Expat Late Boomer/GenXers – what are we? By ERIN O'NEAL

Are we excitable, forever younglings, or historical relics? I pose this question to you, all generations using social media everywhere. Why is it even relevant, you ask. Well, as a Late Boomer/GenXer, I’ve come to realize that we just don’t get old. We’re still rocking out on metal, hard rock and, of course, cutting edge 80's and 90's stuff. We outdo the 20 somethings in the gym, pound the pavement, and work 15-18 hours a day, seven days a week all while handling home life, relationship crises, and (grown) children issues.

But, like our early twentieth century grandparents, we are also living fossils, relics of an age that has passed and gone to dust. We’re remnants of a time when analog phones with room length handset cords were the rage and writing letters on stationery and snail mailing them to a friend and/or sweetheart who moved to another city was the norm. Casey Kesum’s Top 10 list was a must to listen to on the FM radio, or stereo if you were lucky enough to have parents who have one. Latch key head bangers, tough as nails, drink from the hose, and show up at dark relics, that’s what we are. Relics who can still spin a 36-rpm disk on a turn table (record player in our jargon!) because we actually know how turn tables work!

But unlike our grandparents, we’ve developed an addiction to travel, be it local, national, or international. We want to see and experience other realities from our own and our in-the-dirt, don’t cry upbringing is perfect as we are adaptable by necessity. Throw anything our way and we adapt on the spot. 

My travel addiction came on after my first ever flight from Burbank to Bakersfield to see my grandparents; I think I was six at the time. From that first, short flight grew my insatiable wanderlust. I was hooked, totally and completely. I wanted nothing more than to travel far and wide (and ride horses while doing so, but that’s another story) and focused on obtaining that goal.

A school-wide announcement in my sophomore year cemented things; applications to be an American Field Service (AFS) foreign exchange student were being accepted and only sophomores could apply. Being cocky and overly self-confident, I knew my dream of world travel had just presented itself. Out of more than 400 applicants from my school alone, and out of more than 2500 school district wide applicants, I was chosen, the first student from my district to be chosen in more than 35 years!

And being born the off-the-beaten-track, non-conformist that I am, I didn’t ask to go to Western Europe (the Iron Curtain was still very much in place), nor any other ‘typical’ destination, I asked to go ‘somewhere different’ which was exactly where I was placed.

Eswatini, formerly known as the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a tiny southern African country, smaller than the county of San Diego, CA where I grew up. It’s also a galaxy away from the world I knew in southern California. I experienced the bush as few have. I saw animals, people, and experienced a culture that no longer exists. I personally felt the long-lasting trauma of the last months of the Rhodesian Civil War, and had the pain and suffering of apartheid and the anti-apartheid protests that led to the fall of the RSA Boer government thrust on me.

I came back to San Diego a changed person. I vowed that I would live my life in a way in which I could help change the world to make it a better place for the future generations that would follow. I had personally lived through and seen the horrors of unchecked prejudice and segregation and I knew that I had to do all I could to eradicate those horrors for future generations.

Fast forward and I have continued my personal expat mission to help where and when I can. I’ve worked for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) before, during and after the Kosovo Crisis of 1999. I’ve freelanced for CGAR Bioversity International, the Italian military, the Italian education ministry, the Italian Health Ministry, and private international corporations. I trained current and new teachers for the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Education. In each and every one of these organizations, through means both obvious and subtle, I’ve tried to make positive, long-lasting change.

I acknowledge my relic status with grace and aplomb, but I refuse to grow ‘old’. There is still so much positive work to do, so many cultures to experience, so many countries to see, and too much still needs to be done to grow ‘old’. ‘Old’ isn’t for the borderline Boomer/GenXers and never will be, especially expat borderline Boomer/GenXers!

We’ll never get old! We can finally travel business/first class so why stop now?