Re-entry styles – home thoughts from home

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A VSO colleague of mine posted recently about his return to the US and contemplated the issue of re-entry styles. He wrote

“If you accept that re-entry is a period of transition that is accompanied by stress, there is typically one of three approaches driving your transition. Your re-entry style will dictate the level of ease with which you will move through the re-entry transition period. Your style or approach to re-entry will also determine your stress level.

i) Alienation

• Negative feelings about North America and North American
  Rejects the North America lifestyle; unable to adapt, feels stuck
  May try to escape by taking further contracts overseas
  Stress Level: High

ii) Reversion

• Reverts to prior North America lifestyle without dealing with personal changes (particularly attitudinal or value-based changes) that occurred abroad
  Stress Level: Initially low, but with potential to increase

iii) Integration

• Uses the stress of re-entry to learn more about self
  Integrates the changes that have occurred abroad to develop a new identity and lifestyle in accordance with changed self
  Stress Level: Moderate”

I think this categorisation is too simple: I suspect a lot of folks experience elements of all the 3 aspects  - Alienation, Reversion and Integration  - as a real mix. My problem with delineating them is that it ignores, perhaps amongst other things, the impact of one’s original reasoning for volunteering and concurrent changes to your own country during your period of volunteering. I’m not saying that some folks won’t experience one or other of these aspects and adopt the strategies outlined and  experience the stress levels indicated, just that this scale is a gross simplification.

For example, if one’s volunteer experience was the first time living and working in another country then it will have a different impact than if this has done this before, even if that was not as a volunteer.  Some people volunteer knowing they will go back into exactly the same life they left, same house, same friends, same job on their return. Others volunteer as part of a more extended time “seeing the world”. To me these re-entry styles sort of assumes the first and ignores the second. If one volunteered consciously as part of a broader approach to “seeing the world” then going off somewhere else is not “escaping” the alienation of one’s own country and culture but rather part of a planned continued experience. 

Whenever one returns home, one experiences missed things – both positive and negative. Volunteers often write about coping with “too many choices” when they return home, mainly as regards food, but also other things. I recall after my first extended trip back to The Sahara, walking through GDC airport in Paris and suffering a sensory bombardment, not only the lights, the shops, the amount of glass in windows, tables etc,, of noise and people rushing about, but also a nasal onslaught of smells I would not previously have even noticed such as the floor cleaner, the window polish etc.  Now when I return I am no longer surprised by these, although I do still experience the novelty of the changes in smells.,  but there is always something new which gives rise to what I term a “ooh” moment. For lots of volunteers it is when they retaste cheese, for me it happened with black pudding, but it can happen in the strangest of places, with the weirdest of sensations – my most recent was the delight of using ultra soft, quilted toilet paper – not something I had ever even consciously missed in India. These “ooh” moments are very fleeting, but also very intense.

If one had stayed at home during the same period one’s feelings about one’s own country and culture may have changed anyway. I think this is particularly so now as the current eco-socio-political situation has and is changing attitudes within our society at a fundamental level and there’s more to come I am sure. The UK has seen a dramatic change in government during the past couple of years which has had and is having a deep, far reaching impact on our society. There are changes in attitudes to work, social care, education & training, the continued and increasing commercialisation of all aspects of life, the burgeoning commercialisation of social responsibility, the widening gap between the “haves” and “have nots”.

On my return I have been struck by the number of adverts for payday loans with their exorbitant 4200% APR rates  ( a sure sign of economic stress biting hard when people, disenfranchised from the banking system, have to resort to this grotesque form of legal loan sharks) , by how readily people click the button without thinking to satisfy an unrecognised addiction to buying virtual goods, the latest must-have, never-use-after-the-first-week app, the lack of distinction being made between outsourcing, privatisation and commercialisation of what were once services run by the government for the people, the latest being the police force, and the surprise in the general populace when it is revealed that skimming off and subcontracting of difficult cases has been rife in the management on behalf of the UK government by a4e of workplace experience schemes for the unemployed.

Whilst I am not saying that there weren’t improvements and efficiencies to be made to government operations, running a country, a society that cares and which holds certain core values cannot, in my opinion, be done by a commercial organisation whose aim is to generate wealth for its owners/shareholders being responsible for delivering key services – all that means is people’s taxes are being pushed on through to the pockets of already wealthy city types. All a country’s people should  be a country’s stakeholders. Would I have thought the same about this if I had  never volunteered? Of course I can’t be sure - we are after all more than the sum of all of our experiences - but I believe so.

