Hi, I’m Tone. Grab your coffee, please, come join me. I’d love to get to know you better.
As soon as I realized the world was bigger than my Stavanger middle class neighborhood, I knew I had to explore. When the other kids played football, I sat alone, mashing flowers I had collected into a paste, just like I’d seen women in some far away village do on TV. I couldn’t wait to get out there.
While some of the early ethnography I read during my first year studying anthropology was fascinating, it was not for me. You can hold it against me if you like, but I don’t love roughing it. A year of fieldwork in the jungle was never going to be for me.
When, in my second year, my professor introduced me to the combination expats/migration studies and the Middle East, I knew I’d found my niche. I spent the following year defending my choice to learn about ‘oil folks’ – but I was adamant. A six month field work among oil industry expats in Oman was just what the world – and I – needed.
I never looked back. My fieldwork in Muscat led to a theses discussing expat partners’ negotiations of social identity in transition. During my fieldwork, I met the guy who is now my husband. I proceeded to spend years negotiating my own social identity in transition, only to find that actually, repatriating was the toughest negotiation of them all.
Along the way, I learned that actually, a crash course in anthropology would be useful for everyone who are in transition, moving from one place to another, navigating cultural norms, values and behaviours that are unfamiliar. I now use my background in anthropology and intercultral training to do just that – I help people navigate cultural transitions.
Get in touch! I’d love to hear from you.
The Other Trail 