A Merging of Worlds

I have been home from Indonesia now for nearly 2.5 months. Perhaps surprisingly to some, coming home has been the most difficult transition of my life.  That is significant because I’ve navigated many transitions previously. I’ve attended three different universities in varying states, and have lived, worked, or studied (both domestic and abroad) for a month or longer ten different times. I like to think that I’m fairly comfortable with the cycle of transitioning. I don’t mind meeting new people, and I enjoy the adventure of navigating a whole new environment. In fact, I’m a lot more comfortable with being in a whole new place than the opposite- returning home afterwards. 

My greatest difficulty is always finding myself returning home and realizing how much I’ve changed...  

...coming back to the environment and culture I spent most of my life in, and it seeming like most things have remained exactly as I remembered them before. The food, people, activities, and weather all seem the same. And yet, nothing really seems comfortable. My home suddenly doesn’t seem to be the place I once felt it to be. It isn’t until returning home that I realize the full extent of my change and growth. I have become a new person. Similar to a jigsaw puzzle, my hometown puzzle is the same, but I return home finding that my piece in the puzzle doesn’t seem to fit anymore. My edges have been altered, and the colors have changed tint- they don’t match the rest of the puzzle anymore. Figuring how if at all, I’m able to fit into this puzzle is a feat that can be difficult, unnerving, and disappointing.

This “altered puzzle piece” transformation is something I’ve experienced many times, predominate examples including studying abroad in Scotland for a semester, and attending graduate school for two years in South Carolina. Both of these experiences changed me. My personality was altered, and my mind opened to other cultures and peoples that are in the world. Despite this not being a new phenomenon for me, my return from Indonesia has been the most difficult transition of all.  I didn’t anticipate that seven months living and working in Indonesia would have changed and impacted me so much. While of course I am excited to see friends and family again, returning home has not been all happy reunions and butterflies. Every day of these past 2.5 months has been a struggle. While I’m still processing all of the reasons why, some reflecting has offered insight into a few of the reasons:

    1)   I Gave a Big Piece of my Heart Away

While in Indonesia, I opened my heart more than I ever have before. Living and working at a boarding school, it was easy to quickly establish relationships with the teachers and students at my school. Not to mention, they were the most welcoming, accepting, and loving group of people I’ve ever encountered. Despite being the only non-Muslim person within their community, I never felt like an outsider. If anything, I was accepted as a part of their family and felt more included in their lives than I ever have in a community in the U.S.

Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne put it eloquently by saying, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” 

Saying goodbye to my family of students and staff in Indonesia was hard. The hardest goodbyes I’ve ever had to say. It felt like a piece of my heart broke in a million pieces that day that I left. Knowing that I would never see many of those people again in this lifetime made the parting even more heart wrenching. It's difficult to not longer see my students' smiling faces daily and hear their full hearted laughs across campus. A big piece of my heart will always remain at CTF school in Medan, Indonesia.

    2)   A Return to Individualism

      Reverse culture shock is very real. When I arrived in Indonesia, I was expecting everything to be different. I anticipated new foods, new weather, a new language, and a new religious environment. As humans, it’s natural to mentally brace ourselves for these types of new environments.  Often times, people who study or work abroad receive some kind of cross-cultural training before or upon arrival in a new place to understand the environment. During my time in Indonesia, like many people in similar situations, I became accustomed to the culture and environment. It became normal to see students participating in Muslim prayer five times each day on campus, and to bath via a bucket and cold water. I adapted to the environment there as I became more and more comfortable with Indonesian life.  What folks are usually NOT prepared for, however, is transitioning back from their life abroad to their “home sweet home”.  I was not ready for what it would be like to be immersed back into the United State’s individualistic culture. To suddenly be surrounded by people who go through the motions and don’t always mean the words of their speech. 

      One of the main frustrations has been returning back to where “Hey, how are you?” is common place in initial conversation. How often does the person asking the question actually care about the answer? And how many people answering actually answer it truthfully? Don’t get me wrong, I realize this is a cultural aspect of our speech patterns in the U.S., but it was difficult to return to an environment where people “say the right words” but don’t always back it up with genuine interest or care. Coming from Indonesia’s very strong collectivistic culture (where the focus is on the wellness of the group) back to the U.S. where everyone lives in his or her own safe bubbles of individualism, has been extremely difficult. There are aspects of Indonesian culture that I miss immensely, just as there were aspects of American culture that I missed immensely while being in Indonesia. That’s one of the beautiful parts of travel- we can learn from aspects of different cultures, and let our cross-cultural experiences mold and shape us into new people. 

