The day we returned to the States, we were elated. This was partly due to the fact that we had been upgraded to business class on our return flight unexpectedly and for free. We walked off the plane having spent nine glorious hours stretching out on full-length beds, eating fancy cheeses and strawberries. It was the first time I’d ever wished a flight were twice as long.
But we were in the States, and getting off the plane had its own rewards. English was everywhere. The bathrooms were clean and automated. The lines — my god, people stood in real lines, not in pushing, shoulder-to-shoulder human globs. When we pulled into M’s parents’ middle-class subdivision in the suburbs, my eyes were wide. I’d driven these streets countless times, but I had never seen the opulence of the homes, the greenness of the lawns, the luxury of the flower beds. A bedroom and bike for each child? How much must it cost to run those sprinklers?
It was simultaneously familiar and foreign, thrilling and disgusting.
* * *
We spent the next several days in that suburb, waiting for our rental to open up in the city. We ran errands to Target and FedEx and various other stores along the endless strips of highway that bleed one suburb into another. Each traffic light robotically hands lines of cars to the next traffic light and the next. No matter how many cars turn off for the Wal-Mart or the Starbucks or the BP station, the road remains full.
I figured reverse culture shock was the initial weirdness we felt when we drove into the suburbs, with their mega churches and strip malls and the seeming disconnectedness of all the people who roam them. We couldn’t help but contrast them with the images that were fresh in our minds — and, truthfully, we’ve always found those environments to be weird and uncomfortable. A few weeks later, safely ensconced in our new city life, I figured that weirdness was behind us.
I’m sure you know where this is going.
* * *
There’s a theory of learning called transformative learning. The idea is that when someone confronts “disorienting dilemmas” that challenge their assumptions and expectations, they examine those things critically, eventually reforming their beliefs and coming to a different understanding of the self. In other words, you experience something that shakes your world view, and it changes you.
That’s a theory? It sounds like common sense. A death, a divorce, exposure to a new culture, a relationship with a new person — it seems like life is pretty much a series of disorienting dilemmas for anyone with a modicum of self-awareness.
I have realized that for our year in Mozambique, everything we experienced every day was a kind of disorienting dilemma. Truly everything, because everything was underpinned by our very presence there, which itself was based on a dilemma: Are we improving lives? Is any of this stuff working? If we’re driving up the cost of housing and goods such that locals are priced out of the market, does our presence cause a net harm?
* * *
Helena arrives in the morning to begin her day.
Is it possible for our interactions to transcend our differences? Will I ever feel comfortable having a maid here? What is she thinking when I throw out the moldy bread and pay $7 for a half-pound of strawberries, or when I come home from yet another weekend in South Africa with shopping bags weighing down my arms? We halved her hours and doubled her pay; does she know the gesture comes from a place of sincerity? Is it enough to help her save some money, or are we setting her up for dire straits and an unsustainable standard of living when we leave?
* * *
The doorman responds to my bom día! with a look of naked contempt. Every time, for a year.
Have I insulted him? Am I behaving too white or too upper class or too American or too colonial or too something else that I am not even aware of? Do I keep trying to be nice or can I start ignoring him? If it is my job to be a goodwill ambassador for my country everywhere I go, can I claim the occasional vacation day?
* * *
The children, the elderly, the disabled ask for money everywhere.
Do we give money to everyone, all the time? Of course not. How do we choose?
The children are so thin. But if we give them money, are we encouraging them to stay out of school? But many of these kids live on the street. How is school relevant to their lives? And how blinded by Western self-help bullshit would we have to be to say, “you’re starving? But you should be in school, young man! School is the only way to break this cycle!”
And there’s Raul and others like him. Raul looks like he’s our age and he’s missing a leg and he works our street corner like it’s a scheduled job, six days a week, dawn to dusk. Nobody will ever hire him, he probably doesn’t stand a chance. And the old women who stand on that corner are, well, old. There’s no social safety net in this country. Does anybody take care of them? Does anybody take advantage of them? One woman on that corner is both old and disabled. Should we give the bulk of our handouts to her?
Who gets our handouts? How can we even ask — let alone answer — such a question?
* * *
I awake in the morning, grouchy that the cable is out, or the elevator is out, or the night club was going all night, or the greenish-yellow water from the tap is making my hair oddly crunchy and causing my skin to break out. Or the power keeps cutting, and I need power so I can make it to a conference call with a client later this afternoon.
Are these really my biggest problems?
Yes, actually. It seems they are.
* * *
An hour after I order, the waiter brings the wrong dish.
It’s 90 degrees. Humid. The city stinks of rotting trash. I slept badly the night before.
He shrugs when I tell him it’s the wrong dish. He doesn’t apologize or offer to fix it or offer to discount our check. I nibble, as I have on so many occasions when the order hasn’t matched the delivery.
How dare I not eat food that is perfectly good food when, after all, food is what I need and what so few have?
Wait a second, this is a restaurant frequented by foreigners. I am not helping him to provide better service and get better tips if I don’t tell him.
This is not good service, I say. When a customer tells you that something isn’t right, you don’t say oh well and walk away. Good service is saying, I’m sorry, I can fix your order for you. Instead, you act like you don’t care and I must pay for food I didn’t ask for.
Is my Portuguese good enough for this?
Okay, he shrugs. But he doesn’t offer to fix anything. For the first time in my life, I do not leave a tip.
