Personal notes
Several months of experience as a retiree made me decide to share my experience (experience defined as the mistakes of the past that we like to reminisce and chuckle about) with fellow and close colleagues of the same line of business. Because this business of the UN plucks us out of the African reality and we live in another level of comfort. The system protects and inures, but we then return to reality on retirement. Then we realize it was dreamland compared with the day-to-day reality of our families, our relatives, our classmates etc.
As indicated in my previous three articles, this is a series of four articles I prepared and shared with colleagues in active service. For all intents and purposes, please read, and share if you deem useful.
The Article
Dear prospective retirees in UNHCR (sooner or later), my in-laws,
Happy New Year 2024
1. This would be an opportunity to wish us all a happy New year 2024. New friends, new experiences, new hopes, new aspirations, new realizations, new fine and happy events. Everything that is new is symbolized by the entry into a new year. We do not take that for granted, because a few friends, acquaintances and relatives pass on precisely at the end of the year.
Sisi tulio hai, tunafurahia na kumshukuru Mola kwa kutufikisha hapa na kutuonyesha na kutuonjesha mwaka mpya. Tumaini yetu ni kwamba kila mwaka utatuongezea furaha na maendeleo. (Those of us who are alive are happy and we thank God for having brought us to this point, for showing us and allowing us to enjoy the new year. We hope that each year will bring more happiness and personal development)
2. And it is the appropriate moment to share again additional personal insights into retirement and life after work. For me, every day seems like a weekend, especially as I have decided to be a writer. So, I write at my own pace (https://www.canhandulatete.com). I will probably be involved in some community education, or maybe teaching languages in the Seminary here in Tete. For free. Yaani, kwa maana sina haja ya kutafuta hela. (Meaning that I do not do it for the need for money)
3. On this first day of the year, my two other experiences that I wish to share with you, are around family and money. They are very closely linked. And I have learned the Tanzanian tradition of family solidarity that we in Mozambique exercise less. I have been able to accept the consequences of this higher culture of solidarity.
4. My first thought when I was in active service early in my career, was to build houses according to my capacities and the loans I had the right to access; I built one for one boy who is Tanzanian, in Dar-es-Salaam, another for the other boy, Mozambican, in Tete, Mozambique.
5. Except: since we have exposed these boys to the international school environment, they were able to exercise their choices where to live. One is established in Canada, with a family and a joint house. He has refused to renew the Mozambican passport because he now has the entitlement to a Canadian one, and he intends to take that one. My question now is: what do I do with the house? Could I have done better and differently?
6. The other boy, also in Canada, intends to follow his brother and settle there as soon as he is finished with his studies. A second house I do not know how to handle as I look to my own sunset.
7. And since I remarried and have another girl, she rightly expects the same treatment. I established a standard of treatment for my progeniture, I now have to sustain it, for reasons of equity.
8. Our thought was: we build for the children. Except the children may not wish that and may not even be with us. They marry, they organize their lives differently and migrate to the world outside.
9. The question I cannot answer is: was it wise? Could I perhaps have limited myself to giving them the high-quality education they received, and let them navigate life with their own intelligence? After all, giving them a quality education was already a family sacrifice. Why give them a house? Because it is tradition. Is this tradition something we should really pursue with limited resources? I put it to you. And leave it to you.
10. My second issue is money. And on this one, I beg of you: habits are built now while you are in active service. And any habits you do not change now, you cannot change on retirement. Sahauni kabisa! (you can forget it!) My wife and I have six persons waiting on my monthly income, and we do not have a way of changing this situation because of our culture of family solidarity. Richer or poorer, we cannot force a change now. They depended on us while we were in active service, it never changed with the fact that we are now unemployed. With the result that cash is always short, if we have to depend on retirement benefits alone.
11. Family solidarity is our defining feature, our culture. Lazima tuchangie kukiwa na misiba, miharusi, miubatizo na kadhalika. (we are bound to contribute for funeral costs, wedding costs, baptism ceremonies etc). It takes Money, and not just any money, it takes available cash.
12. What am I saying? That you should either renegotiate relationships and dependencies in the family early enough and redefine the limits of family solidarity, or you become the only tree against which all manner of relatives get attached to, whether you tell them that you are now retired, or not. Then you cannot have cash to go on a pleasure trip to Namibia, Maputo, Zanzibar, Lushoto and other pleasurable places. Because you are waiting for the monthly income, which on retirement arrives actually on the very last day of the month.
