My wife and I were driving back from Belmopan the other day when we passed a Jeep heading off the peninsula at an odd hour. I instantly recognized the vehicle—it belonged to our friends Johny and Cris—and gave the standard wave through the windshield. As they passed, I turned to my wife, Lili, and said, “I wonder where they’re heading at this time of day?”

​It was a quarter past 5 in the evening, which in our neck of the woods is a strange time to be driving off the peninsula—there’s not much out that way (for the average NA foreigner), mostly because almost everything in Belize shuts down early. Once past 830-9 pm, your options drop to near zero unless there’s a holiday or a local event—which there wasn’t on this particular evening.

As the words left my mouth, I realized that I didn’t just recognize the rig; I knew exactly who was in it, and was apparently tracking their schedule like a proper nosey neighbour.

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Anonymity Math

​When we first moved to Belize, we didn’t fully grasp how tiny the country actually is. The entire nation has a population of around 400,000 people. I moved here from Hamilton, Ontario, which has about 550,000 people, and Hamilton isn’t even considered a major metropolis by North American standards. Before Hamilton, we lived in Toronto, a place where millions of people pass each other every day in complete anonymity. You walk down the street, and nobody knows who you are, nor cares where you’re going, and the odds of running into someone you know are low.

​But down here on “The Peni”—as a friend of mine who lives off grid in the jungle likes to call it, lol—once you filter out the seasonal residents and the constant wave of tourists, the core year-round community boils down to maybe a few thousand people.

​”You Live in the Green House Over There”

​It took us a while to understand what living at that scale actually means. About eight months after arriving—we’d only been in our house for two months—we walked down the road to a local resort for a Christmas event called the Mistletoe Ball. It was a buffet setup with communal seating, so we sat down across from a young Belizean couple we’d never met. I leaned in to introduce myself, but before I could get a word out, the guy looked at us and said, “Yeah, we know who you are. You live in the greenhouse over there.”

​Having recently come from a city where you could live next to someone in an apartment building for five years and only exchange an awkward nod in the elevator, that was a shock. We had never spoken to these people, and we didn’t know their names—up until now. But in a community this small, new faces like ours are immediately recognized.

​Now four years in, the script has flipped, and we are that couple seated at the table: A new truck drives down the main road (there is only one), and we turn to each other: “Who’s that? That vehicle is new.” We can sit at a local bar or restaurant and instantly pick out who just arrived in town or who’s the one driving that new truck.

​Local Spectator Sports

​My daily baseline has slowly—imperceptibly even—adapted to small-town life. I’ll walk around the village in my bare feet, drinking a stout in a travel cup, stopping on the street corner to catch up with friends, acquaintances, or random tourists. People know my name, my kids' names, and that my wife is “the artist.” Or, at the very least, they know where I live and that I promote my Substack musings on Belize Facebook groups—for better or worse.

​Part of me likes this; it’s quaint and comforting. A tight-knit community provides a sense of peace and security. But there’s also an inherent friction to it. Small towns everywhere run on gossip, and Belize is no exception. When there isn’t a massive amount of traditional entertainment happening, local drama becomes the default spectator sport. As one might imagine, you occasionally find yourself an unwitting ear to whatever rumor is making the rounds that week. I try my best not to participate, but you end up hearing it regardless.

A Quarter-Acre Refuge

And ​that’s where having a private place to retreat to is essential. Our property here is about a quarter of an acre. That might not sound huge on paper, but compared to what we had in Hamilton—which was a full three-story house with a yard—it’s more than seven times larger. When the small-town noise gets a bit too loud, we can pull back behind our fence and enjoy our own space.

In a small town where “pop-ins” are a thing and a vehicle in the driveway is a dead giveaway that you’re home, withdrawing into your home doesn’t always ensure privacy—a driveway with a gate helps, lol.

​”Who Else Would You Be?”

​In a funny way, this life reconnected me to something from my childhood. My family originates from Nova Scotia, and growing up, my mother, brothers, and I would visit every summer for a month to spend time with our relatives. We’d walk into the tiny local general store in this rural farming community, and the person behind the counter would take one look at us and say, “You must be Annette’s kids.”1

​We’d ask how they knew, and the response was essentially: Well, who else would you be? After all, there was one store, one post office, and a handful of local families. When someone new was in town, everyone knew about it. While I understood the concept back then as a kid, living it daily as an adult is different. As someone who had their identity stolen and who purposely doesn’t publish their surname because of it, I appreciate some anonymity from time to time.

​Like most aspects of international relocation, living like this comes with obvious trade-offs. There are no massive concert halls here. No movie theatres, no big museums, and no touring acts. Missing out on live music has been a big adjustment for me, and there are still days when I miss the sheer variety of food options a big city offers.

​But in exchange, I’ve gained a community where people actually recognize you. I’ve found a place where a wave isn’t a formality, where people know your story, and where you’re part of the fabric of the place rather than just a face in the crowd.

It took moving to a small country in the Caribbean to fully realize it, but the reality is pretty clear: I’m small town AF now, and honestly, I’m quite content with it.

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And, as always, hit me up if you want to chat about the reality of four years on the ground in Belize or just riff on life abroad in general.

Want more practical frameworks for making your move abroad smoother? Check out the Moving Abroad Punchlist for systematic planning without the hype.

For more straight talk, read The Moving Abroad Reality Check.

And, for a no-fluff, data-backed assessment of where to actually move to, check out MoveSmart, my AI-powered relocation tool that matches your real needs to the right country.

If you’re curious about other expat insights beyond mine, watch/listen to the Foreign Radio podcast.

My wife has a saying: “Nature is beautiful, but her elements are harsh,” and as we’ve discovered after 4 years, this is a great metaphor for life in Belize.

The Stark Contrast of Moving to Belize

Moving to Belize puts you face-to-face with a heavy juxtaposition. I don’t know if “hardship” is too extreme a word, but it’s a constant push-and-pull between immense natural beauty and raw struggle. Geographically, the country is stunning—the jungle and mountains, the sea, the reef, and one of the highest concentrations of bird diversity anywhere. Additionally, the country’s cultural demographics are equally diverse. You have approximately 400,000 people split across Maya, Garifuna, Creole, Mestizo, Chinese, Lebanese, East Indian, Central American, and Western expats (and for the most part, everyone genuinely gets along).

But hiding behind that postcard is a baseline reality that will beat you up if you aren’t ready for it.

The Cost of Entry: Health Scares and Hard Friction

Our first three years here were anything but easy. When we first moved, we almost lost our youngest son to a severe bacterial infection. We’ve almost lost a cat to a poisonous plant and a dog to a toxic cane toad. We’ve had to handle a sudden machete wound to a foot on a Sunday morning when there wasn’t a single doctor around in a part of Belize that was unfamiliar. We’ve navigated head stitches; thankfully, right as the new Poly Clinic opened up here in Placencia.

And, honestly, that’s just the tip of the proverbial fucking iceberg. Beyond the medical emergencies, the logistical friction is constant:

• The Immigrant Barrier: While Belizeans are highly accepting, there is still a natural cultural divide and a barrier to entry that you have to respect as a foreigner.

• Supply Chain Lifelines: My wife’s art business relies heavily on shipping internationally. For a nearly six-month stretch, border and customs disruptions completely shut down her infrastructure; fuckin’ Trump! And, while things have improved immensely, the process of getting the fruit of her labour out of this country is never straightforward.

• Infrastructure Strain: I run an online business. While the internet in Belize is solid, the power grid is not. During peak summer months, heat waves strain infrastructure as everyone turns on their air conditioning. The power drops right when I’m mid-call or deep in a production workflow.

But all of this is just a rite of passage.

Anyone who stays here for an extended period of time experiences some version of this.

Whether it’s a contractor running away with your hard-earned money, a loved one dying unexpectedly, your marriage falling apart, or your finances taking a nose dive. Everyone gets tested if they want to live here.

Expanding the Circumference of Ease

My wife and I were talking the other day about the freedom we’ve built here. We haven’t set an alarm in the morning in ages; and that fucking glorious! We wake up, dictate our own schedules, and that provides a level of freedom we just didn't have in Canada. We aren’t beholden to anyone. We own our land, home, and vehicle. We are truly free.

But that ease wasn’t handed to us; it was a hard-fought battle.

You have to fight to carve out a space for yourself in a developing country just to achieve a baseline of comfort. Once you survive the initial friction, you can start pushing the boundaries of your little freedom bubble and expanding the circumference of your “area of ease.” You get to know the locals. You discover where to find a long-lost essential. You gain a connection to a service provider that makes your life easier. Everything gets a bit more manageable as that bubble grows, but the harsh contrast outside of it never goes away.

Unless you are incredibly wealthy and can simply buy your way out of every inconvenience, you have to fight for your peace; yeah, I know, that sounds ironic, but it's true.

The Trade-off of a High-Beauty Life

If you are planning a move to the tropics—whether it’s the jungle, the mountains, or the beach—you need to understand this fundamental dichotomy. Some days, the hardships will make you want to pack up and leave, but then the country pulls you right back in with a moment of absolute, breathtaking beauty or peace. A morning coffee filled with bird song, or watching your kids laughing on the beach while the dogs fetch coconuts, and your wife quitely reads while the sea laps at her toes. The moments when you realize, “this is what I moved for.” They are hard-won moments, but perhaps that’s what makes them all the more special.

But, it’s a deliberate trade-off:

• Do you want the predictable, monotonous, and restrictive life you had back home?

• Or do you want a highly beautiful and freeing lifestyle, but with the knowledge that you must accept the extreme logistical and systemic challenges that come with the territory?

For some it’s a hard decision. For me, after 4 years here, it’s a no-brainer.

Next Step Planning

If you’re looking at making a move and need a realistic, data-backed assessment of where you actually fit, check out MoveSmart, an AI-powered relocation tool I built to cut through the sugar-coated fluff and match your real needs to the right country.

And hit me up if you want to chat about the reality of four years on the ground in Belize.

Want more practical frameworks for making your move abroad smoother? Check out the Moving Abroad Punchlist for systematic planning without the hype. For more straight talk, read The Moving Abroad Reality Check. And if you’re curious about more real-world expat insights, you can catch full conversations like this on the Foreign Radio podcast.

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A Typical Encounter at the Beach

A while back, I took my kids down to the beach to escape the sargassum seaweed while still enjoying the water. While we were there, I met a young family from the Southern United States. They were in Belize visiting some friends—also from the US—who do missionary and philanthropic work down in Punta Gorda, in the southern part of the country.

The family was up our way, taking a short reprieve from their labors. They had a young son around the same age as my kids, and the wife was pregnant with their second child.

The other dad and I naturally took up conversation while our young boys played in the shallow waters.

Eagerness vs. Reality: The Desire to Move

He was incredibly eager to move his family to Belize as quickly as possible. He was captivated by the country’s beauty—the mountains, jungles, and sea—along with the missionary work, the alternative way of life, and the lower cost of living. He told me he was seriously considering making the move either right before the baby was born or shortly thereafter.

Whenever I’m in these situations, I always try to be helpful. I never want to unnecessarily scare anyone, but after hearing his timeline, I looked at him and said,

“Don’t do it. It is not worth it.”

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The Biological Reality of Relocating to the Tropics

I explained the harsh reality of moving to a tropical, developing environment like Belize. When you relocate to a completely new climate, the local bacteria are entirely different. A healthy, fully grown adult body requires a significant amount of time—I’m talking months—to naturally adjust and adapt to a new environment.

This environment becomes incredibly dangerous when you introduce a pregnant woman or a newborn baby who lacks natural immunity:

~ The Mother: A new breastfeeding mother arriving in a new country hasn’t had time to develop localized immunity to the regional bacteria. Not to mention the fact that postpartum recovery and breastfeeding subject the body to extreme caloric drain, hormonal chaos, and sleep deprivation, which puts new mothers’ immune system in a state of severe instability and vulnerability.

~ The Newborn: A newborn baby does not possess a fully developed immune system of its own. In those early stages, a child relies almost entirely on the localized immunities imparted by the mother through breast milk. If the mother hasn’t built those defenses yet, the baby is left completely vulnerable.

A Hard Lesson Learned with My Son Dash

Unfortunately, I know this all too well. We learned this harsh lesson within the first month of moving to Belize, when our youngest son, Dash—who was only 11 weeks old at the time—contracted a severe bacterial infection and nearly died.

He spent 10 agonizing days in a rudimentary Belizean hospital. Making matters worse, I was completely out of the country when it happened: I was back in Canada, closing on our house, loading our shipping container, and prepping our bus for the move. By the time Dash was at his absolute sickest—shitting and puking blood (sorry for the bluntness, but it was f’in’ serious)—I was completely stuck trying to navigate transiting the US border into Mexico.

While I was worried sick, my wife was head deep in a terrifying experience. Having a critically ill infant is terrifying even in a developed country with advanced, modern healthcare facilities. We were dealing with it in Belize, relying on incredibly basic local medical care.

The Reality of Remote Healthcare and Insurance Pitfalls

While medical options in Belize have certainly improved over the last four years—including a new polyclinic in our community equipped with some modern diagnostic and life-supporting tools—the care back then was minimal.

