Erin Miller

Reverse culture shock is an incredible force. But its real trick is in its sneaky, almost invisible nature. Many people claim that reverse culture shock is stronger than the initial culture shock of going to a foreign country. I don’t really think that’s true. Reverse culture shock is not stronger than the initial culture shock, but because its harder to recognize and understand, it takes longer to overcome. I think that mine is finally beginning to dissipate.
Of course you become a bit freaked-out when you watch barefoot children with reddish hair and swollen bellies chase chickens over dirt paths, or listen to a pregnant woman tell you how hungry she is, and realize that these are scenes that will become normal. Your stomach starts to ache after the fifth straight meal (breakfast included) consisting primarily of beans and corn tortillas. You shiver thinking of holding your hand under the shower, knowing that it won’t ever warm up, and psyching yourself into getting into it anyway. But even the cold water isn’t as disorientating as when you turn on your shower the next day and nothing comes out. And then you realize that you don’t miss the water as much as the lights when the power is out for the better part of two days. I spent my first two or three weeks in Honduras in a state of shock, until I found the projects that would define my volunteer experience. It was a state of shock that I and everyone else understood.
It’s much more difficult to understand how much you miss all of it once you have returned to the comforts of home. Last week I spoke with one of my best friends who had spent significantly more time than I had living in Central America. We returned to the US around the same time and when she called last week, the first thing she said was, “Do you still feel weird?” It was the first time since I got back that I really felt that it was alright to still be readjusting. When people ask how you are doing you can tell them all about how nice it is to have hot water, power, grocery stores filled with things you cannot even imagine, or that someone can deliver hot pizza to your door, but in truth, few of those things were things that I really missed while I was gone and none of it explains why it feels so weird to be home. It seems like coming home should be easy.
That is one of the trickiest things about it. Everyone assumes that coming home will be easy, but in reality it probably rarely is. You never return to a home that is just the way it was before you left, because home changes even when you aren’t around. And its even more difficult to return home when not only it is different than you remember, but everything in your cultural surroundings has changed as well.
I miss my community in La Esperanza. I miss my host family, I miss my work, and I really miss speaking Spanish. As hard as it may be to believe, I miss rough beans and dry corn tortillas and sour butter. I miss long afternoons spent eating lunch at the restaurant with a generator when the power was out. And occasionally, albeit rarely, I miss really cold showers. I miss buying oranges from street vendors and I miss so much more. But, at least the shock is wearing off.