How living in Kyrgyzstan Inspired German Wiebke Anton to Co-create the Expat Couples Summit [Ep 44]

Wiebke Anton is German – from a city that was formerly part of the communist state of East Germany. She’s a PhD in Political Science and her dissertation is on the Discourse of Russia in the European Parliament. But Wiebke deviated from academia into a career as a Mediator-cum-Certified Relationship Coach for Expat Couples. In the following interview, she explains how her heritage inspired her interest in Eastern European & Soviet history and how her skill as a political discourse analyst informed and encouraged her transition into work as a relationship coach, and how living in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan – part of Soviet Union until 1991 – was the motivator and inspiration behind her co-creating the Expat Couples Summit. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Louise: Welcome to Women Who WaIk. I'm Louise Ross, writer and author of Women Who Walk the book, the inspiration for this podcast. And just as I did for the book here, I'll be interviewing and unpacking the journeys of impressive, intrepid women who've made multiple international moves for work, for adventure, for love, for freedom - reminding us that women can do extraordinary things. You can find a transcript, with pictures, to each episode, and my books on my website, LouiseRoss.com.

[00:00:47] Louise: Hello, listeners. Welcome to Episode 44 of Women Who Walk.

[00:00:51] Louise: My guest today is Wiebke Anton.

[00:00:54] Louise: Wiebke is German, in her mid-thirties, and currently living in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan with her husband and two young daughters. LinkedIn had suggested she might be someone I'd like to connect with, as we have mutual contacts. Of course I was curious, as I've not met anyone who lives in Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked country in Central Asia with a fascinating history.

[00:01:21] Louise: In the 19th century, it became part of the Russian Empire, and in 1936 it became a Constituent Republic of the Soviet Union. And in 1991, it declared independence from Moscow thereafter establishing a Democratic government. This and other historical and geographical data I discovered when prior to my interview with Wiebke, I Googled in the effort to inform myself.

[00:01:50] Louise: I had some familiarity with Kyrgyzstan and another 'stan' country, Uzbekistan, as my Episode 8 guest, Diana Driscoll, takes Arts and Culture tours through Central Asia, and as an expert on this part of the world, she shared a lot of rich information when we talked.

[00:02:11] Louise: So listeners, if you'd like to dig a bit deeper on Central Asia, Google, Wikipedia, and Episode 8.

[00:02:20] Louise: Additionally, an upcoming guest will be talking about spending 2022 living and working in Uzbekistan. I hope to have that episode available in late April.

[00:02:32] Louise: Back to Wiebke, noting on her LinkedIn profile that she's a Dr. of Political Science, I was interested to hear what drew her from academia where her dissertation was on the Discourse of Russia in the European Parliament, into a career as a Mediator-cum-Certified Relationship Coach for Expat Couples.

[00:02:56] Louise: Well, in the following interview, she explains just how her skill as a political discourse analyst informed and encouraged her transition into work as a relationship coach, and how living in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan was the motivator and inspiration behind her co-creating the Expat Couples Online Summit.

[00:03:20] Louise: I'll mention that Wiebke uses acronyms in a couple of places in our conversation. The first one at around six-and-a-half minutes when she says, "I was born in Halle, which was part of the GDR." GDR stands for German Democratic Republic..

[00:03:42] Louise: The second is at around 12 minutes when she says, "I went to Brussels for two reasons. I had a research stay there where I talked to a lot of MEPs." MEP stands for Members of the European Parliament.

[00:03:59] Louise: And now onto my interview with Wiebke Anton.

[00:04:15] Louise: Welcome Wiebke. Thank you so much for being a guest on Women Who Walk. Now you're German, but living in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, which, uh, prior to 1991 was part of Soviet Russia. It's also a country in Central Asia, and though listeners of course can't see us, I can see behind you a beautiful tapestry. Central Asia is known for its gorgeous textiles. So Tajikistan is to the south, and Uzbekistan is to the west, and Kazakhstan is to the northwest. Can you set the scene for us? Perhaps give listeners a sense of Bishkek, the cityscape, surrounding landscape.

[00:04:56] Wiebke: China is to the East, if I may add. Very important, because the Silk Road, of course, influenced Kyrgyzstan. Looking out of the window to the south, I see the Tien-Shan Mountains and the Ala-Archa National Park. It's the closest small mountain range, uh, south of Bishkek. And when I look to the window at the north, I see more mountains, but smaller mountains that separate Kyrgyzstan from Kazakhstan. Mostly I see all these mountains from spring to autumn, unfortunately, in the winter it's often not visible at all because we have a lot of air pollution and smog due to hampered air circulation in the city because of unregulated construction. Too many cars, private heating with coal, and also a power plant that has been built too close to the city with a chimney that is too short, so the emissions spread all over the city.