~ Basic Facilities: Dash was hooked up to an IV line, but that was it, and that almost became a source of a secondary infection if it weren't for my wife. There were no heart rate monitors, no blood pressure cuffs, and no active electronic monitoring whatsoever. There wasn’t even a sharps bin for used syringes, which stayed out on tables for uncomfortably long periods of time. My wife had to stay in a simple room, acting as his primary caregiver and medical advocate.

~ Outdated Medications: The local doctors were treating him with aggressive medications that had long been delisted and banned in North America due to carcinogenic risks. However, we were in an emergency situation and had no choice but to act quickly.

~ The Insurance Nightmare: To complicate the crisis, our travel health insurance plan had lapsed. Because my solo driving trip through Canada, the US, and Mexico left me jumping through unexpected hoop after hoop, my trip took much longer than planned. And, in the chaos of navigating the Mexican border as a gringo transmigrante, I completely overlooked the renewal date. We had to pay for his entire hospitalization completely out of pocket. For a Canadian used to universal healthcare, it was a massive financial hit (though Americans might view the total bill as relatively minor), totaling $10K.

My Advice for Building a Life Abroad

Had the above occurred around the 1-to-2-year mark in Belize, I’m quite certain it would have broken us to the point of leaving. But since it happened so early in our move, our desire to stay remained strong.

So, if you are seriously considering moving your family abroad, especially to a tropical developing country, and you have a newborn, please just wait until your baby is at least one year old. Give your child time to grow healthy and establish their own robust immune system, so they will have the natural ability to build defenses against a new, foreign environment.

A lot of people focus on the lifestyle, the weather, and the financials of moving abroad, but they completely overlook this baseline biological shift. Telling my story to that father completely changed his perspective. And I’m quite certain it resolved a point of contention between him and his wife, and he immediately decided to pump the brakes on their timeline.

I hope to see him with his baby (or maybe even a toddler by then) on the beach again in early 2027, but hopefully not any sooner.

P.S. Dash pulled through, fully recovered, and resumed a healthy and happy life here in Belize.

Want more practical frameworks for making your move abroad smoother? Check out MoveSmart to help identify where your communication style might work best, or grab the Moving Abroad Punchlist for systematic planning without the hype. And if you’re curious about more real-world expat insights, you can catch full conversations like this on the Foreign Radio podcast.

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My family and I are finally doing our permanent residency application in Belize. As you might imagine, there’s a lot of information required. So, a while back, on one of our trips to the immigration office to extend our tourist visas, I asked the immigration officer if they had any information about the residency process.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I got a vague and unhelpful answer about finding the information online.

We started heading back to the car when my wife, Lili, turned to me and said, “Why don’t you go back and ask them if they have any paperwork here?”

So I did; and voilà! The officer retreated to the back of the office and returned with a thick stack of papers, which she handed to me: two copies of all the necessary documents to begin the Belizean residency process.

So what happened there? Why, when I asked the first time, didn’t the officer offer up the paperwork they clearly had in the back?

Welcome to the nuanced (and often unknown) world of high- and low-context cultures.

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The Framework No One Explains to Expats

The high-context vs. low-context distinction comes from anthropologist Edward T. Hall. They are simple but game-changing concepts:

Low-context cultures (think Canada, US, Germany, Scandinavia) are explicit. Information gets volunteered. If there’s a form you need, someone will mention it. If there’s a step you’re missing, they’ll let you know. Communication is direct and detailed.

High-context cultures (much of Asia, Latin America, parts of Africa, and the Middle East) assume shared understanding. Information isn’t offered unless specifically requested. Context, relationship, and reading between the lines matter more than explicit instruction.

I live in Belize, so you’re probably thinking, “Simo, as a former British colony, Belize is a low-context like England?” And you would be, well, only partially right. The interesting thing about my host country is that, despite its British colonial history, it operates more like a high-context culture in daily interactions due to its Caribbean and Latin roots. And this constantly throws foreigners for a loop.

Why This Drives Everyone Crazy

I’ve been amazed at how many conversations I’ve had with other foreigners about “lazy or rude” locals, and the reasoning is always the same. It’s not that the locals are actually that way, but that the expats I’m speaking with have no idea what kind of culture they’re in.

People from low-context cultures think those from high-context cultures are rude, unhelpful, or withholding information. Meanwhile, people from high-context cultures think those from low-context cultures are pushy, demanding, and—ironically—also rude.

The expat walks away thinking, “Why didn’t they just tell me about the forms?” The local thinks, “Why didn’t they just ask for the forms we have in the back?”

Both are right. Both are dumbfounded. And neither understands why.

The “Finished House” That Wasn’t

This lack of understanding became painfully obvious early in our Belize experience. When we were building our home here, I was shocked when the prefab home builder showed me an example of a “finished home” that didn’t contain a bathroom or kitchen.

In Canada, we would never classify such a dwelling as “finished.” But it took my physical presence in Belize—walking through other homes under construction—to gather this information for myself. It never came up in the dozens of emails, initial quotes, and WhatsApp messages with several builders.

I realize now that I never asked, “Does the house you quoted me come with a bathroom?” Mainly because I felt like an absurd question, and back in Canada, it would’ve been. But in Belize—a high-context culture where many locals still cook outside and use an outhouse—it’s not information that’s readily offered unless you explicitly ask. It’s assumed that you know that a finished house doesn’t come with such amenities.

The builder wasn’t trying to trick me or wasn’t unprofessional by forgetting to provide that information. I didn’t understand their culture and communication style, and therefore, didn’t ask the right questions.

How to Actually Communicate in a High-Context Culture

Understanding this framework has changed how I conduct myself in Belize and around the world. The issue is no longer “this person’s rude” but “I’m asking the wrong questions.”

I now ask explicit questions, even when I think they’re obvious.

Instead of: “Do you have information about residency?” I now know to say something like: “Do you have residency application forms here that I can take with me today?”

Instead of: “What does the finished house include?” I should have inquired: “Does your quote include a bathroom, kitchen, electrical, and plumbing?”

And, as a foreigner in a new place, looking for a bank, for example, don’t ask: “How do I get to the bank?” Instead, try: “What’s the exact street address of the closest bank branch, and is it open today?”

This feels over-the-top if you’re from a low-context culture. But it works; you’ll get the information you need, not vague instructions that leave you more confused, frustrated, or angry.

The key shift for me came when I stopped expecting locals to volunteer information and started explicitly asking for exactly what I needed. And this realization resolved a perplexing conundrum I, and many foreigners in Belize, routinely face: the false belief that living in a country with English as the first language automatically eliminates language barriers. It does, and it doesn’t. While I can openly communicate with native Belizeans in my day-to-day, there is often a fundamental disconnect at the core of most conversations. The high vs low context framework bridges the gap, connecting me to the citizens of my host country in new and meaningful ways.

I now understand that language barriers are more nuanced than just the language someone speaks and include a subtle contextual framework as well.

This Works Back Home Too

This framework doesn’t just help you abroad; it can also completely change how you interact with foreign communities in your home country.

That shop owner who seems “unhelpful”? The service provider who gives you minimal information? They might be operating from a high-context communication style while you’re expecting low-context directness. Once you know what’s happening, you can bridge the gap by asking explicit questions about what you need, and you can stop taking shit so personally.

Most of the time, it’s not rudeness or laziness, nor is it cultural superiority or inferiority. It’s just a communication mismatch that you can easily fix with your own context.

Making Life Abroad Actually Work

Knowing the communication type of the country you’re moving to will change everything about how you operate there. You’ll stop fighting the culture and start working with it.

The result? Your interactions with locals become less frustrating and more productive. You get the information you actually need, and you stop wasting emotional energy on perceived slights that were.

I learned this gem from Gregory Garretson on my podcast, Foreign Radio, and I share it with other foreigners in Belize at every opportunity. It recently resurfaced after speaking with Doreen Cumberford on the Nomadic Diaries podcast, reminding me of how crucial this framework is for anyone living abroad.

The next time someone seems unhelpful or rude, ask yourself: Am I in a high-context culture trying to use low-context communication?

Then ask a more specific question.

You might be surprised by how quickly that “rude” person becomes incredibly helpful.

Want more practical frameworks for making your move abroad smoother? Check out MoveSmart to help identify where your communication style might work best, or grab the Moving Abroad Punchlist for systematic planning without the hype. And if you’re curious about more real-world expat insights, you can catch full conversations like this on the Foreign Radio podcast.

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While everyone's debating whether AI will take our jobs, there's another issue brewing that most people aren't thinking about, especially those of us living abroad or considering an international move.

Technology makes work location-independent, while UBI makes humans location-dependent.

The same governments that are preparing a Universal Basic Income to “save us” from AI job displacement are inadvertently designing the death of middle-class global mobility. The economic safety net meant to give you freedom will actually shackle you with a digital ball-and-chain.

Sure, AI-driven UBI will solve the domestic jobless crisis, but it’ll also kill your dreams of living abroad. And if you’re planning an exit strategy based on remote work freedom, you need to understand how quickly that window is closing.

The Irony Nobody Saw Coming

We’ve all seen the trend: technology, specifically connectivity and data-related services and platforms, makes location irrelevant for work; tech bros in Lisbon, writers in Mexico, consultants in Bali. The assumption is that this remote work revolution is permanent and expanding.

But it’s not.

There’s a critical difference between earning money through contribution (remote work) and receiving money through consumption (UBI).

When governments implement UBI to bail out the AI-displaced workforce, they’re not going to pay you to work from anywhere. They’ll pay you to spend money locally to prop up their domestic economy. Your UBI most certainly won’t be intended to stimulate the economy of Belize or Portugal or Indonesia; it’ll be designed to keep your local coffee shop and grocery store afloat.

This essentially creates a ‘consumption contract,’ in which your government dividend comes with invisible strings attached.

The 180-Day Leash

Do you think I’m being dramatic? That’s fine—let’s look at how existing programs already work.

Current UBI pilots aren’t theoretical; they’re live experiments with surprisingly strict residency enforcement:

Brazil’s Maricá program requires residents to show they have lived in Maricá for at least 3 years, and 5 years for foreigners. But the clever part? Benefits are paid in Mumbuca, a local digital currency. The digital currency can only be used within town limits, directing residents to local merchants. If you leave town, your money is functionally useless until you return. To qualify, you must be listed in the national government’s unified registry for social programmes (Cadastro Único). Move your official residence to another city in the federal system, and Maricá is automatically notified.

Germany’s Pilotprojekt Grundeinkommen requires that anyone who is a permanent resident of Germany and is at least 18 years of age may apply to participate in the study. Participation is limited to people with a registered home address within Germany. The study has one key compliance condition: participants completed a total of eight questionnaires before, during, and after the payment period. Skip a questionnaire, and you’re flagged as non-compliant. For non-citizens on residence permits, standard German immigration rules apply; extended absences can jeopardize your legal status and, with it, your eligibility.

Kenya’s GiveDirectly program uses a belt-and-suspenders approach. GiveDirectly addresses corruption through a comprehensive audit process, using multiple independent checks to ensure that recipients are eligible. These checks include in-person visits by different staff members, in-person audits by senior management, remote audits of image and satellite image data, and phone calls with each recipient. GiveDirectly uses GPS coordinates and satellite imagery to verify household information. The program is also village-based, so you can’t “export” your benefits. The study is designed to measure the impact on the local economy, not fund your beach life in Mombasa.

The logic across all three is identical: If you’re not here to spend it, you don’t get it.

But here’s where it gets insidious. Unlike these programs—which still rely on home visits, surveys, and periodic audits—the coming wave of UBI will most likely be distributed through Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), with built-in GPS tracking.

And if you think governments aren’t already thinking about how to use AI for this kind of surveillance, you just need to pay attention to the current news cycle. An unprecedented conflict is unfolding between Anthropic—the frontier AI company that makes Claude—and the U.S. Department of Defense. The heart of the rupture is the DOD’s demand that it be allowed to use frontier AI tools without restrictions for “all lawful uses” and Anthropic’s desire to maintain a few restrictions on their use, specifically to ensure that Claude is not used for mass domestic surveillance.

On domestic mass surveillance, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said AI has enabled forms of analysis that were previously infeasible. This is the fight happening right now. The U.S. government is at war with its own AI companies over terms of service that would prevent mass surveillance of citizens.

And this is before UBI enters the equation.

So, your morning coffee purchase in Lisbon, Portugal, will ping back to Ottawa or Washington in real-time. Spend your government dividend abroad beyond the allowed window?

The tap turns off automatically.

This is ‘the 180-day leash’ (which, in reality, could be more like 90 days or less):

You’re free to roam, but only within the radius your government permits.

Know Your Numbers

This section includes a paid partnership with Flamingo Compliance.

The 180-day leash isn’t coming; it’s already here. Schengen’s 90/180 rule, physical presence tests, permanent residency minimum-stay requirements: this is the compliance confusion global citizens trip over today, usually without realizing it until they’re explaining themselves to an immigration officer.

Flamingo Compliance removes the guesswork. Developed with international tax and immigration advisors, it automatically tracks your movements between countries (and US states), monitors tax residency thresholds, calculates your Schengen days, and alerts you before you hit a limit. Your data stays on your device, protected by bank-level encryption to ensure complete privacy.

