I feel as though I owe a blog post to everyone who has
followed me for the past four months. So
here is an explanation of what happened:
In October I accepted a position with EF (English First)
Indonesia to teach English in an EF school for adults. I was very excited because EF has a mission
to carry education to the world, a mission that I am very much motivated with.
EF let me know that they were arranging my visa and I made
travel arrangements, expatriation arrangements, and got all my papers in order. I rehomed all of my furniture, sold many of
my possessions, including my vehicle, and quit my employment. I bought a new wardrobe based on the dress
code that EF emailed to me. In all, I
invested close to $10,000 in purchases and losses (my car was the big loss).
Just as I was beginning my travel, EF sent me an email to
let me know that my teaching visa would not be ready, but that they had
arranged for a business visa so that I could enter Indonesia. On a business visa, I could attend meetings,
orientations, and trainings, but I could not teach, have a contract, or receive
a salary. EF let me know that they were
working on my teaching visa and that I should expect to receive it in 4 to 6
weeks. In the meantime, I would still
receive my salary. Upon my arrival, EF
presented me with a contract to sign.
Although I was not teaching to violate my business visa, I
was still scheduled to work 5 days a week and asked to produce lessons after my
training was complete. I had the choice
to work remotely or at the school, and wanting to look diligent, I opted to
work at the school. I later opted to
work half at the school and half remotely, and finally completely remotely, but
I will get to that below.
Asian custom is to avoid delivering bad news, so rather than
give someone disappointing information, they will simply not communicate at
all, or give ambiguous answers. With us,
they continued to say “4 to 6 weeks” for our visas, no matter how unrealistic
that timeframe was. Three months into my
contract, I was again told “4 to 6 weeks” and at that point I started
aggressively searching for employment elsewhere.
EF told us to lie to immigration officials, should we be
questioned, on numerous occasions. Lying
to a government official, especially in a foreign country with a biased legal
system made me very uncomfortable. We
asked the possible repercussions should we be discovered in a lie, but the
question was evaded.
Some of the other teachers were stopped by immigration
officers at their apartment complexes and questioned. I was stopped by my neighborhood policeman
once, but I just played very stupid, asking him a lot of questions about
himself and then buying him dinner. I was
lucky. We were all questioned at the
airport on visa runs (leaving the country every 60 days is a requirement on a
business visa), and on my way back from Bangkok, I was held for about 15
minutes.
If I was caught violating the terms of my business visa, I
could have faced up to 5 years in Indonesian prison and/or deportation.
The worst part of this whole process was the fact that EF
knew what they were doing, or asking us to do.
Five days before I boarded a plane to expatriate, two teachers at one of
the schools were caught teaching on a business visa by an immigration search. The teachers were detained and had to leave
the country for a week. Four days later,
and only upon the insistence of one of the deported teachers, EF informed my
school that the teachers on a business visa could no longer teach. The company had planned to let us continue
teaching. Two months into my contract,
we learned that preparing lessons and attending social activities were not
allowed on a business visa, so we stopped doing that as well, even though the
company didn’t seem too happy about this.
Once, while I was still going to the school every day, I received a text
message instructing me not to come to work because immigration was at the
school. This was when I began to work
remotely.
Thus began the waiting game.
I spent my days sitting in my 9’x9’ kost room (which was all white, down
to the bed comforter), lovingly referred to as my sensory deprivation
tank. I binged on tv series, read books,
and made myself walk to the gym at least 4 times a week. Not working was very hard on me and I found
myself becoming depressed.
For the first two months my salary receipt read “salary,”
but after pointing out to EF that we were not allowed to receive a salary and
questioning whether immigration could use the receipts against us, I received a
receipt marked “allowance” and one marked “reimbursement.”
A week before I fled the country, my supervisor attended a
meeting where an upper management employee said that our contracts were no
longer valid. Since my contract was the
only thing guaranteeing my monthly salary, this was a final straw, even though
I had already accepted a new position in the US.
So, that’s why I’m home.
In short, not working was slowly killing me, I was violating my business
visa by receiving a salary and having a contract, and I could face serious
consequences should I be caught. My time
in Asia was not a total loss, though. I
gained some new skills, saw some amazing things, and had a great experience (minus
my employer). I will miss many things
about Jakarta, cold showers, rats, and bugs aside.
