Is it water or ‘worrah’?
When friends and family who opted to pursue their education journey or relocated aboard come back home for summer break, holidays and vacations, it is quite evident to notice a difference in how they speak, their mannerism and irritability to some stuff.
Living aboard or living in a totally new environment and culture most definitely influences us in many ways. From how we speak, to our beliefs, to our behaviors, to our world view to the extent that adaption becomes our way of life. It is as if one undergoes a total cultural shift and is assimilated into different and new cultures. This justifies that fact that culture indeed does influence us. And how we process and react is commonly referred to as culture shock as broken down below:
Euphoria
This stage of culture shock is mostly experienced during the first few months upon arrival at a totally new environment. The individual is fascinated by the ambience, the buildings, the people and cuisines. They may identify and note similarities and differences between their own culture and the new culture. They may, for example, find it amusing how certain things in their own culture are norms while in other cultures they are a complete nuisance. A case in point is the perennial traffic jams in Nairobi.
Disillusionment
This is the actual culture shock. Differences in languages, values, beliefs and behaviors between one’s culture and the foreign culture can in turn cause frustration and anxiety. Homesickness and separation anxiety kicks in as one tend to miss home, friends and family reminiscing of how life would have turned if they never travelled in the first place. Psychological and emotional effects may result in physical sickness as the desire to go back home lingers in their mind.
Language barriers affects the ability to effectively communicate with others. For instance, if an African travels to China. Most people in China do not understand English and therefore a person without at least the basic understanding the Chinese will find it difficult to navigate around the country. This may causes misinterpretation and misunderstanding as neither can understand the other.
Some words and their meanings in different cultures may not connotate the same in others. For example potato chips, crisps and fries have different meanings in different places: in the US are commonly known as crisps in Kenya. Such difference in meanings may cause frustration, agitation and uncertainty between the two cultures on the various meanings of terms thus the individual isolates in order to avoid misunderstanding. William Gudykunst (Gudykunst, 2005), in his Anxiety Uncertainty Management theory, expounds how intercultural interactions have a greater likelihood for creating social anxiety hence some people tend to be extra mindful of what they say or others opt to avoid conversing with strangers and people as they do not want to appear incompetent.
Adjustment stage
After a while, one adjust and become acclimatized to the new environment. The things that were so foreign become a routine.
With language for example, one slowly by slowly grasps the context of how to enunciate words, when to say them and certain words cannot be used. There will be plenty of mistakes but gradually one will be able to get the hang of it.
Individuals are recommended to find coping mechanisms that make their stay memorable and comfortable. An example is joining support groups that can be a form of ‘home away from home.’ However, the adjustment stage may not be the easiest stage for some people as some still remain in a trance or in denial of the cultural shift. They use drugs, indulge in alcohol abuse among others as coping mechanism.
Assimilation
When an individual spends so much time in a new environment, one becomes assimilated and acclimatized to the culture. This can be seen as the shedding off of their own culture that is rooted in language, values, beliefs to the extent that there is no discernible cultural difference between them and the new culture. They are fully integrated into the new culture.
The feeling of hopelessness and homesickness is not done away with entirely, but one finds a new home, new friends, new family become your day to day routine. The thought of doing things differently may not cross one’s mind.
Re-entry shock
This mostly happens when an individual, especially those who were on a travel for work or on educational purpose in a different state, comes back to their home country after an extended period of time. The unexpected difficulty in re-adjusting to the beliefs, values and behaviors that were once familiar. Everything has become so different and life moved on without them. For example, in Western countries, there are various forms of transportation adhere punctuality such as air flight, to city buses, to high speed rails among many others while in African States, there is always a delay, annoyingly prolonged traffic jams.
One may even find it very weird that things they used to do in their new home cannot be applicable in any way in your own home country forcing you to re-learn and adjust all again!
Some come back with an accent that they picked in the environment that they were in, making it harder for them to settle down. Leaving the friends and family that they left behind asking themselves is it water or “worrah”!
Bibliography
Gudykunst, W. B. (2005). An anxiety/uncertainty management(AUM) theory of effective communication: Making the mesh finer. In Theorizing about intercultural communication (pp. 281–323). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
