The Truth Nobody Tells You About Being a Digital Nomad

A few days ago, I was on phone with a client friend.

It was about 3 P.M. my time, a roaster crowed and he was like “Man, where are you!”

You see he lives in the suburbs of Clarksville Tennessee,

Where Roasters Dogs and Cats are strictly regulated by city by-laws

I, on the other hand, are living the life, in sundrenched backwoods of African savannah!

Where Roasters, Cats, Dogs, Snakes, Guinea fowls, Mongoose, an occasional Hyena, and Jackals are perfectly welcome.

As a matter of fact, I keep two Guinea fowls, in my barnyard with a couple of egg-laying chickens, just for the racket they cause.

I chose this life over the comforts of city life. I actually fashioned myself as a Digital Nomad long before, globetrotting, laptop-carrying hippies became the norm of a digital Nomad’s lifestyle.

Being Black and all I wanted a taste of my roots. Africa beckoned and I responded, I bundled my family, wife, kids, and cat, paid a one-way ticket to the boondocks, and hoped to live happily ever after.

Now before thinking of doing what I did, I have to dampen your enthusiasm — the happily ever after hasn’t happened, not just yet. We are happy but we can’t say it’s for ‘ever after.’

The Cultural Shock

For starters, we had to face hilarious cultural shock, — shopping and transport hazards. The locals who have no clue of our ‘Americaness’ address us in their local language, but when we respond and sound White, I can’t tell you the number of times we have drawn uncomprehending looks.

It was quite unnerving at first, especially if they couldn’t communicate back in passable English.

My ten-year-old son and five-year-old daughter got the brunt of our digital displacement, — students unwilling to embrace their ‘foreignness’ yet perceiving them as black played ‘a them versus us’ tackle.

We had to change schools, thrice, just to get a friendlier foreign embracing environment.

But something magical came with this digital nomadism. An incomprehensible serenity, a disconnect from everything familiar, from family and from friends.

The Silent Phone

The phone literary went silent, occasionally interrupted by a staccato of client zoom calls and sporadic conversations with family members and friends. It’s a great relief, to my writing spirit.

Life is actually comfortable, a $500 rent bill has afforded us a suburban-styled house complete with outside parking, a lawn, a Chicken barnyard, a small passion fruit orchard, and a sizeable Kitchen Garden, where I frolic experimenting with growing broccoli, lettuce, cucumbers and bell pepper, uncommon vegetables in this part of the world.

Something else, the mornings are exquisite, the roaster rouses the neighborhood with air-splitting crowing at 3 am, then lets you sleep in for two more hours, before shattering the morning calm with an insistent wake-up cock-a-doodle-doo.

The Chirping Birds

The birds join in and a symphony of cacophonic bird chirping, crooning, chirruping tweeting, and twiddling ensues. It’s the most beautiful sound anyone can wake up to.

And because I feed and give them water, some birds have changed residence and now perch in the neighborhood. Occasionally a rare colorful bird comes flapping on my windowsill; it’s such breathtaking moments that keep us grounded in our newfound nature-loving life. I wouldn’t trade this beauty for anything else.

The Lonely Ranger

Except that it can get lonely. Quite lonely. Considering that I can’t stroll for a chat with my next-door neighbor, who isn’t next door anyway as a two-meter perimeter wall separates our houses, neither can I hail a stranger walking in the neighborhood good ol’ ‘howdy’

The neighbors are friendly, can’t say they aren’t, but cultural, and language barriers keep us bound within the confines of our personal spaces.

I have had to learn the art of soliloquizing just to hear familiar sounds, my own voice, especially when I’m on my evening walks, on unpaved dusty village paths.

The walks are not just calming, but stirring, the red ball of the setting African sun with a hue of magenta, on a fiery orange background takes my breath away, every time.

Playing With Critters

The kids too have had a wild share of nature discovering escapades, strange critters and creatures slithering or scampering in the backyard, hunted down by my five-year-old, who seems to take pleasure chasing down defenseless, sometimes colorful bugs.

The Relief of Modernity

But before thinking, we are cut off from civilization. No, we aren’t, we occasionally take a furlough, to eat KFC chicken, and seep Java coffee. A 20-minute drive to town at an Ultra-modern shopping mall, where brisket and sirloin steak and Kentucky chicken breasts compete for freezer space.

The internet, a prerequisite to a romantic nomadic life is relatively stable albeit a little costlier for premium broadband. It’s not fiber optic, but a powerful wireless router streams Netflix, downloads YouTube videos, holds stable Zoom calls, and of course, helps me write online.

Become a Digital Nomad

Do you think you have what it takes to become a Digital Nomad?

This life is loads of fun despite heartaches, headaches, the constant hustle to stay ahead of bills, the need to work while thinking you are on holiday, and the adoption of foreign cuisines. I wouldn’t exchange it for the glamour of city life.

This Article was first Published Here: The Desire for a Digital Nomad life and the Reality of Displacement