When you visit a foreign country, you're often subjected to odd and sometimes prying questions or assumptions about your homeland. When I went to Ireland in fourth grade, kids always asked me if, being from America, I knew any movie stars. In France, the summer after my senior year, my host mother was convinced that people in America only ate fast food.
"What you need to learn," she would explain to me at the dinner table as she doled out another ladle of bouillabaisse, "is that you can't go through life eating nothing but hamburgers and hot dogs."
Presumptuous statements or questions about who you are and where you're from can sometimes make you feel uncomfortable, but on the bright side, they always make you think.
During my abroad term in a South African township called Langa, the most frequent question I was asked was why I wasn't married yet. On my first day in Langa, my host sister took me to a party were at least five or six men pulled me aside at different points to ask me which of the women there I wanted to marry. When I finally took the time to explain to one of them that I was not there to find a wife but that I had voluntarily left my family and friends at home to go to the other side of the planet to learn about anthropology and hang out with a bunch of people I'd never met before, he gave me an unexpectedly sad and confused look.
"But if you have a family and a home, why are you here? Shouldn't you be with them?" he asked.
When you meet someone in Langa, it's customary to continue shaking hands and holding eye contact well into the conversation, an ordeal that can last anywhere between 10 seconds to two minutes. My eight-year-old host brother loved showing me around the neighborhood, which meant that four or five times a day, I could expect to have about 10 new people getting all up in my personal space, probably questioning me about why I wasn't married yet as they stared curiously into my eyes.
One night at my neighbor's house, after we'd had a few beers together, I plucked up the courage to ask him what the deal was with the never-ending handshakes and super personal questions. We'd been sitting in silence for some time, fixated by a soccer game on TV, but when I asked this of him, he sat up and got a pensive look in his eye. After a pause, he turned to me and said, "We do it because ... before I can become friends with you, first I want to feel your humanity."
I know, not really the kind of thing you typically chat about over beer while watching soccer. I was uncomfortable. Too much intimacy. But I took a keep breath and tried to stay in the moment.
"If I say I am your friend," he continued, "that means your struggles are my struggles. Your joys are my joys."
Later that night, questions surged through my mind as I lay in bed. I had a lot of friends, but did I know their struggles? Did they know mine? Perhaps more importantly, did I ever take the time to share my struggles with the people who cared about me? Or had I really just spent my sophomore summer bottling up insecurities and girl problems to fit the role of the perfect, happy Dartmouth student? I wondered what my friends were doing and how well we really knew each other.
The greatest privilege of going to a new country is not the beaches or the mountains or the food. Those things are great, and should be enjoyed, but the real privilege is the opportunity to reflect on the life you already have. In America and at Dartmouth, it can feel difficult, especially for guys, to share your struggles, even with close friends. And, for some strange reason, it can be just as difficult to share your joys.
I still clam up a lot. I'm afraid of being dependent on other people for my happiness and confidence. But I'm more afraid that if I don't get over my aversion to openness, that will mean I didn't learn anything in South Africa, that my inability to change will render it nothing but a four-month vacation.
My host families, neighbors and friends in South Africa didn't live comfortable lives, but they gave what they could long handshakes, patient listening and a desire to know my struggles and joys.
To do the same for my own friends is the only way I could possibly thank them.
