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January 20’s roundtable.

What fun to convene around the same topic, with a mostly new collection of people. Thanks again to Natalie, Tracey, Sara and Nuno for sharing your amazing stories with us. My favorite was when Natalie was given a baby on a Ghanaian bus “to keep!”

Some people asked when we would do this again. The answer is: continuously! We revolve topics, but stay with the open forum style.

Join our mailing list at OrangutanSwing.com — that’s Design Kompany’s conversation series.

UPDATE: January 17, 2012

All systems go for EXPAT this FRIDAY!

UPDATE: December 28, 2011

We have four awesome speakers lined up for Expat on 20 at Havana. Read more about them below.

The next EXPAT will be at Old Havana.

Find this event on Facebook.

A roundtable about being elsewhere

We are really looking forward to the remix of EXPAT.

EXPAT2 will be at Havana in Durham on January 20, 2012. It happens to coincide with their 1 year anniversary!

Here are our speakers:

Sara LeHoullier was on her way back to Madagascar when I met her at the James Joyce totally randomly. She’s the mysterious “S” in this post, and will share her stories about Africa to-and-fro adventuring. She writes: “Sara LeHoullier is a fledgling travel writer though her scope so far has been limited to the island of Madagascar, where she lived and worked for almost four years. During that time, she taught, traveled, researched, wrote, and ate mountains of rice (along with lots of mystery meat). She now works as a Project Specialist at RTI International; her cubicle is, appropriately, in the International Development Group.”

Natalie Rich just got back from Ghana when we met her at our first Expat roundtable. She’d read about it in the Independent and told us what it was like to be suddenly back in the same part of the world she had been before Africa. She writes: “I first traveled to Ghana in 2001 as a volunteer and taught for 3 months at a rural Junior High school. Since then, I have worked in domestic violence research in Cape Town, South Africa and substance abuse treatment in North Carolina. In 2008, I returned to Ghana as the Health Program Coordinator for the Ghana Health and Education Initiative (GHEI), where I worked with a team of local staff and Community Health Workers to develop and implement health education programs. During my time in West Africa, I traveled throughout Ghana, Togo, Burkina Faso, and Mali. I continued living in Ghana and working with G.H.E.I. until May 2011, when I returned to Chapel Hill to pursue a graduate degree in Public Health. Currently, I am pursuing my masters in Public Health at UNC-CH and working at UNC Counseling and Wellness as a student Alcohol and Drug Intervention Specialist.”

Nuno Gomes is a designer we met recently at his art show at The Carrack Modern Art in Durham. It was awesome to find someone with such varied experiences and perspectives who is now well settled in Chapel Hill with his wife and three children. He writes: “Expat? Immigrant, emigrant, or refugee? Depends on how you look at it. Born in Angola, I have lived in Portugal, Canada, and ended up in the U.S. 10 years ago settling in Carrboro, NC. My movements around the globe have mostly not been by choice, but by necessity. This journey has informed my art and design work in every way. I am currently creative director at a digital marketing agency in Raleigh. I am also working on a project documenting the stories of expat Jamaican musicians in Canada, and continuing to make art from discarded materials and obsolete technologies.”

Tracey Coppedge spent some time living in Japan as well as Italy. We will get to hear her perspective on seeing the world. Perhaps she’ll also enlighten us on how she picked up so many accents, like the Scottish brogue, and what she’s doing now as an actor. She writes: “Tracey Coppedge is a full-time actor and voice over artist. Growing up a Navy brat, her father’s career allowed her travel the globe. During her three years in Japan, she starred in three National Japanese commercials through Aesop Modeling Agency. She is also an active member of “It’s a Mystery” Murder Mystery Theatre based in the Triangle. She received her B.A. at Ohio Northern University with a double major in Theatre and Professional and Organizational Communication. Her internship took her to Tallinn, Estonia where she worked as the Cultural Attaché for the Estonian Center for Dance Information. She was also the Community Development Manager for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. Tracey and her husband Matthew live in Downtown Durham and travel whenever they can.”

Watch this space for updates, pics, and more from our special guests!

UPDATE: July 16, 2011

THANK YOU to those who were interested and to those of you who could join us for EXPAT. It was a fascinating discussion, and we are going to do it AGAIN in the fall. Probably October, after people get settled into their school-begins routines. Want to be involved? Leave a comment below.

DK hosted EXPAT last night in Durham. Below is a reaction.

The mundane and specific jumps to light in the eye of a newcomer: “What is the deal with pimiento cheese in Durham?” “Ziploc bags in Belarus?”

Why?

All journeying begins with an internal boredom—not finding sensual intrigue in the subjects and objects of our everyday routines. But even as we lengthen our roots in a new country, we develop sensors that dull what once confused or delighted—ears that now hear the content of a once-foreign language. The bus women’s dialogues now mercilessly bore.

And again, the eye and ear grow restless. The heart is hungry for new intrigue. It searches the horizon, then clip!—darts fast without thinking towards it. A constant quest for the new. Relationships. Cities. Persons we become.

And so the mechanism that drives the expat to leave is one and selfsame: a lust for change. When the romance of the present loses color, wearies us, we press a new button, hoping presto! for a brand new shade of mystery and allure.

Read more at this post.

UPDATE: June 16

Two speakers!!! Stuart Albert spent a number of years in Japan, in the megalopolis of Tokyo. Tara Connolly took a “Gap Year” after school to travel the world and hit Ireland and Thailand, among other places.

Also!

I went by to suss out what the evening scene would be like, since our Make roundtable was a bit loud and stuff. Here are some pics from the early evening yesterday, it was perfect for a loose, informal discussion about good stuff like being abroad.

Venue announced!

We’ll have this at Mad Hatters in Durham. Come with an open mind, friends welcome. Free. Public.

For extra credit, catch the Bull City Connector down. For even more, wear your favorite hat.

UPDATE: June 9

Now you can RSVP if you’re on Facebook here:

Save the date!

Looking for speakers for Thursday, June 23 discussion on the topic “Expat.”

What does it mean to be from somewhere else? To repatriate? To juxtapose culture?

Join us Thursday, June 23 for a frank and nonlinear discussion that follows on the heels of our first Durham roundtable, Make.

Comments, questions welcome!

What do you think we should discuss?

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