cultureshock – An Indelible Friend

Since I moved to London last August I’ve had to adjust to lots of things. At first, the most pressing life problem was being able to financially support myself in one of the most expensive cities in the world, whilst also leaving myself enough time in between jobs to pursue the career which brought me here in the first place. Not easy to do. Then I had the added pressure of moving all my hospitals down here and making sure that I could receive the treatment I need even though none of the doctors here knew me. Again, not ideal and I’m still waiting for the pair of shoes I ordered back in October. But I want to give the disability talk a rest today – imagine ! – and chat about what’s going on in my brain instead.

Something I’ve realised about myself as I’ve become total self-sufficient is that I have a tendency to want to run away from things when I get overwhelmed. I’ll pack a million things into my days, tell myself I can handle it, struggle with the concept of being bored, eventually crash, and then feel this desperate need for space and quiet. So in those moments I get in my car and I run to the seaside, or to a secluded lake or field, or to my parents’ living room; all places where I feel like I can be truly quiet and not allow my brain to run at a hundred miles an hour. Just for a minute.

A couple of months ago, I was getting to that point again after my most recent stint of hard graft, and I met up with a friend who I hadn’t seen in years. We sat and summarised our lives since the last time we’d spoken – not a simple feat when you’ve had whole university degrees and countless life changes since your last chat, but we gave it a go. Once we got onto asking each other how we’d both found moving to the capital, my friend managed to capture exactly how I was feeling in a way that I just hadn’t been able to for months. I’d told her that sometimes I feel so claustrophobic in this massive city, that even having to go at 20 miles per hour everywhere can make me feel like I can’t breathe and I don’t know why; it’s not like there aren’t a million places or go or people to see all the time. At which point she came back with, ‘it’s because there’s no horizon anywhere’. And for me, that simple sentence managed to summarise everything I’d been feeling so beautifully.

She’s going to love that blog feature as well, so happy Tuesday to you mate.

This idea that every day I go to work or out to meet friends or just to wander around, but there’s no end to the city skyline everywhere I look leaves me feeling like I’m boxed in. It’s wonderful and vibrant, and there’s always so much going on, but there’s no space, so the northern country girl in me ends up feeling periodically trapped in a corner by the constant light and sound. Thus I wake up some days and all I want to do is look at something expansive like a field or the sea, or drive at 60 miles per hour on a road to feel like I’m actually going somewhere.

Don’t get me wrong, I love everything that the city has to offer as far as opportunity and creativity are concerned, but most people here work themselves to the bone, so that, mixed with the constant sensory stimulation, tires (!) me (!) out every now and then. In my core, I’ll always be the Yorkshire gal, and with that comes the love for a field. Somewhere quiet where all you can hear are the sheep and the river. In those spaces I breathe better and I don’t feel quite so tense. But the radio stations aren’t in the fields and I’ve got things to do, so if keeping a life in the city means that I’ve got to run away for a bit every month or so then so be it. There are worse coping mechanisms to have.

Out of all of my trips, Fiji was an emotional roller coaster: there were a few moments where I almost spent all of my money on a plane trip home. Not due to the scenery being underwhelming, or the people unwelcoming, (definitely nOt the case) but because in many respects the country was so far away from everything I knew and expected.

Quick tip: don’t travel from the North of England all the way to the heart of the Pacific Ocean for 2 weeks. It’s faaaar too long a journey for such a short amount of time. That being said, it’s stunning so give yourself long enough to properly explore. Also make sure that you’ve got a hefty bank account so you can afford the island life: I didn’t have that much money, but I made the best out of it. I even had a wild Manta Ray swim past me in the Pacific Ocean (GAP YAHH)!!!!!

I’m hesitant to be completely honest about my experience in Fiji because I met some really great people there, many of whom I hope to see again. But my first week didn’t give me the same bliss I experienced in the second, on a private island surrounded by the ocean.

I spent the start of my trip helping in a local boys’ school as a teaching assistant, and went into it thinking that it might be similar to my experience in Nepal: it wasn’t. The children themselves were super sweet, but kids are always sweet, they can’t help it. What was more notable, was the underlying physical and emotional violence present within the school. Namely through the teachers in the school using corporal punishment. The class I was with was one of the youngest, and worst behaved, so I watched the teacher strike and verbally intimidate the kids regularly. This created an atmosphere with heightened physical violence where the boys would spend a lot of their break-times hitting each other during playtime. The first thing the teacher I assisted told me was to not get close (emotionally) to the children. I understood that she meant it on a disciplinary level: to create distance and respect between adults and children. But I can’t see how the way she went about it helped the children at all. It was clear to me that many of those who were misbehaving had learning difficulties or experienced physical violence at home, or both.

At this point it became very clear to me that there was very little I could do in that situation. I can’t describe how affecting it is to have a 6 year old child look you in the eye with tears in his eyes as his wrist or ankle is slapped with a wooden ruler, and not be able to do anything. But it comes down to the fact that as the intruder in the room, what right did I have to tell someone that an element of their culture was right or wrong? Some might say that I should have said something, but I didn’t see how that would have achieved anything but made it seem like I was a privileged white girl trying to push my Western views onto another culture. Instead, I tried very hard to stop the boys from doing things to provoke punishment. For those who fell behind in their work, I did my best to catch them up and for those who were about to do something mischievous, I pegged it across the room to try and stop them from doing it. I also allowed them to stand behind me and hug me when their teacher wasn’t looking, seeing as it was obvious that many were starved of positive physical contact.

I’m couldn’t really tell you my opinion of that teacher. On one hand, I watched her hit the kids, and that repulsed me. But then she also seemed like a hard-working, tough woman intent on ensuring that those children received a decent education. Spending time in that classroom, even for such a short time showed me that living in different cultures is not always easy. I have strong views on the subject of corporal punishment in schools as a result of my upbringing in the North of England. That teacher’s views were the polar opposite to my own, but then she had a very different upbringing to me. What is difficult to navigate in that situation, is to what degree I can express my opposition without reeking of western imperialist superiority.

I’m not sure how well I did in such a short time, but I like to think that those kids will remember the hugs I gave them and the parts of the alphabet I taught them.

An Indelible Friend

Tag: cultureshock

City living hurts my head

Culture shock in Fiji