Culture Shock.

So I’m back in dear old Blighty. And what can I say? It’s grey.

I thought I’d timed the return sufficiently wisely in order to avoid the “longest winter on record” (which only finished a fortnight ago) and would be promised lashings and lashings of long summer days. Sadly not many sun’s ray to boot so far; the sun must not have heard that it’s time to get up north for the onslaught of summer.  I have had plenty of happy days with family and friends though which has brought a different sort of sunshine. I had a lovely welcome home from my family last week

(the R and L obviously the most delicious letters) reciprocated with my contribution of some local Tanzanian tipple: Konyagi.  This cheeky little drink not only comes in a sachet (in manner of ketchup at the service station) but also contains 100ml in every pack: a quadruple measure by your average barman’s standards; all for the blissful price of around 40p. And the best bit? It tastes just like gin! So, Konyagi and tonics all round at the Musson household last week.

A trip up to Scotland to see the rest of the family last week brought with it an array of wildlife (as well as cuddles from my gorgeous little niece); from the usual cows, sheep and hens to the new arrivals of some rather delicious little puppies

and a few grey seals lurking at the harbour in Troon when we went to get fish and chips one night.

It may sound strange to say, amidst homecomings and reunions, but I have suffered from major culture shock upon returning to the UK. This may not seem to make sense, as this is the place I know well and have lived, on and off, for my entire life. Yet I know some of you understand this, having talked with me at Christmas when I suffered the same during my fleeting return from Nepal. For those who have never experienced the sensation, let me divulge a little.

For most, the idea of culture shock comes when visiting a country very different from one’s own (for example, when I took some of my students a few years ago to Borneo, or when I took them to Tanzania, some of them found the local customs and the excessive poverty hard to comprehend, being so different from what they were used to seeing, experiencing and understanding.) And that is what I feel coming home, in part. Things are just so different from what I am used to seeing and experiencing on a daily basis living as I have this last year, that it is hard to mentally adjust. That, and the fact that life here is so fast, so developed, so frantic and so grey right now (oh, how I miss those blue-sky days).

One of the things I am missing the most is having time to think. There is much I have taken with me from African living; I have gained great wisdom from living out in Tanzania, and feel much more in touch with myself and the world around me. Having the time and space to gain clarity, perspective and insight has perhaps been easier living where I have been because of the fact that it is not fast, it is not developed in the same way, it is not frantic and it is not grey (well, the latter isn’t really relevant, but it does make you feel happy when the sun shines. That’s just fact).  Life here in the west tells you (subliminally as well as smacking you in the face) that you have to work hard; work fast; achieve more; do more; get more; be more. You have to go faster, work harder, and get more done than those around you. (None of it necessarily makes you any happier or life any better, but it's what you're told you have to do). It was a shock to the system getting back on the tube this week; seeing people rushing from work towards the closing doors and bashing them in frustration when they missed the train. Because they would then have to wait for two more minutes. Oh my, two minutes: the day is ruined. And yet the anguished look on these chaps’ faces made you think that it really, actually was.

I loathe the British press and it has been rather depressing coming back (albeit fleetingly) to the onslaught of tabloid trash that is creeping its way slowly into all levels of the media. From billboard posters, to adverts on the train, the bus, cars even; on shops, on lampposts, on the side of buildings, the media get you at every angle. Firstly I detest advertisements and the vicious power they have to make you feel inadequate, in need of a better life, a better you and a feeling of dissatisfaction with whom and what you are. Not having to see or hear advertising, or have it forced into my daily living every day for the past year has been so mentally refreshing. Secondly, I abhor the concept of celebrity that seems to consume this country more and more each day. Why, oh why, do we think that just because somebody has appeared on the television, or has a lot of money, or has written a song that’s quite catchy that they are better than us? Why do we think that these people are worth stalking, surreptitiously and voyeuristically from behind the pages of our magazines and newspapers and computer screens each day? That they are to be perched onto majestic pedestals and made glorious and divine reigning in the land of man? They are people. They still eat marmite, wipe their bottoms and pay their taxes like the rest of all good people out there, so why should we be forced by the press to assume that they are in some way godly and fascinating enough to read about/look at day in day out? That they are, in some ways, a better breed of human?