13. There are times when
One cannot enjoy a fine meal out because one must save on costs in case there is a sudden family event (no cash to travel, no cash to contribute),
One prays that no one in the family passes away when we have no cash to travel immediately and attend to urgent matters,
There are always relatives that depend on us even more when they have a health problem, and we discover that they have no health insurance, and they look up to the retiree for fees that are costly.
14. My message is simple and consists of two sides of the proverbial coin (pun intended): cash in hand is a necessity, and for that, you (we) need to review the type of family solidarity we exercise and entertain and what kind of expectations it builds and consolidates. It is not in us Africans to enjoy while a relative is suffering. That is our culture. The result is that the relatives then build their lives around the permanent undeclared self-entitlement to the income of the UN retiree. Without income, you start selling properties to deal with emergency health issues. We’ve seen it happen all of us all the time.
15. Without abandoning our culture of family solidarity, which is a value, we need to keep the eyes open to what is developing around us and how that will affect us in the future. And perhaps renegotiate a relationship that will not encumber you once you are retired.
Jose,
Tete, December 2023
Contribution from Liz Ahua
Thu 11/01/2024 00:31
Dear Jose and all the colleagues that are here copied,
First off as the year is still young, let me wish you a very happy , peaceful and successful year ahead. I trust that in all your locations and situations you are doing well and God is keeping you in the hollow of his hands. My family and I are doing well by the grace of God.
Once again, let me thank you Jose, for your generosity in sharing the situations, predicaments or dilemmas that some of us who are retired are dealing with. For many, if not the majority of us who were on the international circuit, our children ended up receiving an education outside our homes. So we are now faced with living our retirement in our countries of origin, away from our children. A few opted to become citizens of countries in the West. Still they are not livin in the same homes or even the same locations as their children. In other words we are seeing a transition from the traditional setting where at the minimum parents and children lived very close to each other and oftentimes inherited the homestead to continue the lineage.
If truth be told, many of us were already in situations where we were living pretty far from the homestead. The situation was not as dramatic as it is now. So you do well in sharing with those that are still in service and therefore may seize the opportunity to reflect deeply and choose wisely. If possible they may even choose to discuss options with their children if they are old enough to give their views. In your case as in mine, when we took the loans afforded by the UN and its systems, we fully believed that the children would return HOME from their countries of sojourn and find their futures on the continent. What we did not see as clearly as we do today is that the continent is really offering very poor/limited opportunities for our kids. For instance we encouraged my last daughter to return to Nigeria, do her national service for one year to the country and find work. She obliged us. She got employment in Lagos and for over 2 years struggled on a shoestring salary of less than 300 USD per month.
In the end she was burned out by an environment that she hardly knew, having left Nigeria when she was less than one year old. Asyou know too well, Jose, even those paking rubbish in the west earn better than most university graduates in many african countries.
So the dilemmas are as existential for our children as they are for us. What will be beneficial for your children in the future, when you and I are no longer there, is that they can trade in the homes we built and hopefully use the buck from our sweat to improve their lives or even better their lives in their chosen countries. And hopefully, also leave something for their children - to break the cycle of poverty that might accrue to them were they to return. And hopefully, they will not lose the culture and the faith that we tried to instil in them.
I do hope that my incomplete thoughts will help us all to review carefully how we can navigate the future for ourselves as well as for our progeny.
With regards to the social dependency in traditional Africa, insofar as politicians are gulping resources and not investing in the future of our populations, it will be difficult to shake off responsibility. I do escape from time to time when I am in Abuja, which as you know is over 400 kilometres away. However, the moment I get to the village, the relatives tumble through with demands. This in addition to those that we fended for while in service.
In terms of finances, the main source is the monthly pension. No extras coming from anywhere. Certainly not the children. Whereas we were social security for our parents, our children, most of them can just look after themselves. Hopefully the younger ones still in service will find uses for the experiences that we are sharing and diversify their portfolios. If so, it will be great to hear from them too.
Thanks again for the opportunity
God bless you all
Mama Liz
Jose,
Tete, Mozambique
20 April 2024
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