Wednesday: I'm writing this from a hammock

Tid Bit about living in Recife: In the UK, even in London and larger cities, I don’t think that we really have a full understanding of what Noise Pollution is, or how it can affect you, both positively and negatively. For example, last night when really, all I wanted to do at 3.30am was sleep, I was kept awake by fireworks and by the fact that this community has finally discovered Despacito and was playing it on a loop (although I must say that this is quite rare for the community here. They don’t usually have parties until 5am, and the whole place is abuzz with the scandal this morning). Despacito is just universally a cruel tune. So, yes, there are times that it seems quite unfair to have to adjust your body clock along with others who have made the decision for you! On the other hand, I must say, thanks to the light and the movement and the music in the mornings, I find that I wake up much easier and much happier, it feels more natural, the cocks crow at sun-up (they really do!) and from then on the noises slowly but surely start to create the effect that it is morning, and before you know it you are happily woken up just before your alarm, and usually humming a little tune. Some days it’s gospels, this week its Despacito. I missed the community noises when I was away from Brazil. In the UK we were the ones who created the community noises (Sorry John- it really was mainly Maria). Currently I am between the positives and negatives of the effect,  I did want to have a little nap to make up for time lost last night, but also have too much work to do to actually nap. Luckily, the dude next door made the decision for me! As he is playing Brazilian trucker music right under my window. Not my favourite music, but it is helping me concentrate here.

Today I wanted to think very briefly about culture shock and reverse culture shock. Anyone who has lived abroad as an adult will have passed through this phase of being in their new surroundings, and then upon return to their home countries. I say adults, not because I don’t think that children experience culture shock, but because I don’t know if it affects them quite existentially as it does adults. Sure I remember well all my first days in school, not just new schools, but new countries, new climates and new languages to contend with. I remember the tears that I would cry in frustration over homework that I didn’t understand (ever since I was little, I can really only remember crying either from physical or from emotional frustration, this is true today – apart from those soldiers coming home video’s. Those get me every time). I remember having to swap between languages, as we would return to Finland on a sort of between gigs furlough, sometimes for  3 months, sometimes for a year, so each time I was enrolled into a different school. Obviously there were difficulties, but I don’t think I fully got it  until I was older. Until my mind was made up about certain facts of life, until I felt that my identity had solified a little, and my spiritual foundations were more firm – that’s when I began to be more effected by culture shock. Until then my emotions and my rational had been protected by the plasticity of my growing understanding and brain.

It is not until you have passed through the honeymoon period that you really begin to experience culture shock, this usually is up to the first 6 months of your time in a new place. You get to know a whole bunch of new people, you are excited by the change in climate, the freedoms, the fruit (okay, this might have been in my case only – but you get the drift), the new adventures and the new experiences. After a little while you begin to realise that you have about four good hours in a day, because the temperature difference means that your body is trying to adapt to new climates, the new language around you is tiring, because your really have to strain to understand what is being said, and then the mental aerobics that it takes to make yourself understood are more draining than actual aerobics. You have to relearn how to make food, how to clean your house, where to shop, even what you do in your free time might change. In Brazil, you have to time your day around the AT LEAST 3 showers a day that you need to be presentable.  Little by little the frustration creeps in, where you thought you had a good handle on the language, you realise that your conversations are deepening and you don’t have the vocabulary to express yourself in the way that you would want, and if its out-with your good four hours  - it becomes impossible and maddening. Where you are used to punctuality/flexibility you encounter the opposite and find yourself either embarrassed or frustrated, day after day about the same things. You have made friends, but it is different from having lifelong friends and family around you. Politics begins to confuse you, you are taken a back in your church by some attitudes that you have held as primary beliefs and all of a sudden all of that is thrown into question. It is no joke, culture shock has hit and it has hit hard, and you are suffering.

The good news is that little by little you begin to adapt and assimilate those areas of the culture that fit better with you, you begin to understand that 2.30pm actually means 3pm, and you can chose to either turn up at 2.30 (it’s a matter of principal) but spend that time prepping or reading. You begin to enjoy the way that people relate to one another, you begin to delve deeper into your relationships, and you finally worked out how to use the pressure pot to make beans. There are some aspects of the culture that will never sit well with you, and those you learn to live with, but don’t accept into your own identity. So life begins to smile again. It might not be the honeymoon, but it’s definitely something you understand better, and you sleep better at night.

Until, that is, you have to move back home. And things are turned upside down and in a way that you never expected. Throughout the time you have spent in another country you perhaps don’t realise how much you have changed, the new aspects of your character that you have assimilated from your host culture have become a part of you, and you go back home thinking that – of course, this is my home – I know exactly how it’s going to be here. And you realise that you are more lost than ever. You don’t really understand the way that your friends communicate with you – “What do you mean you’re doing GOOD – that doesn’t mean anything – explain EXACTLY what you are feeling right now.” Social interaction is harder to read, because you have become adapt and understanding another culture. All of a sudden you think that people are constantly rude to you and that you have no idea what the meaning behind their words are. Coke doesn’t taste as sweet, where-as food is totally over salted. Fruit tastes like water and avocados are tiny shrivelled up things (no joke – avocados here are the size of little league footballs). You are scared to use public transport or walk home alone, and you have to relearn everything. But it’s worse, because you thought this was who you were, and now it’s not. You didn’t 100% fit into your host country, but you knew that, and you made it work. Now you don’t 100% fit into your home country – and that’s a lot more difficult to handle.

I could go on for pages to add to the difficulties of being cross culture – here we didn’t even have the chance to touch on relationships or third-culture kids or education. Turst me, once you have had to learn about Henry VIII 4 times, but always missed the information on WW2 you begin to develop serious specialities and gaps in your education. But I’m going to stop here. I wanted you to know that there are a) people going through what you are going through, if you are struggling with culture shock or reverse-culture shock or b) for those that aren’t experiencing this, that perhaps this will help you to look around you to the people in your communities that perhaps are feeling this way, and maybe you will have a little more patience with them and more compassion for them now that you realise that your day to day may not be quite so full of cultural speed bumps and potholes as it is for others.