I used to read the Arusha Times in Tanzania; a local paper outlining local news (shock horror, news in a newspaper) and had lovely little entries to lift the spirit, such as in the last copy I bought, where page ten inspired all to have more PMA in their life:

Plus every week they have the poetry column: helpful, clever little poems written by local poets to inspire, teach and (in this case) counter-act some of the problems people were facing:

All in all, a great little paper with no vile commercial adverts (yippee) and no such thing as celebrities (woohoo!)

I haven’t missed television in the slightest. It has the power to brainwash more than any other invention, bar the computer, I think. An average person in the UK apparently watches 4-5 hours of television per day. Now, do a quick bit of maths and you can see how this idle action actually takes up, on average, 50% of these folks’ social time each day (assuming most people sleep for eight hours and work for eight hours). That’s roughly 76 days per year, or a fifth of every year spent sitting, staring at a small box, watching drivel! Blimey. Again, not having a television, not having people around me watching television and talking about what they watched on television, and not having the media telling me to watch television if I want to fit into a society that feeds and thrives on television makes you actually do things with your time. And that has got to be better than killing your brain cells watching drivel for a fifth of your life, surely?

I haven’t missed nonsensical packaging. I went to the shop today to buy food, mainly fruit and vegetables. Long gone are the markets I’ve been shopping in where everything is local, fresh and natural and covered in remnants of earth from which they were pulled that morning; it’s back to imported, homogenous, packaged, flavourless goods.  And to get at these beautifully ordered veggies, you have to battle your way through umpteen layers of totally futile packets and wrappers and bits of plastic. To get fruit or vegetables that are clean, uniform and mainly quite tasteless. Before I left last year, whenever I had to buy fruit and vegetables from a supermarket, I used to buy the economy ones because the only reason they were cheaper was because they were “ugly” in the eyes of the consumer – carrots slightly wonky, a bumpy apple, potatoes that were different sizes. Crazy but people avoid them because they are not military; because that is what the crazy world tells us that fruit and vegetables should look like to be good, and that we have to have to be doing it right.

I haven’t missed the weather. Enough said.

I think, for me, the culture shock resides primarily in the concept of “stuff” that surrounds every aspect of daily living here. I hate “stuff”, as my family well know; I can’t stand pointless stuff that you are told you need to be happy; gadgets and widgets and bags and clothes and phones and houses and cars and money and shoes and holidays and whatnot. Because the reality is, you don’t need any of it. Food, shelter, water, companionship. Done. I’ve lived happily all year with two pairs of shoes and only one jumper. And no bags and no makeup and no money and no widgets and gadgets and no useless thingymajiggy whatnots. And guess what, I haven’t missed them. Any of them. And I haven’t been ostracised for not having them either. I have not cared what I was wearing when I got dressed each morning, beyond looking clean and not strange, because no-one judges. The media is not telling you what you should look like and how you should be and dress and live, and so there is a tremendous freedom to just be. Yet the minute I landed back here, I have started to think about what I put on in the morning again, I didn’t realise I was doing it for the first couple of days, but I have noticed that I care now about what people may think if I wear this or that: makes me feel quite sad.  And before you ask, no I haven’t turned into a tree-dwelling, mud-loving, consumer hating weirdo that wears hessian sacks and runs barefoot through the forests; I’ve simply lived without the need for stuff. Because, the reality is, you don’t need it to be happy (the consumer culture over here just tells you that you do cos it makes them lots and lots of money). Stuff is nonsense (they just got the saying wrong all those years ago – “Stuff and Nonsense” should have said “is” not “and”).

So, although coming home brings the joy of seeing family and friends and catching up on stories of life that has passed over the year, it also brings a return of the culture shock that I experienced so badly at Christmas, and that I know I will not easily shake off this time. I know that I will find a way to process everything and to make my own way back into the world here, but I also know it is going to take me time and involve a new direction as I work out just where my life is going now and just how I want to live it. So lots to think about and write about already upon my return; both good and bad. Maybe those delicious little homecoming cakes were right: there is a bit of an ache that comes with the welcome of home…