In spite of the hazardous snowy conditions, 117 brave members turned out for
the February meeting and were rewarded with an excellent slide presentation
entitled “Extraordinary Ex-Pat Experiences” given by the guest speaker, Mrs
Alison Rowlands who, as a qualified French teacher, led the French Group
within SGU3A until a few years ago. As the wife of a geologist working for Shell
Petroleum, Alison and Paul spent over 40 years abroad living as expats in more
than 30 houses in 10 countries on 4 continents! Arriving in French West Africa
in the late 1950s/early ‘60s, they settled in Gabon with their 9-month old
daughter and soon learned to cope with bush elephants, gorillas, various kinds
of snakes, and numerous varieties of unwelcome insects and bugs! Before
long, Alison also found herself teaching French again. In the late ‘60s, they
moved to Lagos in Nigeria where they spent four years and where Alison
became headmistress of a school for 4-12 year olds. One of the more ‘exciting’
episodes of that time occurred during a coup when she took 27 Dutch children
(whose fathers worked in the nearby Heinecken factory) back to her house for
safe-keeping until the Dutch and British Consuls could arrange a guaranteed
and secure return to the children’s own homes.
We were entertained to numerous, and humorous, anecdotes which Alison
experienced as she and Paul moved together around the world. In Madrid she
learned to speak Spanish although not quite enough to get her out of some
highly amusing but very embarrassing situations! They also lived in Venezuela
and later in Lima which, at that time, was under the régime of Maoist
guerrillas. Due to Paul’s senior position in Shell, he was very likely to be
kidnapped so daytime and night-watch bodyguards were an essential part of
their lives. Possibly their favourite posting was to Thailand during the early ‘80s
where they loved the Asian people, their country and their culture. Together
with a constant stream of visitors from home, they visited many of the
beautiful Buddhist temples as well as the Royal Palace. Ever the linguist, Alison
soon learned the Thai language which, being tonal, she compared to Chinese
but thought it was easier as it read from left to right. She and her fellow expats
also spent much of their time helping schools by raising money, usually from
Christmas Bazaars, to purchase, books, mattresses, playground equipment, etc.
In fact, it was Alison’s general outlook on life that led her to gain so much out
of her expat experiences while enjoying to the utmost her daily life with Paul
and the raising of their two children. Her three main aims in life are to throw
herself into everything she does and undertakes to do; always to try to learn
the language of her host country; and to keep her sense of humour. And it was
very obvious to those of us listening to her that she certainly lived up to all
three.