Things they didn't tell me

In making our decision to move overseas, in our usual fashion, T and I (i.e. T) did a lot of research. He researched the places where we might live, and he found books on the various aspects, from financial to psychological, to making an international move. We even got to talk to someone who worked at this University for five years. We didn't feel completely prepared when we moved here, but we certainly felt more prepared than some.

However, there are still things I wish someone had told me. Or maybe someone did tell these things to me, but I wish they had been emphasized more.

At the top of my list of things they didn't tell me is the absolute truth that some people, after moving to a new country, will get sick, and they will never really get better, at least not as long as they stay in that country. I don't know why this happens. I have many friends, for example, who came to Morocco and started drinking the tap water and eating street food right away and never had a day of travelers' diarrhea. More common, I think, is an adjustment period of the body that ranges from a week to a few months, during which time the individual is more susceptible to all kinds of bacteria and viruses, but after which that person is basically okay.

Then there are those unlucky few who are constantly coming down with a wide range of diagnosable and undiagnosable ailments that affect a wide range of parts and systems of the body. I seem to be one of these unlucky few. This is something I have tried to avoid blogging about because it is essentially "negative," but the truth is it has also become a large part of my experience living in a foreign country for the first time.

Even minor health problems can be complicated in a foreign country, as I'm sure you can imagine. If one has moved from a developed country to an undeveloped or developing one, the quality of medical care will seem subpar. In fact, while I was very reluctant to go to doctors while living in the United States, I have made a fairly firm decision not to visit a doctor (or especially a hospital) here unless I am already in danger of dying – in case they kill me, of course. For people like me who like "be their own doctors," there is the issue of not knowing what sorts of medications and treatments are available. I have lived in Morocco for 16 months and I'm still learning what is and is not available. There is the additional complication of not always knowing what the real problem is that one is trying to treat.

The biggest problem of all, of course, is communication. Think about the last time you went to visit a doctor. Did the doctor understand you? Did you understand everything the doctor said? I think there's a high chance that you will answer at least one of these questions with "no." But if you had to communicate with the doctor in a language with which one of you was uncomfortable…well, imagine the opportunities for miscommunications and misunderstandings.

I don't know what the solution is for those of us in this small and unfortunate minority. I know I'm not the only person going through this, but at the same time it's not that comforting to know there are other people who, like me, haven't seemed to figure out how to be well in a foreign country.