Whether you’re establishing residency, avoiding unintended tax obligations, or just trying to keep your travel history organized for the inevitable audit, Flamingo is how you document your side of the story.

Flamingo Compliance — flamingo.tax

The Residency Paradox

Living in Belize for almost four years now, I’ve seen firsthand how the bureaucratic reality will make this even messier.

Your home country will most likely be operating with high-tech surveillance: blockchain-based payments, GPS verification, AI-powered spending analysis, and monitoring. Meanwhile, your host country is still using 1980s metal filing cabinets and manual paperwork processing.

Navigating the Belizean bureaucracy is hard enough, let alone trying to explain to an immigration officer that your income comes from a “blockchain-based digital dividend that requires GPS verification of your spending patterns.”

Good luck with that conversation.

This tech gap creates ‘bureaucratic pink tape’ where you’re stuck in the friction between a high-tech monitored home state and a low-tech paper-based host state. Without independent wealth to bridge that gap, you’re functionally trapped.

From Global Citizens to Nationalized Consumers

All this creates a new class divide that history hasn’t seen yet:

1. The UBI Class: Safe, fed, housed, but geofenced. They’re functionally tethered to their tax jurisdiction like livestock with high-tech ankle bracelets. They can travel, but their economic survival depends on staying within their government’s designated spending zone.

And,

2. The AI Owner Class: Those who own private assets, intellectual property, and equity in AI-driven businesses. They have true “exit velocity” because their wealth isn’t contingent on a domestic GPS ping.

The middle-class dream of “work remote, live cheap” dies in this transition. You either become a nationalized consumer on a comfortable digital leash, or you build enough private wealth to maintain genuine global mobility.

The Only Exit is to Own the Means of Production

Back in October, I had the privilege of speaking with Brian Clark on Foreign Radio about building what he calls “sovereign lifestyle”: income streams that don’t depend on any single government’s goodwill.

The solution isn’t to fight UBI (it’s probably inevitable), but to move from “public AI wealth” to “private AI wealth” before the window closes.

This means:

• Building businesses that generate revenue from multiple jurisdictions

• Creating intellectual property that produces ongoing royalties

• Investing in assets that appreciate regardless of your physical location

• Developing skills that command premium prices in cash-based economies

The goal is symmetry of choice: your income mobility matches your physical mobility.

What to Do Before the Window Closes

Based on my experience building a life in Belize while this transition accelerates, here’s what I’d focus on:

1. Stop waiting for certainty: The “comfortable UBI option” will always feel safer than the risk of building private wealth. But comfort is the enemy of genuine freedom.

2. Build multiple income streams now: Remote work won’t disappear overnight, but the regulatory environment will gradually make it less viable for true nomadism.

3. Test international banking and payment systems: Understanding how money moves between countries—especially cash-based economies—will become crucial knowledge.

4. Develop relationships in your target location: The bureaucratic maze of living abroad becomes manageable when you have local allies who understand both the local and the host country’s systems.

5. Plan for the ‘symmetry gap’: The period where your old income model (remote work) is declining but your new model (private assets) isn’t mature yet. This is where most people get trapped and retreat home.

Now, please don’t confuse this with being anti-technology or anti-progress. I’m not arguing against UBI as domestic policy. I’m just saying that if global mobility matters to you, you need to understand the trade-offs being made on your behalf.

The next decade will determine whether the “global citizen” remains a middle-class possibility or becomes an exclusively upper-class luxury.

The choice is still yours to make, but not for much longer.

​See you on the coast,

Simo

Still planning your move abroad? Check out my Moving Abroad Punchlist for the systematic approach to international relocation, and the Country Finder Prompt to help you identify where your preferred lifestyle might actually be viable.

—

For deeper thoughts on building location-independent wealth, listen to my conversation with Brian Clark on Foreign Radio about creating genuinely sovereign income streams.

—

If you’re interested in the 'why' of living abroad, stay here. But if you want to dive into the 'how'—specifically the AI tools and strategies required to build the kind of location independence that doesn't rely on a government GPS ping—come join me over at BottBott. It’s where I explore the intersection of AI and modern work for those of us who refuse to be tethered.

—

If you enjoy this, you might also like Foreign Radio Podcast, A Foreign Perspective, Foreigner501, Foreign Tales, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-winning book Home in Good Hands. If you’d like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or buying me a coffee. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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As the situation in the US continues to degrade and more people are Googling “how to move to Portugal” or “easiest countries for expats,” I feel a responsibility to tell you something frank and uncomfortable:

Moving abroad won’t fix your problems.

All it does is exchange them.

And if you don’t understand that going in, you’re setting yourself up for a brutal wake-up call.

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So You Want to Move Abroad? Here's What Actually Happens

I’m not saying this to discourage you; there are huge benefits to moving abroad. I moved my family to Belize in 2022; sold our house, exited our vehicle leases, packed up a 7-week-old baby, a 17-month-old toddler, and two dogs, and left Canada behind.

We built a house from the ground up, started new careers, and got our asses handed to us in ways I never saw coming, which is why I want to share how crucial it is to know what may lie ahead when you make a similar move.

What You’re Really Trading

A desire for physical change—better weather, lower cost of living, a slower pace—can be a key factor in leaving your home country. But that novelty fades fast. You quickly adjust to your new environment—even if that means becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable—the exotic becomes ordinary, and voilà, you begin to assume a new set of challenges.

The question isn’t: “Will difficulties appear?” (they will), but “Which struggles do I want?”

Do you want the problem of navigating a foreign bureaucracy, or the challenge of sitting in rush hour traffic for 3-4 hours a day? (I did. It sucked. I don’t miss it.)

Do you want the problem of being far from aging parents? 1Or the difficulty of living somewhere that no longer aligns with your values?

Do you want the challenge of rebuilding your social circle from scratch? Or the problem of staying stuck in a life that feels like it’s on autopilot?

While these trade-offs can suck to make, there is a hidden power in them:

You’re no longer beholden to the circumstantial problems that intrinsically arise in your given environment.

When you understand you’re choosing your struggles—not eliminating them—you become the architect of your own life. You’re no longer restricted by the environment you were born into. You can say, “I prefer navigating [country X’s] bureaucracy over my home country’s housing crisis.” That’s power. And also privilege; millions of people don’t have that choice. And it’s exactly why you need to go in ready.

But there are a couple of caveats:

1. That power is only beneficial when you’re honest about what you’re signing up for.

2. There’s a blind spot when “choosing your struggles”: you can’t fully understand what the new challenges will be until you start living in your host country.

If I’m being honest, I didn’t really know what I was signing up for when I moved to Belize. Research only uncovers so much.

The Invisible Trade-Offs

My wife and I are action people, and while we had a plan (you need one in order to make such a move), we got swept up in said plan and didn’t really consider things like:

• The village we’d need to raise our kids

• The importance of friends and interpersonal relationships

• The toll that the stress of an international move—with all its moving parts—can take on a marriage

• The extended timeline for starting new careers

These are real difficulties. Challenges we didn’t have back home but traded for anyway. Now, my wife and I are resilient AF, and made it work, but barely at times. By moving to Belize, we traded the familiar and seemingly secure life in Canada for utter uncertainty.

A Partial Inventory of Shit That Went Wrong

So, keep this in mind: If someone’s selling the dream without the nightmare, they’re just selling. But if you want longevity in a foreign country, you have to get cozy with the mess.

So what does “getting cozy with the mess” actually look like? Here’s a list of some things my family and I faced in our first two-and-a-half years in Belize:

Health Scares

• A bacterial infection that nearly took our youngest son within weeks of arriving

• A poisonous cane toad that nearly killed one of our dogs

• A toxic tropical plant that nearly offed one of our cats

• A son who split his head open—down to the skull—on a Sunday and needed stitches in a country where hospitals are closed on Sunday (it happened on a Sunday).

• Our other son, who needed some too, after he dropped a rusty machete on his foot

None of this happened because we’re reckless parents, but because daily life looks different, risks surface differently, and you learn fast how much vigilance a new environment demands.

Navigating The “Angry Expat” Gauntlet.

This consists of a social landscape filled with people who:

• Moved for the wrong reasons

• Moved because they thought it would change them

• Imported their personal baggage and unresolved issues along with their shipping container

Logistical Chaos

• Multiple flat tires

• Blown engine lines

• Constant vehicle trouble- the Caribbean has a way with automobiles and all their metal and electrical components

Bureaucratic BS:

• Immigration woes

• Transportation department challenges

• Dealing with a stolen identity back in Canada, and trying to sort out the security of my personal information with the government, law enforcement departments, and a banking system that failed to protect my privacy (but wouldn’t take responsibility)

Honestly, there were a couple of years when it felt like the universe was testing our resolve to be in Belize. And, this isn’t just us. Many people we know, at least here in Belize, have dealt with things they never bargained for:

• A spouse dying unexpectedly

• A beloved dog snatched from the shoreline by a crocodile

• A marriage evaporating into salt air while a dream-house-on-the-beach rots half completed in the Caribbean sun

• A family member suddenly passing away back home

• An expat community shunning you so badly that you had to move away

• The ubiquitous yet subtle sense that you can’t find your groove

Most of the time, just a single item from the list is enough to make someone leave as quickly as they arrived. The “shitty phase” is real, and many people give up the moment they experience it.

Based on conversations with dozens of expats and my own observations, I’d estimate only 20-25% of people who move to Belize (or abroad in general) actually make it work long-term. Most people experience a sense of “this is difficult” and mistake it for “I made the wrong decision” when their dream life doesn’t unfold as expected.

And I totally get that.

We were very close to leaving, too. For two years, we weren’t sure we’d stay. We rented our house out. We looked at other countries. We came close to calling it.

But we also recognized that we made a commitment to move and felt it necessary to give it a real shot, and not just tuck tail and run because we’d been dragged through some shit. We stayed because we wanted to ensure that we could do more than just survive here in Belize; we wanted to know if we could thrive. And that required staying, facing our challenges, and finding sustainable solutions.

Now, almost four years in, we’re starting to feel like we’re getting there.

The Relocation Reality Check

Assumption 1:
Moving abroad is a “fresh start.”

The Reality:
Sure… but also no. You bring your internal baggage—emotional, political, and social—across the border. Unresolved issues don’t disappear at customs; they just get a new backdrop.

Assumption 2:
You’ll save money instantly

The Reality:
Maybe, but you trade savings for less convenience. Between “gringo taxes,” home builds, unexpected medical bills, and the burned runway of starting a new career, financial hardship can arrive faster than you think.

Assumption 3:
It’s a permanent vacation

The Reality:
This is a dangerous mindset. Home is a commitment, not a resort. Without the structure of work or a familiar community, “vacay all day” can quietly spiral into unhealthy habits like excessive drinking and sedentary behaviour.

Assumption 4:
Leaving is the hard part

The Reality:
Selling your stuff is just logistics. The real test is the second year—when the novelty wears off, and you have to decide, every single day, whether you’re staying after the “magic” is gone.

Reframing the Mess

Part of our resolve to stay came from realizing that hardships are part of life. Shit happens, no matter where in the world you are. Yet, so many people think the moment they “head for greener pastures,” they are somehow immune to it all; that retirement, or whatever life event prompts the move, somehow graduates you out of having to deal with friction points.

And that’s when the collision between the story in your head and the life you’re actually living occurs.

The reality is that hardship is just part of moving abroad; it opens doors to new and unforeseen struggles. So, don’t be surprised when expectations lie smashed on the floor in a puddle of blood and vomit. The sooner you recognize this, the sooner you’ll overcome whatever comes your way.

Why The “Shit Phase” is Worth It

After all I’ve been through, I have zero regrets and no plans to return to Canada.

If you’re scared that moving abroad will blow up your life, it very well might. But that doesn’t mean you can’t put everything back together, better than it was. Even after everything I faced, I discovered:

• Meaningful friendships with kind-hearted people who offered us help when we needed it most

• A slower pace of life: no consumerism treadmill, no rush hour, no 9-to-5 grind

• The beauty of living beside the sea, in the jungle, and in the mountains

• New passions: writing, podcasting, and connecting with people around the world

• Resilience that I didn’t even know my wife and I had

• A deeper understanding of each other and our marriage

• A new outlook on life; one built on intention, not inertia

And none of that would have been possible if we’d stayed comfortable and kept our struggles from home.

If I Could Video Chat My 2022 Self Before the Move, Here’s What I’d Say to Him

• I’d be more systematic in my learning about the messiness of life in the host country, without falling prey to serial doom posters and naysayers.

• I’d look for people who “shoot straight” in their Facebook group posts and online forum comments; if they aren’t sharing their failures, they aren’t giving you the full story.

• I’d expect the “life explosion” and plan for it. By expecting things to break—your car, your bank account, your patience, your relationship—you can devise a course of action to take, before it happens, for when it happens.

• I’d expect the constant tests, so I wouldn’t feel so damn bad about myself when it arrives, and I inevitably fail them.

• I would fully understand that, by moving, I’m inadvertently taking on new challenges. Being aware of this allows you to approach the difficulties in a more meaningful way.

• I would fully step into the power of choosing and the privilege that comes with it, taking full responsibility for the choices I’ll make in the future.

What You Should Do If You’re Starting Out

• Stop waiting for certainty. As I’ve described above, it’s pretty clear that nothing is certain. The “right time” never comes, not before you leave, and not after.

