LEAVING ESTELÍ
As you can imagine, saying good-bye and moving out of the neighborhood we called home for the year was bittersweet. The closer we got to departing, the more the excitement to see friends and family in the States mounted. The kids fantasized about whom they would call and talk to first, and plotted what little trinket gifts they wanted to purchase for specific people while we traveled those last few days. I too, would get excited thinking about seeing my good friends, (a group of people I fondly refer to as “my village”). I had SO missed their daily conversation and support, so thinking about having them back in my life on a regular basis made me very excited. And yet, having to leave our newly developed friendships was hard and sad. The last two weeks were filled with “despedidas” (good-bye parties) both in large groups like at the girls school and in more private settings, like me and my friend Indira getting together over coffee to share a final conversation.
A particularly happy/sad despedida took place at the paper factory with Las Mujeres Ambientalistas, the women’s project I had worked with for the past six months. I have stated in previous blogs that this group of women are very poor. They don’t have money for extras. So when we (the whole family) showed up for our despedida and the women had purchased juice and cookies, and had made and bought good-bye gifts for us all, I was particularly touched. Each woman, and some of their children (who I had also gotten to know), gave me gifts and shared publicly how much they appreciated and enjoyed my participation in their project. I, of course, had to remind them that the benefits and pleasure were VERY mutual, and indeed, I felt (and still feel) that despite their generous gratitude for all that they perceived I did for them, I think I got WAY more out of the relationships and experiences (albeit in ways much more intangible and difficult to describe with mere words.)
Our girls also had a very special good-bye party offered to them at school. The whole school halted studies for an entire afternoon to celebrate with special food, parting gifts, banners wishing us a safe travel home, and piñatas made to resemble Jordan and Devyn. (I tried not to think to hard about the concept that the point of the piñata is to whack the hell out of it. ;-) I have always found piñatas made to resemble human beings somewhat disconcerting.)
These are from the despedida (good-bye party) at the girls school
This one is of our good-bye to the neighbors whom Jordan and Devyn played with regularly
In our final hours with all the good-bye parties behind us, we completed the arduous chore of moving out of the house and delivering all the stuff we could not or did not want to take home with us to peoples’ homes. This was no simple task, as we had no car (we had not had a car for the whole year) and thus had to schlep some pretty hefty stuff for several blocks. Not the least of which was the big tub of worms I had told you about in my first couple of blog posts. Anyway, after all the packing and the cleaning, we were finally ready to catch a taxi that could fit all our bags and head to the bus station where we would then head to Managua (the capital) and meet our friend with a truck—so we could dump our stuff at his place while we continued to travel for the next to weeks.
The overwhelming emotion we all felt driving out of Estelí was one of accomplishment. Michael and I looked at each other and gave “high fives,” saying, “We did it!” We lived a year in Nicaragua and thrived. The whole experience was a huge success. Each of us reached personal goals we had set out to achieve and some we had not even imagined. At the end of the day, after all the challenges physically, emotionally and intellectually, we can say with utter enthusiasm, it was worth all the effort!
Once we dropped our luggage at a friend’s house, we packed one backpack and set off to see some of the more remote beaches of Nicaragua. This turned out to be a fabulous way to end our sabbatical year. We traveled high and low, via “chicken bus,” taxi, and on foot, to some of the more remote beaches, and it was worth all the effort it took to try and get there. I have never seen more beautiful beaches, and, (basically) to have them all to ourselves was . . . well . . . let me say . . . therapeutic. Our accommodations were, of course, rustic because these were not your typical touristy areas, but the alone time the trip afforded us as a family allowed us to debrief our year of experiences and prepare our hearts and minds for re-entry into the States.
Some of my favorite photos of our travels the two weeks prior to returning to the States
Would you believe me if I said, it was actually more beautiful than this?
Devyn preparing herself mentally for another ride on a chicken bus ;-)
NOW WE ARE HOME
Back in our “little piece of the pie” home in U.S. we were greeted with many heart warming “WELCOME HOME” signs both on the interior and exterior walls of the house. Once friends found out we were back in country we were given many generous welcome home offerings. We were showered with many generous gifts ranging from being picked up at the airport in our own car, to bringing us coffee and coffee cake the morning after we landed. There were fresh cut flowers in the house, veggies planted in the garden bed out back, kid-sitting for a while we unpacked, and more. All these gifts were above and beyond our homecoming expectations. It felt so good to be missed. We really did feel “home,” not so much in the sense of our location, but instead with respect to where our “people” are. To all of you who were a part of this “little village” of do-gooders (you know who you are), we are so grateful and so fortunate to call you friends. Thank you! Thank you!
AS LIFE CONTINUES
Many people, (many of you readers, in fact) have asked us if we are experiencing “reverse culture shock” since we have returned to the U.S. As you can imagine, our experiences of culture shock are as varied as each of our personalities. Here you will be getting my particular slant on things, but many of them, I think, could be generalized to us all.