[00:06:00] Wiebke: But now we have 15 degrees. It's spring and I can see the mountains from my bedroom, which is really nice. They look very close and still you need about 90 minutes to get there.

[00:06:13] Louise: Thank you for describing the scene, the landscape. I Googled before we talked to get a sense of what it does look like, and in addition to what I saw online and the way you're describing it, it sounds like Bishkek could be in a bit of a bowl surrounded

[00:06:28] Wiebke: mm-hmm

[00:06:28] Louise: by mountains. So you get this kind of inversion of smog maybe that settles over the city.

[00:06:34] Wiebke: Bishkek is in a flat area, one of the few flat areas in Kyrgyzstan because more than 90% are higher than 2,800 meters. So it's really a mountainous country and Bishkek itself is an interesting mixture of buildings that are new. Also a lot of out worn Soviet architecture, and you will find a very interesting mixture between this ethno-nomads style embroideries, and fabrics and patterns, but also this, um, Soviet brutalism and Islamic elements and capitalism. So here you will find a lot of shops, restaurants, but also street sellers, bazaars, and fancy apartment buildings, fancy restaurants. So it's a very interesting mixture of past and present and future.

[00:07:34] Louise: It sounds like it. I had quite a visual there as you were describing the local culture, which really is this blending of the old Silk Road with contemporary culture, with Soviet culture.

[00:07:47] Louise: As I mentioned at the beginning, you're from Germany and uh, can you tell us a bit about your background, perhaps where you grew up and, and whether there were influencers at home or at school that caused you to want to travel and live abroad?

[00:07:59] Wiebke: I grew up in Halle. It's a medium-sized city, about two hours south of Berlin. In a very normal family. We don't have an international background. We, we are just a standard, boring family, you could say. I would say that my parents, they always encouraged me to travel and especially my mother, she's very curious and explorative. Except for my father who has been to the United States, they never really traveled outside of Europe. But they were always really supportive when I said, oh, I wanna go there. They were always like, yeah, you should do that, but of course, please make sure you get your finances right. So they provided me some basic funding, but I always had to work for my travels, because we are not that abundant, financially abundant family.

[00:08:55] Wiebke: Also a lot of influence came from my teachers. I was lucky to be in a public school where couple of my teachers were really eager to take us as a class to the United States, to Italy, to France, Denmark, Czech Republic, Poland, even in the age of 14 to 17. And I'm so thankful about this because I think it's really influenced, yeah, I would say openness and curiosity or it really nurtured it.

[00:09:26] Wiebke: One of my teachers, she once showed me her pictures from her travels in Vietnam, and it impressed me so much that it basically ended up on my personal list of destinations I want to travel to. And I did this, because the way she talked about it and I saw these pictures of like, this must be such a fascinating place. And yeah, these days it's still one of my favorite places I've ever visited. They really, really influenced me.

[00:09:56] Louise: You had a natural curiosity by the sounds of it, because one could sit in a geography class or a social studies class and hear and learn about other countries, but not be curious about them, but it sounds like you were.

[00:10:10] Wiebke: You have different types of people, right? Some people, they have enough when they read about it and some people just wanna really understand it by seeing it and eating it and feeling it and smelling it, I think I'm one of these people.

[00:10:27] Louise: You're absolutely right. I can identify with that. I might read about someplace or see it online and I think, well, I want to go there. I want to have a personal experience of that place.

[00:10:37] Louise: Going back to the fact that you're in Kyrgyzstan that was, former Soviet Russia, you went onto study political management, mm-hmm, and Eastern European studies. So what drew you to this?

[00:10:51] Wiebke: It's interesting because this question came up quite often through my studies. Like, why did, why do you study this? Why did you choose this geographical focus? There are so many options. Why this? It's still not so easy for me to really pin down why Eastern European studies. But I think that Russia and Eastern Europe and Soviet history and also the Cold War studies, they have fascinated me, because even though I was born in Halle, which was part of the GDR, which was of course different than living in the Soviet Union, I think that understanding the politics and culture and mentality of the Soviet past also helped me to understand my own family and people from Eastern Germany better, if that makes sense. Getting familiar with Soviet and post-Soviet societies, for me personally, is like this puzzle piece to understand part of my own identity and the identity of people around me. And Eastern Europe is so diverse and so magical, I just had this inner drive to explore it further.

