Alone At Home

At the age of 18 I joined a group of young people to travel to West Africa on a humanitarian aid mission. Ten of us travelled to a small country called Togo and lived in the bush for three months. The “bush” refers to an area that is wild and untamed, and Togo fits that description perfectly. It had absolutely none of the many luxuries we take for granted in America, and it was the first time I’d ever experienced a way of life that was diametrically different from my own.

Even while living in the bush, we had the rare benefit of having clean well water to drink. Most of the villages nearby didn’t have that technology yet, which was one of the things we hoped to bring with us. These people lived in mud huts with straw roofs and drank from dirty puddles in the road as if it was normal. They lived with the goats and chickens and shared a communal lifestyle like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was like stepping into a documentary.

I’d seen videos and pictures of sick children before, but none of that can compare to seeing it firsthand. Small children who could barely walk had stomachs that were distended from parasites and malnutrition. Mothers caring for newborn babies without any diapers, cleaning supplies, or medical care whatsoever. Many older siblings raised the younger children because parents had died or simply abandoned them. My heart broke.

The bush had no cars or paved roads, no plumbing, and next to no access to medical care. Even the largest market in the nearest “city” would be flattered to be compared to an American flea market. We hired some teenagers to be our translators and come with us everywhere we went, and they ended up teaching us a lot about the local culture and customs. They became some of our closest friends and protected us from dangers we weren’t even aware of.

On top of experiencing the depths of abject poverty and learning bits of the local languages, it was also the first time I’d ever experienced being singled out for being white. We were some of the first white people the village children had ever seen, and I can only imagine how strange we must have looked to them.

We found out quickly that the local term for white people was “yovo.” They chanted it every time we visited a new place. There was no room for subtlety and no way to hide the fact that we were different. We felt like animals in an enclosure with the way people would point and stare.

At first it made it hard to acclimate to the culture, but eventually we learned how to speak bits of the language and that became a bridge with which to build connections. We came in humbly, wanting to learn and to honor, and that was what ended up opening doors for us to help. What had started as a term strangers used to alienate us eventually became a term of endearment between friends. There were still many who felt we didn’t belong or who only wanted our money, but those who lived nearby and got to know us soon became dear friends.

The things I learned from them and ways I grew as a person far outweighed any material aid I was able to bring into their lives, and it was worth every single moment of discomfort and hardship. I truly came to love their way of life, and was heartbroken that the time to return home came so quickly. Leaving Togo was so much harder than arriving had ever been, and the true culture shock came after I got home.

Re-entering the United States was one of the most jarring experiences of my life. All the neon lights I had never even noticed before suddenly became caustic and obnoxious. The sound of the radio was loud and blaring, and gave me an overwhelming sensory overload for weeks. The foods I had spent months craving were far richer than my stomach was used to, so I had to moderate them for quite a long time. Going back to work and seeing trays of perfectly good food being dumped into the garbage at the end of each day made me physically sick to my stomach and more angry than I could even explain.

Sadly the hardest point of re-entry was at home with my family. I had just spent three months in an entirely different world and had my entire views on life fundamentally altered, and yet all they wanted to talk about was summer camp and local gossip. No one wanted to hear my stories of hiking out to remote villages or installing water sanitation tanks. A couple gross bug stories got a rise, but even that attention was short lived. It was like none of them had even realized I was gone or knew who I was anymore.

The feeling of being an outsider in my own family and community was indescribably alienating. They took me to In-N-Out the night I returned and I felt nauseous after the second bite of my double double. They assumed I’d want to go to the mall or get a pedicure, but all I wanted was to look at pictures of the friends I missed. I would fill a glass with clean tap water from the sink and stare at it with guilt and apprehension. What once was such a simple task now felt wrong.

I felt completely alone in a crowd of people who thought they knew me but didn’t care enough to find out. I tried to go back to the life I once knew, but it suddenly felt like I was living a stranger’s life. I didn’t have the strength to go on living a life of opulence and needless waste when I knew what it was like to live without.

The only other people who understood that feeling were my teammates, and they all lived in other states and countries around the world. We had become a makeshift family over the course of those three months. We ate, slept, worked, played, and cried together as a single unit for so long that we no longer knew how to do life without each other. Suddenly I was homesick in my own home, and it was only by texting and calling my teammates that I felt grounded again. I was forever changed, and I learned the valuable lesson that belonging is found through heartfelt connections with people no matter where I am. I can be at home in a foreign country or a stranger in my hometown; it just depends on who I’m with and if those people truly care to know me for who I am and what matters most.