Transition

A few people have asked me if it will be hard to adjust to life back home after being here. Nope, I say, not at all, thinking about the friends and family and fresh salads waiting for me at home.

It used to be. At the end of my semester in Brazil we had a whole session on re-adjusting and dealing with culture shock. I remember being shocked by the variety in the supermarket, the hot water right out of the tap, and the clean, quiet streets. But the harder part was being overwhelmed by my own wealth and privilege after seeing such desperate poverty and trying to grapple with how unfair it all is and how big and complex the world’s problems are.

I don’t think it’s that I’ve become immune to these things. I spent the bus ride to my field site listening to This American Life’s take on the hopelessness of fixing Haiti and I started crying because I was looking out the window at pretty much the same hopeless story, halfway around the world. Talking with impoverished farmers about the challenges they face, watching flies crawl all over their children, wondering how we can possibly fix everything hasn’t gotten less sad – if anything, the more I learn, the harder it gets as I realize just how much we’re up against.

But some self-preservation is necessary. I have to be able to walk away from it sometimes and enjoy my own life or my career will be very short-lived. That means going to the fancy $7 dinner expat restaurants here sometimes, and it means not bringing all the weight of what I see here with me when I go home.

So I’ve gotten used to going back and forth between two worlds. It’s like I have one self that walks into traffic and brushes my teeth with bottled water and one that expects youtube videos to load instantly and eats raw vegetables. And a 34-hour flight will be more than enough time to switch back.