True Reflections of a Traveler

There comes a time in every journey abroad when even the most enthusiastic travelers, like myself, become homesick. In my past travels I’ve honestly never really felt homesick. Then again, I’d only ever been away from home at most for 4 months during which time I was dating someone, spending all my time with new friends, enjoying my classes at my University and having the time of my life. As I approach the 5-month mark of my time in Tanzania at the end of next week, I’ve come to realize that homesickness has crept up on me almost out of nowhere. While I’ve enjoyed most of my time here since I arrived in June, lately the cultural differences that I once perceived as charming and intriguing at the beginning of my trip have become quite troubling and burdensome. All of a sudden it seems like I’m struggling to shake the smallest annoyances that I previously held an indifferent attitude toward. The small things I’ve had to adjust to like not having running water, sharing my house with many species of insects, being called “Mzungu” wherever I go, and inhaling huge clouds of dust on a daily basis have all become taxing and sometimes even infuriating.

I suppose I started to really feel flustered and homesick for the first time here when I got malaria nearly a month ago. At that time all I wanted was to be in the ultimate comfort zone I experienced when I was sick at ten years old: sitting on my couch at home in Vermont eating soup and watching movies while my mom tended to my every health need. Not having the luxury of being at home nor with my family while I was sick provoked the homesickness bug to implant itself into my brain. It’s funny that I’m homesick because I’ll admit I was easily the most unlikely person to get homesick out of our WorldTeach group when we first arrived. I was the most excited person at the start of our program to be here and I even used to get annoyed when my fellow volunteers when they started to complain about this or that about the culture. Since I’d been to Tanzania twice before and I have so many great friends in Dar es Salaam, I felt like I was home and I didn’t want anyone to rain on my parade. Yet, when I started feeling some of the same irritations that the other volunteers had voiced, I felt embarrassed to suddenly feel bad about being here. I felt guilty, almost like I was turning my back on a good friend. All the experiences I’d ever had in Tanzania had been positive up until this point and I didn’t want to admit to myself or anyone else that my time in Tanzania could be anything but completely fantastic.

Once I got malaria, however, I got a harsh wake up call that keeping these feelings inside might not be as productive as I had once thought. While I thought I was being strong for trying to stay so positive, I realized I’d begun denying my right to express my true feelings, which are sometimes just plain shitty, just like everyone else’s sometimes are. I began to grasp that sometimes, no matter how much you love where you are and the people you’re with in another country, living abroad is really hard sometimes. Whereas I’d stubbornly kept my negative feelings to myself about my internal adjustments to Tanzanian living before I got sick, I immediately let my emotional floodgates free as soon as I got malaria. As a consequence of keeping these feelings to myself for so long before this point, however, I all of a sudden didn’t have enough bad things to say about Tanzania, my program, and my general life here. Rather than venting a healthy amount, I quickly saw myself falling into a deep depression because I was finally acknowledging all my qualms about being here. Life was not looking so hot.

While I sought solace in my housemate during this time by sharing my feelings with her once she returned from her month-long vacation away from Tanzania, we both realized quite quickly that instead of soothing each other’s negative emotions as we talked about them, we were instead feeding off of each other’s negative energy and making each other feel even worse about being here. Although I definitely felt listened to by my housemate and I utterly adore her for hearing me out, we always felt so hopeless at the end of our venting sessions. By some grace of God, a former friend of mine, whom I hadn’t seen in over a year, is currently traveling across Tanzania and she was able to make a pit stop in Morogoro for two days last week to visit my housemate and I. When she observed how my housemate and I talked about being in Tanzania (and hating it at the moment), she dawned new light on what we were doing by telling us just how destructive our empathizing for each other’s bad experiences had become. She could see that the more we talked about what made us upset, the more upset we got about them and the more we wanted to go home as soon as possible. Hearing her say this was a revolutionary wake up call for me. After she told us this, I almost instantly became open to the idea of accepting my life here the way it is, no matter how rough it is sometimes, because no one wants to be around nor talk to a Negative Nancy all the time. I could see my negative self reflecting back at me through my friend’s eyes, whom had always been accustomed to knowing me for my bubbly, friendly, and optimistic personality. I knew from that point on that I didn’t want to be the negative person I was turning out to be, for my sake and everyone else’s, and that I needed to find my old self again if I expect to survive here for another 7 months.

Up until I made this revelation last week, I hadn’t been able get over even the slightest ounce of my homesickness. In fact, it somewhat shames me to admit that I even went through a tough time a couple weeks ago when I was seriously considering ending my time with the WorldTeach program early six months and coming home in January. I just felt like I couldn’t take being here for any longer than six months. Fearful that I would say some things I would later regret, I refrained from uploading a blog post during this time and instead specifically reached out to my closest family and friends to pull me through my difficulties. As much as I wanted to go home, I secretly wanted the people I look up to most in this world to pull me out of my negative mentality and tell me to stick it out for the year. They know me well enough to know that I am not a quitter and that I can accomplish anything I set my mind to, as long as I want it enough. Fortunately, these amazing people ultimately believed in me enough to tell me to complete my time here with flying colors. Although it took a lot of convincing on their behalves, I’m now mentally prepared again to stay on board with my program for the entire year until June 2011. In my humble opinion, even the most flexible and open-minded travelers go through trialing times like this when they feel like enough is enough and all they want to do is go home. That’s the very definition of homesickness, really. Reflecting back on my whirlwind of emotions over the past month and a half, I’m honestly grateful to have gone through this grueling thought process because I think it’s helped me cleanse out my system. As I’m actively shifting my attitude, I’m starting to feel like my optimistic self again who knows that I’m here for very important reasons and I can’t leave until I’ve achieved what I set out to do by June of 2011.