It was nice being home, and I’m excited to get back to Malawi. Most people don’t think of taking a vacation to Minnesota in the middle of winter, especially when they live near the equator. There’s good reason for that, but I enjoyed seeing my family and friends after being away for over two years. I had a lot of people tell me that they are reading this blog. I was always looking at the dearth of comments (by the way, the user-unfriendliness of the comments posting feature has been fixed; please refer to the previous post) and assumed that my audience was small, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear that many of you find this interesting. I’ll try to post more frequently this year. It should be easier now that I have a MacBook and daily Internet access. It will just depend on how much time, wit, and energy I have.
Peace Corps often warns and informs us about “reverse culture shock,” meaning that it is difficult to readjust into your original society after being away for a while. However, I didn’t see this as a problem. I definitely was awestruck by this place we call America at first, riding through Minneapolis on the interstate after leaving the airport when I first arrived was almost like a hallucination (ain’t no skyscrapers in Malawi), but I didn’t feel uncomfortable. A few other things that surprised me: HDTV is everywhere now. Driving was like playing a video game (especially with a few inches of snow on the ground). Bruno Mars and Rihanna completely dominate the pop music airwaves (I don’t think I’m exaggerating if I estimate that at least 75% of the time when I turned on the radio it was one of these two singing some lame, cliché love song. They are both great singers, but I can’t believe there isn’t more variety on the radio here. In Malawi, there’s only like ten people that know how to record music, but they still find a way to mix it up more than we do here). Last, I forgot that American women dress so provocatively, even in the middle of winter. If a woman in Malawi has a hemline above her knees it’s a good indication that she’s a prostitute.
Some things that haven’t changed and I’m happy to get away from:
1.Cookie-cutterness. Every freeway exit, town, house, park, etc. looks and feels the same. I went to Applebee’s a few times, and every restaurant had exactly the same floor plan (this makes it a lot easier to find the restrooms). This was the world I grew up in, and I always used to hear yuppies complaining about this cookie-cutter world we live in (Am I a yuppie now? Probably not, I bathe with cold water out of a bucket.), but it didn’t really bother me until I experienced it coming from another world. The other world being Malawi, where everything is different and a surprise, for better or worse (usually worse, but you can make it better with the right attitude-that’s just not very easy to do).
2.Ignorance laced with fear. One of the first things I heard when I set foot on American soil (concrete) was a guy in line with me waiting to go through customs security. He claimed that we should “just nuke the whole Middle East,” which would get us through customs a lot faster. Obviously he was joking and his statement was a bit extreme compared to how most (but certainly not all) Americans feel. It’s easy for me to preach and say this now, but we should be ashamed about how little we (collectively) know about the rest of the world. It is this ignorance that is pointing our country in the wrong direction, down a dark road where our politics are motivated by fear and our old friends no longer trust us.
3.Winter. Humans really shouldn’t live as far north as Minnesota, and I’ve decided that whenever I settle down it will be somewhere where the climate is hospitable.
4. Nevermind, three is enough. Complaining is for losers.
With all this off my chest, I can end by saying that this is really a great country. While talking with people about the last two years of my life, many eluded to the fact that we have it so easy here and we take a lot of things for granted. That’s true; we do have relatively safe and comfortable lives. It’s inspiring to remember that we have this safety, comfort, excess, and extravagance because we work our butts off, make education a priority for all our children, embrace diversity (most of the time in most places), and our quote unquote forefathers made many sacrifices so that we can prosper like we do. Down the road, we will be known as forefathers so let’s try not to screw things up too much.
Check it out, they put my ugly mug on the front page:
www.westshurburnetribune.com
"You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it." Paulo Coelho