Learning to reconcile multiple cultures has proven to be the most difficult challenge of all.

    3)  The Misunderstanding of Islam

9/11 shifted America in a number of ways. A strong wave of patriotism swept the nation, but fear also planted a deeply rooted ignorance and prejudice towards the Muslim population.  To this day, many American people see a woman on the street in hijab (head scarf) and automatically have thoughts that resemble “oppressed”, “extreme”, or “voiceless”. They see a Muslim man and automatically get suspicious and unnerved. Don’t get me wrong- it was human nature for Americans to want to place the blame of 9/11 somewhere. Unfortunately, most of this blame was wrongly placed on Islamic people worldwide. The problem is that what begins as an unchallenged ignorant thought can frequently escalate to stereotypes, prejudice, and racism. This is the steep slope where many Americans blame and ignorance has led, to a place where all Muslim people are mistrusted and misunderstood. I will admit that I was guilty of some similar misinformed thoughts before going to Indonesia. I had not ever experienced Islamic culture first-hand, and so all I knew was what I had been exposed to through media and education within the U.S. I was guilty of not having done my research or gotten to understand what the Muslim faith truly stands for.

However, this began to quickly turn around once I arrived at my school in Medan, Indonesia. I lived and worked at an Islamic boarding school, where I was the only female living on campus to not wear a hijab. Though being in the Christian minority, the students and staff at the school embraced me for who I was, and I never felt pressured to embrace their faith as my own. And, ironically enough, I felt loved, accepted, and was treated with kindness on a scale that surpassed any experiences I had in the U.S. (or for that matter, anywhere else throughout my travels). I found that most of the females I spoke with genuinely wanted to cover their hair with a hijab. They were proud to live their faith and follow teachings in the Koran. I also found that every person in my community whom I asked about ISIS and terrorist attacks said that they wholeheartedly disagreed with those groups and the violence they had inflicted. They were apologetic for the pain that had been inflicted around the world "in the name of Islam", and stated that those extremists who were using fear and violence were not true to their religion.

The way that many Americans have viewed Islam has been equivalent to the rest of the world assuming all Christians align themselves with, and support, Westboro Baptist church. 

It has been difficult being back in America where one of the most frequently asked questions I’ve had has been, “What was it like, living and working at an Islamic boarding school?”, expecting my response to reflect frustration, danger, or difficulty in such an environment. Some folks have been quite surprised to find my answer is along the lines of, "It was the most impactful, transformative, and meaningful experience in my life and I would go back in a heartbeat." I have returned from Indonesia with a clear view of the deeply rooted prejudice many Americans have towards Islam. It has frustrated me to be surrounded by people whose failure to understand a group of people causes them to jump to negative assumptions and mindsets. I hope that in my years ahead as an educator, I can serve as an advocate for the Islamic population- encouraging Americans to get informed, and challenge the prejudices we have from years of biased media and political exposure. 

    4)   Frustration of reflection deficiency. 

One of my biggest personal frustrations has been an inability to process the experience. When experiencing a very different culture, it can be a challenge to digest all that is thrown at you so quickly. Cultural exchange is often layered and can seem convoluted, and it takes time and effort to digest and process it all. I get frustrated when trying to talk about my time in Indonesia to friends and family back home. I can’t seem to find words that do it justice…. I can’t locate vocabulary that fully captures the impact the experience has had on every aspect of my life. I have found it very true that there are life experiences that cannot be explained or understood until they are felt with the heart. This is something I will continue to wrestle through, making sense of all the lessons learned and finding a way to convey that with those around me. 

I will continue to hope and pray that the life lessons learned can remain a vital part of my identity for years to come. I don’t want to become fully immersed in an individualistic society again and lose the beauty of the cultures I have come to love and appreciate so deeply. For now, I will focus on continuing work as an advocate for international education.

There are few things that are more enlightening in life than being able to stand in another’s shoes and learn to view the world in a whole new way. 

The more we do that, the clearer it becomes that each of us is more alike than we are unalike. And THAT realization is the first step towards a more peaceful world.