[00:12:09] Louise: You say magical, Wiebke. What do you mean? What do you mean by that?

[00:12:13] Wiebke: Magical because I think people in Europe, Western Europe, they probably often don't understand that it's not just one big post-Soviet space. It's the place where a lot of different cultures and languages and traditions prevail. So many different combinations or, yeah, salad bowls or melting pots of traditions and ethnicities mixed together with the influence of the Soviet times creates a very fascinating new mix of culture.

[00:12:57] Louise: Yeah. So again, it's, it's what you talked about initially, which is that it's this blending of cultures that creates this richness and this sort of magical environment.

[00:13:09] Wiebke: Yes. And, and, and Central Asia, it's the same because you have history dating back thousands of years. You have the tradition of nomads. Then you go to Uzbekistan and you have this rich history with these old Silk Road cities and fabrics and food. And it's just so interesting to understand how all this here blended together and the Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan of today, would have not been without the Soviet past. For me, it's fascinating to see how it all came together with its, yeah, downsides, of course, and its advantages. It's still feeding my explorative mind, so to say.

[00:14:01] Louise: Well I guess it was and, and still is because I noticed that you have a PhD on the Discourse of Russia in the European Parliament. Now this sort of takes what you are talking about to a whole other level. It sounds fascinating. Can you talk us through this period in your life when you were a researcher at the University of Munich and how the topic of your dissertation came about.

[00:14:26] Wiebke: When I finished school, I wanted to become a diplomat, and I wanted to work in the foreign service. So my idea was, and this is how I ended up with political science, that I want to study something that includes knowledge about political system, but is also interdisciplinary and gives me this, you know, broader idea of how to address the complex problems of today and the future.

[00:14:53] Wiebke: Through my studies I was very much focused also on negotiations and work of parliaments and NGOs and so on. And after I finished my masters, I ended up in Munich to work as a researcher. And I wanted to bridge what I learned about Eastern Europe and my interest in the EU, European studies. I was always interested in Russia's role for Europe's identity and at the same time when I studied in Munich, the annexation of Crimea happened in 2014. So I think that the topic for my PhD emerged from that. But I have to mention also that when you write a PhD and you pick your topic, it's always this zig-zag development. It's not a linear process that when you start you think, oh, I will write on this topic, and at the end you end up with a totally different topic.

[00:15:52] Wiebke: What I did in my dissertation is that I analyzed the parliamentary debates in the European Parliament about the Europeanness of Ukraine. And it's basically natural fit to the EU and Europe versus Russia's otherness. And I was looking into how the debate was conducted from all political sides and how eventually Russia was either a friend or ally or enemy, depending on how it was narrated, basically.

[00:16:27] Louise: Were you sitting in on these debates in the Parliament?

[00:16:31] Wiebke: I watched most of the debates online because I was in Munich. But I went to Brussels for two reasons. I had a research stay there where I talked to a lot of MEPs and also to the committee that supports the foreign relations committee in the Parliament, for some expert interviews, talk to them about my research and get a second opinion and have this background conversations with these experts. But also my boyfriend at the time, and now my husband, he lived in Brussels, so I traveled a lot back and forth with night buses and trains, so a very busy time.

[00:17:14] Louise: I know you didn't go on to have a career as a diplomat, but were you able to use your studies in your work once you finished.

[00:17:23] Wiebke: Often people ask me like, okay, you are a political scientist or a social scientist. Why are you now a mediator and relationship coach? Like how. It doesn't make sense to me. But for me, really it was very natural development, because as I said, I was always interested in negotiations. At some point I said, okay, I really want to learn the craft of negotiations. So I trained as a mediator. And what I was doing in, in my research was that I always worked at as a discourse analyst, which is nothing more than understanding what people are saying, what they mean, how they create meaning, and how they create their realities.

[00:18:09] Wiebke: If you think about it, relationship coaching, is basically this, plus helping couples to step out of their patterns and showing them alternatives to the behaviors they want to change. Even though the product of my work is different, the way I work is quite similar or it was a natural evolution.

[00:18:32] Louise: I absolutely understand. You're a discourse analyst, and really that is what couples counseling or mediation is all about. Analyzing the conversation between two people and what underlies the discourse of one person versus the other. So yeah, very interesting work. And, and of course you preempted my next question, which is that I saw on LinkedIn that you're a trained mediator and that you work with couples, and I thought, well, how did she get there from her academic background? But that makes sense. On LinkedIn, I also saw that you and your work partner created the Expat Couple Summit. So tell us about that. Why did you create this and, and what has the response been?