So at a personal level have I been undergoing Alienation, Reversion and Integration? Yes all 3 but I think the volunteering experience is only one small part of a bigger and planned change in me which started some years ago. I made a conscience decision to see more of the world, to experience more of life, to live it to my fullest and if I could do something constructive along the way, well and good. I’d always hoped and planned to volunteer and to do it in more than one place. My volunteering experience has and will be one of the many facets of that life change, not the only one.

As I now “escape” to my second VSO placement I wonder how differently I am coming to it than I did my first?  Re-entry styles the other way round! Well in terms of due diligence, much the same approach really . I’ve done my homework on the country, chatted with VSO volunteers there, checked up as much as I can on the organisation I shall be with. It shall be interesting to compare programme office approaches. The immediately obvious one is a much shorter in country introduction process in Nigeria compared to the 4 weeks we had in India. After that we shall see.

Revelling in diversity

Another insightful returners moment…..I am out shopping with my friend Helen. First there is this amazing array of bread, covering about 30 feet of wall space and a central table stand. Wow, bread is a basic and yet here I am bemused by the multitude of forms, shapes, flavourings it is to be found in. Even compared to my local supermarket at home this is a wide range, compared to what was available in Rayagada it is incredible. Next, the vegetable aisle and I smile to myself when I see Mooli and Lau on display. I’d never see those at home. Here in London, with its mix of cultures and peoples even the supermarket aisles are labelled African, West Indian, Asian etc. Standing at the checkout I survey the people, the usual baskets piled high with produce, patiently waiting on the next available checkout operator. but such a range of peoples, a real mix of races, ethnicities, creeds, and cultures. I am conscious that I am trying to place where everyone’s or their forebearers has come from. A trip down Holloway Road and it is like entering a forgotten world of small shops and helpful shopkeepers – the fishmongers, the fruit and veg shop etc - the market looking more like something one sees elsewhere in the world as people try to buy and sell to make a living. I love it!

Coincidently my online book group has just been reading a short story by Leila Aboulela entitled “Missing out” which gave rise to a discussion of the cultural hybridisation which occurs when people migrate, either through choice or not, as they inevitably begin to feel homesick on the one hand, home making on the other; as they begin to feel less part of one place and yet not fully part of the other place. It made me aware of how I am increasingly feeling, being a part of that every growing body of people with a sense of reduced belonging to one place and never a full sense of belonging to another, but with this comes a sense also that the whole is greater than the some of the parts and in a world where fear of other is on the increase I can but wish for more cultural hybridisation.  The scientist in me is reminded of the phrase “hybrid vigour” :) That aside diversity rocks!

3 for 2 does not equal 1 for 2/3

Am I the only person to find the “3 for 2”, “2 for 1”, “buy one get one free” offers pointless because all I want is 1?

I  read an article yesterday which states that 50% of US households are single, so I think I can’t be the only one out there who wonders about the markets continual preoccupation with multi-buy offers.

I remember, in the days before the internet, needing to buy a single rail ticket between Sheffield and London and ending up being told by the booking clerk that what I needed was a return. No I politely said what I had asked for was a single. He quietly explained I should buy a return because it was cheaper. More recently, a friend also told me of cases where buying 2 return air tickets, and only using one half of each, has worked out cheaper than buying one return. Result = empty seats.

Then there are those supermarkets offers of the buy one mango get one free type. But if you are not going to eat the second mango then why buy it, even for zero cost? Result = gluttony or waste. Instead, why not have singles supermarkets, where buying one pork chop instead of a pack of 3 is possible? Or why can’t supermarkets let you sign over your second mango to someone else in return for their second pack of oranges say? Or credit your card with a free mango on your next visit? Or let 2 people share a “2 for 1” offer between them? Or where the zero cost mango could be given to a food charity as your donation?

