By Susan Bromley
Staff Writer
(Editor’s Note: This is the first of a 2-part story about Justin and Sarah Walker, Brandon High School graduates who are working and raising a family overseas.)
Ortonville most likely seems a tame vacation destination to most, but for Taelyn Walker, seeing the cows at Cook’s Farm Dairy was a walk on the wild side.
Taelyn, 6, has lived in four different countries in her life, including South Africa where she regularly saw giraffes and zebras wandering around and fed an ostrich through her backyard fence. When her parents, Justin and Sarah Walker, brought her and her sister Kaelia, 5, to Ortonville, cows, like the horses and pigs at the Johannesburg Zoo, were a novelty.
“Going to Cook’s was an exotic experience for them,” said Sarah. “Taelyn tried to feed a cow hay and it was munching on her braid and she thought it was so dangerous.”
The Walker children, barely into formal schooling, have already experienced a travel education that most people don’t achieve in a lifetime. Their parents, both 1999 Brandon High School graduates, are working and raising their family overseas.
Justin and Sarah (Pepera) Walker married in 2004. In 2006, they were living in Colorado, with Sarah working her first teaching job, and Justin studying for his doctorate degree, when a friend who was working at a school in China called and told them the school needed a counselor. Justin had not finished his dissertation and he and Sarah weren’t seriously considering the opportunity, but their friend was persistent. The founder of the educational organization flew to Colorado to meet with them and ended up hiring both.
“We thought we could try it out for a little while and see if we liked it,” said Sarah. “This was before owning anything– we were renting and got sick of the town we were in. We loved Colorado, but couldn’t see the mountains where we were. We were on the same page, we both always liked to travel.”
In 2007, they left the United States for a new life in Shenzhen, China, where Justin would work as a counselor at the international school and Sarah would teach high school English for the next two years.
“There were things we absolutely loved about China and things we absolutely hated and nothing in the middle,” laughs Sarah. “I loved the full body massages for an hour and 20 minutes for $4 every week. I liked the ease of living, it was simple. We didn’t know the language and we were in an expatriate bubble.”
They hated the lack of personal space. In public spaces in China, such as the subway or on the bus, people are right up next to each other, touching. Sarah notes that if you leave any kind of gap while standing in a line, people will cut in front of you.
They were disturbed by babies and toddlers without diapers or in crotchless pants defecating and parents simply shaking it off into the street, and they note that China doesn’t have the social supports the U.S. has, lacking shelters for the homeless for example.
The food there was a love/hate relationship for the Walkers. Justin notes they loved the stir-fry, but meat could be oily, fatty, or unidentifiable. On menus, they would often point to whatever pictures were available for what they wanted. Justin recalls that in their first week in China, they went to a local restaurant and pointed to one of five pictures on a menu. The waiter kept pointing at something in the distance and placing his hands on his stomach. Thinking he was making a motion that indicated the menu item was delicious, they nodded and said that was what they wanted. When their order came, the meat was gray, chewy, and they figured out he had been tapping his stomach because the food was pig intestine.
Their apartment was small, their undersized washer and dryer fitting in the kitchen which didn’t have a stove, so they made do with a toaster oven. Justin likened living in China to living poor in New York City and Sarah said they have learned what is important to have and what isn’t and downsized accordingly. “You don’t need a dishwasher when you don’t have 30 dishes,” said Justin. “When you only have a couple bowls and a Walmart knife you have to wash those things every time. That’s in stark contrast to the way we live now, we haven’t washed a dish in five or six years, we have a housekeeper.”
The Walkers didn’t have to learn to speak Chinese fluently as they were in an English speaking school and Justin said in China, everyone wants to learn to speak English. Instead, Justin and Sarah learned to count in Chinese and how to direct a cab, as well as the phrase for ‘too expensive’ so they could haggle when making purchases. They were in southeastern China, on the border of Hong Kong, where English is even more common.
They traveled extensively, and relatively inexpensively, while they lived in China, too, seeing more than a dozen countries in two years including Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore while they were on summer break from school, or on the other various breaks during the school year.
Their close proximity to Hong Kong, with elite hospitals, also helped make them feel comfortable starting their family while living abroad. Taelyn was born in Hong Kong and Sarah loved how the doctors there were more about following her birth plan, in contrast to their daughter Kaelia’s birth 16 months later in Colorado, where doctors were more concerned about following their own wants rather than Sarah’s wishes.
When Taelyn was 4-months-old, the Walker family returned to Colorado so Justin could finish his dissertation. In 2010, he obtained his doctorate and they welcomed their second daughter, Kaelia, in June. They enjoyed living in Colorado Springs and thought perhaps they could stay there for a couple years, but Justin searched for jobs through international education organizations and saw an opening in South Africa. In August 2010 the family relocated there.
“It was South Africa, how can we not apply to South Africa?” asked Justin. “We had done Asia and this school was a step up from the caliber of school in China.”
The salary was better and additionally, the South African international school, like most schools overseas, paid for their housing (often fully furnished), insurance, transportation, and round-trip airfare once a year for the entire family to and from their home of record.
“Everyone wants to live in Berlin or Munich, but they don’t offer the same perks,” said Justin. “They may pay $70,000 or $80,000 per year salary, but they don’t pay accommodations or airfare home. Switzerland or the Netherlands are sought after, but they pay high taxes, and it’s a huge ding into your salary and you don’t see Social Security from it and you’re not eligible for their health insurance plan. Salary in itself is not a clear indicator of a good package.”
He notes that they can’t afford to live in London because the international schools there don’t pay enough to cover the cost of living in that city, nor do they have the benefits. Western Europe in general is harder to save money because of the high costs. He turned down a job offer in Poland because there was no housing perk and the salary was lower than what they received in China. While some expatriates don’t care because they want to live in Paris or another high-priced location, the Walkers are concerned with their retirement, which they are entirely responsible for funding.
So they landed in Johannesburg. The downfall was that segregation still exists in South Africa more than 20 years post-apartheid, much of it due to the limited education for blacks from the apartheid era.
“Now, 20 years later, you are able to get a job no matter what race you are, but without the education, you see more white people in those positions,” said Sarah. “Racism wasn’t anger or hatred, just segregation. You would see a huge line of black people waiting for a taxi, but no white people waiting.”
Justin said he was only white person on the road, running seven or eight miles to work.
“White people don’t walk– you’re the white, entitled, 10 percent minority. There wasn’t redneck bigotry, it was just this underlying current you felt in a political or education discussion. They (whites) just didn’t quite see them (blacks) as equal.”
Aside from the racism still present in the country, the Walkers loved their 4-year stay in South Africa, a country about the size of Texas, with a wide variety of terrain, from mountains, to rain forest, to desert, to beach. They found it to be an ‘outdoorsy’ country, with lots of runners, walkers, hikers, cyclists, and swimmers. The weather was glorious, with more than 330 days of sunshine per year and no humidity. Their summer, from November to March, featured temperatures in the 80s and 90s. Winter, from May to August, had temperatures in the 60s during the daytime and 30s at night. Most buildings were concrete, with no insulation and no furnaces. They used space heaters to warm a room.
The Walkers enjoyed safaris and excellent food and the perks of having a housekeeper. Having household help is expected overseas they said, and obtained at very reasonable prices.
Despite the chilly winter nights and the segregation, they were determined to adapt, and they did.

Next week: Life in Qatar