“Do ya’ll have McDonald’s where you’re from?” Asks a plump, dark haired boy turning around in his chair to gauge my reaction while wearing a smug smirk on his face.

“Oh my word Jared, you’re so stupid, shut up. Ignore him!”, says a blonde racially ambiguous teenager with a thick southern accent.

“Do you have houses where you’re from?” another teen asks.

I sit there with a blank look on my face thinking, “Um, no, we live in huts and trees, what the heck did he just ask me? Doesn’t he know our homes are built with actual bricks and cement?”

“I like your pigtails” says a short, perky white girl and I quietly thank the Gods that because she doesn’t know any better, what would have been regarded as lazy and unkempt is somehow cool in this instance. 

It’s the first day of school, and I’ve just been introduced to the class as the girl from Africa. Never mind which country in Africa, because as long as it’s not Kenya, they’ve probably never heard of it. I’m in a small, conservative private Christian school in the middle of nobody knows, Virginia.

In the months that follow, I barely speak to these new faces, let alone make any new friends. But as divine providence would have it, I have four other siblings attending the same school. They provide me with the familiarity and connection I desperately need and have now left behind in the form of friends, family and acquaintances back home in Tanzania, East Africa. 

My younger siblings being more malleable and adaptable adjust quickly and make new friends. Unique personality traits exert a substantial influence as I seem to be having the most trouble making new connections. Every time someone tries, they are met with a polite but mostly standoffish attitude from a fourteen-year-old on the cusp of puberty. 

Mentally speaking, I, the fourteen-year-old, am in limbo. Something doesn’t quite fit the way it should about this new place and these new faces. Before the big move, I’ve only crossed paths with a handful of western foreigners. I’ve assumed they all smell nice and that they’re all missionaries. Well, some are pastors and doctors too. 

The move has been anticipated for months in advance. I’ve said my goodbyes, and I’ve done all the “I’m going to America” bragging that I can do. I’ve anxiously counted down the days to this new adventure so now that I’m here, I can’t understand why I feel this way. Why I feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me. Why I feel cut off and disconnected.

[…an experience a person may have when one moves to a cultural environment which is different from one’s own; it is also the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration or a visit to a new country, a move between social environments, or simply transition to another type of life.]

When I learn of the term “Culture Shock”, I start to feel like I can begin to describe my experience. Ironically, it’s not the culture that I find the most shocking. I actually find this new culture to be liberating and much more conducive to my spirited and inquisitive nature. It allows me to explore concepts and ways of living that would not only be taboo but also proper causes for alienation and punishment in my native culture. 

It’s not the new that’s bothers me, it’s the old. It’s as if fourteen-year-old me is frozen in time. Like she’s been catapulted through time to a future in which she doesn’t belong. And even as I turn fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, the feeling fades but it doesn’t completely go away. 

I gradually warm up to my new geographical crib, but there remains that faint sense of unease. A constant gnawing, a scratching sound from behind a locked door. Something long forgotten wanting to be revisited, to be seen, to be examined. Eventually, I decide at age 24 that I can’t live without knowing what’s behind that door. So I book a one-way ticket to Dar-es-salaam within two days of making the decision. My family attempts to talk me out of it but when my mind is made up, it truly is made up. This is the way. 

Even though the decision is mine this time around, I am not prepared like I was the first time around. I find the same cultural attitudes and dispositions that I left behind but with a twist. 

To know more about what happens next, stay tuned for part 2! I compare and contrast the differences in culture and values and explore some critical issues.