Transcription of personal notes
Canhandula, Antonio
Dar-es-Salaam, 29 April 2023
Seventeen months of experience as a retiree made me decide to share my experience (experience defined as the mistakes of the past that we like to reminisce and chuckle about) with fellow and close colleagues of the same line of business. Because this business of the UN plucks us out of the African reality and we live another level of comfort. The system protects and inures, but we then return to reality on retirement. Then we realize it was dreamland compared with the day-to-day reality of our families, our relatives, our classmates etc.
So
I decided to actively coach with alacrity whoever asks me to.
I do have a few colleagues who want to learn so they can start now adjusting their plans.
I thought I share my experience wider through my site. Please pass on the messages if they make sense to you.
The Article
Personal observations on Preparing for Retirement from the UN
There is no gainsaying that throughout my articles, a few repetitions will be obvious. It is a question of various angles to the same state of grace: retirement. And take it as a state of grace, because many of our colleagues never reached this stage, after contributing, through blood, sweat and tears (literally). And pushing the thought of passing on before retirement, in some cases through deaths in the line of duty (remember the hundreds of UN staff that died in the Gaza Strip during the current Israeli military campaign against the people of Palestine).
Not wanting to be subversive, we need to be aware of the international financial and economic order, where our retirement monies are kept not in our countries, but in financial capitals far from Africa. In most cases, our spouses are not well informed of these dispositions. Meaning that once the contributor is dead, there are spouses that hardly know how to make their reduced rights prevail (read again, reduced rights). Monies then remain dormant in American capitals until they are considered forfeited, benefitting the entire American architecture. And I think we ought to be aware of this, to ensure that we take care of our health to enjoy to the maximum that for which we spent the best part of our youth contributing to.
Message: let us cultivate the courage and culture of sharing with our spouses detailed information on our family assets and investments, retirement entitlements being also an investment.
Now that I am reaching 18 months of retirement experience, let me share a few more thoughts. Sharing is caring for fellow African colleagues going through similar work experiences.
(i) Remain socially relevant to your community: you will have more time to study: During my time with the UN I never stopped trying to take a few distance learning projects that I never completed. Life with the UNHCR has been very hectic, as I am sure many colleagues have a similar experience. After retirement, you have the time to enroll in distance learning, summon the necessary discipline and complete a few courses. I have done three and I am going for more. Why?
Because we still need to be useful to society, for that society to accept us as wise elders, not as irrelevant people who belong to the archives of past historical glory. Candles that have run their usefulness. Having seen retired consultants when I was active, it is my opinion that seeking consultancies back with the United Nations, is frankly not opening wide enough other opportunities outside the United Nations. You can do some free-lance paper translations or get teaching at home. Again, more to be busy and useful than to earn money.
(ii) Cash and assets: My second experience is that after retirement is the period when one needs readily available cash, because the family still looks to us for support and succor. Having houses and plots of land is not the same as having cash. It is never too early to start thinking how you will ensure ready cash to tend to family issues. You do not want to start selling property in retirement to have money to solve family issues. Sooner than you think, there will be no assets to sell. I do see it happening to fellow retirees. An income creating activity is important and perhaps should not be started just when you are retiring. Neither should you wait for your monthly retirement entitlement to solve family issues. Retirement income is for your enjoyment after so many years of toiling and working hard and competing internationally in a system that is already biased and heavy on us.
(iii) Health and lifestyle: My third experience derives from my lifestyle experience while in service. As a result of which nowadays I go to hospital like I was going to the office when I was active. We need to pay early attention to lifestyle, to healthy food, to early detection of ailments. The tradition of going for full exam only when the organization demands it, is no longer enough, particularly now that the market is full of foods of dubious quality. I advise for an early tradition of a full exam every year, even if you have to pay for the extra. It will be money well spent, in retrospective. I am to-day on 5 pills per day, because of non-communicable diseases (NCD) that I could have detected early if I had not waited until HR asked me to go for full medicals. Not to mention the cost of medicines and the dependency on such pills for life. A diabetes pill plus a blood pressure pill a day takes TSH8,700 ($3.7) And perhaps apart from the UN Medical Insurance, you want to already start thinking of reinsurance, meaning, a second local/East African insurance that covers your entire family. No rush, but I leave it here as a thought. And listen to your body. It needs rest, it needs water. Start now choosing healthy foods, there is much cancer diagnosis in Southern and East Africa to-day. And learn something about NCDs. It is important.
(iv) Do not forget friends and neighbours. When you are retired, you will be looking for friends, and they may have been transferred to another part of the country, or life expectancy may have caught up with them. It is very lonely. When I went to Mozambique, I realized I was of the very few old people in my town (Tete). Until I decided to frequent the church, where perhaps I would be seeing more of my old colleagues. And the few I met, came to church also to say goodbye to another friend who had just died. Suddenly you feel you are of the few survivors, and you look into your telephone directory, to find only old UNHCR colleagues who are no longer interested in hearing you, because they have their own much tougher demons to contend with. They are competing in the organization and are focused on themselves and their careers.
Let me conclude by saying that I take it that none of us will retire and go rent a house!!!
Jose
Tete, 19 April 2024
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