Hvassing.com

As an expatriate son; a student at a international school I kind of live a life consisting of two separate lives. The first, and best known as well as experienced one, is the one that I've been living in Norway. This is the life where I am Average Joe with the average friends, average purchasing power, average house, attending a average school and getting average grades. In short; average. The kind of life where you don't have much of neither worries nor acclivous hills to climb, metaphorical speaking. I have to admit that this way of living suited me just fine. I had some great friends, a great employer, fairly okay grades and a horizon that went from the northern state border to the southern one.

In a matter of 14 hours my life turn upside down, both geographical speaking and life-wise. This is my second life. A life where, I all of a sudden, become just another of "those filthy-rich white boys" with a fast car, big house, my own driver and attending the outermost expensive school there is in this entire country. This is my second life.

In this second life of mine I spend more money on coffee in a month than one of our employees earn in a week. The locals call us "mzongo's", a word used to describe everyone who's white and got more money than they will be able to spend in Tanzania in a sensible way, not in this life and most probably not in their next one either.

Going back to my first life, the original one, where I lived in small-town Norway, my parents gave me pocket money, almost $100 every month. This would buy me a ticket to the cinema, some soda's, a lunch and credit for my phone. The very same amount in my second life would be enough to buy my way out of the most trickiest situations, or buy me more soda's than I would ever be able to finish. To put it in perspective; the same $100 that I spent every month on everything and nothing in Norway would make sure that three kids could go to school and come home and have a nice meal - every day.

A student like me with two lives will have problems adjust between the two lives. Going from living in a country ranked 177 out of 185 countries on the HDI index, to a country who holds the 1st place on the fifth year in a row. My price of my squash racket is about the same as a month salary for the upper middle class.

It is this difference that may be why many expatriates are not able to make the transfer back to their "normal" life. Going from filthy-rich white boy and back to Average Joe again who doesn't have a dousing of employees to do all the tedious chores. The ones who doesn't make the transfer and stay where they are and are given the appropriate name "losers".

When I'm going home, back to my original life I will make sure that I go back to my normal life. I'm going north and I'm going home; back to normal. But that's still one year ahead in time.