The loneliness of the long distance consultant

You start on an exciting career abroad. It’s new, different and you meet all sorts of interesting people. You do well and the next job comes along. By now you have covered Tanzania, Kenya and gone on safari in Zambia. Time to step up so you go to a job at the Asian Development Bank based in Manila. The money keeps flowing in as you buy a new Mercedes and have your rent paid. You add Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma to your list of countries and move over to covering Tonga and the Pacific. After four years, time to go home. You think.

You get a good enough job in Sydney but at lunch with colleagues when you mention going up the Khyber pass until you were shot at and had to return to Quetta, big silence and everyone goes back to talking about last week’s cricket. You head out again this time to Hong Kong assisting with the hand back of the colony. You find it hard to handle all the corruption there and return to Africa under the UN revamping the accounts in Lesotho with regional work in Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana, Angola, Malawi and Swaziland. Another tour of Tanzania and Kenya with Uganda and Rwanda on the side for the World Bank. Bored with that. Move north and privatise some businesses in Egypt then get embroiled in Ethiopia and Sudan. Time to leave so head for Eastern Europe and cover most of that. Then Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

The years pass by and you pop home every once in a while but things change and you really start wondering where home is. The bear looks over the mountain. Haven’t worked in China so off on a major EU bash across that country dishing out 60 million Euros and then on to Vietnam this time throwing around money not bombs. Still wondering where is home.

Eventually you return to Australia and after 52 countries try to settle down again. Still hard because most of the friends from years past are spread around the globe and you can’t really talk about what you’ve done or where you’ve been although this is a major part of your life. People around you don’t understand these places and you can’t tell them what it’s like to put an ankle holster before you go out at night. And just are not interested which limits your conversation. So you continue to wonder where you fit in……. and would you do it all over again.