Reminiscing: Re-entry Shock

This post will make more sense if you read my first post in the Reminiscing series first. So click here to read it then come back here to continue.

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An article I found on google written by Robin Pascoe defines re-entry shock as the reverse culture shock you experience in your own country when you visit places that should be familiar to you, but are not; you try to interact with people you should feel comfortable with, but don't; or face situations you should be able to handle, but can't. 

And he says it's completely natural to feel like a foreigner at first.

I still feel like a foreigner, 7 years later, and I have been trying to settle in and find my place. There's plenty of progress and now more than ever I feel more settled in, more aware of my environment and people, but there's still a part of me that wants to fly away to Nairobi and just walk the old streets again, go to town, walk around the supermarkets I went to often, go to Church, and do the everyday things I used to do. I'm very aware a whole lot has changed while I've been in Malawi but I think it would still be comforting to just be back and look around- unless the change would be another shock to deal with for a while. . .

I remember thinking how small Malawi is when we would drive around. It was quiet, town felt so small with a limited number of options when shopping, and shops closed really early (5PM). It was quiet in most places by 6/6:30PM and it was a bit irritating at some point. I have now gotten used to it and there are still some supermarkets (Chipiku Plus, Shoprite, Game Stores) and restaurants/fast food outlets (Pizza Inn at Crossroads-both in Lilongwe and Blantyre, Steers, KFC, 21 Grill on Hannover- Ryalls, Blantyre, etc) that close later than 6:30PM so that's comforting. 

Supermarkets felt so small and a lot of times it felt like the tellers were slow. Coming from Nairobi man you really learn to be fast. You become a fast walker (something I still get comments on whenever people see me walk so fast), you do things with speed, you learn to value time. Now, Malawi is a laid back country. People tend to do things in a relaxed way and a process that should probably take only half a day easily drags on to the end of the day, and if you try to make them hurry up? frowns, you will get frowns and some will even give you rude comments like you should have come yesterday if you knew you were in such a hurry, mukuthamangira kuti? (where are you rushing to?) etc etc. It has taken patience and a lot of reluctant acceptance of how some things are done around here to stop feeling too frustrated.

Other things I have experienced have been in the areas of communication; others not seeming to understand me, finding it hard to explain things articulately and finding it hard to find common ground with people. Once in a while I meet people I feel I can communicate with, and by that I mean get each other without the extra explanations and clarifications, but over the years it's been far-in-between kind of encounters. But then this could be just a common human experience where you just don't click with everybody and not entirely a re-entry shock kind of thing, right? Don't know.

Ah, I remember someone from work texting me with "uli ku vepi"? (are you at work?) and me responding with "vepi ndi chani"? (What is Vepi?) LOL. The person just replied with "serious"? (are you for real?) haha. By that time I was not yet familiar with the young people slang of the day so pshhhh I had no clue. When I later thought back to this texting exchange I felt so embarrassed. I imagined how baffled this person must have been in that moment. (Vepi is a slang word for “work”)

Another word that took some getting used to was "takunyadirani" (we are/I am proud of you). It felt weird to hear I'm proud of you from someone who wasn't a close friend or family. Like why are you proud of me? lol. Turns out it's just a word used as pleasantries, said in passing and doesn't really mean the person is proud of you. This word was not commonly used before we moved.

Have you ever experienced re-entry shock upon returning to your home country, or even within your own country where you may have moved from one city to another and then returned to your home city? What was it like? Do share in the comments section!

Read other people's experiences with re-entry shock here and here

It's always awesome to find posts you can relate with on the world wide web that help you realize you're not alone and you're not strange after all.

Cheers!