• Run some realistic numbers and build in a massive contingency.

• If you can swing it, test a location before you make the move.

• Most definitely build a remote income stream before you leave.

• Familiarize yourself with the inevitable friction points you’ll face, because you will be tested, early and often.

• Prepare yourself for difficulties now and devise a plan for how to approach them, so your mind doesn’t immediately jump to “I’ve failed and need to go home” when something hard happens.

Because it will happen. And when it does, you’ll need to decide:

Is this the struggle I chose?

Is this the life I’m building?

But just remember: You got this.

Still Want to Start Planning?

If I haven’t scared the bejesus out of you and you’re still eager to move, I have a few resources that can help you navigate the logistics without the hype:

The Moving Abroad Punchlist: A systematic way to plan your move without losing your mind.

The Country Finder Prompt: Use AI to help narrow down where your “preferred struggles” might live.

If you enjoy this, you might also like Foreign Radio Podcast, A Foreign Perspective, Foreigner501, Foreign Tales, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-winning book Home in Good Hands. If you’d like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or buying me a coffee. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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“Wherever you go, there you are.” But what if where you go gives you the chance to become someone different?

What if moving abroad doesn’t solve your problems, but simply trades them for different ones? And what if that’s the whole point?

Many people dream of moving abroad to escape something: the 9-to-5 grind, dissatisfaction, political disillusionment. And it’s true—pulling up your roots and planting yourself somewhere new can offer a reset. A chance to design life differently.

But here’s what few people say out loud: moving abroad won’t erase your problems. It just swaps them for new ones.

And that isn’t a failure of the expat experience. It’s the very reason to do it

Escape or Evolution?

There’s a subtle but important distinction between moving to get away from something and moving to become something.

People who relocate in hopes of erasing discomfort often find themselves frustrated when it returns, which it inevitably does. Communication barriers. Foreign bureaucracy. Cultural differences. Social disorientation. But these aren’t defects in your new home—they’re features. And they’re often exactly what makes the experience so powerful.

By contrast, those who move abroad with an explorer’s mindset—seeking growth, novelty, challenge—tend to integrate more deeply. They allow themselves to be reshaped by the experience.

Picking Your Problems

There’s no such thing as a problem-free life. But there is such a thing as choosing your problems with intention.

In your home country, your problems might include relentless work hours, unaffordable housing, or the numbing pull of a cultural script that tells you who you're supposed to be. Abroad, those challenges shift toward unfamiliar systems, limited infrastructure, or re-learning how to connect and communicate.

That’s certainly been true for me. Back in Canada, I wrestled with rising housing costs and time-sucking commutes. Now, in Belize, the trade-offs look different: less access to goods and services, and the challenge of building new careers from scratch.

While neither set of problems is inherently better or worse, personal preference plays a big role. I’d much rather face the challenges of growing a remote freelance writing business than endure the soul-crushing routine of daily traffic. I’ll take the need for intentional online shopping over the trap of on-demand consumerism any day. Problems are still problems—but some fit better with the kind of life you actually want to live.

That’s the essence of the great problem swap: You don’t eliminate difficulty by moving abroad, but you do gain agency over the type of difficulty you face. Having made the decision to leave, I now choose where to be based on the challenges I’m willing to take on. When I was in Canada, I had to deal with what was presented to me. Here, if I ever decide I no longer like “Belizean problems,” I can pack up and go.

When you move abroad, you opt for a new kind of friction, one that challenges your assumptions, forces you to ask different questions, and might, ultimately, serve you better.

From Problems to Opportunities

Maybe “problems” is the wrong word altogether. Maybe what we’re really talking about are invitations—to grow, to adapt, to expand your worldview.

Living in a foreign country is an invitation to become more flexible, more aware, more open. And yes, it’s uncomfortable. But that’s the price of admission.

And being uncomfortable? That’s kind of the point.

Expat life brings a productive naïveté, a humbling awareness that you don’t know what you don’t know. And that’s fertile ground for transformation. Through the process of adapting, you learn what really matters. You discover how much of your personality, values, and preferences were shaped by cultural conditioning. You begin to see your home country more clearly—not necessarily with scorn (although you might, especially if you’re American), but with a new perspective.

Living abroad forced me to shed the assumption that the Canadian way of life was the default. It showed me that there are other, equally valuable—but very different—ways to live.

That’s often where the real learning begins.

You start to see where your old beliefs were shaped less by logic and more by unconscious influence. You encounter opinions, values, and ways of being that challenge your sense of certainty.

The “Best of Both Worlds” Illusion

Many foreigners get stuck chasing the fantasy of having the best of both worlds. They try to build a hybrid life. They want the cultural depth, nature, or freedom of their new country—but also the convenience, efficiency, or structure of the old one.

But that’s not how it works.

No country offers it all. Every place comes with trade-offs. And until you’re willing to embrace those trade-offs, you’ll remain suspended between worlds—never quite home anywhere.

As foreigners, especially in the early stages of immigration, we’re not just visitors. But we’re not locals either. We’re guests. That means learning and listening more than pushing or demanding. It means meeting a place where it is, not where we think it should be.

To belong somewhere new, you have to participate. You have to adapt. You have to let go of old expectations. Your new country isn’t a copy-paste version of your last—and it shouldn't be.

The Real Terrain Is Internal

The biggest shift that happens when you move abroad isn’t external. It’s internal.

Your routines are broken. Your assumptions are challenged. Your identity gets unmoored—sometimes painfully, sometimes beautifully.

But the discomfort you feel isn’t necessarily a problem. The real challenge is whether you’re willing to meet that discomfort with curiosity instead of control. Whether you can sit with ambiguity instead of rushing to fix it. Whether you can grow into someone who adapts, rather than escapes.

Living abroad invites you to redefine what you think you need, what you consider normal, and who you are beyond the cultural script you grew up with.

The real “problem swap” isn’t about changing countries. It’s about changing you—trading rigidity for resilience, comfort for growth, and certainty for curiosity.

If you let it, the process reveals not just a new country, but a new version of yourself.

And slowly, you become the kind of person who doesn’t run from problems, but who chooses them with purpose.

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like the Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-winning book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays like this one, consider subscribing, sharing, or buying me a coffee. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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"No shoes, no shirt, no service!"

It’s not a thing in Belize.

I almost always walk around barefoot, often shirtless, just wearing essentially a bathing suit.

No one gives me a second glance.

No one cares.

Why should they?

TikTok and the Real Land of the Free

So, I posted about it on TikTok, and it blew up: nearly 10,000 views in two days, with dozens of comments and hundreds of likes. Belizeans flocked to it. They showered me with positive affirmation:

“Welcome home, bro.”

“No shoes, no shirt, no problem.”

“You’re home, bro, do your thing😂🤙🏾”

But the comments also leaned heavily towards my unassuming dialogue on freedom:

“Welcome to true freedom 🙏”

“😁happy you're enjoying my beautiful and blessed country ❤️🙏 land of the free our jewel.....”

“Ur welcome, ma bwoy, it’s called Land of the free by the Caribbean Sea for a reason 🇧🇿🤜🏿🤛🏿”

“It’s the real land of the free, u better Belize it 💯”

A New Definition of Freedom

It didn’t take long after moving here to realize that Belizeans love their freedom. I quickly recognized it as a subtle cultural meme that hung in the air, ubiquitous as the smell of roadside BBQ chicken. Now, after three years here, I’ve come to understand that the Belizean people take their freedom very seriously, and the flood of comments on the post solidified this point for me.

One comment in particular stood out; it captured, with clarity and heart, how many locals view true freedom in today’s world:

“@Richard Young: The word freedom carries a different meaning to different people...its not always about money...the little things we do here that we often take for granted, we can't do in most other countries, you would be arrested/fined/ticketed...so people like him [me, SimoD] who comes from a strict first world country, come here and experience what they see as true freedom, they take full advantage, caz they can't do that in their own home country without repercussions. They see the freedoms we enjoy and want to experience that too. For us, things like this are the norm, we don't think anything of it until one day, it gets taken away by laws being passed which are influenced by first world countries and their expats.”

And he’s right. When I compare the casual freedoms here to what's happening in places like the U.S., where states are actively rolling back rights, surveilling citizens, and legislating control over everyday decisions, it becomes even clearer why so many people are looking for a different life abroad. You can go to Belize, or somewhere similar, and breathe a sigh of relief. No one’s watching you, waiting to ticket you for walking barefoot, or ready to deny you entry because you aren’t wearing a shirt. In parts of the so-called “free world,” it often feels like you can barely sneeze without some Karen throwing a hissy fit.

But now, I can walk around as I please without fuss. Like the Belizean nationals, I’ve come to see this as an indicator of freedom; a flavor of which you can only taste in a small, beachside community outside the developed world.

Barefoot Politics

Being barefoot and shirtless whenever I want is incredibly freeing and something I’ve unexpectedly grown to appreciate while living here. Words can’t express how liberating it truly is to be able to walk around just as you are.

I used to think “no shoes, no shirt, no service” was about hygiene. But it isn’t; it’s about control. The phrase emerged in the ‘60s and ‘70s as a way for proto-Karens to keep hippies, surfers, and other counterculture types out of their establishments. It was a passive-aggressive power move; properness weaponized to establish privilege. It wasn’t about protecting customers’ health; it was about preserving a particular “social pecking order.”

While the haircut has changed, the instinct remains the same. The modern Karen doesn’t just live in your neighbourhood; sometimes, she shows up at your beach bar halfway through retirement, trying to change the menu.

An Unwelcome Guest

The responses I received on TikTok make sense: the Belizeans love their freedom. They recognize something in it that is distinct from what is available in their developed neighours. However, freedom isn’t just appreciated here; the people protect it, which explains why some Belizeans have begun to push back against the presence of certain foreigners in their country.

I used to wonder why locals sometimes seemed resistant to people like me, until my wife, Lili, offered an analogy that put everything into perspective. She said:

Imagine inviting guests over to your home for dinner, only to have them complain about everything?

“I don’t like what you’ve cooked and how you’ve cooked it; at my house, we do it differently and it's way better.”

“I don’t like the way you’ve set the table. Here, this way makes more sense.”

“At my house, we have better routines and rituals, you should do it like this…”

Then they take over cooking and rearrange your home to their liking.

If this happened in your home, you would probably tell them to get the f*ck out.

The above scenario is what many foreigners do when they land in a new country. Instead of expressing gratitude for the hospitality of their host country and accepting its ways and customs—warts, inefficiencies, and annoyances and all—they try to impose their ways from back home. So it makes sense when some locals tell foreigners to “go home.”

Freedom ≠ Safety

The TikTok response got me thinking a lot about how different things are in Belize from my home country of Canada. Over the past few years, I’ve come to realize how the reigning in of fundamental freedoms, many of them small and subtle, starts to taint a society’s ability to feel truly free.

I often promote my Substack posts on Facebook, and I regularly hear from the Canadian and American diaspora abroad. Many of them comment on the quiet erosion of freedoms back home, and how they’ve found those freedoms again in places like Belize.1 One friend, Amber, left this message on a recent post:

“I left 4 years ago due to declining freedoms and a constant feeling of oppression and control by both an overreaching government and other Canadians, I became rather out of synch with. Nothing was "fun" or happy anymore. Police lurking on hiking trails, on the water, hiding everywhere in black cars, hoping to intimidate and fine you for some new stupid law, of which there are so many they will find something! I left when Canadians began begging daddy government for tougher distracted driving laws and when it actually became illegal to sip a coffee while driving a car or to chat ”distracted” to the person beside you. No more fun parties - everything was about safety and nonstop expense. I came to believe you can not have a free society when you expect a government to keep you safe. Other places, like Belize, seem to ask for self-responsibility, respect, and community alignment. Do right, mind your business, don't bring your bullshit here and don't be a dick. I am responsible for my own safety. We couldn't net a lot of money in Canada despite working huge hours and having a busy business - the government took it (to keep me safe), lol... no thanks. I had constant high anxiety in Canada, being out of synch with a country that I remember as once being free and happy - when the plane left for Belize, I felt a true peace wash over me....I would never ever go back.... My life is happy now and free. Nothing I wish to change or impose on this beautiful country. My two cents.”

I agree with her. There is a degree of personal responsibility present here that isn’t in Canada. Everyone back home expects Big Brother to take care of them. So, the government imposes innumerable restrictions in the name of safety, yet people fail to realize that there is a subtle trade-off: your freedom.2

Recently, I commented on Elizabeth Silleck La Rue’s post, saying I believe Central America is currently one of the safest places in the world; not because there’s no danger, but because people here generally respect boundaries. And now, I’d add: it’s also one of the freest. You’re not under constant watch. You’re not being managed, surveyed, or sanitized. You’re just left to live. Belizeans understand this about their country and are fiercely protective of it.

While Belize has its issues, a lack of freedom isn't one of them.

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An Unspoken Rule

Here in Belize, the government doesn’t micromanage its people as it does in Canada and other parts of the world. This is partly because it doesn’t have the means to do so, but also because it's a part of their culture and way of life. Live and let live is a thriving yet silent mantra, and people appreciate it.

