And The Expat Street Cred Score

One year after moving from the US to Amman, Jordan

One of the things I most appreciate about living overseas: everyone is interesting. Everyone has some story to tell or is doing some interesting work. Life in Amman can be hard, dusty, and sometimes exhausting. But it is also fascinating.

I’ve met photographers and journalists and philanthropists. I’ve met military guys and state department guys and almost certainly CIA guys (though you can never be sure). I’ve met Americans who’ve been living in Jordan since the 70s. The 70s!

Missionaries, models and filmmakers, including one named Georgie, and the South African ambassador to Jordan.

Two Raytheon people showed up to a party at my house a few weeks ago and I’m not even sure who invited them. I’ve met an Irish woman married to the most well-known Jordanian beat-boxer (in the admittedly small world of Jordanian beat-boxing).

And of course, so many white women. I know some white women who hate living in Jordan: “I’m just here temporarily; it’s a bit too easy. I’m looking for something a little more difficult.” Sugary smile. “And what about you?”

I know others who love living in Jordan and might stay here forever.

I’ve met an American woman who converted to Islam to marry her Muslim partner; US Air Force officers working at the Azraq airbase, way out east in the desert, therapists, even a girl from Beaver Dam, WI – just a couple hours from my hometown of Milwaukee.

Last week I went to Margarita Monday at the US embassy where my friend Lucas was emceeing an open mic night. There I met a veterinarian/US military consultant who is deployed here to give small animal veterinary training to the Jordanian Air Force. They are responsible for training the dogs used in counter-terrorism operations. I didn’t even know that was a job!

Expat life: endlessly varied and exciting.

Six years after moving from the US to Amman, Jordan

Today I’m at Espresso Lab, an overpriced coffee shop in Rawabi. I’m out on the patio, where the air is absolutely perfect and wrapping me in a mild spring embrace, with a slight gentle breeze and a weak sun.

One too-skinny kid has passed by twice, begging, because he knows that people who come to this street have money. I wonder how he got here, and where he will go after he’s done for the day.

Four expat women (five if I count myself) are out here at another table, chatting with each other. They seem to be doing small talk or intros – perhaps they’ve all just met? One wants to find a gym near where she lives at 8^th circle. Another is explaining how she met her husband in Muscat, Oman and that they don’t have any kids yet.

“Oh, you lived in Muscat? Muscat is a nice place. Lots of art, lots of potential.”

“It was incredible. Really intense, but they did have the most amazing rugs there, I mean just the most incredible street artists, and you could watch them weave. You should come over sometime; I’ll show you the one I have in my dining room.”

A third is saying she’s actually soon moving to Beirut but is just waiting for the paperwork to come through so she can bring her rescue dog with her.

Here we are, all over the city, going to parties, saying, “So tell me more about yourself,” and bracing ourselves for the blasting heat of summer in Amman.

Sitting here on the patio, listening to the women talk, I wonder: What are the things we like to think, or pretend, about ourselves as expats?

I start jotting things down, answering my own question.

1. That we know our way around and we’ve seen it all before. We’ve lived here for a long time (or maybe we just moved to Amman, but we spent the two years in Istanbul before that and the year in Morocco before that, so).

2. That we are doing some cool or interesting job, like the vet-military-training job. Something you would tell someone about at a party and that person would say “Oh wow. I didn’t even know that was a job. How cool. So what do you actually do every day?”

3. That we have lived in, could live in, or are about to be living in a more “difficult” place than here – for those of us working in humanitarian aid, that means somewhere definitively closer to “The Field”.

This last one makes me cringe. It paints a picture of life in Amman as easy, when in reality life here is difficult and harsh for so many people struggling to make ends meet. Unemployment is high and costs keep going up. So many expats are cushioned from this.

Those first two points, however, get at the core of how we are always subtly looking each other over and comparing ourselves to one another.

We do this in Rumi, another overpriced cafe across town in Weibdeh. We do this in Stop & Shop, the tiny grocery store at Paris Circle where all the Weibdeh expats shop. We do this in the UNHCR conference rooms in Khelda, where all the UN and NGO staff subtly size each other up before the meetings.

It’s as if we have an imaginary expat street cred score calculated in our heads at all times, for ourselves and others we come across.

If this was a real number you could calculate it like this: number of months you’ve spent living as an expat multiplied by how interesting your job is on a scale of 1 to 10.

Two extra points added on for every country where you lived as an expat before you came here, and five extra points if you’ve ever lived in South Sudan. (We, the Expats, have collectively decided that South Sudan is the most difficult place to move for a job. If you’ve done that, five extra points for you.)