Ash Wednesday, 1981st edition (Mbabane, Swaziland; American-African Press, 2014)

 We landed in Swaziland on October 27, 2012.  Today is Wednesday, 5 Mar 2014, the start of Lent.  Calculating ... that's 1 year, 4 months, and 6 days.  Just about right.

Moving to another culture is one of the more significant stressors that a person can go through.  I'm not sure exactly where it is on the list, but it's in the top ten.  [If I'm not mistaken, having a child die is #1, and having a spouse die is #2.]  The thing about culture stress (or culture shock, as it is often called) is that it takes time to hit you.  I'm not talking about the kind of culture shock that you experience when you travel overseas for a week or two, or even more a few months.  That kind of culture shock is real, and has some profound implications.  But it is not the same as the stress experienced when you have left your own culture for good and are attempting to assimilate into a different culture where things are really different -- the language is different, the food is different, people's mannerisms are different, social norms are different, etc., etc., etc. 

The reason why this particular kind of transition takes time is because, at first, all the differences seem like a big, grand adventure.  And it is!  All the differences are really fascinating, I've written whole blog posts about them.  But after a while, all the differences start to be overwhelming, and the longing for the familiarity of your own culture (i.e. "home") grows.  Usually it takes somewhere between 6 months and 1.5 years for this process to run its course, usually ending in a precipitous crash.  Which is what has happened to me.

I noticed it starting about a month ago.  I was feeling some culture stress when we were in France over Christmas, Europeans are so different than Africans in seemingly endless ways.  Everything in France was SO EXPENSIVE, and everyone was SO SERIOUS compared to Africans.  The day we went to the Eiffel Tower I was climbing over a metal barrier to get some food, and I lost my balance and fell down.  In Africa, everyone around would have said, "Oh, sorry!" and laughed to ease the tension.  But in France, no one said a word ... of course, the people around didn't want me to feel embarrassed, so they pretended that nothing happened.  But at that moment, it really hit me that I wasn't in Africa anymore.  And to be honest, at the moment I wished I had been!

It took a few weeks, but once we got back I started to recognize the signs of the "culture crash" (that's just my own term).  It started out as more intense sugar cravings, then I noticed myself starting to miss the US, which I never did all last year.  Then I started being conscious of feeling like an outsider in certain social situations, especially in cases where people were speaking siSwati and I really wanted to join in whatever they were doing or talking about.  And now, the last couple weeks I've been feeling sad in the evenings, and sometimes it's been hard to force myself to go to bed.  I haven't had any insomnia, I can sleep fine.  It's just that getting myself to bed has been hard some nights. 

Tonight, I'm feeling really sad.  It's hard to read the newspapers here, because people are truly suffering.  It's hard not to be angry at the king, who seems to rule this country unwisely.  It's hard to drive over terribly maintained roads, then cringe whenever you hit a pothole.  It's hard to be an outsider.  It's hard to keep a good attitude when things don't work right, and everything is slower, and everything is harder, and everything is just so ... well, different. 

I knew this was coming.  I had good cross-cultural training, and I had been preparing myself for ten years to move to another culture.  I'm OK.  But I'm sad, and for probably the first time in my life, I feel truly and thoroughly homesick. And actually, the fact that I feel all of these things is GOOD.  It means that I'm doing what I'm "supposed" to do when making the transition to another culture -- the key now is to not stop, but to keep on rather than giving up or settling into a pattern of complacency toward the new culture. 

For now, I'm concerned about myself, that this particular crash doesn't bring about a lasting depression.  I mention that it's Ash Wednesday because I've been trying to figure out what to do this year to observe Lent.  And I think I've discovered the answer.  At times when I've gone through depressive episodes in the past, I've often found it helpful to force to write out what I feel each and every day, and to do so past the point of being comfortable.  One time I forced myself to hand-write 3 full pages every day for multiple weeks (don't remember exactly how long it was), because I needed to do that to get out the deeply-internalized feelings that were buried deep inside my heart. 

The Rule of the Third Order of Franciscan Friars, that's the one for laymen, prescribes that each monk examine his conscience every day.  This will be my ascetic discipline this Lenten season, to examine my soul every day, pen in hand.  And when Easter comes, I will say, "Alleluia!"