How Many Volts is a Culture Shock?

What does it feel like to have culture shock? Is it an electrical zap? Is it a chronic dull ringing? Is it like a gong banging around in your head? Does culture shock wear off gradually, or are you just left sizzled?

Culture shock is like that friend who creeps up on you from behind and taps you on one shoulder and you turn in the wrong direction, and then it does it again and you turn in the other direction, and the third time it happens you’re ready because you’ve learned their pattern, but the next time they change the pattern and trick you yet again. It makes me question things just when I thought I had it all figured out. I’m constantly comparing, noticing minute differences and asking why why why? And noticing the similarities as well, because sometimes those are just as surprising as the differences.

I don’t feel shocked. I feel like I’m in a constant state of inconsistency. Sometimes I am hopelessly confused, sometimes I can tackle anything, sometimes I think that I think I have found the meaning of life, sometimes I see myself as one grain of sand on a beach that never ends (that’s when I’m being dramatic), sometimes I am convinced I have discovered the secret to happiness (oh but I have!), sometimes I wish I had a punching bag. I miss home more than I have in the rest of my life put together.

Or maybe none of this is culture shock, and my mood just fluctuates because of the malaria pills I ingest every Friday at 1330 hours – which also give me crazy/eerily realistic dreams, among other side effects. This is the excuse I use for myself when I find myself in my house needing to force myself to go outside, and trying to remember why I shipped myself half a globe away from my comfort zone instead of just opening an ice cream shop like I had originally planned.

Getting asked a question in the local language and then, when I don’t understand, receiving laughter but no translation? 9 volts.

Walking through a market and hearing a chorus of “whitey! whitey!” from all around? 14 volts.

Having a quick trip to the market for onions turn into a 4-hour rendezvous because I stopped to say hi to my neighbors on the way and ended up sitting in a plastic chair in their yards chatting and eating cookies and holding baby bunnies that they are raising? Priceless.

The Craziest Year of My Life (so far): Memorable Moments

- Carrying a baby on my back in a capulana (a colorful multi-purpose cloth, more on this later)

- Reading a book out loud with my little sister

- The reappearance of my frisbee after I thought it was lost for good

- Cracking an egg into a pan and seeing a large fetus with bulging eyes pop out

- Defending, in Portuguese, the armpit as the most important body part (why? It maintains homeostasis and releases pheromones, of course)

- Cooking a delicious lemon zest cake with an improvised recipe and a dutch oven (a pot inside a pot with sand inside and heated over a charcoal stove)

- Climbing a mango tree and not having an allergic reaction to the bark

- Discovering that the house across the street from me bakes fresh bread every morning (now I just need to buy peanut butter) (explanation of blog title: pão = bread)

- Roasting freshly picked cashews (do you know what a cashew looks like as it is growing? I didn’t. Google it.)

- Having my first philosophical conversation in Portuguese

December 30, 2011: and they said, let there be light!

(...but only for 3 hours)

I write to you tonight not by candlelight, sunlight, wind-up flashlight, solar/battery powered lantern, or cell phone light, but computer light. This is one of three noteworthy events that took place today.

Let me tell you the story.

It began at 3:00 this morning when my cell phone alarm went off. I did not intend to wake up at this ungodly hour. I meant to wake up at 5:00, obviously a much more reasonable time to wake up in the middle of vacation, but I had forgotten to fix the clock on my phone and it got a little ahead of itself. I tucked the mosquito net back in and promptly fell back asleep and I think I dreamed that my friend sent me a text, because I no longer have the text and don’t remember deleting it. But I was so sure it happened. This is an interesting side effect of the malaria pills. More about that in a future post.

I was re-aroused from my slumber at the real 5:00 (although at 3:00, I guess it was 5:00 somewhere?), and was escorted to the bus station by my friend Leah, who(m) I was visiting, and her dog Chamossa, who usually likes to chase goats but this time was chased by the goats. Most of today was occupied by me transporting myself from Leah’s site to my site, which is quite a process, involving 4 different bus rides (2 hours, 4 hours, 1 hour, 0.5 hours) and a lot of bravery, since it was my first time traveling by myself in Africa. I would have liked to have conversed with the people who were sitting around me/on top of me/underneath me (apparently, being so squished together that you are interlocking legs with a stranger and your knee is jamming into their crotch for 2 hours does not automatically lead to friendship), but I was using up all my energy pretending to be brave that I didn’t have any left to start any philosophical conversations. That will be a goal for my next solo trip. Today my goal was just to arrive home.

The second monumental event of the day actually began last night when I witnessed someone light charcoal in less than two minutes without burning a plastic bag, which is the traditional method here. Perhaps I have not told you how much trouble I have had lighting charcoal. To give you some idea, I would estimate that the first two weeks at site, I spent about 16.4% of each day fighting to get it lit and then stay lit. This acquired skill is crucial to survival, because every meal that cannot be eaten raw (I should try making sushi) must be prepared on the charcoal stove. But after witnessing this miracle yesterday, I went home today and tried this new method for myself, and within 14 minutes, my entire 8 by 8 inch charcoal stove was ablaze! And no one was around to see it. I celebrated by making rice pudding for dinner. Actually, that was just the only food I had in the house.

Then, at around 18:24 hours, in the heat of the charcoal-lighting moment, something else was suddenly ablaze behind me. It was the electricity in my house! For years, it has been all wired up and ready to light people’s lives, but the town never turns on the electricity for some reason, and I just assumed the generator was broken. But alas, my bedroom light is shining for the first time since I first laid eyes on the darkness around it, and I am typing on my computer as it is being charged.

Dear reader, I have never appreciated electricity as much as I do now.

Let me tell you a secret: any of you can do what I’m doing. Living without electricity and running water is just something you get used to. However, I no longer want to be Laura Ingalls Wilder. Candles light up a room much more than I realized, but there’s nothing as bright as a ceiling light that turns on with a switch. Bucket baths save water and get you clean, but there’s nothing like a waterfall-like stream of water pounding on your skull. I resolve to not take these things for granted anymore.

For a day full of such ordinary things, it has been an extraordinary day.