Next there are the Vouchers for Schools Schemes. Not knocking it, its a great idea. A tiny amount for each transaction translates into real Computers for Schools across the huge volume turnover at supermarkets. But here too there is a singleton factor to the equation. When supermarkets first started giving vouchers for schools, I asked my till server if she wanted them for her kids school. No she replied she was not allowed to take them. OK fair enough, but as a consequence I’m always on the hunt for someone with kids of school age or someone who looks like a grandparent to hand my vouchers off to. I remember once, having done a huge shop one day and then buying a whole load of wine, I had this enormous pile of vouchers, and would you believe it a supermarket devoid of obvious parents! After several attempts to find a person with kids I’m on my way out of the shop when I spot a women at the other end of the car park. It turns out she was a teacher who happily took my very large pile. Why can’t supermarkets have a drop box for each local school?

Then there are 2 for 1 meal offers – what good are these when you are eating on your own? They are in effect a surcharge of being a singleton. No different than single supplement room charges.

Today another of these silly offers. I needed to get my eyes tested and the Optician has a “buy one get one free” offer. But I have perfectly good frames for my glasses, I just need new lenses. On the other hand I only have one pair of prescription sunglasses at the moment and that is never enough, especially when living in sunny tropical climes, and so really needed to buy a second pair.

First the optician costed out my lenses. When I sad I wanted my sun glasses changed as well out came the buy one get one free offer. So here’s how it works out

Glasses : Lens £102.50 x 2 + Frame £144.50 = £349.00

Sunglasses :  Lenses £66.00 x 2 + Frame £29.00 = £161.00

Eye test - £20.00

Total £530.00 (Extortionate!)

Discount £161.00

Paid £369.00 (Still expensive! With a need to change my lenses every 18 months to 2 years that is £15.00 - £20.00 per month cost)

I am buying exactly the same frames as I have already for my ordinary glasses. This means I now have 3 frames the same!

Can someone please tell me why I should be buying an unwanted frame, that someone has spent time making, that materials have been used to make, that energy has been used to make and which in effect is surplus, it is waste?  result – unrequired production, waste.

Why not say that instead I could have £144.50 off my sunglasses? With this, I might have even spent more money and chosen a more expensive frame as the choice for sunglasses within this offer is somewhat limited. As it was, I’d spent time looking at their range of frames and was well and truly non plused by the pitiful choice. Lots of all too similar frames, almost all rectangular in shape, black, blue, pink, violet in colour but little in the way of my rich autumnal browns, greens, and reds to choose from. This wasn’t a cultural acclimatisation moment of too much choice, they were just a boring selection. So I ended up with quite ordinary stayed chocolate brown frame. I want to be more adventurous in my sunglasses, but nothing individual, nothing distinctive, nothing very colourful. However, for what amounts to £161.00-144.50 = £16.50 for my sunglasses I am not complaining money wise, it just seems warped logic and wasteful over production to me. 

I just hate these offers! Rant over!

Roll down the windows and let the wind blow back your hair….

…of all the things to have missed! I took a walk into Cambridge today to get my hair cut. Over 12 inches chopped off and it  is still below my shoulders. Walking back, on a late autumnal day, with a slight chill in the air, the wind picks up and whoosh, hair flies! A great “cultural reacclimatisation” moment as Springsteen rings through my  head and after almost 2 years of wearing my hair tied up and back it is free to move and my scalp feels cool. Priceless :)

Driving normalities

As I am being driven back into Cambridge this morning to stay with friends there for a couple of weeks I am pondering the differences in traffic. There are of course the obvious lane discipline, traffic jams and lack of horns, but I was struck by one particular one as I watched a learner driver run out of slip land space as he tried to merge into nose to tail traffic heading into town. It was a brightly coloured, newish looking , all signed  up motoring school car complete with bright obvious L learner plates. The contrast to Rayagada could not have been more apparent. In my nagar there was one driving instructor who also had a small car. But his looked  anything but new with typical bumps and bruises and balding tyres. Every morning as I walked into work I would pass a collection of young men, all I suspect students at the local Engineering College, who had gathered together with their cycles to wait for their turn in the car. No book and pay for an hour plus here, their lessons consisted of 5-10 minutes of driving round and round the sandy lanes of the nagar. They probably did not get out of 2nd gear. And of course a vital part of their training was to learn to hoot their horn at each junction, even when there was no other traffic, car, bike or cycle, and no pedestrians in sight. It got to be very normal. Now it seems I am living two normalities and happily adjusting between the two :)