F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

FS VOICE:
FAMILY MEMBER MATTERS ■ BY DOUGLAS E. MORRIS
Living in the Bubble
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Foreign Service personnel may not
want to believe this, but life while
serving at a U.S. embassy overseas
is rather easy, at least in comparison to
what other expatriates experience. Having
grown up abroad outside of the cocoon
of the embassy community — my
father worked for a U.S. corporation —
I viewed diplomatic life as rife with benefits.
As an adult, I recently spent two
years with my Foreign Service partner
in Turkey smothered in diplomatic
perks. Now that I am living in Italy
while she is in Afghanistan for a year, I have been rudely
reawakened to the rigors of expat life outside of the embassy
“bubble.”
The bubble begins with housing. While embassy personnel
arrive at their new post and move into an assigned,
often furnished home, other expats generally have to find
their own housing, which involves dealing with foreign real
estate agents, in another language, while facing unknown
hurdles and incomprehensible laws.
Here in Italy, for example, I spent three weeks dealing
with 12 different real estate agencies and visiting a dozen
apartments. Even when my family was moving around
under the auspices of a multinational corporation, we received
virtually no assistance in finding a place to live. My
mother would fly to the next foreign country for a frenzied
couple of weeks’ housing search on her own, with no embassy
or corporate support staff assisting her.
I still remember one apartment that was an empty shell,
without kitchen cabinets, appliances, light fixtures or finished
bathrooms — quite the opposite of the fully equipped
apartment my mother had seen when she scouted it weeks
earlier.
Without a welcome kit or a cadre of embassy employees
to help set things right, we had to navigate government and
business bureaucracies, language barriers and every other
cultural oddity to get our home set up before we could even
think of moving in.
Then, if we had electrical, plumbing, telecom, television
or any other household problems, there were no embassy
technicians on call. And there certainly was no one to help
us hang pictures, a service I was stunned to discover was
offered to embassy personnel in Turkey.
If we got in a traffic
accident, there was no
Foreign Service National
to come deal with it,
and we had to navigate
the vagaries of a foreign
legal system on our own.
If we got sick, we had to find our own
doctors. There was no health unit to call.
If we got in a traffic accident, there was no
Foreign Service National to come deal with
it, and we had to navigate the vagaries of a
foreign legal system on our own.
If we wanted a familiar food product,
there was no embassy store or commissary
to meet our needs. We had to make do
with what was on the local economy. If we
wanted to order something from the U.S.,
we did not have the Army Post Office to
deliver it to us quickly and inexpensively.
If we felt isolated or needed some questions answered,
there was no Community Liaison Office to help out. Certainly,
after a few months, once we connected with the extended
expat community, we were able to gather
information about what to do, where to go, where to shop,
etc. Before that, however, we were flying blind.
To be sure, corporate employees often receive larger pay
packets, and housing and education allowances. But while
these benefits may help ease the financial burden of overseas
life, they do little to ensure a smooth transition to a
new place, help create the embrace of community life, or
begin to approximate the support network available at U.S.
missions.
This is not meant to suggest that life in the U.S. mission
community is all caviar, champagne and black-tie events.
Navigating a foreign culture, having to forgo many familiar
products and services, leaving behind friends and family,
communicating in a foreign language, moving every two to
three years, starting over and creating a new life in another
country — none of that is simple. Living overseas is never
effortless or trouble-free. However, the embassy “bubble”
does cushion the experience.
I am not embarrassed to say that I have tasted life in the
bubble, and I want more. Even though I am enjoying my
time in the land of la dolce vita, I am looking forward to
my partner’s next assignment, when I can once again feel
the embrace of the ever-so-cushy life inside the U.S. embassy
community. ❒
Douglas E. Morris is the author of Open Road’s Best of Italy and other
books. He currently resides in Viterbo, Italy, waiting for his FSO partner’s
year in Afghanistan to end. You can contact the author through
his Web site: www.TheItalyGuide.com.
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