Xasperating, Xcruciating - Xerrified of this Xorrible Xetter!

 

Spot the X. There are two, not one, but two in this photograph.

Okay....so we come finally to the most dreaded…

As I’ve mentioned before, Fijian does not use X in its alphabet, see for yourself how worthless this letter is – when the the Latin alphabet was adapted for Fijian, folks just gave X the chop completely. Find out how and who devised the Fijian alphabet by reading this article. So...There's no help to be found in the local milieu - no place names, no glib phrases, nope nothing. 

What I'm going to do therefore, is to tell you about some of my observations re the Xasperating and Xcruciating aspects of being an Xpat, some things true for Fiji, some true for the other places I've lived and some everywhere. 

One of the aspects I've found irksome are the banking regulations for foreigners, every country has its own restrictions - in Bahrain the bank issued us local credit cards but wouldn't give us any cheque book facility.  That wasn't a massive issue, we don't use too many cheques anyway. 

In Fiji we can't hold either credit cards or cheque books. Hobson's choice - either we use the Indian cards and pay extra due to the service charges to the Indian banks plus applicable taxes on foreign currency transactions, or pay the entire amounts upfront in cash. Additionally, most merchant establishments in Fiji charge some 2-3% extra on card transactions. So there's at least  a good 7-8% extra on the price one ends up paying if the credit cards are used. Good thing we didn't/don't need to buy any big ticket items! 

However, I still find it inconvenient and a bit uncomfortable to carry  paper money around by the bagful. Especially in those first days, when we needed to sort out the household stuff that's required at every relocation -  since I was told these horror stories of purse snatchings and break-ins the minute I landed. It just added an extra layer of unnecessary jitters. 

Next, there is what I call the currency commotion, which is funny till it isn't. If you're an expat, you'll  have to cope with juggling two kinds of money - one of your home base, the other wherever you live. That's learning a whole set of notes and coins in each country and making sure you're not handing over a note to the cabbie that's ten times more in value than your actual fare, because of course you've been gone for a couple of years, meanwhile new notes have been introduced none of which you know from Adam and the colours have been shuffled around and the fonts are more decorative than clearly legible. And of course you'll have to be able to earn in one currency, take care of your obligations, save and pay your taxes in another and do the arithmetic for both systems of money like it's a piece of cake. 

Now if you're an Indian expat, then you'll have to learn to hold in your brain and convert smoothly between three currencies - the Indian Rupee or INR, the currency of wherever you live and a 'hard currency,' now usually the USD. When I was a kid it was the Sterling Pound. You'll have to constantly decide which one is your own "real money" depending on how long you've been away from your homeland. 

So you go on home leave, look at a textile priced at say, INR 2,000 and think - 'heavens, that's only BHD 9, hand woven length of art, how is that even close to a decent price? How much does the weaver make after costs?'...Or you look at a scarf in your 'away' home and go 'gosh, that's 10,000 rupee right there for a piece of machine-made mass-produced flimsy trash, not even locally made, I'm not buying that, thank you.' You'll never have used a dollar bill to buy a single thing till your children grow up and go to uni in the USA, but you'll be required to calculate your income in that currency from time to time and report all the export markets you research in dollar value.

As soon as you get used to the currency of one country e.g. the Bahraini Dinar (BHD), the god of relocations will hatch a plan to shake things up because hey, this character here is getting too damn snug-settled, so off you go to another one! By now BHD has become your 'real money' in practical terms. Now you'll have the angry voices in your head chatting back to you in four different currencies - INR, BHD, USD and the new country's, say Egyptian Pounds. It'll get seriously crazy - total  cacophony in there!

The next issue is particular to Fiji. In the Middle East everywhere I've been, though government facilities may or may not be up to the mark, there has been no issues with availability of healthcare  - plenty good doctors and top quality medical care. At an extra price for foreigners of course, but it's there, I wouldn't have had to be airlifted home in case of a medical emergency, the sponsor would cover the cost so I didn't have to worry. I must point out though, the Gulf Countries including Bahrain and UAE where I've lived, have vast numbers of unskilled foreign workers who can't afford the pricey, private health care, are not covered for any substantial medical bills and so have to be sent home for treatment. I know of several cases, some of them truly excruciating. 

Fiji is a different ball game entirely. First off, the basics are not there - Fiji has 2.0 hospital beds per 1000 population, which is substantially lower than the world mean at 2.9. There's a shortage of doctors - 0.84 per 1000 people, as compared to a global figure of 1.5 per 1000. Fiji spends 3.8 of its GDP on health care, again much lower than the world average.  (Btw, Kolkata where I come from has figures quite similar or worse than Fiji, but private care is accessible to those who can afford it, much like the ME.) However, figures tell  just half the story.

The other half - what I hear from people, not necessarily expats, is quite unnerving. Birth stories that are total horror shows, road accident victims dying due to lack of care, expats having to move back to their home country because some piffling but specialised problem couldn't be tackled on the island. A few days ago someone from a European country asked in an online expat forum about relocating to Fiji with his pregnant wife and a gazillion horrified people from all sides, both locals and expats,  jumped in and effectively yelled at him - are you nuts?! have the baby in your home country! I've myself had to consult a dermatologist, an experienced specialist, who diagnosed me and then recommended I get the necessary but totally minor surgery when I got home next. All this is not exactly confidence inducing. 

Finally, there are two other aspects - one personal and the other political, they come with the territory of being expat Indians. Political first - you'll not be able to participate in most political processes in the country of your residence, unless it is a democracy, which most countries I've lived in aren't. There are other laws in place that will limit your freedoms, what you can wear in public in Saudi or Iran for instance, whether you can swig beer on a beach or park, if you can watch or import porn into the country, whether you can proselytise, or even volunteer at an NGO.  UAE used to bar WhatsApp voice calls, it allowed texts only when I was in the ME - all those kinds of things. In short, when in Rome you'll have to follow the rules made by Caesar. This I have no issues with. Mildly xasperating, sure, but no biggie. If in some country there are laws I find absolutely xecrable, I'd just not go there (as in Saudi). 

Finally, the personal - the things you leave behind, small and big, each compartmentalised home with its complement of attachment points that can't be carried over. The lack of family support through your crises, the lack of your participation in those of the extended family back home. The births, weddings, funerals that you must celebrate/mourn alone at a remove - particularly the funerals, that's gut wrenching, but it's an integral part of split continent living and you've made the choice knowing the downsides. They'll still knock the breath out of you when they happen, there's no way to prepare for that beforehand. 

I'd originally thought I would write about Xenophilia today - the love for strangeness and novelty, a deep attraction for the unfamiliar. It's the  underlying driver of wanderlust - I wanted to write about some Xenophiliacs here in Fiji, the foreigners who came, who saw and who were conquered by its untouched beauty and its remoteness.  But I'm seriously out of wordcount and you must be out of all patience. We've already talked about  Raymond Burr earlier and David Gilmour yesterday. Here's the link to two more - Maria Rova and Roberta Harris. 

All this month I'm writing about Aspects of Fiji, which is where I'm at the mo. And where the sum of its xceptional parts is xquisitely greater than the whole!

What do you think - should X be part of the English alphabet? Can we give it the chop like the Fijians have done? Do you know of any other language that uses the Latin script but not X? 

~ Thank you for reading ~

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2023