The Foreigner

I've got it just about as good as it can get. I'm not a refugee: I came here of my own free choosing. People don't scorn me: rather, they look up to me, the rich, white, English-speaker. I haven't suffered cultural awkwardness and rejection: I'm surrounded by the loveliest, most welcoming people. I don't get stared at or treated differently: I pass for a Chilean on the street. The culture's not confronting and Other: I think I may even end up feeling more comfortable in this culture than in my own. And I don't find the language alien and veiled: rather, I enjoy it.

But I'm a foreigner still. It's strange to find myself thus. I don't think I'd really twigged that it would be my identity when I stepped off the plane. I find myself in something of a no-man's-land, at once part of things and not. Obviously I'm physically present in all sorts of situations and places, but socially and relationally I'm looking on.

Of course this can happen in your own culture, if you're excluded from a friendship group. Horrible as this experience is, at least at some level you still belong. You know how these groups operate and what people are thinking (that's why it hurts so much); you know how to go about life in your country; and (hopefully) you are part of other relational webs. But as a foreigner, you find yourself, not outside of a particular group, but outside of a whole culture. It's like there's a bubble enclosing all the people of the land except for you. You can see and hear and even communicate with them, but there's much you don't understand and you're not in. Maybe it's a bit how people with Autism and Asperger's feel - although I suppose they don't always realise what they're missing.

I don't really know what point I'm trying to make. I guess I'm hoping to help my dear readers understand - so you can feel sorry for me (!) and be a friend to the foreigners in your life. Don't feel too sorry for me though - I feel very confident that this is just a phase and a short one. I think that God chose very well when he placed me here and I do think that all will be well. I've always been fascinated by 'sense of place', so in a way this experience is a great blessing for me. And I pray it will help me know, love and turn my eyes to the land where one day I will truely be home.