[00:19:19] Wiebke: When I moved to Bishkek with my family, that was two years ago, my mediation training was long done, and also my relationship coaching training was done. When we moved here, and we received some training from my husband's employer, I realized that both from a professional and personal perspective, that it definitely lacks an offer for globally mobile couples and their challenges. Many companies take care of their employees and sometimes their families preparing them as best as they can for their assignment.

[00:19:59] Wiebke: But after arriving here and settling down and then looking back to my training, I thought there's nothing about the couple, maybe we talked 60 minutes or 90 minutes during a workshop about the couple dimension and all the challenges that you will most likely experience as a couple when you move together for one career and not for both careers.

[00:20:23] Wiebke: This idea was growing and then our paths crossed, or me and Rhoda's crossed paths in Bishkek and we had a good chemistry and we talked a lot about our work. And one day we sat down and we said, okay, there seems to be nothing out there for expat couples. Okay. So we should pioneer this. And this is why we created this online event for couples in expat relationships. So either couples who move together or who have a long distance relationship abroad or frequent business travelers.

[00:20:58] Wiebke: In this online event, a lot of experts who work with expats, shared their knowledge with some theoretical background and some hands on tips, what you can do, what you can practice, what you can look out for. We had some people from academia who presented their work. This knowledge base with a very positive mindset for couples who want to have a good time abroad and have a good relationship and stabilize their relationship when they move.

[00:21:30] Wiebke: And it was received well, especially from the professional colleagues. So this year we will have a second edition for sure. We will change the format a little bit and also focus more on periods of transition. But we will repeat it definitely.

[00:21:48] Louise: Your working partner, Rhoda, is she also from Germany?

[00:21:52] Wiebke: Rhoda's p arents are British and French, so she has a very interesting and international intercultural family history and her husband is Swiss and she has been in, um, long distance marriages and parenting for longer periods of her life. So she's mentoring families who decide to split location midterm or long-term. This is her field, so we complement each other.

[00:22:25] Louise: How did you meet?

[00:22:26] Wiebke: An acquaintance of mine. He looked through my Facebook profile and he just sent me a message and he said, you should meet Rhoda. She works in the same field. We had this blind date, where we just met in a cafe and talked and we just had this chemistry. And we can discuss a lot of things about our work and of course also our struggles.

[00:22:51] Louise: I wondered because you're also president of Bishkek International Women's Club, so I thought perhaps you'd met Rhoda there. And I'm also curious about where the members are from and perhaps why they're living in Bishkek.

[00:23:05] Wiebke: Rhoda's also a member. So in BIWC, Bishkek International Women's Club, we have about 20% Kyrgyz members, but the rest are all expats who relocated or migrated to Bishkek either for work, for love, for family, or for curiosity. What unites all the members is their international education or intercultural family, or they work for an international company or international organization. All of these women are somehow international in their mindset or life story.

[00:23:43] Louise: You said that there are Kyrgyz women. Are they women, mm-hmm, who've lived outside of Kyrgyzstan and have returned, so they've had this international experience and now they want to interact with other international women?

[00:23:55] Wiebke: Exactly. A couple of them have husbands from abroad or they have studied abroad themselves and they want to stay connected to the international world because they feel they meet like-minded people who have had similar experiences or they work for international organizations, or their husbands, for instance, moved here for work and stayed and so on.

[00:24:21] Louise: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, that makes sense. That's the same as here in Portugal. International Women of Portugal has many members who are Portuguese, who have returned here from living abroad, usually from former Portuguese colonies. And In those environments were socializing with other international women and then returning to Portugal, they're drawn to continue to socialize with other international women, because they've had these international lives. Exactly the same there by the sounds of it.

[00:24:56] Louise: When I first contacted you, you just had some huge fundraising event. What was that all about?

[00:25:01] Wiebke: Bishkek International Women's Club Is first of all it's a social network for connecting women, but we also have fundraising projects each year. We partner with one organization and we fundraise for this specific organization and we have smaller and bigger events, where we try to raise money. And one of the biggest events is our masquerade ball, and this was just three weeks ago. It's an event with about 100 guests and we have live music and an auction and entertainment, food of course, and so on.

[00:25:42] Louise: What were you raising money for?

[00:25:44] Wiebke: A wonderful organization called Uplift Orphans. It's a Kyrgyz organization founded by a German lady, Maren Ernst. She's amazing. She is really this pioneer, strong personality, female personality, that you wish it was your grandmother or Aunt. She founded, Uplift and now it's both in Germany and in Kyrgyzstan.