From what I can tell, people here live by an unspoken rule: respect your neighbours’ way of life, and they’ll respect yours.3 It’s a quiet, mutual understanding: “Yoh noh trouble me, ah noh trouble you.”

And it works. And it’s great.

But not everyone gets it.

Exported Expectations

I’ve come to realize that one of the most disruptive exports of the developed world isn’t wealth or privilege but expectation. The expectation that everything should be a certain way, that service should come quickly, that money can solve all problems, and that rules can be manipulated to satisfy personal comfort. This mindset isn’t always rooted in bad intentions, but it often carries selfishness, a lack of awareness, and a need for control that overrides others’ freedoms.

And that’s where the problems begin. This mentality clashes with the local laissez-faire attitude. The imported mindset starts to show itself, trying to “fix” what was never broken. Then come the signs: “No shoes, no shirt, no service!” Not because the locals asked for them, but because the newcomers didn’t like what they saw.

And before we even realize it, a Karen has been transplanted into a new culture.

Cultural Contagions

After thinking all of this through, something dawned on me: There are no Belizean “Karens” or their male counterparts, “Kevins.” Any Karen/Kevin that I know here is a foreigner and what I’ve come to refer to as “angry expats”. Now, I’m sure this doesn't need explaining, but just in case, a “Karen” or “Kevin” is:

A pejorative term for a person who weaponizes entitlement in everyday situations, often demanding special treatment, rigidly enforcing rules that benefit them, or escalating minor inconveniences into full-blown dramas. They are known for treating service workers, neighbours, or strangers as if they exist solely to accommodate their needs. Their energy is unmistakable: performative outrage, misplaced superiority, and a firm belief that the world should bend to their will.

Then I realized: People from developed countries are the global Karens and Kevins. Think about it: so many foreigners who relocate abroad bring with them an incessant need to impose themselves on others. Many disparage local establishments because they don't meet their standards. What Karens and Kevins often fail to understand is that these impositions undermine the personal freedoms of the local populace, just as they do in their home countries, as Amber portrayed her experience of living in Canada.

I’m now beginning to see what local populations the world over see when they look at imposing foreigners; they’re fuckin’ Karens! And who likes a Karen? Nobody! And, like @Richard Young hints at the end of his comment, the Karen attitude is what soils the relationship between locals and foreigners.

It’s an all-too-common scenario: a Karen puts up a fuss to fulfill their selfish need, a policy changes, and a small freedom is taken away from an entire people. If this happens repeatedly, it can change everything within a country.

When we impose ourselves on our host country, we become a Cultural Karen—or worse, a Colonial Kevin—who undermines the personal freedoms of those around them, and stains the cultural fabric that makes a place feel unique and free.

For the proud Belizeans who see their country as the jewel of the Caribbean, I don’t doubt that many of us are seen as a plague of Karenitis when we land on their shores. Our Kevinosis tarnishes the gem and corrodes the delicate prongs that hold the jewel in place. It's not something they can brush off or ignore; it's a direct threat to their sovereignty, autonomy, and cultural identity. It's a direct assault on their way of life.

That’s some serious shit.

Common Ground

There was a time when I was worried about the locals. I could sense a rumbling of discontent rising and wondered if it would result in an outward clash with the foreigners here.

Honestly, a pushback is still coming. When people love something deeply, they defend it, especially when it starts to change without their consent. But the response to my recent TikTok post alleviated some of my worries and gave me hope. It reminded me that respect still means something here. It also showed me that many locals recognize when a foreigner genuinely gets it; when someone shows up curious, not corrective.

I think they saw that in me. They saw that I appreciate what they love about their country, and that I don’t want to see it changed.

So, to anyone arriving fresh: remember, no place is perfect. But just because something is unfamiliar or imperfect doesn’t mean it needs fixing. That instinct—to clean, optimize, or improve—can be the very thing that ruins what made a place feel free in the first place.

Dirty Freedom

After all, true freedom isn’t always clean. It isn’t always efficient. Sometimes it’s barefoot, unkempt, or gloriously imperfect. That makes it unique. And that’s precisely why it’s worth protecting.

While I’ve focused on Belize here, this isn’t just about one place. It’s about how we show up anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or where in the world you land; nobody wants a Karen around.

PS. My apologies to anyone named Karen who is pleasant and chill (, I'm thinking of you here). I'm sorry this meme has co-opted your namesake.

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like the Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-receiving book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or making a small donation. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

Thanks for reading!

When researching Part B of The Big Fat 21st Century Lie, I came across a blog post listing the reasons why young adults want to attend university. It reignited an idea that's been floating around in my mind for a while: a mandatory or standardized live-abroad program for secondary school graduates.

I know, it sounds extreme, maybe even unrealistic. But hear me out: what if, instead of funneling young people into expensive degrees they may never use, we gave them the chance to experience the world firsthand? An unspecified amount of time to learn through culture shock, adaptation, independence, and exploration.

A program like this wouldn't reject education per se but would expand it. It could fulfill most of the desires that drive students toward university, but without the crushing debt or post-grad disillusionment.

Imagine this: instead of a four-year degree, a young person enters the workforce with four years of global experience, having lived abroad, navigated unfamiliar cultures, learned new languages, and adapted to constant change. What if that showed up on a résumé and was seen not as a gap, but as a credential? A testament to resilience, curiosity, and cross-cultural intelligence. That's the kind of real-world education we should be valuing.

What Travel Taught Me That School Never Could

The essay in draft, along with its research, led me to reflect on my time in and immediately after university. One thing that stood out to me was my travel experiences during that period—South Korea, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia—and how formative they were for me. Honestly, they were more meaningful than the four years I spent at Carleton. In comparison, those trips were a fraction of the time I spent at school, but I remember them more vividly than any lecture, study session, or essay I wrote.

As I read through the list of reasons, I realized that most of them had nothing to do with higher education, gaining work experience, or building a career.

Here's what was on it:

1. To get into a Particular Career

2. For the Social Life

3. To Experience Somewhere New

4. To Get Smarter

5. To Meet New People

6. To Live On My Own

7. For Opportunities

It’s clear that most of these desires could be better fulfilled through alternative means. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that travel checks almost every box.

Sure, reason #1—getting into a specific career—doesn't align with the travel thesis. But let's be honest: a significant number of graduates don't end up working in their field anyway, so they may as well have gone traveling. As for the rest—social life, new experiences, meeting people, living independently, and finding opportunity—none of these require a classroom. Travel delivers all of that in spades. Even reason #4, "to get smarter," is achievable through far cheaper, often more engaging methods: a library card, deep-dive podcasts, or an honest commitment to "YouTube University." Frankly, I'm not sure I got smarter during university anyway, after killing untold brain cells at parties.

Expectations, Inheritance, and the Illusion of Choice

Like nearly half of all university graduates, I now question what I gained from my "Honours Degree in International History." Yes, I had to manage my time and work independently in my program, but no one taught me how to do that; I figured it out on my own.1 And, yes, going to university gave me experience in researching, forming narratives, and coherently writing thesis papers (which undoubtedly has value in my current endeavours as a freelance writer), but the distance between then and what I do now—20 years later—seems so vast I doubt it has any relevance.2

When I reflect on my motivations for pursuing a post-secondary education, I realize that my reasons are as weak as those listed. For comparison, my list was:

1. "That's what you're supposed to do," followed closely by,

2. "It's what all my friends are doing." My final reason?

3. "It won't cost me anything."

Just as with the student list, my reasons were acceptable.

Now, I don't want to come off ungrateful—I don’t regret the opportunity or the time spent at uni—I just want to be frank: my father earnestly invested an inheritance left to him by his late mother (rest in peace Grammy and thank you) for the future education of my brothers and the then 6-year-old me.

The creation of this education fund set the expectation that I would use it to attend university, as my dad had done. I grew up understanding that this was what I would do when I was old enough. I don't doubt that many aimless eighteen and nineteen-year-olds still experience this same expectation.

When I reflect on it, I wasn't particularly excited about the prospect of attending university. I wasn't passionate about it and thoroughly disliked the application process. My grades weren't that good, and I narrowly secured a place at one of the three institutions to which I applied.

When I consider those factors, I doubt I would have pursued the post-secondary path had my scenario been different; I likely wouldn’t have attended if I had to pay for it or go into debt, as 67% of all graduates in my home province of Ontario often do now.

Ultimately, I went because I didn't know what else to do after high school, but I was expected to do something. Throughout my upbringing, society ingrained in me the notion that attending university was the "next logical step" for a middle-class white adolescent male; otherwise, you're a failure and a bum. "It's what employers are looking for," the rhetoric claimed, so I mindlessly went, not realizing that I would spend most of the preceding working years as my own boss.

Learning Beyond the Lecture Hall

Looking back, if I had been given another option, like travel, I would have taken it. And many of the 13 students who contributed to that list might have done the same. Based on what they were seeking, they might have chosen a different path entirely if only someone had encouraged them to do so.

Some of my most vivid memories from that stage of life aren't from lectures or libraries, but from travel: working and saving to go, planning the trips, and then setting out. I learned more about the world in a few short months abroad than I ever could have in four years of study.

As I mentioned, my degree was in International History, which focused on events in North America, Europe, and East Asia during the two World Wars, the interwar years, and the Cold War era. I wrote a paper on Ho Chi Minh while in school, but I learned far more about Vietnam from being there, experiencing the people and the physical and political environments firsthand. I now possess real, tangible knowledge about that country, and it's not because I learned about it in a third-year seminar.

While I learned a lot about communism in class, I got to witness it firsthand and in unexpected ways: watching the military rolling down the street in an armoured truck, belting out orders to the populace over a megaphone. The locals scurried around, obeying the commands. The fear was palpable. I wanted to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, even though I was there as a tourist. I couldn't imagine living like that. This happened in Saigon (renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976), which is known to be more chill than the northern capital. Life there was very different than anywhere I'd experienced before.

No words on a page could convey the frenetic energy of that moment. It made the history I learned very real and far more meaningful than any classroom lecture.

School Is Predictable; Life Isn't.

Therein lies a key aspect of what institutionalized learning lacks: the tangible realities and the potential for the unknown to shape the learning experience. When you attend school, you know what program you're in, what classes you are taking, and essentially, what you will learn. Whereas travel almost solely consists of the unknown, beyond booking your flight.

This unknown aspect is crucial for learning, as it expands your mind through experiences and prompts you to challenge deeply held beliefs. It keeps you on your mental toes, forcing you to problem-solve the inevitable challenges that come your way. Travel helps you grow and evolve as a person in ways that sitting in class can't. 3

And most importantly, the unknown leads you to places you can't even begin to imagine because you haven't experienced the precursor to that unknown thing yet. I realize that's a weird sentence, so let me clarify with an example. When my wife and I left on our 2020 Belize vacation, we never imagined the implications that boarding the plane would have on our lives two years later. It changed everything, and we would never have predicted it. That's a beautiful thing.

Learn Skills for Life

Having experienced both versions of education—the traditional butt-in-seats schooling and The School of Life Abroad—I can accurately weigh the value of each and say, beyond a doubt, that travel is a far better teacher. I don't mean to diminish my professors' experience and their ability to teach—they were great at what they did—but hindsight would have me invest that inheritance in physically being in the places I spent countless hours learning about at the campus library and in seminars.

After coming to terms with my own post-secondary experience and gathering a thorough understanding of the current debt-for-education statistics, the lack of availability of employment opportunities for graduates and the rapidly evolving digitization of modern life, the last thing I will do when my boys are ready to graduate is push them into a debt heavy post-secondary education.

The School of Life-Abroad

It baffles me: students list experience as their primary motivation for attending university, yet we still steer them toward institutionalized education. What they're seeking isn't coursework; it's life. And for what school costs these days—nearing $100K for a four-year program in Canada—they could travel the world on a shoestring for years, gaining real-life experience, personal growth, and cross-cultural insight.

Now, I fully realize that a mandated live-abroad policy would never work. The logistics alone would be a nightmare, never mind the ethical and legal implications of forcing people into a program they may not want to participate in. And unfortunately, the international cooperation required to launch a truly global initiative is far beyond our current political reality.

Still, the idea serves a purpose. It forces us to reimagine what post-secondary development could look like if we stopped defaulting to debt-heavy degrees. Ultimately, the goal of this piece isn't to advocate for a formal mandate; it's to shift perspectives.

What if we stopped indoctrinating young people into believing university is the only viable path? What if we redefined failure and started encouraging the kind of uncertainty that leads to growth?

A mandatory travel policy may never materialize, but that doesn't mean we can't actively promote travel as a legitimate—and in many cases, more effective—alternative to higher education. The richness of experience, personal evolution, and cross-cultural learning available in the world beyond the classroom is immense. And based on what young people say they're actually looking for—social connection, independence, adventure, and new ways of learning—travel fits the bill.

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like the Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-receiving book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or making a small donation. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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While recently filling out a questionnaire for , I found myself writing a deep dive on why I moved abroad. A totally understandable character limit led me to truncate my story of what led my wife Lili and me to move to Belize, so I thought I’d post the full version here.

Early in our relationship, we were avid travellers—technically still are, but two young children have paused that for the time being—and went on several trips together. Wherever we would go, Lili proclaimed, "Let's live here!"; even in places like Iceland, which is beautiful, but not where I'd care to live. So, I'd laugh and say no. But something shifted during our babymoon in Belize. Surprisingly, when she said it this time, I agreed. I'd always wanted to live abroad—almost moving to Costa Rica years earlier—and the beautiful landscape and welcoming people stirred my desire.