And as I am walking away, I think, did I really just not give him a tip?
* * *
I get food poisoning.
(Different restaurant.)
I pay $200 for a quick visit to the private Swedish clinic where Swedish doctors speak English, are wonderfully kind, and study my symptoms for 30 minutes. They confer with each other while I am in the room. They tell funny stories. They spend nearly an hour with me, not because my case is complicated but because it’s pleasant to visit. They give me medication.
In the meantime, Helena is telling me that I will get better if I stop drinking so much water and stop eating bananas — two suggestions that are exactly opposite the truth. False ideas that are, quite literally, killing thousands of children in Africa every day.
That’s not right, I tell her, I need to replace the water I have lost. I don’t know the Portuguese word for hydration.
She shrugs politely and shakes her head a little. She won’t believe me and my Western medicine anyway, so I decide not to push it. My ideas must sound to her like her ideas sound to me. Just the same, I leave her with packets of rehydration salts at our last goodbye with explicit instructions for when and how to use them.
* * *
We are out with Mozambican friends. It is night, and the mosquitoes are everywhere. I stink of mosquito repellent and am hyperaware of the exposed skin on my ankles and feet, my neck and hands.
Don’t worry, our friends tell me. You are pregnant, and pregnant women have special immunity to mosquitoes. Plus, it’s nighttime, and the mosquitoes that cause malaria do not bite at nighttime. Don’t worry!
I open my mouth. I don’t know what to say. I am hoping for a punchline.
According to the World Health Organization and the CDC and the NIH, children and pregnant women are at the most risk of dying of malaria. In other words, according to the facts. It is also scientific fact that the anopheles mosquito, the one that transmits malaria, is most active at night. These are indisputable facts that are the cornerstone of every prevention campaign. It’s why NGOs work so hard to create a future when everyone in an endemic area will sleep under a mosquito net and use it properly. It’s why those campaigns have actually worked in places like South America.
Facts! I say, trying to drive home my point.
Hmmm… I don’t think so, they say.
No no no, this is not a case of what you think or I think. This is a case of facts. Scientifically proven facts! Science! You know?
About half our friends present that night have had malaria. One is recovering from the highly dangerous, and often deadly, cerebral malaria. He is 20 pounds lighter than he was three months ago.
* * *
We are cruising down an embassy-lined street when we see a child sprawled unnaturally on the wide sidewalk. This is not a place to sleep.
That doesn’t look right, I say. Turn around.
We go around the block and come back. We put on the hazard lights and drive partially onto the sidewalk so speeding cars won’t hit us.
I go to him and try to wake him. His fingers have loosened their grasp on an empty bag of Samba chips, which lies maybe six inches from his open hand. Crumbs speckle his face.
Amigo! I say. Tudo bem?
He doesn’t move or open his eyes. I touch his arm, give it a little shake, speak louder. His eyes flutter and again seal shut.
What’s wrong? I ask. No response. I cast a worried look back at M in the car.
Are you OK? I shout at the kid. The slightest nod. Are you sleeping? Are you just tired? The slightest nod, again. His mouth is slightly open.
Do you need help? No. Are you sure?
I return to the car. We do another loop to check on him again because I can’t shake the feeling that I should do… something. After we loop around, he is no longer there.
I keep looking back over my shoulder as we drive away. We are headed to meet our friends for lunch by the gleaming pool overlooking the Indian Ocean at the Southern Sun hotel.
* * *
The girl. The girl the girl the girl.
Why? How? Why? Still.
* * *
So here we are. We’re back in the States, which I guess is about as close as we can come to a definition of “home.” And now I realize that reverse culture shock is real and lonely, and working through it is a longer and slower process than I anticipated.
In the weeks immediately following our return, exactly one person asked us about our time in Mozambique. One. I had already shared many thoughts and stories and posts with many people over the year, so I don’t want people reading this post to think I’m criticizing them for not grilling me about our experience. I’m talking about people we hadn’t seen or talked to in all that time. They didn’t ask. I guess they didn’t wonder. I don’t want anyone to think that we should lead group discussions at dinner parties, but I can’t imagine not being curious enough to ask someone, “what was it like?”
But what they can’t know is the same thing I couldn’t have known a year ago: just how much our time as expats — constantly faced with disorienting dilemmas to which there is no simple solution — would permanently change us.
On more than one occasion, someone said something like, “Wow, I bet you’re glad that’s over.” But they hadn’t asked, and we hadn’t told them, about any of it yet; the statement was their conversation starter and ender, all in one. Glad that’s over. What is that, exactly? What do they think is over?
The funny thing, of course, is that they were right. The funnier thing is that they were right for all the wrong reasons.
* * *
Reverse culture shock is understanding that we have changed, and although we embrace this change, it has in some ways further isolated us. It’s also the intense discomfort of comfort, and then, rather quickly, the comfort of comfort. Some days I feel utter delight at and appreciation for all of the comforts that surround me. Other days I take them entirely for granted.
Still, I miss our friends. I miss the sight of the South African Lowveld. I miss the sense that my brain is on fire from all the learning. As obvious outsiders, we were free to observe, explore, and learn — my most comfortable mode. Here, the sense of foreignness I feel isn’t evident to others, which somehow only intensifies it.
Maybe for some people, reverse culture shock solidifies, clarifies. But for me, it’s the continuation of a process in which greyness continues pervading anything that had remained black or white. Certainty has made itself scarcer.
* * *
