The Huggery-Buggery Drawer

There are websites galore devoted to the expatriate life and how to make the most of it. How to choose the right school. How to recreate oneself as an accompanying spouse. How to make friends in a foreign land. How to have a baby overseas – that one always makes smile. I believe the answer is the same anywhere in the world – you push. 

Living a life abroad is not difficult. And as the world shrinks with the ease of travel and the omnipresence of the internet it has without doubt become easier. In some ways though the very ease of communication and the ability to see films and TV shows from any country,  has created a belief that we are one giant homogenous world with little separating us – a sort of Bollywood comes to Hollywood. And that can lead to unrealistic expectations, to a lack of cultural awareness, a lack of willingness to accept and, mostly, embrace our differences.

It is a privilege to be invited to share in someone else’s customs and traditions. To travel, and to spend significant time in another country encourages us to become more compassionate, more open to inevitable differences, to understand that there is no single way to do many things. It is also too easy to forget issues that may arise whilst living in a foreign country might well have arisen when living in the village of one’s birth, surrounded by family. It is easy to blame external factors for internal problems though like everything there are exceptions.

I think a global perspective helps make us more accepting and in some ways kinder.

What travel most certainly does is introduce new words and phrases into our lexicon that are used without thought in our daily speech, without remembering those to whom we are speaking might be utterly confused.

My 60th birthday was shared with seven girlfriends with whom I have celebrated for over ten years and who, last week, flew in to St Croix from mainland USA and Britain. Sitting on the gallery one evening I looked at these wonderful women who I had met around the world and wondered how many countries had been lived in. A quick tally was 24 countries, and that wasn’t counting overlaps where some of us had lived in the same country. Had we included those the total would have been 42.

Not surprisingly those multiple countries and languages have spawned many phrases in our personal dictionaries. Growing up in Malaysia the word cukup and tidak were daily admonitions from, it sometimes seemed, most adults in my life. Meaning “enough” and “no”. Makan siap called us to the table – the bahasa melayu equivalent of “grub’s up”. Papua New Guinea added em tasol and means “that’s all”. Genoeg and tot ziens came from Holland, another “enough”, and “see you later”. My children, raised initially in Thailand, were quick to learn mai pen rai – “it doesn’t matter”. 

But the phrase I had completely forgotten from my childhood was huggery buggery!

I had left the house early to go and prepare the table at Cafe Christine’s for 14 lovely ladies joining me for lunch. Unbeknownst to me, those staying with me had plans to decorate the house in my absence. (I later understood why everyone kept asking me “when are you going?”, or “what time do you want us there?” I had also been mildly surprised to note my Cruzan friends, who often work to a Caribbean clock, arrived on time and my houseguests all late.)

But back to huggery buggery.

Apparently whilst hustling to decorate the house with all manner of glitzy banners, streamers and balloons proclaiming my advanced age, my multi-lingual pals were searching for sellotape.

“Well she must have a huggery-buggery drawer somewhere!” said Trish, continuing to pull open cupboard doors and tug recalcitrant drawers swollen by humidity.

“What?” The query came from five women.

“The huggery buggery drawer. You know, bits and bobs, odds and ends. Everyone has one.”

Relating this to me later over yet more bubbles, I laughed. It was a phrase used by my paternal grandmother and my father, learned from their days in India. Sometimes it is best not look too deeply into the etymology of a word but goodness it is descriptive. And whilst Trish has never lived in India, she learnt it from an Indian ayah whilst living in Dubai.

Writing this blog brought to mind the teenage glee with which a friend and I, then living in Papua New Guinea, would call her dog to heel. Her travel history included South Africa and her amusingly non-pc parents had named the mutt who appeared one day at their door, Voetsek. Voetsek in Afrikaans is a not terribly polite way of saying, “get lost”.

And so along with kindness comes humour. Two things necessary wherever we live but which is sometimes needed in larger doses when living a global life. Some of the things we build into big events or issues are really very unimportant in the greater scheme of life, and we need a take a kecil out of the huggery-buggery drawer and learn to realize that for most things, mai pen rai!

Now I wonder if there’s an expat website for that!