It wasn't that I disliked living in Canada—I never questioned it, to be honest—but something felt off. At the time, I owned and operated a growing residential renovation business. While I enjoyed the freedom of being self-employed, I couldn't shake the feeling that systems of someone else's creation bound me. I lacked autonomy and felt pressured by obligations and norms to conform to the world around me. I was a product of systems: governmental, educational, cultural, and social, set in place long before I was born. It didn't sit right with me. Under the blind societal obedience, sat an uneasiness, a restlessness, a desire to exit. I hadn't agreed to participate in any of it, yet I was expected to do so—dare say, I was mandated to do so. That sense of misalignment pushed me toward change and to consider life outside the country I’d grown up in and always known. The thought of life in another country was exciting, and the prospect of “what if we could make it work?” pushed us into action.

So, we spent much of our babymoon speaking to real estate agents and looking at properties. We found a place that ticked all our boxes: a fixer-upper (I have a history of renovating and reselling homes), close to the beach, with income generating potential (the place had a small building by the main road that the previous owner ran a bakery from before they had to return to the US for medical reasons and never returned).

We submitted an offer days before our return trip, and after a brief negotiation, the seller accepted. We were elated! But it was March 2020, and COVID lockdowns hit worldwide within days of returning home, making it impossible to fulfill a key condition of the deal, in-person inspection within 14 days of closing.

The deal fell through, and it crushed us, along with our dream. But, it was a blessing in disguise; only, we didn't know it at the time.

With our Belize dreams dashed, we set our sights on a fixer-upper in an up-and-coming municipality west of Toronto. Now, May, we worked tirelessly to prepare the home for our firstborn, starting renovations within 24 hours of closing on the property and had it livable by the time Jack arrived in October.

However, getting him into the home proved daunting.

Jack was born with a severe case of MAS (meconium aspiration syndrome); so bad that the OB who performed the emergency C-section said it was the worst she'd seen in her medical career.

So bad, it nearly took his and my wife's lives. For ten days, we didn’t know if he would survive.

Jack spent a month in critical care in the NICU. Thankfully, our new home was a short drive from one of the highest-ranked pediatric hospitals in Canada. He was presenting moderate to severe brain damage, and all diagnoses pointed to a life of disability and constant care from the Canadian public healthcare system. Had we been in Belize, as initially planned, the odds were we wouldn’t have been considering long-term care, but a funeral. As hard as they were to navigate and as weird as it is to say, I am forever grateful for the COVID lockdowns, which kept us close to top-notch acute medical care.

It was a challenging 30 days; the hardest of my life, and an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone.

After weeks in the NICU, and miraculous brain scans that came back normal, discharge day arrived, and we took baby Jack home. He pushed through; we made it. Our son was a miracle, beating the odds heavily stacked against him.

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But being in the NICU and witnessing how common birth traumas are was eye-opening. So many families affected; so many journeys untold. It’s not what people want to hear about when the conversations around birth arise, so they aren't often shared. We were lucky, and Jack survived, but that was not the case for all the families alongside us in the NICU. Days before we took Jack home, we witnessed a family on the opposite end of the spectrum. Their baby didn't make it, and the whole NICU team came out to console the distraught family. It was fucking tragic; and bittersweet for us. We knew we'd leave with a healthy baby in tow, while others went home with only sorrow.

Soon after, I fell back into my work routine—long hours to steer operations and drive growth in my business. I had this miracle baby, but I barely saw him. He was a great sleeper and was often down by the time I got home from work, and still asleep when I left in the morning. Perhaps the result of 30 days in a noisy NICU ward. It wasn't what I imagined fatherhood would be, especially after Jack's rough start.

I wanted to spend more time at home, so I applied for parental leave. The GOC denied me. Since I was self-employed, I wasn't eligible. Despite years of contributing to the Canadian social security and EI system, they refused to support me when I suddenly needed it most. That moment clarified everything: I’d been playing by rules that didn’t work in my favor. The system was flawed; it wasn’t built for people like me.

I knew we needed a change.

So, in the spring of 2021, my wife and I vowed to spend more time as a family. We bought a camper trailer and toured around our province at every opportunity until the Fall. During that time in the camper, we reignited our Belizean dream. We knew the established norms of North American life weren't for us. So, while in that camper, we purchased a parcel of land—site unseen, because it was still hard to travel at that time—close to the beach in a growing community on the Placencia peninsula.

From our camper, we laid the foundation for new lives.

We also created a new life (literally) in that camper, where our second son, Dash, was conceived.

From the summer of 2021 until spring of 2022, we planned our move, designed a new house, sold our old one, and parted with many of our belongings.

Then Dash arrived, just weeks before we left, but not before threatening to blow the whole plan out of the turquoise water. We were back in the NICU. Shortly after his birth, Dash developed a hole in one of his lungs, behind his heart. Given the precarious area, invasive medical action wasn’t an option. While not nearly as severe an experience as our first, we spent a week in the NICU waiting for his recovery.

Some people thought a second NICU baby would cause us to delay or cancel our move, but oddly enough, it only strengthened our resolve. It put the unpredictability of life front and center. There are endless reasons why you shouldn't do something different, but we held on to our “what if…” and set off on a life abroad, never looking back.

P.S.

This piece touches on several themes I plan to explore more deeply in future posts—like moving abroad for the “what if” rather than to escape a problem, the subtle but persistent challenges of life overseas, and how leaving your home country can expand your sense of autonomy.

If this resonated with you, consider subscribing—or upgrading to a paid subscription—so I can devote more time and energy to creating thoughtful, honest work like this. Either way, thank you for reading and being part of the journey.

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-receiving book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or making a small donation. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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What makes a place feel like home? It's an open question that leads to many others: Is home a place or a state of mind? Is it physical or conceptual? Answering this question wasn't as straightforward as I first thought. I intended to comment on Kaila's initial Living Abroad Discussion post, but as I began to ponder the question, I needed more space to articulate my thoughts. There is no direct way to define what makes a place feel like home. What appears to be a simple concept is, in fact, a profoundly complex one. Like an onion, each layer peeled away reveals a tangle of emotions—some sweet, some sharp enough to bring tears to your eyes.

While considering this concept, I thought of ideas related to comfort and familiarity. I almost wrote this piece about that, but it didn't feel authentic to me. Something was missing. Undoubtedly, home is a place of comfort; a place imbued with your personality; a place that is familiar and predictable. However, this doesn't capture the essence of home for me.

As unsexy as it may sound, home is a commitment. It's an acceptance of location and circumstance. I lived in Ottawa for four years while at Carleton University, but it never felt like home. Perhaps because I knew I wouldn't stay, because I never made any plans to do so, and therefore knew I'd eventually leave. I had friends from my region of Ontario who stayed and established their lives in Ottawa after school, but I just couldn't commit to living there.

Many years later, I now live in Belize. I decided to sell almost everything and move out of Canada. It's taken years, but it's finally beginning to feel like home to me. While Canada is my 'home country,' and my parents still reside in our 'family home,' it no longer feels like home.

And while comfort appears to be a crucial characteristic when defining what makes a place feel like home, it's a result of another action and not the determining factor in deciding whether a place feels like home. Commitment is. When we commit to living somewhere, we can begin to establish a sense of comfort and familiarity. But we need that pledge first.

I've been in Belize for three years now, and while the country is finally beginning to feel like home, it's a new feeling; we almost gave up and left. Our proposed departure stemmed from the numerous hardships we faced during our transition. We took on a lot by moving. We started completely anew, creating new careers, becoming new parents for the second time (our youngest was mere weeks old when we relocated), and building a new house from scratch. Just one of those things is enough to cause stress, but we also faced numerous other hardships.

We faced financial challenges. The strain of purchasing land and building a home left us more depleted than we had anticipated, and starting new careers in entirely new industries put us at the bottom of the income stratum, making rebuilding our finances all the more challenging. Then, about a year and a half after emigrating, I had to deal with identity theft; a fraudster assumed my identity, opened bank accounts and secured credit in my name, leaving me to sort it out while abroad.1 The ordeal took nearly a year to resolve, and during that time, it sometimes felt like we were untethered from everything, drifting between two worlds with no clear footing.

We also had our health and well-being tested more times than you can imagine. The first instance occurred shortly after arriving in Belize, when a nasty bacterial infection nearly took our youngest son from us. Thankfully, he made it. Since then, we almost lost a dog to a poisonous toad, a cat to a toxic plant, and have fielded a barrage of flues, colds, stomach bugs, eye and ear infections, in addition to two rounds of stitches, one for each of our boys.

Then there were the social challenges of making friends—something I explore in depth in my podcast episode with Gregory Garretson. At the same time, we faced a new challenge: navigating the complex social landscape of Angry Expats. In addition to everything else, we encountered a series of vehicle issues, including multiple flat tires, blown engine lines, and a near rollover off a cliff in Mexico, which caused the vehicle body damage.

It was a lot to deal with in just over two years. It felt like Belize didn't want us here, or that the universe was testing our resolve in our decision to move abroad. Many would have given up, and we know people who have, after a few months of challenges. The transition nearly broke us. We almost left: we set up our home as a vacation rental for a time while we explored other options. Then put it up for sale.

In other words, we struggled to commit to making Belize our home.

But my wife and I aren't the type to sit around and wait for things to happen.2 In the face of uncertainty and strife, my wife and I resolved to rebuild our lives. Instead of waiting for the changing force of yet another house sale and move, we committed to living our lives in a new land and got to work crafting a new reality for ourselves.

We put the hardships behind us. We pulled through. Our lives have improved considerably. In the process, almost without realizing it, we committed to Belize—by focusing less on what might be next, and more on building a life here, now. Now, my wife's art career is blowing up, and I'm finding my groove as a freelance writer. The boys are thriving at school, learning and making new friends. We are making changes to our home and property that now reflect our style and preferences, rather than catering to the vacation rental market and tropical real estate industry. Everyone is healthy, except that three- and four-year-olds are essentially germ production and distribution centers.

And you know what? We're beginning to call Belize home. It's finally starting to feel like our home: the result of committing to fully live our lives here. We know we are staying, and that makes it feel like I have a home again.

Now, I realize Kaila's prompt was probably geared toward physical experiences of home, such as "the sound of a spoon hitting the bottom of a cup" or "a certain light in the kitchen." And while home is certainly these things, these types of experiences cannot happen before one commits to calling a particular place home. That commitment opens the door to opportunities to transmute physical experiences into tangible interpretations of home. Now, catching a glimpse of morning light shimmering off the Caribbean through the seaside trees feels like home. The earthy smell that hangs thick in the air after a tropical downpour brings me a sense of peace. The sound of my wife singing in her studio while she creates another abstract work—a blending of paint and thoughtful intention—brings a smile to my face. The freeing feeling of being barefoot wherever I go is irreplaceable, and I now wonder how I ever wore shoes so much. The taste of fresh, locally grown mangoes, which are now sprouting on a tree we planted two years ago, too, makes me excited for this time of year. It's a fantastic feeling and a welcome change from the last two years or so.

Our commitment to our new home now fosters feelings of peace and comfort. Back in October, my oldest son turned four, and we invited a handful of people we have come to call friends to celebrate. It was an eclectic group—one that wouldn't usually gather in everyday life on the peninsula—and we all had a blast. It left me with a sense of community and belonging I hadn't felt in many years. It felt like home.

Just the other day, during the boys' Easter break—a two-week affair in Belize—we ran into some of their classmates on our way to a daytime activity. When the kids spotted each other, they called out names and ran to greet one another without hesitation, exchanging big, clumsy hugs the way only three- and four-year-olds can. Watching them—different skin colors, different backgrounds, but united by pure joy—I felt it again: home.

None of this would have been possible before committing to calling Belize home. And to think, we almost gave it all up, nearly cutting off the potential to make our move abroad work. Now, all the hardship seems worth it. Ultimately, home isn't just where you're comfortable. It's where you decide—despite uncertainty, despite struggle—to plant yourself and grow.3

Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash

Colonialism: Then and Now

Belize has a rich cultural history dating back thousands of years. First inhabited by the nomadic hunter-gathering Paleoindians, the country became one of the seats of Mayan culture across southern Mexico and Central America. The Maya thrived for more than two and a half millennia before their eventual demise at the hands of Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Belize (not known by the name at the time) and its geographical neighbours became a contested zone between the settled Spanish and an encroaching British, with the latter prevailing in the closing years of the eighteenth century and becoming colonial occupiers of British Honduras until 1973 and Belize until 1981. As a result, the country is home to a diverse population of indigenous peoples, descendants of occupiers, and foreign transplants from all over the world.

A New Age of Colonialism in Belize

While the historical European oppressors vacated decades and centuries ago and the 'ism' no longer resembles redcoats and powdered wigs, a new age of colonialism is alive and well in Belize. The vestiges of exploitation and subjugation smolder like embers in the ashes of once 'great' empires, now fanned by enterprising foreigners flocking to the country to reap the benefits of real estate sales, property management, and land development. As the historical captors of the nation once leveraged their wealth and freedom of movement to garnish national resources from their rightful owners, these new-age colonizers do so, too. They use their foreign assets to rug-pull the profitable industries right out from under the foot of the nationals. Evidence of this is everywhere in the country and seen as so commonplace that most actors have no idea they are complacent in taking over the nation's vital assets.

