Friendship in Curaçao: The Bad (Part II)

This is Part II of the series Friendship in Curaçao: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, The Sad.

If you read The Good post, you might be thinking Curaçao is da place, at least for friendship (and if you happen to dislike 90-degree weather year-round).

But there's a flip side one doesn't discover until it's, well, too late.

How many circles do you see?
No, really. No joke. Seriously.

At home, where you grew up or where you've lived for, say, more than five years, you have circles. The circle of the people you knew in college. The circle of people you socialize with at work. A circle of peers. A family circle. A crazy-Friday-nights circle. A circle of people you work out with, or rescue dogs with, or write with, or whatever with--you get my drift. Your social life is compartmentalized.

In Curaçao, that doesn't happen. Or it happens very rarely.

Unless you're a serial killer or a pedophile, chances are your own circles overlap. A lot, a little--it's all good, right? But here they overlap to such extent there's no geometry principle that will support the notion there's more than one circle.

This is an island with around 146,000 people. That's probably the population of your neighborhood. The ex-pat community is even smaller (according to the CIA--they're everywhere, I swear--there's 1.27 migrants for every 1000 locals). And ex-pats have no family, no old friends--not on the island. Unless you're accepted into local communities (more on that in Part III) it follows your social life will revolve around your job: your assistant is also the guy you jog with in the morning, your officemate's wife runs the animal shelter where you volunteer on weekends, your supervisor is the only fan of film noir--besides you--on the island, the IT guy is the party guru who takes you all on Friday rampages.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. By definition, most ex-pats are an open-minded bunch who rarely sweat the small stuff. It makes for pretty easygoing times. The real drawbacks are i) you work with these people, which might cramp your tequila-gurgling, dance-on-the-table style, and ii) if there's someone you really don't like--the chauvinist pig, say, or the pick-a-fight-with-a-shadow drunk--haha, the joke's on you. Because there's no escape.

Unless, of course, you want to go back to the lone ex-pat wolf life.