Expat lives: Gulf course

©Matilde Gattoni

Richard Bampfylde in the recently revitalized neighbourhood of Mar Mikhael, Beirut

When Richard Bampfylde decided to move to Beirut, he received some amusing responses. “A friend of mine told me that when he was a kid, his mother used to say that his bedroom was as bad as Beirut.” Another friend sent him an email alerting him to the fact that football matches in Lebanon are often poorly attended because sport there, like everything else, is highly politicised.

Bampfylde finds that people often have some sort of predictable reaction to a mention of Beirut. Forty years of intermittent war and near-constant political strife, coupled with the city’s well-documented love of parties and plastic surgery, have lent Beirut an almost mythic quality. But at the Bampfyldes’ dinner table, Beirut was a frequent topic of an entirely different sort. His Greek mother and English father had met and married there in the 1970s. “It was part of our family history,” says Bampfylde. “When I finally got to visit at the end of 2007, I fell in love with the city.”

Bampfylde, 32, was born in Bahrain and spent the first seven years of his life in the Gulf. Later, his parents moved to England, settling in Guildford, Surrey, where Bampfylde lived until he left for university in Leeds. A job landed him back in Bahrain in 2006. “I represented a UK consultancy that wanted to expand its business in the Gulf,” says Bampfylde. “I spent three years developing the business, very much by myself.” Though he made a good salary, he found himself spending most of it on evenings out and trips abroad. “Like a lot of the Gulf guys,” he says, “I used to come to Beirut on holiday.”

Beirut’s reputation as a bastion of liberalism in the Middle East attracts a sizeable tourist population who fly in to shop, eat, and stroll through the city’s scenic streets. “Coming from the Gulf,” says Bampfylde, “you find there’s a lot of freedom in Lebanon. You can express yourself and enjoy ordinary things, like sitting outside drinking a beer or being able to walk outside in the summer.”

Anxious for a change of scenery, Bampfylde knew exactly where he wanted to live next and why. “There’s something about Beirut. It’s a feeling of spontaneity, of opportunity. I feel more able to take risks here,” he says.

That new-found feeling of confidence has translated into a varied and fulfilling experience. Shortly after he moved to Lebanon in 2009, Bampfylde secured a job as a teacher at a local school. He acquired an electric scooter, which he later replaced with a Vespa. And he found a two-bedroom apartment to rent in the historic and recently revitalised neighbourhood of Mar Mikhael in the north-east of the city, now home to an increasing number of upscale bars and boutique businesses.

So far he has no complaints about expat life. “A perfect example of the je ne sais quoi feeling one has in Beirut is the taxi rides you can take here,” says Bampfylde. “If you get on with the taxi driver and have a long chat, he may not even charge you when you get to where you’re going. Nothing is regimented. I like that.”

In June 2010, a friend persuaded Bampfylde to accompany her to the Dbayeh refugee camp on the eastern outskirts of the city. Under the auspices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Dbayeh is home to some 4,000 Christian Palestinians. Bampfylde spent the afternoon as a guest in residents’ homes, eating saj, a traditional Lebanese flatbread, and drinking tea. The experience motivated him to set up an English course for Dbayeh’s refugees. “My friend helped me co-ordinate it, and the first course was that same summer. We’ve run three courses since.” He plans to submit a proposal to get funding to start a permanent English language programme there.

His volunteer work at Dbayeh emboldened Bampfylde to try his hand at what has been his ultimate goal all along: to be his own boss. “The idea for an international plat du jour takeaway came to me on a flight back from Hong Kong,” he says. “But people don’t do takeaway in Beirut. They get delivery.” Since plat du jour turned out to be a logistical challenge given his teaching commitments, to get things rolling he settled on making a British classic one day a week. “I found myself with afternoons off on Fridays, and decided a fish and chips delivery was the thing to do.”

So Bampfylde begins every weekend by dropping off orders of fish and chips, along with complementary bottles of beer, to the neighbourhoods around Gemmayzeh, Hamra, Mar Mikhael and downtown Beirut. He does all the buying and frying himself, which has given his flat a distinct chip shop fragrance.

So far, word of mouth alone has been good for business. “The idea has always been to not use Facebook or any sort of social media,” he says. “If you want fish and chips, call the telephone number. It’s old school. Of course, everyone in Lebanon is on Facebook, but I don’t like in-your-face marketing.”

Despite Lebanon’s capricious political climate, Bampfylde has no intentions of leaving any time soon. With his first hire – a delivery driver – impending, he feels his hard work is starting to pay off and hopes to make his business a full-time one. And Beirut continues to inspire him. “I feel quite confined by social pressures in London where one is expected to choose professions that make them ambassadors of where they come from,” he says. “I’m happy to do that, but in my own way. Beirut has been a lovely place to start again.”

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Buying guide

Pros

●Four distinct seasons

●Lebanese cuisine

●The friendliness of the people, especially the taxi drivers

Cons

● You can’t watch live football matches

● The use of two currencies and the money that is lost in constant exchanges between them

● High cost of living

What you can buy for ...

$150,000 A two-bedroom, 100 sq m apartment in Sin El Fil, a suburb of Beirut

$1m A three-bedroom, 250 sq m apartment in a newly constructed building in Achrafieh