The "Hard Work" of Living in a Developing Country- Pt. 6

As I look back on the various tolls living overseas exacted on body and soul, it might be good to take a brief glimpse into the heavy wages paid in terms of “items lost”. Physical trinkets may immediately come to mind, but there is such a variety of other, more costly effects, that were so much more precious to be lost.

The first thing one must give up when living abroad is his sense of control. That goes out the window in about the first 3 hours of landing. Control over how fast your taxi will drive you into town, and whether or not he will have chosen beer or vodka as his liquor of choice; control over having the washing machine of your choice- heck, even having one at all for the first month might be an enormous luxury; control over whether your children will have vaccinations, enough fresh fruits and vegetables to eat (for the first 3 winters, we ate ONLY carrots, onions, potatoes and cabbage for 5 months straight) or enough children’s Tylenol when the fevers got too high. If you think control over who was listening to your phone, who was watching you outside your window, or who was following you onto the train for a ride across the country, forget it. They controlled all of that. One area of control that was particularly hard to endure was control over censoring information that might make loved ones (especially parents/grandparents) overly concerned or worried. News media can paint a frightening picture of the real stories and, on the other hand, it’s hard to make the kids, especially if they are young, understand that not everyone needs to hear everything.

We were told very clearly to “count the costs” by many trusted and close friends before we left, but some things just can’t be anticipated, nor can one even begin to imagine all that could be demanded living away from home, culture, family, friends, and personal, treasured things and comforts. Not only is that ever-elusive “control” lost, but one’s sense of belonging is quickly snatched away, only to be bought back through hard work, rivers of tears, and an over-abundance of embarrassing mistakes and misunderstandings. Gone within minutes of landing is that safe, comfortable sense of “place” and security. When one is rooted in a certain set of “rules” and standard of behavior, it is nearly impossible on every level to find a new norm and be completely at home in it. Daily we struggled with everything from the simple ‘How do I talk on a bus (in our cases not at all)?’ and ‘How should my legs be tucked under me while sitting on the floor at someone’s dinner table?’, to the more complicated like, ‘What would be appropriate to say to my neighbor at a public wake who has just been widowed?’ and ‘What do I do when my neighbor comes to the door holding her child who is literally dying in her arms?!’

How can one “count the cost” when neither a pregnancy nor a revolution in the neighboring country had been anticipated? How can one come back to a country that has gone through its own crisis? Our family has almost no common or shared emotional connection to the rest of America who has witnessed 9/11 ; we saw none of the images, spoke to no one during that time, and only read the headlines weeks later in a borrowed magazine. While we were struggling to make a new normal, we utterly missed an entire decade of the “other” that made America a completely different place to come back to. We suffered the hard work of trying to relate to those who’d call and try to communicate the changes, but just could not. Another “item lost”…

It may be strange to say, or rather maybe even hard to believe, but I, in my heart of hearts, think our bodies took a much greater physical toll than if we’d lived here for the same 10 years. I won’t go into the litany of issues for fear of sounding like a whiner, but summer sun, heavy bags to and from the bazaar, the stress of everyday living, various falls on ice, constant stomach issues, and lack of nutritious food all add up to less healthy people. That was one cost we counted, and I have nothing to grumble about. It’s a reality we live with, and we count it as gain.

There were, of course, those “physical trinkets” we had to say good-bye to for a season. Some, over time, lost their meaning or dearness; others we yearned for year after year. Christmas was an especially melancholy time as almost every tradition was left behind. Dinners with extended family were impossible, fabulous meals with all the trimmings were suddenly gone, beloved decorations that held special meaning were not there. Instead was a 4 foot plastic tree that fell apart more and more every year, candy garlands hung on the tree in a lame attempt to make things colorful, and we listened to the same music over and over and over on the only 2 CDs of Christmas music we had. Of course, not all was lost. We eventually made friends and had Christmas dinner with them and our teammates. Care packages full of goodies arrived once in a while full of nice gifts like peanut butter and silk flowers, and we learned to make our own music to fill the gap.

At first everything was new and exciting and we didn’t miss our “stuff”. But as time went on, our home began to feel bare and Spartan. We really longed for a few familiar things to remind us of where we’d come from. Unlike a lot of other host countries, ours had really no beautiful arts or crafts to offer in order to make a home inviting other than rugs. Ours was a country that had only recently gotten their independence, and had not been open to free market trading for very long. The only goods that regularly came in were low quality and purely functional- not meant for making a house a home. I longed for pictures on the walls of my loved ones, vases of fresh flowers, even just a simple throw pillow to brighten up our floor (we didn’t have a couch and chairs until well into our 3rd year). I never thought I’d be one to dwell on “stuff”, but I found myself missing those boxes packed away, hoping that they were safe until the day we could see it again.

Continued Next Time….