ended up in a class of 12 people, from 11 countries. The class which started a month after we did overtook us in 3 weeks flat. 3 weeks worth of learning for 7 weeks of money is not a good deal. I quit because when I asked to switch classes, the teacher tried to give me a guilt trip saying that so many other people had dropped out that the class would have to close. By then I was 5 weeks off the end of my contract, so I they would close it then anyway. I am still angry about this, because one of the reasons I came to Germany was to learn German, and these guys wasted half of the short time I was there, and by then it was too late to sort out anything more effective.”
Private Tutors
Good, but obviously more expensive. Even so, this is a good route to go if you need flexible arrangements, and are not too bothered about meeting other English-speakers, or if you want to make progress in a short time.
Online Utilities
There are a number of sites which help with translations. Some are language-specific. Here are three which cover a wide range of languages.
Alta Vista
AltaVista provide an online utility which you can use to translate up to 1000 characters of text at a time; or which you can use as a combined translator and browser to view entire web pages at http://babel.altavista.com/translate.dyn or http://world.altavista.com
The translations vary from the bizarre to the downright unintelligible. Here are instructions for using OneTel translated from German: “As soon as your number is de-energised, select from your telephone from simply our preselection 01086 before each target call number abroad the in or. Telephoning with One.Tel is so simple and favorably!”
Translation pairs are available between English and most major European languages.
Systran
The Altavista site is powered by Systranet: http://www.systransoft.com. They do different versions of their product (£49, £299 and £899), the main benefit of which is that they will translate documents (eg Word, emails, etc) on the fly for you without cutting and pasting, and the browser is better than the version on AltaVista. The demo version only works with Netscape. Contact [email protected] for info and pricing.
Netscape Navigator 6
Netscape promise that with Navigator 6 you can “Translate web pages in a single click to your native language with the AutoTranslate feature in Navigator, based on Alis Technologies, Inc.’s Gist-In-Time service for the Internet.”
http://home.netscape.com/browsers/6/index.html
Communications
Global Diallers
If you want to access the Internet then you will either need to find an Internet café, or use a local ISP.
Using a local ISP is in fact very easy. There is a great dialler called Gric, which provides local access to ISPs all over the world. This means that you can access the net for the cost of a local phonecall, because you do not need to login to your home ISP in the UK. Gric’s site is: http://www.gric.com
CIX in the UK charge about £15pcm for their standard monthly account which includes the Gric dialler as a freebie. CIX’s site is http://www1.cix.co.uk
Cheaper phone calls
One of the unexpected costs of working abroad is increased mobile charges, as you pay the international element on calls made to your mobile. Quite often the cheapest option is to get a local pre-paid mobile for incoming calls. Your UK mobile is still probably cheaper the better option for calling home, unless you get a landline.
Navigating menus in a language you do not speak is a nightmare, so get them to help you set up your own message before you leave the shop.
Useful things to take with you
Photocopies of the details in your passport authorised by a bank.
You may not need these; but they are worth having in case you do. For example, you will need them if you need to open a bank account but cannot visit the bank in person. UK banks should do this while you wait, and shouldn’t charge you for it.
Teabags
Christine Hall says in Living and Working in Britain “The British generally drink their tea diluted with milk. You may find this custom barbaric, spoiling the delicate flavour of the tea. But once you have tried British tea bags, you’ll understand”. The “delicate flavour of the tea” in Europe is a good reason to take your own supplies of PG Tips.
Different people miss different things. Heinz beans can be hard to find in France, and German loo roll may be called “Happy End”, but it sure isn’t kitten-soft.