[00:26:13] Wiebke: And what they're doing here is they help families to not give their children into orphanages because, for instance, they have some kind of disability. So they prevent children from getting institutionalized into the Kyrgyz orphanages when they have a family, but the family might be scared of keeping them at home because they don't know what, what do I do with a disabled child? What do I do with a child that is born 10 weeks early. So they have this help line. And also they have different regional centers where they have support groups for women with disabled children that they can come and connect and help each other.

[00:26:59] Wiebke: They have also a center where they have trainings for local staff to have physiotherapy with disabled children and show these people how to feed disabled children. And what they are doing this year is they want to build their own building, because right now they are renting from the state, but they have to reapply every year for this house, so they are always dependent on the mayor's or governor's grace. So they are fundraising for their own building that is really state of the art.

[00:27:40] Louise: It sounds like an educational program to keep children with disabilities at home, but that the parents need a lot of educating to learn to care for the children and learn perhaps that it is acceptable.

[00:27:55] Wiebke: Absolutely.

[00:27:56] Louise: To, yes, have, have a disabled child. Because I imagine at some point, prior to this kind of support, that perhaps the families felt that there would be prejudice toward families with disabled children.

[00:28:10] Wiebke: Definitely there's a lack of knowledge about what to do. And basically when you get into labor and you are 10 weeks, 12 weeks early, you think your life will end and often these women, they flee and the child just stays in the hospital. So what they're doing is that doctors call and say, okay, there's this lady, she just gave birth, we are concerned that she might just, you know, disappear and the child will stay in the hospital. Can you send someone to talk to her about, okay, your life will not end, probably your child will develop normally and so on. So creating knowledge and information, helping to minimize prejudice.

[00:28:58] Louise: Mm-hmm, wonderful work. Wonderful work. I'm just, again, thinking about Portugal and I'm very aware of seeing parents who have adult disabled children, and they're still caring for them. It seems to me that there isn't that level of prejudice, that children are loved here so much that it doesn't matter if they're healthy or not healthy, they're part of the family and there's something rather beautiful about that, that they're just included. They're taken out, they're taken for a walk, perhaps in a wheelchair. So wonderful work then that, is being done by this organization that the International Women's Club is supporting.

[00:29:37] Louise: So do you see Bishkek as a long-term posting, or is there another country move on the horizon?

[00:29:43] Wiebke: We arrived two years ago and originally it was planned to repatriate to Germany last December. My husband's contract has been extended, but we want to leave this summer, autumn, or at least until the end of this year, mostly because of the air pollution and the impact on our children's health. Especially this winter, we had a lot of smog and if you check the air quality index, Bishkek suddenly became one of the most polluted cities in the world with Lahore and Deli. Always one of the top five most polluted cities. And it really affected our health and also mental health.

[00:30:30] Wiebke: I have to say, when you cannot leave your apartment, because you have to wear a mask, and even if you wear this mask, you should just stay out of the house for 10 minutes and then you're getting sick from it. This is why we want to move somewhere else. And we are currently looking, looking for a destination.

[00:30:52] Louise: Well, it sounds like you've had a really rich experience during the time that you have been there. And understandably, if the air quality is so poor, it's time to move on. So, moving on, um, the Expat Couples Summit, you've got another one coming up this year, and if listeners would like to learn more about the summit and the work that you do, which is Expat Couples Coaching, where can they find you online.

[00:31:21] Wiebke: They can find the Expat Couples Summit, on ExpatCouplesSummit.com. I think you can still log in and see all the material. And if you want to find me, you can find me on LinkedIn, on Instagram, and on my website help4love.com/expats. You will find information in English about my service offers. On LinkedIn, if you look for Wiebke Anton, You will find me.

[00:31:49] Louise: Thank you Wiebke and I, of course, will put links to your social media, LinkedIn, and so on, in the transcript to this episode so that listeners can click through from the transcript. Thank you so much for your time.

[00:32:02] Wiebke: Thank you so much for inviting me. Really very nice talking to you.

[00:32:06] Louise: Thank you for listening today. So you don’t miss future episodes, subscribe on your favorite podcast provider or on my YouTube channel @WomenWhoWalkPodcast. Also, feel free to connect with comments on Instagram @LouiseRossWriter or Writer & Podcaster, Louise Ross on Facebook, or find me on LinkedIn. And finally, if you enjoyed this episode, spread the word and tell your friends.