On Reverse Culture Shock

I've been meaning to actually sit down and write my feelings about the past year and a half of being home after South Africa. I've avoided it perhaps because I'm afraid of the torrent of what might come pouring out of me. Firstly, I naively thought that returning home after such an odyssey would be a piece of cake. I'd heard from previous exchange students that the re-entry phase would be the hardest, but somehow I didn't get it until it hit me in the face. I suppose I also had the pleasure of coming back to a country that had significantly changed in the time in which I was away with Obama's election and the financial crisis. I could feel it in my bones as I stepped off the plane in the US, the stifling crippling depression of a country slowly sinking from within.

In a sense reverse culture shock is like grieving for a long lost friend. I'd find myself driving to college and I'd suddenly catch a glimpse of someone on the street, hear a voice, listen to a piece of music and I'd have to stop the car as the casacade of tears overtook me. To add to the isolation there has been no one who has been able to relate to this just the silence of my day dreams. Many of my high school friends either had gone away or I had nothing to say to them. I've hated that perhaps the most. That division that gaping divide and knowing that there are simply no words to express. And, most of all knowing I've needed that deep connection now even more than before and not finding it. I've simply floundered around like a slowly drowning animal in memories that have forever passed to the shadows of dreams.

I've dreamed many times in the twilight hours of the night of elephants and sparkling lakes and sun so hot it scorches the soul dry. The dreams I've had about South Africa are the only dreams I've had that have been in blinding colors. The sun and the ocean become one in streaked skies of golds and crimson. My naked feet softly pad the fresh earth as my spirit is torn free.

But this is all the sadness in me the insomnia and being lost in my own mind for long stretches of time. I can't forget to speak about the way my eyes see differently and how I've seen a country in different light. How can I forget my new friends or when I first read Langston Hughes? Sometimes it seems I've lost a connection with myself and with the present around me, but perhaps it's just that I don't recognize the person I wanted to become.

I've come to the conclusion that this is all in the journey. I am beyond grateful for having been given such an extraordinary opportunity to look deeply at the world around me and at myself.