I am now realizing (since I have let so much time go between postings) that “reverse culture shock” comes in phases. I don’t know exactly what phase I am in, but I do recognize that my reactions to things now are different than in the beginning months of our return, and as time continues to pass different reflections and challenging aspects surface.
The answer I give to most people who ask the culture shock question is “yes” but to explain all the nuances is complicated and the experience is fluid and changes over time. Thus, the following are a few musings I have had over the past few months on my/our experiences of “reverse culture shock”.
In many ways falling back into our American lives is surprisingly easy. For example driving a car is . . . just as the saying goes, like riding a bike—you don’t forget how—even if you don’t do it for a year. However, getting on Interstate 80’s five lanes of freeway, where everyone is going 75-80 (or more) miles per hour is another thing all together. It wasn’t so much that I forgot how, as much as I wasn’t emotionally prepared. Whoa! I think were the words I uttered. Even now, after several weeks later, with many freeway experiences behind me, I am still amazed that the system works as functionally as it does, and at such high speeds.
I keep having similar experiences (which I have now coined, the “ooh aah” culture shock response) when I go into a big store with literally hundreds of choices for things to buy, or a huge building, or business office, or even drive around my neighborhood. Everything looks so shinning and new. At one point I said to Michael, “It seems like everyone painted their house while we were gone.” The roads are so nicely paved, the buildings have new paint, there is no garbage lying all over the ground, and I am impressed. I guess what I am experiencing as “reverse culture shock” is a wowed reaction to the contrast of the two different worlds. The immensity and tidiness of it the U.S. leaves me in awe and wonder. One day as we pulled onto the I-80 freeway gaining speed (so as not to get pummeled by the speeding traffic already on the road), Jordan said from the back seat, “Wow! This place is big.” So I guess I am not the only one noticing. The immensity also leaves me feeling overwhelmed, and sometimes lagging behind. I had to hesitate at the checkout counter, trying to remember how to operate the do-it-yourself credit card machine. I am getting the hang of it now, but the feeling of being two steps behind everyone else is a reoccurring theme.
I also feel ambivalent about all the “fanciness” of our Western culture. On the one hand, it is impressive, functional, efficient and great, but on the other hand, it also speaks to what is NOT present when efficiency, tidiness and bigness are the priorities. There is a price to be paid for all these things. An emotional tax if you will that’s hard to describe, but it has something to do with expectation, social pressure and generally being wound to tightly. I feel it most when I shop. I get this glazed-over, overwhelmed feeling when trying to choose an over the counter cold medicine from out of hundreds of choices. (I must have that “I am lost”/ “deer in the head lights look” on my face when I go shopping because clerks keep asking me if I need help with something. I don’t remember the customer service being all that good before we left.) In Nicaragua, if you went to the pharmacy you stepped up to counter, told the clerk you needed something for a cough, and she handed you the one type of medicine they had for that ailment. Fewer options, yes, but a lot less complicated. However, despite my feeling overwhelmed while shopping, I like and appreciate many of the aspects of the bigness, the tidiness, and the efficiency in other areas of our culture. For example, I like how clean our pediatrician’s office is, and how everyone (generally) obeys the streets signs and traffic laws. More than anything, I think the culture shock presents itself in how much more attuned I am to these things than I was before because they have not been a part of our lives for the past year.
More recently the “reverse culture shock” is more challenging, albeit in a more subtle emotional way. Our return is old news, the questions about our experience have ceased, and people are back to life as usual (which, of course is appropriate and fine, we don’t expect people to keep our year in Nicaragua on their radar). However, for us, Nicaragua is still very much with us in our hearts and minds, and we still desire to share those experiences. It is also hard jumping back in, especially when a part of us doesn’t want to re-join the frenetic lifestyle that seems to define American culture. For many, life as usual means running around, being very busy with very little time to stop, breathe, and take inventory of whether what one is busy doing is really all that gratifying. It seems as if Americans do everything big. We celebrate big, we eat big, we spend big, we achieve big. While in Nicaragua we lived “small” for a year and we are noticing and feeling the contrast. I (and I will start speaking personally here) feel exhausted trying to maintain the peace and simplicity we had in Nicaragua in the midst of our fast-paced, achievement-oriented American culture. Yet, I want to be clear. There are many things I like (and missed while in Nicaragua) about American culture—AND I still find it exhausting. There are so many great choices here, so many terrific opportunities, so many ways one can find “enrichment,” I now have a heightened awareness that saying “yes” to one thing, is also by necessity saying “no” to something else. We have become much more carefully aware of what we are saying “no” to when we say “yes” to opportunities that come down the pike. For example, the abundance of “enrichment opportunities” for the kids to be involved in is staggering. But if we were to take advantage of more than 2 of these extracurricular possibilities, like sports leagues, art, swimming, karate, choir, et. al, we would rarely have a sit down meal together as a family and the kids would seldom have idle time and space to simply play. Each of us has to decide what things we want to take advantage of and what we don’t. However, I am finding that the frequency with which I am asked (required really) to make the “yes” or “no” decisions about what we want to be involved in, IS in and of itself, exhausting. And that is not to say anything about the plethora of cultural values with which we’re uncomfortable and various activities we have definitively chosen NOT to participate in. It often feels like being pummeled by ocean waves. There is barely time to take a breath before another decision about what to participate in needs to be made. I am aware that the world in America that I left last year didn’t get more frenetic while I was gone, I am simply seeing it in a new light, and have experienced a taste of what fills the space when the frenetisism (to coin a word) isn’t there. It’s actually a nice alternative. I am now a little more aware of a different way of being—an alternative lifestyle if you will, and it leaves me feeling conflicted, misunderstood and self-righteous all at the same time.