Note: I’ve just been told that huggery-muggery is listed in a 1700 Scottish dictionary so it seems India borrowed and adapted from the Scots!

I Promised Monkeys

We are a mixed bag! A family spread across the globe – Britain, the US, Trinidad and Tobago. My children were born in The Netherlands and Thailand. My grandchildren are bi-racial TCKs. My son’s girlfriend is Polish. We are archetypal global nomads. And we love it.

However getting together is never easy. We all lead busy lives in different time zones, with the added complication of a son working rotation in the North Sea. Fortunately my daughter is a firm believer in travel being part of her children’s schooling and so has no compunction about freeing them from the bonds of formal education.

This month, after a three year gap, we managed to coordinate our lives to have six days together on neutral ground – Costa Rica. A country none of us had visited and one we were all eager to explore.

I wanted a house Ava and Harley would remember. A unique property jumped off the screen. Way down south on the Peninsula de Osa, and 40 feet up a tree. There was even a ground -level bathroom for anyone not keen on conducting ablutions in the treetops. Perfect. What fun! Until the sensible partner of our marriage pointed out that a fearless-almost-four-year-old rampaging around a treehouse would not be conducive to a relaxed vacation. And one review did mention mahogany birds the size of playing cards. For those of you who have not read my novel, Fireburn, mahogany birds are not sleek and beautiful members of the avian family but are actually up-sized flying cockroaches. Seven of our group, whilst not being enamoured of the rather repellant insects, are pretty relaxed in their presence. The eighth member of our party would not have been quite so blasé and might well have taken flight herself.

And so Sirena Azul was found. A funky house memorable for its shape and colour. Round and a vivid hyacinth-blue. Located a short way up a hillside equidistant from Domincal and Uvita, it ticked all the boxes. Large enough. Reasonably safe. A beautiful tropical garden and pool. A stream and waterfall. Birds. And monkeys.

Spider and howler monkeys to be precise.

As we arrived the dipping sun bathed the garden in dappled gold, and cicadas launched their evening chorale. Then from further up the hill  came a cacophony of deep-throated coughs. Though we couldn’t see them, the howlers were howling. A quick scan of the Costa Rica guide (we weren’t set up for internet) told us their voices can be heard up to three miles away, warning other troupes to stay clear of their territory. The children went to bed exhausted but happy with the promise of monkey sightings soon.

While most of us were diving for multi-coloured plastic turtles in the pool the next afternoon, Grandpa disappeared on a monkey hunt. Having clambered upstream and over boulders, he returned happy and victorious. A family had been found larking around in the treetops – spider monkeys – their prehensile tails acting as a fifth arm. He promised a trek up the hill the next day but we got sidetracked and so the only monkeys around were the girls.

We surfed, we zip-lined, we rode, we lazed. We played games. We were a family gathered. And all the while humming birds, so iridescent it looked as if they had sequins sown on their wings, sipped from heliconia around the garden, hawks hovered, egrets busied themselves, and euphonia showed off their yellow breasts with gay abandon. Toucans did not appear though we heard them high in the canopy. A two-toed sloth was spotted but fortunately not whilst I was arboreal, and also agouti. Iguanas eyed us with reptilian lassitude as we passed by. But still no monkeys though we heard them howling as dawn crept over the horizon and through the trees, or as darkness fell in a bruised blur of purple and black.

And then as four of us sat enjoying a quiet few moments on the verandah later in the week, I think with a beer in hand, a rustling attracted my husband and there, just a few trees away, was a skittering shape. Then another. With more still to come. A balcony surrounded the top floor of Sirena Azul and we raced up. There they were. Monkeys. The same family.

A quick message was sent to those absent. “Monkey sighting. Come home.” And home they raced, in time to see the troupe swing from tree to tree in playful chase. A family just like ours enjoying each others company.

Six days flew by. Who knows when we’ll all get together again? But in the meantime we will all treasure our memories of Costa Rica, and the promised monkeys.

What do you like about being an expat?

https://blog.internations.org/2017/07/the-greatest-reasons-to-love-life-abroad/

Thanks to Internations. org – it was fun!