The Internationals

It is quite funny, but no matter how different Afghanistan and Dubai are, they have one thing in common; they would not cope without their expats. However there are very different types of international. In Afghanistan you find the “humanitarians” and the “cowboys” travelling from one disaster or war zone to the other and like to talk about and comparing the misery in different places, the one place being worse than the other. In Afghanistan noting is really simple or clean. In Dubai everything is shiny and beautiful and they seem to believe it is possible to build away all problems and act as if there are no worries in this world; it is all a big party. Instead of moving from disaster to disaster people move from one financial centre to the other. In Afghanistan there are few parties and little investment and finance is more a question of funding. So what makes those people do what they do? What is their motivation? Money? Kicks? On the average maybe these two groups of people are not so different after all. The other day someone commented my trip to Afghanistan with: “That must be interesting, it is great that there are people who work with things that is not just about making money.” That made a huge gap very visible. I never thought of it like that. Not that I would mind making a lot of money, but I could not imagine spending my time on a job that I don’t find interesting.