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Going back

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17/04/2007Going back

The unseasonably warm weather has the editor musing about going home and reverse culture shock.

Bilingual kids and finding my voice

At least this is what I have heard happens when you return to place you call 'home' after several years abroad.

I imagine this reverse culture shock to be an even stronger and more disturbing feeling of the kind of alienation which many expats experience at some point during their time in a foreign country.

It's rather like a sudden wave that passes over you unexpectedly, and in my experience often accompanies a stressful period in your personal life.

I remember being on a kind of 'high' when I first moved to Paris, but then this 'honey-moon' period suddenly wore off and I had a sickening feeling that I could never really fit into this new environment. Strangely, my rejection of the French culture, manifested itself, only briefly, in a rejection of the national cuisine.

The ancient Chinese proverb 'A tree may grow very high, but its leaves always fall back to the roots' suggests that in the end we all feel drawn back to our roots, but, knowing the effects of reverse culture shock, then we are all in for a blast.

Plus many expats have children who have roots in a country far from the land of their birth and this brings up the question, is there any going back?

I spoke about this with an expatriate I know who chose to move himself and his young family back to his Scottish homeland after spending 20 years in Asia. He said he wanted his children to know their roots.

He brought up another proverb, African this time: 'A people without knowledge of its history is like a tree without roots.'

"If we don't stay in touch with what has happened behind us we can collapse, just like civilisations collapse when they loose sight of their roots," he said.

True, going home is one way of finding our roots. Another way is simply to keep them alive for ourselves and our children through speaking about our origins and theirs. Take them there on holiday, help them keep in touch with family and friends across the globe, remind them they have deep connections. Introduce them to other children with similar multicultural backgrounds and experiences.

In the end, home for a traveller can simply be a place of safety and contentment we have cultivated deep within ourselves. Plus living abroad gives us the opportunity to raise our children – the future global citizens of the world – in a greater understanding and tolerance of other cultures.

Natasha Gunn / Editor / Expatica

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