“Expat? Never heard of the word”
February 4, 2009 1 Comment
“How can I find her?” This is what I kept thinking after stumbling upon a short interview with a young mother from South Africa in one of the local door-to-door newspapers. She looked so friendly on the accompanying photograph! The article said she lived in my village in the outskirts of Maastricht, but I had never seen her before.
This was almost ten years ago. I was longing to meet other foreign women, foreign mothers, because since I had left my job in Maastricht to become a full time mother at home, I hadn’t been able to meet anyone in my small village and life could feel very lonely sometimes.
International Women’s Club of South Limburg
One day I spotted a Japanese woman in the neighbouring town and this encounter changed everything for me. She was a member of the International Women’s Club of South Limburg and she invited me to attend their following meeting. All of a sudden, here I was, part of a dynamic network of more than 200 women from 40 different nationalities!
I quickly joined the “Mothers and Toddlers Group” (now known as the Maastricht International Playgroup) and met many other young mothers like myself, who had married a Dutch man and were raising their children bilingually (sometimes even trilingually). And my friendly looking neighbour from South Africa was there too!
Some members were expat spouses, who were not going to stay in South Limburg for more than a few years and didn’t speak Dutch. Others were planning to settle down more permanently, because they had a Dutch partner, but were finding it difficult to learn the language because “good Dutch classes are too expensive”. There were also Dutch former expats, who had spent many years abroad, felt attracted to foreign languages and cultures and saw themselves as part of the international community.
Most women said that they too had discovered the IWC – or the Playgroup – by accident, through “sheer luck”, often “after searching for months”, and that joining the club had been a “life-saver”.
Many of them didn’t have a job, either because they weren’t allowed to work, or because they couldn’t find any employment in their profession, or because they didn’t speak Dutch well enough. For some, this was a source of frustration and increased their feeling of social isolation.
A new Irish member shared a revealing testimonial in the latest IWC newsletter:
“I don’t really feel homesick, as I have lived away from Ireland for quite some time. However, I do really miss being a part of a community that I feel included in. It can be difficult to get to know people here, especially not knowing the language. Also, at first I thought the locals were quite unfriendly. I have realised that they can be very friendly once you get to know them. I think they just don’t want to waste time chatting to complete strangers (which I love!). I think the key is to join a club or set up a club that will allow you to meet people through mutual interests. […] I found out about the IWC by searching online, and as soon as I got in contact I was met with a warm response.”
In my case, the new friends that I made at the IWC and the playgroup gave me the necessary strength and confidence to move forward and reach out to the local Dutch community. Even if things didn’t work out, I knew that I had a safety net to fall back upon. I soon joined the local gym and started befriending Dutch parents at my children’s school. It was thanks to the international community that I finally was able to feel at home in South Limburg.
Expat partners and foreign spouses
Strangely enough however, initiatives for the international community in South Limburg such as the IWC, the Maastricht International Playgroup, Crossroads or the Meuse-Rhine Journal receive little coverage in the Dutch media and still remain largely unknown among the local population. The particular predicament of foreign spouses is generally overlooked.
In this context, the interview request from a journalist from Dagblad De Limburger earlier this month came as a welcome surprise. As we sat over a cup of coffee in Maastricht, Benti Banach first asked me to talk about my work for Crossroads but the conversation gradually shifted to the needs of the international community in South Limburg. When I started telling him about the specific group of trailing spouses and foreign partners, his attention was immediately caught: “[The expat partners] form an important but almost completely invisible group of people. An entire group of people, highly educated and economically influential, is hidden in our regional society, almost as if it’s a secret,” he said.
“Desperate in Maastricht” and “Expat with unhappy wife is time bomb” read two large headlines in the paper that following weekend.
During the interview, Banach also asked me how I felt now, if I was happy in South Limburg, and couldn’t hide his surprise when I answered: “Yes, I like it here and I don’t think I would want to live anywhere else right now.”
“But with your type of background, is Maastricht cosmopolitan enough for you? Do your friends agree with you?” he insisted.
“Well, the difference with many of my friends is that my husband and I came to live here by choice. We weren’t sent here. All my youth I missed having a place that I could call my home, and it actually feels nice to grow roots somewhere. But I would lie if I said that all my international friends feel the same way. In fact, I must admit that I regularly hear foreign residents say that they’d rather be in Paris, London or Amsterdam.”