Setting Things Straight

Now, before I venture too far down the road of criticizing the foreign diaspora for their economic invasion, I want to point out and clarify a few things before some Facebook group participants lose their shit over my opinions.

A Global Issue

Yes, I am a foreigner and an immigrant. I purchased land, moved here, and built a home. I contributed to the rise of property values in this beautiful country. This, however, is not a Belizean issue but a global one: I have watched Chinese and Russian nationals buy up properties in Canada (my home country) for the past two decades. Where the buyers are from is ultimately beside the point, the key being that global wealth migration and gentrification are happening in Canada, too—and elsewhere in the developed world—similarly to what's occurring in developing nations.1

Recently, the government of Canada placed a two-year ban on the purchase of residential properties by foreign buyers (with a possible two-year extension) in an attempt to keep housing affordable and available to Canadian nationals. It's not the first time they've attempted to limit the activity of foreign interests either, as many Canadians will remember the foreigner buyer tax implementation in the mid-2010s, which still stands today. In the province of Ontario, where I was born and raised, a non-Canadian can expect to pay an additional 25% of the purchase price. But just like in Belize, those who come to buy land can typically afford the added fees, and quite often, such measures fail to stem the flow of foreign buyers. All this is to say that I feel for the Belizean people. I understand—if only vague as I don't know the added trouble of poverty and low income, coming from a middle-class North American family—what it's like to see national property prices creep, in some cases, hockey stick, out of reach.

The GOBs Role

The Belizean government doesn’t have clean hands in the matter. Their complicity in the modern conquest against its people is just a mirror image of an age-old scenario in which a nation's ruling class, through corruption and personal ambition, allows themselves to be pressured or paid off by foreign interests for their gain. To some degree, you can't blame them—it must be enticing to the government official who is offered a bribe, perk, or other financial incentive in exchange for pushing someone else's agenda. How would you react to the opportunity to pull your family from generational poverty or historically low income by a foreigner with more money than you can imagine? The carrot of wealth dangled in the noses of a country's gatekeepers has always played a critical role in the subjugation of one group of people to benefit another.

Despite their shortcomings and limited resources, the Government of Belize has done a great job keeping the commercialization of the tourism industry at bay. Unlike Mexico and other Caribbean nations like Jamaica, Barbados, and Saint Lucia, Belize doesn't have many corporate hotel or resort chains, keeping the negative impact of these entities out of the country. There aren't any all-inclusive Riu or Sandals resorts, where, despite being in a specific country, you wouldn't necessarily know it, as branding ensures each location is the same as the next. The boutique-style resorts here add to this country's charm and help to protect its environment. The lack of commercialization was part of what drew my family and me here. Nevertheless, Belize has the foreignization of its hotel industry in common with its Caribbean neighbours, as outsiders typically have the privilege of being wealthy enough to afford to buy or build a resort.

A Tale of Two Immigrants

I realize that there is—perhaps you could call it a double standard—a stark juxtaposition between the immigrant who moves to a developed country and achieves success and the "Westerner" who moves to a developing nation and does the same. The former is an underdog story—they pull themselves from dire circumstances to achieve a better standard of living; the latter feels like advantage-taking.

Perhaps this is the distinguishing factor in new-age colonialism: just as the 16th and 17th centuries imperialist nations spread out with vast wealth already in hand, intending to take unrealized fortunes from others, the well-to-do foreigner moving to Belize does the same. Let’s face it: most foreigners who come here are pretty well off; you have to be; it's part of the immigration requirement. I am not the only one to point this out. In her thoughtfully written article The Great American Exodus, Lily Pond writes that she sees foreigners "looking to live 'life on the cheap' overseas as 'neo-colonialists.'"

A Wide Brush but a Small Group

Lastly, I would like to clarify that many foreign nationals and immigrants in Belize are respectful and have come here to enjoy retirement or a simpler life. Many don't work here and contribute to the Belizean economy by spending earnestly saved money from their home countries. Even some who work a boots-on-the-ground job here, in industries I feel should be Belizean only (which I get to below), routinely give back to the country in meaningful ways, providing jobs, donating resources, and creating institutions that may not otherwise exist. Their presence adds value to the country and helps offset their industries' inherent downsides.

It Doesn't Take Many

However, a small group was responsible for executing the colonialism of old; the entire population of Spain or England didn't need to land in Belize to significantly influence the region and its inhabitants.

The Face of Neocolonialism in Belize

The Oxford Dictionary defines neocolonialism as "the use of economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control or influence other countries…" This definition accurately describes the actions of foreign nationals in Belize, especially those who set up businesses that directly compete with or take potential employment from Belizeans. While they may not overtly plunder natural resources like in the old days, they take over profitable industries like real estate, construction, land development, and property management.

The Real State of Real Estate

I don't know the exact statistics on this, but I'm willing to estimate that 80% or more of Belize's established real estate brokerages are non-Belizean. Therefore, much of the commissions made—which are pretty high, mind you—from the sale of Belizean properties don't end up in the hands of nationals but in the bank accounts of companies owned by outsiders. That doesn't sit right with me, especially when you consider the fact that it's a historically corrupt industry in Belize, with land development fraud perpetrated by out-of-country entities and sold by alien agents. I'm sure we are all aware of Sanctuary Belize, one of the country's most well-known real estate scams with a landmark FTC ruling in the US. The key point here is that corruption perpetrated by foreigners is a classic characteristic of colonialism. An article I came across in the HAL archives, Corruption, Empire and Colonialism in the Modern Era, paints a strikingly similar picture. The authors write:

“Scandal, corruption, exploitation and abuse of power have been linked to the history of modern empire-building. Colonial territories often became promised lands where individuals sought to make quick fortunes, sometimes in collaboration with the local population but more often at the expense of them. On some occasions, these shady dealings resulted in scandals that reached back to the metropolis…"

I suppose a case could be made for having foreign real estate agents set up shop in a country where English isn’t the primary language. In this case, foreign agents provide a service to buyers who also don’t speak the language. Again, I recognize the inherent neocolonial implications of foreigners selling another country. But Belize is an English-speaking nation, and while it is trilingual, I can converse with most of the Belizeans I meet, and anyone interested in buying land here can, too.

After bearing witness to it, I can’t help but feel that Belize's real estate industry is a bit ridiculous: it’s unregulated, fraught with scandal, and filled with innumerable expat agents who fail to put any standards or regulations in place for themselves. They demand commission rates that are 60% higher than what you would pay in North America when the job mainly consists of fielding inbound inquiries from people on vacation. It lacks professionalism and trust because anyone can claim to be an agent and start selling property. The foreign monopoly tarnishes the industry name and restricts a significant economic source from reaching the Belizean people due to its exclusivity. As mentioned above, I am guilty—and regretful—of perpetuating this system, having used an American real estate agent to purchase my lot. Had I understood the implications of what I was doing—and had the knowledge of alternative avenues that I do now—I would have pursued different options.

Management By The People

Probably the most insidious case of new-age colonialism is property management. The government attempted to secure this industry for its people by stipulating that all property managers must have residency status. The BTB has also made hiring a property manager mandatory for all hoteliers, directly linking property management to this arm of the tourism industry. For context, tourism is a significant source of the country's GDP, accounting for nearly half of what the country earns annually. It's an essential economic engine for its people, but how much of that is being siphoned away by the neocolonialist agenda?

I can't help but feel this policy failed. Now, foreign-owned management companies service foreign-owned property owners, completely excluding locals from profiting from managing the country's copious vacation rental income. Instead, nationals are relegated to cleaning, raking, and turning over units. Those who manage to operate a business in this space must compete with expats who have direct connections to a large pool of clientele.

I see this all over. Someone, please explain why a retirement-aged American woman needs to work a property management job in Placencia. Someone like this exists in my neighbourhood—I featured her personality in my Angry Expat piece. In addition to routinely cursing me out for having my dogs off leash on a public beach—"Her beach" apparently; an attitude brimming with neocolonialist overtones—she also actively takes a job from a capable Belizean. If you aren't a national, you shouldn't be allowed to touch this industry, plain and simple.

Impending Backlash

Now, I imagine someone reading this is already gearing up to fire back: "But not all Belizeans want to sell real estate or manage vacation rentals!" And that’s fair. Just because an industry exists doesn’t mean locals are lining up to work in it. But we aren't discussing a lack of interest but a lack of access. How do Belizeans compete if foreign-owned real estate firms dominate the market, with property management companies run by expats catering exclusively to foreign homeowners? Foreigners selling to foreigners and hiring other foreigners to manage foreign-owned properties seems like a closed loop to me.

Construction Industry Scorn

Construction and development are also significant seats of neocolonialism.2 Contemporary research deems Western-style development a self-serving political weapon that “destroys domestic economies, impoverishes the vast majority, and further pushes borrowing nations into the abyss of debt."

Just like property management, I can't help but feel that this line of business should only be available to nationals. It’s an industry near and dear to me, as I spent nearly two decades in it in Canada. It seems crucial to me that the self-determined development of a nation should be done by its people—especially one as small as Belize. While it was tough to compete with thousands of other home builders and remodelers in Canada—nothing hard work and a solid reputation wouldn't overcome—there were millions of people living in my area of operation. There was plenty of work to go around.

It’s critical to understand that the population of Belize is 30% smaller than the city I lived in before moving, which isn't considered big, even by Canadian standards. And Canada doesn’t have big cities compared to those on an international level: Tokyo, for example—albeit the most populated city in the world—has almost the same population as my home country. Yes, Belize is growing and developing, and there are more opportunities for employment as a result, but not to the extent of, say Mexico. But then again, their population is 322 times larger than Belize.

All this is to say that Belize is tiny. Setting up shop here and pandering to people who share your origins breeds resentment among the locals because it's evident that you are taking their jobs. Unlike in the Canadian construction industry, there isn't plenty to go around.

An Inherent Bias

I am aware of my bias here. I have an extensive construction background and designed and built my home from scratch. Essentially, I don't need to hire anyone to build anything for me if it comes down to it. So, it's easy for me to say, “Don't hire a foreigner for your home build in Belize,” when you are challenged to find someone trustworthy to work on your project. Yet, I should point out that when developing my lot, I used a local Belizean contractor and a Belizean prefab home company to assist with the build. And, as obvious as it would be for me to have gone into construction for employment here, I decided against it. It seems disingenuous to profit off the development of a country I don't hold a passport for and am a newcomer to. I recently turned down an opportunity to assist with a development project here in Belize—oddly enough, this occurred on the same day I wrote this; perhaps the universe was asking me to promptly put my money where my mouth was. Instead of taking the easy route, I (and my wife) opted for the challenge of starting a remote work career in Belize, in an entirely new industry.

Harsh But True

I realize I am coming across as harsh and painting a very black-and-white picture. I'm doing this purposefully to illuminate a very real, albeit muddled grey, situation.

Exceptions for the Exceptional

I fully understand that some exceptions can and should be made for forward-thinking, problem-solving foreigners who invent new products or services or establish new businesses that are the first of their kind. For example, I have friends who have a window coverings company—there isn't another business like it (from what I know), and they have cornered the market. The area needed it, and they had the insight to fill a void.

I also have a friend who roasts coffee, which, surprisingly enough, isn't that large of an industry here, given Belize's proximity to one of the world’s largest coffee growers and exporters. As a former construction worker, I love coffee, and most of what you find packaged in the stores here is pretty bad. His coffee is probably the best in the country, so even though a foreigner produces it, it brings unmatched value. He also employs locals, even though his operation is small.

Another business that comes to mind is the school my children attend. It's a private institution run by a fellow Canadian that educates Belizean and international students alike. The school hires local and international teachers. Like the other businesses mentioned above, it doesn't harm local industry or leverage its privilege to its advantage. Instead, it fosters inclusivity while providing a value-added service that fills a void in a relatively small community.

Exceptions can also be made for those who can inject much-needed capital into a budding industry. However, this needs to happen in a more regulated and structured way. Admittedly, I'm no economist or business wizard, but the country could benefit from a resource pool or platform on which interested foreign investors can partner with enterprising nationals.3 The platform could be like a Belizean version of the Angel Investment Network meets Novetur. Belizeans with viable business ideas can pitch their plans to receive funding from willing foreign investors. Conversely, foreigners with a business idea and funds can connect with nationals willing to execute the idea. Perhaps the fund can guarantee a modest return for those fronting capital and even include a profit-sharing model so both sides can reap the rewards. A system like this could ensure that Belizeans see meaningful returns on domestically run businesses without being pushed out of the market because of international economic and income disparities, which are natural barriers to entry.

A Fine Line Between Exploitation and Contribution

There is a fine line to tread here. This type of thinking is a slippery slope and a hop-skip-and-jump for justifying significant resource exploitation: "I had the insight to plow the jungle to get to that natural mineral deposit” or “I thought it cool to terraform a mountain to make it look like the Hollywood hills”—destroying a community's source of spring water in the process. True story.

