Employment

vicshere says on Jun 10, 2004, 11:16:

NOT WORKING well truthfully with a small draw on my RRSP which I don't pay any Canadian tax on I can live all year....but I got to find something to do this is getting boring.....thanks god my wife keeps me busy all day wink wink nudge nudge for about 500 US a month you can live pretty good in a strato 3 that should cover food rent and utilities....500 bucks a month doesn't cover 1/4 of the rent back home let alone food and stuff.....happy in Colombia Vic

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Bquilla says on Jun 10, 2004, 12:55:

Thanks Vic That is my biggest worry...not having enough to do. I do enjoy time with my wife and love the wink wink nudge nudge, however, I know myself well enough to know that after about 6 months of the "fun stuff" my mind is going to hunger for some mental stimulation or physical stimulation for that matter. Have you done any research on employment, talked to local business people? How accommodating do they appear to the notion of hiring a gringo?

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vicshere says on Jun 10, 2004, 16:00:

Wild wild west Well as far as a business its wide open baby. Think of Colombia as the wild wild west of business. The business you open is dependant on the money you have. The business have so few restrictions in all areas nothing compared to say the US or Canada. business killers in the US are permits licenses and permission from every bureaucrat you can imagine. here its all very easy to do register you business at the center for commerce and register at the DIAN and at the City. probably do it all in one day if you start early. You can make money on buying and renting apartment....you can make money selling gum drops on the street. Now the secret is that a business will make you money so you can have a good life here. But you wouldn't be making money like you would make back home. For example if you making say 2,000,000 profit here you can live very well but when you convert that to US$ then all of a sudden you have 800 US$. so if you want to travel using Colombian currency this wouldn't go very far. So either have a whopping good business ( and there is many of those here where the owner of the business lives in Miami all year round...by the way Colombian love Miami) or just think of making money to live here very comfortably. Next month I should be opening my fast food business finally hamburgers and hotdogs. so I will let you know how it is 4 months down the road. That's it for now Vic

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Roncita says on Jun 11, 2004, 06:03:

one expat's experiences of working in Colombia I'm British and I lived in Medellin with my paisa fiance (who is now my husband) for 2 years, returning to London last September. I'm a journalist and I found it incredibly difficult to find a job. When I first went (November 2001) I was on a year-long student visa, so I spent the first 5 months or so doing a Spanish course at one of the universities. Only 6 hours a week, but it helped pass the time and I also met some other foreigners (although not many in those days!).

After that i worked at the newspaper, El Colombiano, unpaid, for 6 weeks. I tried to get a job there but they refused, saying I wasn't Colombian. Well, not much I could do about that and I didn't want to get married just for a visa. During all this time I was giving private English conversation classes to various people through my partner's university where he works. So I earned some pocket money through that.

A few months on I got some work from the English department at the university - correcting English texts etc and translating Spanish articles that i could do at home on the computer. But, I still didn't have a proper job and was getting very bored.

Around that time the university decided they wanted me to run a course teaching scientists how to write academic articles in English, and be a proper, salaried and taxed, part-time employee of the university. But to do this I had to get a work visa, and I couldn't change my visa status within Colombia even though I went to the Foreign Affairs place in Bogota and practically begged them. They said I had to leave the country - but as I was earning next to nothing and we were both living on my partner's salary, I couldn't afford to. But I was going home to the UK that December (I applied to change my visa in September). So, I had to wait another 3 months, still doing the odd bit of teaching/translating etc before I could come back to London and get the work visa.

But it doesn't finish there. OK so I got the work visa in London and returned to Colombia the following March. Once there I got stuck in with the new job, teaching the scientists how to write articles. I started off with about 8 students, but one by one they all dropped out until I was left with just two - one of whom was my boss, and the other created the job for me. The reason for it was that they just couldn't, or didn't want to, find the time. I even went back to El Colombiano to ask them again to give me a job. The editor decided I could have a whole page teaching English every week - with articles in English, exercises, grammar and vocab etc. It was a good idea, but he failed to turn up for any subsequent meetings we had scheduled, so I decided to forget it. I was worth more than being treated like a Nobody.

In September last year, I had finally had enough, so I decided to come home. I had to leave my partner as he has a permanent job in the university there, but he came to London in December and stayed here till last week, during which time we got married here. He is coming back in January. I got a job in journalism in London within 2 months of coming back and have no immediate plans to return to Colombia to live, but I do miss it (despite everything) and I want to go back for a month's holiday in late August.

I found that the only job I could have done, and the only one anyone really found for me to do, was to teach English. I even phoned up the multinational and national companies in Medellin to ask if I could do PR or translating work for them or similar, and they only ever offered me teaching work. I just didn't want to teach English full-time.

Perhaps I had a particularly negative experience, but after battling it out for 2 years I think I gave it my best shot.

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