Readers’ reactions
Obviously, I received many reactions and comments on the article, not only from members of the international community in South Limburg but from local Dutch residents too.
I’d like to share some of them here:
A local Dutch man:
“It was an interesting article. I had never heard of the word “expat” before!”
A Dutch woman from the Randstad area:
“It was hard for me too when I first came here. But I speak the language, so after a while, I managed to make some contacts”.
Another Dutch woman, from the Brabant region:
“Do you have any Limburger friends? I’ve been living here for many years, and my colleagues at work are very nice but I don’t really have any friends here to go out shopping with. Limburgers tend to stick to themselves.”
A British woman:
“I am glad you mentioned the [difficulty in finding] clothes – I can never find trousers to fit me here, I have to have them all altered (because my legs are VERY much shorter than the average Dutch lady!). Let’s hope the article raises some awareness!”
An Australian woman:
“I dreaded the times when my husband would have to go on business trips. I didn’t know anyone in my street so I would sometimes stay three or four days with my small children at home without speaking to any other adult.”
A Dutch woman and former expat:
“It is all about awareness. Some people have been living in Maastricht all their lives and have never heard of the International Playgroup, Mosaic Pre-school, etc. For a Dutch national who has lived half her life abroad and was born in Amsterdam, I am happy and pleased with the international network that I have found in and around Maastricht.”
A German woman:
“I do not agree that this is an expat problem. It is an academic one. When you have a specialised education you have to look for work where there are specialised industries. The problem starts when two people with two different types of specialisations want to find work in a relatively rural area (compared to Amsterdam that is). I think the expat wives group is commercially interesting for potential employers but they are difficult to find because they are not looking (in the right places) for work (I recently talked to someone from Randstad [temporary work agency] about this and that is what I was told). In this sense, some sort of platform would be very welcome for the involved parties. What was very obvious from the reactions on the Limburger website is that locals have no idea what is going on in the expat community and to change that I think the problem needs to receive more coverage.
A woman from Singapore:
“It would have been so helpful to have a website with all the info we needed to find without having to scramble around like a blind in the night. I hope they listen to your story and do something about it, even if it will take them years to implement it which is the norm here.”
A Dutch woman working for an international organisation:
“From several sides people started talking to me about your article … and learned to their great surprise that [an assignment abroad] is a huge problem for spouses, and that it may even lead to the professionals resigning from their job!”
A local Dutch man and former expat:
“I completely recognised the image of the “time bomb”. My wife and I experienced this situation when we lived abroad and this is exactly how it felt. In the end we had to come back home because of this problem.”
By Sueli Brodin
Crossroads editor
NB. Foreign women who – because they are unable to speak English – are not eligible to join the International Women’s Club, can still count on the club’s “Mentor/Friendship group for non-English speakers”. “These women need friends and support just like the rest of us,” writes Pam, the founder of the group. “As newcomers struggling to adapt to a new culture and learn a new language, they seldom know where to turn for help. In order to make these women feel welcome, we are looking for Dutch speakers (native or otherwise) who are willing to act as ‘mentors’ for these women. All you need is a bit of free time and a willingness to share it with someone else. An occasional cup of coffee together, a shopping trip downtown, a visit to their home – whatever it takes to build their confidence and give them the feeling that they too, belong.”
For more information visit: http://www.iwc-sl.nl/activities.php
NB. It is not necessary to be a member of the International Women’s Club to join the Maastricht International Playgroup.
Articles in Dagblad De Limburger:
- Expat with unhappy wife is time bomb, by Benti Banach, 24 January 2009
- Desperate in Maastricht, by Benti Banach, 24 January 2009
- Who is Sueli Brodin?, by Benti Banach, 24 January 2009
- What is actually an expat?, by Benti Banach, 24 January 2009
- Expats, an editorial by Joos Philippens, 28 January 2009
Related articles:
- Trials and Tribulations of a trailing spouse
- What do a life jacket and the Maastricht International Playgroup have in common?
- Maastricht wants to make expatriates feel at home
- “Maastricht needs an international network for expatriates”
Further reading:
At least foreign women in this region have a club to meet people…
If only there was something for the other expats.. But nothing, nada, zip, none!