But where’s the line? At what point does foreign involvement shift from contributing to an outright economic takeover? The key is ensuring that wealth generated in Belize is by Belizeans—that locals aren’t pushed to the margins of their economy while outsiders extract the profits.

Can We Remove Ourselves From the Problem?

So, what can we, as immigrants and foreigners in Belize, do to limit our participation in neocolonialism? Apart from going home or no longer coming here—which isn’t a realistic option—I think there are things we can do.

Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should

If you want to limit your neocolonialist footprint when you come here, don't participate in industries already pushing out local interests. Unless you can redefine, improve, or meaningfully shake it up, stay out. In a country with a population of four hundred thousand, how many foreigner-operated brokerages, property managers, and construction companies do you need? As I already explained, it's a tiny country in terms of population. The availability of jobs and employment industries matter. And foreigners have essentially taken over the most profitable. So when you come here, think outside the box. Bring something new to the country if you plan to work and occupy employment space. If you genuinely love and respect Belize, don't seek employment in the abovementioned industries. It's not our country; Belizeans should be responsible for selling and developing it and reaping the benefits.

Show Respect

If you insist on working in one of these industries, please treat the nationals well. New age colonialism doesn't just have to present itself in economic terms, it also reveals itself in attitude. This past year, I had the unfortunate experience of witnessing a neighbour building a home—one he had no plans to live in but flip—berate his crew on several occasions. I don't know the man personally, and he could have been having a bad week for all I know. But I do know his behaviour over a few days was cringe-worthy. I have two decades of construction experience, led multiple crews, and managed numerous projects at once, and never once did I treat those who worked for me in such a degrading way. His condescending tone towards the workers (locals of course), was shameful. I felt embarrassed to be a part of this community just listening to him. It doesn't matter how much or little you pay someone; they deserve a level of respect that was completely missing in his interactions with his crew. Don't be like that. In addition to making you come across like an asshole, it gives all foreigners a bad name.

Change Your Language

Take Lily Pong’s advice: “If you decide you’re going to live the rest of your life in a foreign country, consider yourself an immigrant instead of an “expat.’” I know this is a hot topic, and it may seem like I'm beating a dead horse, but it's a serious issue. People don't like the word, especially locals the world over, who are surrounded by wealthy foreigners. Regardless of your opinions on the word, the local people you are embedding yourself with evidently don't like it. Just peruse Facebook, and you will see they often use it negatively. It's not just in Belizean; ‘expat’ is a contention term in many countries.

Yet, if you aren't an immigrant but are more than a tourist, like a snowbird, a digital nomad, or someone who takes extended vacations or stays for half the year, come up with something else. Perhaps you can try using “foreigner” instead. The word indicates other origins but is devoid of any economic implications.

Stay Humble

Humble yourself by actively recognizing your privilege. It's so easy to take what we have as developed-nationers for granted. People are poor here, and I don't mean, "John Smith from down the street lost his job, and now he's broke" kind of poor. I mean systemic, "my house doesn't have electricity and running water" poor. In my younger years, I traveled to Laos, one of the three poorest countries in the world at the time, so I’ve witnessed poverty on an extreme level. Yet, as a tourist in Belize, I didn’t get the same sense of the situation, but it does exist.

I've been privileged enough to get to know some great Belizeans during my time here, and they've given me a realization of a way of life I never fathomed existed in this part of the world. For example, a young woman I’ve known for most of our time here can remember when her house in a village near Punta Gorda didn't have power; she's only twenty years old. This type of scenario isn't localized to one area either.

Last year, I had an eye-opening conversation with a worker my neighbour hired to complete maintenance tasks around his house. He told me he sometimes has to miss work to fill jugs at the water truck so his wife and baby can have the crucial resource. His home doesn’t have plumbing, which is a double-edged sword because he must take time off work to ensure he and his family have water. A couple of days after our conversation, he stopped by my home to ask me if he could purchase an old battery-operated drill from me. He just wanted it for the LED light, which he planned to rig directly to the battery so his daughter could complete homework at night. His home also doesn't have electricity. I decided to give him a drill, battery, and charger for free as I have several I don't use regularly—a newly recognized privilege of mine, the privilege of plenty. He charges the battery at job sites during the day so his daughter can continue her education in the evenings. He lives in Santa Cruz, which is not far from my home in Placencia.

Before moving here, I would have never imagined that people in this part of the world wouldn't live without running water or electricity in their homes in the 21st century. It's so commonplace in Canada that I didn't think about it. It's truly a privilege that in-home utilities come standard.

The young lady I mentioned earlier also doesn't have a bank account or a passport, which are two essential assets for living outside your home country. She couldn't leave Belize if she wanted or needed to, at least not without first enduring the lengthy process of applying for these seemingly commonplace personal accouterments most people I know in Canada have from toddlerhood.

A short drive south of me is Seine Bight village. For those who don't know, it's one of several Garifuna communities in Belize, and while on the Placencia peninsula—one of the most foreigner-heavy enclaves in the country—it's pretty poor. It's just down the street from me, and there are one-room shacks smaller than my primary bathroom—and my home isn't big by North American standards—which is one of three bathrooms in my home. The layout of my house may seem commonplace: three bedrooms, three bathrooms. Yes, for North America. That same privilege of plenty. When locals visit my home, I’m often embarrassed by its grandeur, which, compared to many others in the area, pales in comparison.

Once Ignorance and Now Torn

In the excitement of moving abroad, it's easy to forget that our relocation has broader implications beyond our immediate lives. I was indeed ignorant of these facts when I purchased land in Belize, as are many foreigners. And I don't mean to use the word ignorant disparagingly. It was honest, even innocent, ignorance. I hadn't known anyone who lived in such circumstances. It hits close to home now. While I still can't relate to living in such conditions, I can better empathize. So, remember to keep this in mind when you interact with locals and go about your lives in Belize or wherever you choose to live aborad. Understand that for many nationals, life looks very different from what you are used to and probably expect.

I'm torn: while I understand my invasive presence, I don't want to return to Canada either. Despite the hardships we faced moving here, the challenges of establishing new lives in another country, and starting a remote work career in Belize, I don't think leaving is the solution. Diversity breeds opportunity and understanding. While contentious at times, the intermingling of cultures can lead to unity and a global human identity. Ultimately, foreigners need to be more mindful of what it means to leave their home countries to live in another and how that action affects the people who originate in the country we land in.

Final Reflection

We should all strive to think in the manner expressed to me by a realtor back when I was interested in a beachfront property on the north end of Seine Bight: "Leave that for locals," they said. There are just some things that foreigners don't need to be a part of in their new country. We have the resources, education, and privilege to move abroad and start new lives in foreign lands. We should respectfully leave specific industries and employment opportunities for those born there.

It was good advice at the time—too bad that person failed to follow it long-term. Barely a year later, they were selling property in that community—just neocolonialism doing its thing. No doubt hypocrisy is a telltale sign, too.

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-receiving book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or making a small donation. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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The following is not satire or exaggeration; it reflects my experience living on the Placencia Peninsula in Belize. I wrote it about a year ago when my family and I were struggling—feeling the growing pains accompanying a two-year mark in a new country.

Disclaimer

I want to clearly state that I do not see all foreigners—or expats as so many colloquially like to call themselves, for better or worse—this way. I've met some wonderful, kind-hearted people here, whom without, the challenges of moving abroad would have undoubtedly been worse. I am usually a pretty positive dude, but the end of 2023 and a good portion of 2024 were challenging, and writing is cathartic for me. The following was a pressure release, which I didn't plan to publish out of fear but also out of a lack of platform—I wasn't on Substack at the time. Nevertheless, I recently found this in my Google Docs, and with hindsight, I find it amusing. However, it is still relevant and accurate to living as a foreigner amongst other foreigners, in Belize.

I now want to share it because there is a cohort of people in Belize who fit this profile to a T—those shrouded in entitlement and who carry around the proverbial stick up their ass. Those who take on the mentality of the Romans, but not in the sense of "do as the Romans do," but more as, do as the Romans did when they conquered a good portion of Europe and Asia.

It isn't just a Belize thing, either. Peruse any Facebook 'expat' group for other Central American countries, Mexico, or the Caribbean, and you will find mirror-image personalities loitering with their sticks at the ready, vampirizing the energy of the innocent, albeit naive, questioners.

So, before we get into it, I implore you: if the following words spark a defensive flame within you, look at yourself and analyze if this is you. And if it is, smarten the fuck up!

A Ubiquitous Grump

Wherever you go, there THEY are

-Me

It doesn't matter where you go in this world; they are there. The more beautiful the place, the more likely you will find them. Pristine beaches nestled beside quaint little towns along the shores of the Caribbean? Yup. There they linger, like a tropical storm cloud, ready to rain down negativity on an otherwise sunny day.

Attempts to get away from them are futile. They flock to the most beautiful places. Through a strange act of osmosis, they unwelcomely balance out the peace and beauty of a place. Shitting on every light-hearted parade.

Their motive operandi is to stick their gin-blossomed noses into business that isn’t theirs. Oh, you have permission from the landowner to park your RV on a vacant lot1 with epic views? It doesn't matter; a Caucasian beer-bellied interlocutor will undoubtedly accost you the moment you step outside at six in the morning—Christmas morning, to be precise. The lush will rant about how you've parked on private property—which he does not own, I might add—and go on about some unbeknownst grudge he has against trailer owners, as if everyone who travels in an RV, converted bus, or camper van is some stereotypical country-bumpkin-trailer-park resident from tornado alley—not that there is anything wrong with that. Meanwhile, other grumpy boomers passing by take photos of you and your children without your consent in some awkward attempt to capture and incriminate you in a suspected but false act of trespass.

Their entitlement is palpable. They arrive in foreign countries and impose their grumpy standards on the local way of life in a newaged act of colonialism:

"Oh, there aren't building permits here? Well, there should be!"

"What about local bylaws? There aren't any? How will I impose my grumpy-ass ways on my neighbours and force them to bend to my will?"

"Dogs just roam free here? There should be leash laws!"

"The beaches are public? They shouldn't be! I bought an oceanfront property!" Then they put up fences where there shouldn't be any and construct built-in structures and impediments to access to give passersby the impression that they own what isn't theirs2.

Their presence pollutes. Many of them smoke, contaminating their bodies with black clouds of chemicals—the smoke wells like their shitty energy, which they spread to others wherever they go. With smoke-scarred voices that rasp tiredly, they spoil the tranquil air breezing off the sea and pollute your ears with their dinosaur-call-like coughs emanating from deep within their charred lungs, killing themselves with the same voracity that they destroy a positive outlook.

A smile rarely crosses their faces unless it's in response to the sarcastic remark they spit in your direction or when they feel they've one-upped you.

Hypocrisy is a key trait. I already mentioned how they will attack you for being on private land (with permission) they don't own. They will thrash you for having a dog off-leash on a public beach while their dog wanders the same patch of sand. But it's okay for them to be there because they own the land adjacent. "I live the fuck here!" they will exclaim with lousy grammar when you remind them that their pet, who is but a cubit away, is also off-leash. Seeming to forget that the beach is public, they will glare at you and storm off, ranting about calling the cops about some leash law that, even if it exists, is not enforced by any branch of law enforcement.

They will come to your home to tell you what people are saying about you behind your back in some passive-aggressive way to "help" you and show their disapproval for something you were completely unaware of. They will claim they do not gossip while perpetuating the hearsay loop and actively engaging in what they claim to disavow.

They prowl Facebook groups, injecting negative feedback whenever possible. They could contribute something meaningful to the conversation but opt for snarky, unhelpful, and hurtful remarks that fit their fancy just fine. Negative for negativity's sake.

Sit beside one at a local bar or restaurant and express interest in moving to the beautiful location. They will tell you that you shouldn't, that "it's not a place to raise kids," and that it is generally a bad place to move to, in a subtle way to gatekeep you from realizing a dream. Yet, when you ask them how long they have been living or visiting there, they will tell you 10 years! It's apparently a terrible place, but they keep returning or have yet to move away.

They will talk shit about your toddlers for only wearing diapers in record-breaking heat in a beach community. They will tell you to “get a handle on your kids" when you are the only patrons in their open-air establishment. They will make you feel like your children are an embarrassment and that they are a burden in their presence, seemingly forgetting that they have some of their own or at the very least, were once kids themselves.

But probably worst of all, they hide behind the facade of “a good Christian." They stick their snobby, righteous noses into other people's business, criticizing how others choose to live their lives and conduct their businesses. “It's not a good look," they'll say, backhandedly spreading their disdain-filled "impartiality" when no one asked them for their fucking opinion.

My rant is over, but I want to close this out with a bit of verse I've titled,

So Many Few

What do you do with so many few?

Their presence is small, but we hear them all.

If you retort their beck and call

They will stew and lash back at you

"Live and let live?"

"Fuck that!" they say.

"You live my way.”

“Or you’ll regret the light of day.”

The best solution of all

Is not to fall,

Victim to their trolling call.

But instead, turn your head,

Plug your ears

Know that their behaviour just reflects their fears

How have I managed in the last year?

I act as a mirror—no filth gets near,

I reflect the spite right back.

And let them see just how they act

And how things will be.

For my life is for me,

And I live it for only a few:

My wife, my kids, and my dogs, too.