Reflective Essay Requirements: Write 800-1500 words reflecting on events, ideas, or questions related to your topic. (The other choice was a persuasive essay.)
Do I belong in Cambodia?
Jeden Tag packe ich den Koffer
ein und dann wieder aus.
“Every day I pack my suitcase up
and then unpack again.” This line, the
opening line of the poem “Dazwischen” (“In Between”) by Turkish-German author
Alev Tekinay, has haunted me since I studied it in 2006 with Dr. Ünlü, perhaps my favorite college professor. I
tried to imagine how I would feel as a Turkish immigrant to Germany,
homesickness mounting day by day even as Germany’s culture felt more and more
like home.
After decades in Germany, thousands
of Turkish-born or Turkish-extraction residents are torn “between the closet
and the suitcase,” as Tekinay describes it.
Every year that passes makes going back to Turkey a more elusive dream,
and yet barriers to complete assimilation or acceptance in Germany seem to
remain insurmountable. For example,
citizenship is not automatically granted everyone born in Germany, so many residents are considered Turkish though they've never stepped foot on Turkish soil. There are some Germans who would say, “Sure,
he was born in Germany, but for thousands of years before that his ancestors
were Turkish. How can we ignore all that
history to say he’s one of us?”
The
past five years in Cambodia have enabled me to relate better to Tekinay. I’ve celebrated so many milestones of
language and cultural acquisition: visiting a Khmer friend’s relatives in the
province, memorizing the alphabet, arguing my way out of a traffic ticket in
Khmer. I know how to pick out the
perfect mango, how to make an early left turn before the intersection, how to
keep my smile when I’m angrily confronting someone, how to hear the “no” hidden
inside a certain type of “yes.” I can
pat myself on the back that I’ve arrived here younger, studied the language
more, and stayed longer than many of my fellow expat friends. Cambodia often feels more like home than
America does, and my love for Cambodia increases each year.
But does all that make me
Cambodian? Sometimes I wonder how far I
can really go. Could I ever marry a
Khmer man? Live in the province? Spend the rest of my life here? Lose my accent? Write a book in Khmer? The deeper I go in exploring Cambodia’s
language and culture, the more I realize how different I am from Cambodians and
how strong the forces are that would stop me from ever fully speaking and
thinking like a “true” Cambodian. I
could be the most Cambodian expat I know without crossing the invisible gulf
between my birthland and my adopted home.
And in many ways, I’ve barely started trying. I’ve spent only a month living with
Cambodians. All my students and most of
my colleagues – even the Cambodian ones - are fluent in English. My kitchen currently contains Raisin Bran, spaghetti,
Gouda cheese, and not a lick of prahok (Cambodia’s classic fermented fish
paste, commonly used in cooking).
I
wonder who gets to define “belonging,” anyway.
Some days I feel like I’ve got this down. I have awesome friendships, my language
skills are progressing steadily, I’m settled here, and my roots are deepening. Other days, when the gas station still can’t
understand how I say “full,” or when I walk into someone’s house with my shoes
still on, or when a joke doesn't seem funny despite multiple explanations, I feel “fresh off the
boat” and perhaps even ready to reboard it.
Many Cambodian friends are kind and gracious with me, praising my
abilities and encouraging me to stay for years to come. They accept me despite my differences. Is their assessment the true one, or should I
pay more attention to the Cambodians who still notice how un-Khmer I am in many
ways? Even if it weren’t for my dirty
blonde hair and towering height, my way of walking – even of sitting astride my
moto – would expose me as an outsider to anyone in sight.
I take
heart when I look at foreigners who are ahead of me. My friend Victoria, in Cambodia for seven years and counting, blogged recently about attending
a Khmer friend’s birthday party:
“A sweet sense of community washed over me. [...] The purposeful feeling of being needed to
make cakes. The family-like joy of joking
with people practically sitting on you because the floor is absolutely covered
with people. The familiar comfort of
knowing what we are expected to do or say.
Our language skills finally good enough to keep up with the latest
banter or joke. Our lives fully
accustomed to the flow of life here in Cambodia. In that moment it did feel like home.”
Stories like this encourage me that I haven’t
yet maxed out my potential for “fitting in” here – more time and language and
exposure could take me farther. But I need to remember that belonging isn't just about fitting in, but about being accepted by others in spite of sticking out.
Sometimes, my life’s transience is
a bit terrifying. My closest friends and
community here (mostly foreigners) have such high turnover that the vast
majority of them will move on to another country in the next five years. Staying
here is no guarantee of maintaining my beloved tight-knit community. If I returned to the US, how long would it
take before I truly felt again that I belonged there? I know my faux pas and awkward moments would
subside within a bit, but I suppose I’d have twinges of “other-ness” for years,
possibly decades, to come. My US friends
and family are scattered across towns and states, and I currently have no
desire to settle there permanently. If I
were ever compelled to leave Cambodia for good, I have no idea where I’d end
up. I imagine myself spinning the globe
and pointing to some brightly colored blob.
The mere thought leaves me dizzy, like when I was a little kid lying in
bed. I’d shut my eyes tightly and feel
as if gravity had been suspended, as if I were floating off into the blue. I long for an anchor – something that will
hold fast amid tumultuous waves of change.
I’m
thankful that in a spiritual sense, I have a very real anchor. God says I belong with Him, wherever He is,
wherever He takes me. That means I can
be at home anywhere in the world, whether Cambodia or Cameroon or California or
Colombia. Everywhere I go, I’m in the
world He created, with people made in His image. Everywhere I go, I can clutch the hand of a
Dad who knows and loves me, a Dad who's got children all over the place for me to discover. I can be a loyal citizen of my passport
country and an eager learner in other countries because my permanent address is
in a heavenly country. I can be at home
anywhere in God’s presence, and yet I’ll be fully at home only when I’m fully
in His presence. I belong completely
with Him because He’s the one who completely knows and loves me – the
definition of belonging.
With
that source of confidence, I can accept my life of packing and unpacking, the
fine balance between the closet and the suitcase. Change can be dizzyingly exhilarating, not
dizzyingly sickening. I’m reminded for
the umpteenth time of my favorite C.S. Lewis quote:
"The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God
withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, merriment, and
pleasure He has scattered broadcast. […]
Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will
not encourage us to mistake them for home."
Knowing my true home
frees me to fearlessly put down roots despite the risk that they’ll be torn out,
to belong to each place as much as I’m able with assurance that no more is
needed, and to savor the sweetness of life wherever I am.
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