Alternate title: What I know about reverse culture shock. It’s a thing.
Serving in the Peace Corps turned out to be two of the most fun and meaningful years of my life. Those few years after returning home from the Peace Corps were not. I spent the first years post-college as a Ghanaian in a rural village, that didn’t have running water and barely had electricity. That’s the world I became an adult in. That’s all I knew. Taking care of myself meant buying food at the market on every 6th day and periodically filling up my gas tank so I could cook on my camping cooker in my shoe box kitchen. Cleaning my home was sweeping my dusty floor with a long grass broom, and asking the neighborhood kids to help me find the dead mice and bats under my bed. I bathed outside under the stars and cut my own hair. I spent full mornings doing buckets of laundry by hand, and full afternoons writing letters home. As humans do, I adapted to life in Ghana. After two years it was the only way of life I knew.
I don’t know if I was more anxious or depressed when I came home. I was terrified of crossing streets and shopping at large grocery stores. I would have feverish headaches at work as I adjusted to working in an office for eight straight hours. I couldn’t relate to anyone. I didn’t care about pop culture or current affairs. Even the big ones. I was rude to strangers and mean to friends.
I didn’t like paying to do laundry, and spending three dollars on bread. Being broke in Ghana was like a fun challenge to get creative and resourceful . Being broke in NYC…not so much. It was pretty miserable.
I moved into an apartment in Harlem that was across the street from a mosque. When I would catch the call to prayer, I would crawl into my window and listen with tears rolling down my face. I missed Ghana so much.
In Ghana, I was my best self. In NYC, my health and spirit quickly deteriorated. I would say it took two years to get a hold of myself. If you are freshly back from the Peace Corps and are startlingly depressed, I gotchu. Here a few bits of advice. Remember this, people are built to adapt. You did it before, and you’ll do it again.
It’s ok to have a job that pays the bills. It took me two years to find a job that married my skills and passions. For awhile, I was hoping to ‘get paid to do what I did in Ghana’. I tried that one in an interview, and it did not go over well. Because it’s not really a thing. Until I figured out what that was, I had an administrative job that I believed was slowly killing my soul. It actually gave me invaluable skills that prepared me for the job I have now.
If sitting in an office from 9 to 5 makes your head spin, when for some time you were planting trees, teaching children to read, empowering local women to start a business – and still had time for mid afternoon naps – I feel your pain. Be patient with yourself as you find your niche.
In the meanwhile, here are some great interview tips:
Remember volunteering? Until you find your ‘dream job’, there are plenty of ways to foster your new identity, and have purpose. When I think about what was most meaningful to me while living in Ghana, it was the time I spent with my junior high students. When I returned home, I joined a mentoring program that helps girls develop the same kind of life skills as I did in Ghana. It has made me feel connected to my community in a way that gave me the same kind of grounding I had as a full-time volunteer.
Speaking of community! Find one. This may be through volunteering at the school you pass on your way to work, through a church, an RPCV group, or a book club. I experienced a major loss of community when I returned from Ghana, and worked really hard to find community where I currently live. Finding a place in a community abroad and in one as busy and transient as NYC has proved to be challenging. But it has served me so well.
Keep in touch. I don’t think I laughed as hard or cried on as many shoulders as I did while a Peace Corps Volunteer. I don’t really know how to talk about what my Peace Corps friends mean to me, but I will say that while living in Ghana all of our cell phones had the same forty phone numbers stored. That’s kind of weird, right? A group of people having just each other, and only each other, for two wild years. For a time, I grieved what I felt was a loss of friendships. We went back to our own corners of the world, our own support systems, our own very different lives with unique cell phone contacts. My good friend Adam (also a RPCV) told me that our experiences did not cease to exist because we lived new and different lives. This is a young adult life lesson, not an RPCV one. But it was harder on me during that stage in my life than the others. We have all put in an effort to stay connected, even if it’s an annual email update. In the past year, a few people in my Peace Corps group experienced some really heartbreaking losses. The support and unity that came through at those times was really breathtaking and beautiful. So, my advice is to be intentional about staying in touch. Those friendship will change, but they will not disappear. And when you need them most, they will show up at your doorstep.
I also keep in touch with many people from my village. It is amazing how many people are on Facebook! I get frequent calls, emails, and Facebook updates, and even an occasional photo from a project I worked on that is still going strong. Keeping in touch with people from my village is a reminder that while I did not change the world, I did make very important relationships that I believe will last me a lifetime.
Keep the adventure going. There was once a savage African buffalo who wandered into my village, who killed a few locals and had grown men trembling up in treetops. The village was on lockdown until some hunters took care of business. Like, how can you compete with that around here? While I was dating Erik, he brought me on adventures all over the United States. After globe trotting for ten years, but not really venturing west of Pennsylvania, he revealed how mass and beautiful my own country is. Find adventure wherever you are. It’s there, I promise.
I’ll close with this. Your Peace Corps experience did not abandon you, it is you. It is in the community that finds you, the career you land, who you choose to love, how you parent, and the tailwind of all your adventures ahead, big and small.