What Reverse Cross-cultural adjustment looks like:
- Reflexively thinking there’s a water-cut when you turn on the tap to find no running water, only to figure out you’ve not used the “fancy” knob the right way!
- Waking up in the middle of the night trying to readjust your mosquito net, only to find out there isn’t one!
- Getting in the car and instinctively pulling the car windows down, only to remember that cars here have air-conditioning. Windows up!
- Feeling overwhelmed standing in the middle of a bookstore’s Stationary-only section which takes up an entire floor, realizing that’s the size of the biggest grocery store you’ve been to in the past year.
- Craving those amazing fifty-cent rugby-sized African avocados, only to find them here the size of the seed of those avocados!
- Instinctively boiling all your drinking water, until someone reminds us, “You can drink tap water in Singapore!”
Coming home and realizing that in spite of all the adjustments and differences between two countries miles apart (one recklessly organic and the other, set in meticulous order), you’re still in love with them both.
You’re in love with the red dirt in the natural wildness of the African savannah and the neatly pruned greenery flanking spotless sidewalks in this city; you’re in love with the organic flexibility of everything Ugandan and the predictable efficiency of everything Singaporean; you’re in love with the pearl of Africa and the heart of Asia.
Both have stolen and captured our hearts,
both are beautiful in their own distinct ways…
The beautiful Treetop Walk in Singapore
The breathtaking plains of Uganda
Both are places we can call home,
because of the memories we’ve shared and the people we’ve loved.