And then there is the grief. This is really the hardest part. This is the part where we are just sad that our experience is over. Like all good things, they sooner or later come to an end—and it’s a bummer.
I am not good at maintaining a state of denial about being sad for very long before I am side-swiped by some uninvited insight that the reason I am yelling at my kids, or frustrated with my husband, or unable to focus on a task, is not for any of the reasons I make up to justify my behavior, but instead is because of the sad reality that our time in Nicaragua is over, and I am totally bummed. However, at the same time, I am happy to be back in the States with people I enjoy and care about, and in a culture that affords me so many fringe benefits. I suppose that is how one can identify sadness as grief as opposed to depression or something else. Grief allows you to be happy about your current state of affairs while being sad about your loss at the same time.
So that’s it. That is “reverse culture shock” as I am experiencing it. There are many more nuances to the story, but because of their nuanceiness (to coin yet another word), they are a little beyond my writing capability to explain. Suffice it to say again, “reverse culture shock” is not (in my opinion) a thing that happens once and then ends and you move on. It is a fluid process, if you will, of living within a culture that was once so familiar that it felt like your own skin, only now after having experienced something “other,” it feels like it doesn’t quite fit you anymore. Almost as if you gained some weight and your skin didn’t grow with you, so now everything feels a little more tight and constricting.
WHAT WE ARE DOING NOW
Well, the kids are back to school in a Spanish/English dual-immersion program at Washington Elementary, and they’re thriving. Michael is back to teaching, and although keeping up with his breakneck schedule after having so much independent study time has been a tough adjustment, he too, is thriving. Me, well, I am flailing a bit trying to find my next niche. I want to find work or a volunteership that is separate from family life— Something that excites me as much as the women’s paper project in Nicaragua did—something that will utilize the skill sets I have to offer. Finding this niche is a little more complicated here in the States than it was in Nicaragua. For starters, I don’t have a maid or a house-husband. That should say it all right there. ;-) Yet in addition to that, it takes time to network, scope out what might be available, make the right contacts, allow people to get to know me, etc. Thus, I am still waiting for something to come along.
The first day of school stateside.
We got a puppy shortly after our return. Her name is Toña (named after our favorite Nicaraguan beer).
SEVERAL MONTHS LATER
That something did come along. I got a job as a Student and Family Resource Coordinator at an elementary school in our neighborhood, where my responsibilities are to develop programs and access needed resources for an underprivileged community. I am getting to use my Spanish and am doing very similar work to what I was doing with the women’s project only with much loftier goals. I love it, and am totally amazed to find myself doing work that my experiences in Nicaragua prepared me for.
So there you have it, the closing remarks to my foray into the blogging world. Since returning I have discovered blogging is a completely contextual experience for me. I just can’t seem to find the space or desire to make it happen here in the States. Maybe its because I can speak so freely in my native tough, I have no words left for the page. At any rate, this is my adios from the blogging world for a while.
I also must add that though this blog has largely reflected upon me and my experiences both in Nicaragua and now home in the U.S., I am ever aware that during this time of economic struggle, the people most affected are those who were the most vulnerable before the crisis. This includes many of our friends in Nicaragua and that awareness tends to relativize the small concerns I have about my own re-entry into our very comfortable (comparatively speaking) lifestyle. For them the daily struggle for survival continues, and I suppose the best way to close out this blog is to simply express my deep love, gratitude and solidarity with them. My experiences in Nicaragua demonstrated for me beyond a doubt that serious and lasting change in our world is urgently necessary. I intend to be a small part of that change, and I ask you, my readers, to hold me accountable to this intention.
I very much appreciate those of you who have read this blog over the course of the year (and now two years) and have given me affirming feedback and encouragement. Your support has meant a great deal to me.
Again, thanks for tuning in, CHAU!! (that's chow in Spanish;-)
-Kelli
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