Leaving Home to come Home

Well, this blog couldn't last forever. I am out of stories and it is time to move on.
I had a wonderful time though, as you can tell from the stories. I enjoyed sharing them with you just as much as I enjoyed living them.

So as I plan future travels, I think about how I have to go back. Yet there is still so much of the world to see, making it that much harder to choose.
Although I reckon that Poznan, Poland, is one place that I just have to go back to.
There's just something about it. ;-)

I am finally being forced by circumstances to do my final bits of unpacking and I keep finding more and more of those keepsakes that make me just want to stop and...and then I can never figure out whether to laugh or cry.

A note I found at the back of the book one of the host families gave to me as a souvenir...this one just takes the prize!

 One day, when the winds are right and the stars align, visit I shall.
Till then, till future travels...Do widzenia!
Ha ha!
  

The African Effect

Where to begin...this has got to be my favourite post!!

Do you know what it is like to be different?!
Oh yeah...I was different!

I visited a park where traditional Polish homestaeds were being showcased and one of the caretakers gave me a free pot. Here's what happened, she was showing us around and mentioned how traditionally some people made pots! I asked if I could touch them, she said sure. I picked it up and took a look at it and as I went to put it back...she said, "Keep it! Take it back to Africa with you!"
They weren't even on sale!!!
So I quickly stuffed it into my bag and thanked her. Taking it back to Africa indeed!!

Then there was the time a few people and I were positioning ourselves for a picture, and this one lady positioned herself behind me, I was seated, and let her hands run wild on my head. Impromptu head massage right there....and she kept muttering, "Ohhhhh, sooo different!!", while feeling my hair. I just sat there in mild shock and smiled. This came after someone else stopped me on the streets and asked to touch my hair so it was not that new. There was also the girl who could not take her eyes off me on a tram, so I turned to her and smiled, and she blurted out, "Your hair is so cool!" (flips hair in slow motions, says thank you!) Ha ha!

Not to mention the fact that in most situations other interns would be introduced and their nationality would be part of their identity. For example...Crystal from Singapore, Vir from india, Hannah from China...but me, no, not a country for me. Of course this was not always the case, but I was Kathleen from Africa. A whole continent! I was Africa! Hilarious!

Then there were the people who had other friends from Africa. They would strike up a conversation with me, ask where I am from, then tell me all about their friend from Nigeria or Ghana or Namibia and expect me to know all the places and events associated with the story...when really I have not been anywhere in Africa except Kenya, so I probably knew more about Poland than I did about these other African countries at that point.

Then there was that guy at a souvenir shop in Prague. I walked in with a couple of friends and first thing he says to me is..."Miss, we are from the same continent!" I would not have guessed so because he looked Arabic, but he was from Tunisia...I think. For the next 30 minutes or so, he just went on and on about everything under the sun! Yeah, one of those guys but he made my night.

Of course not forgetting the reaction when you meet other Africans...okay, non-North Africa Africans. We can spot each other from a mile away and depending on the situation...a glance, a smile, a conversation, perhaps even saving of seats for a 5 hour bus ride.
I met a couple of Nigerians, as I was traveling from Warsaw to Poznan, at the bus station. From across the waiting hall, they called out to me, "My sister, come sit next to us!" Could not hold the laughter in, so I obliged. We had the most delightful of conversations. They had me cracking up for a whole 5 hours on the bus.

Then of course there were Aunt M. and Billy Boy, the two other Kenyans I was lucky enough to hang out with. They of course take all this attention in their stride, living in the diaspora I suppose. The attention did bother me at first, but Aunt M came to visit and we hang out, and she silently reassured me that it is okay to be different. (Wonder if she knows this...) We were headed back to our hotel one night, and there was that bunch of teenagers who kept staring and giggling. Then when they got off, they shouted and waved. I personally was at a point where I was just tired and fed up, I just wanted to not be the centre of attention for two seconds, but Aunt M. smiled back at them and waved, then turned to me and said...well, I do not even remember what she said but she said it in a Luhya accent and she made me feel so much better. It is okay to be different, but we really are not that much different, are we?
Billy Boy gets a kick out of attributing the stares to his dashing good looks...that is another approach.
To think, just Kathleen, was someone's first taste of Africa.

I almost forgot, craziest thing anyone ever asked me... There was this one teacher at a school where we went to make our presentations. When it was time for questions, she asked...
"You dance a lot, back home?!"
"Yeah, Africans dance a lot, especially at weddings."
"Have you ever danced naked?!"
...huh?! :-o
I was so confused, ha ha!
 

Your Home is Where You Are

We have all heard the cliche phrase...'Make yourself at home, right?'
Well, when you really have no home, this phrase takes on a very literal meaning.

We tend to treat the unfamiliar with great trepidation. As a guest in someone's house, you will not exactly saunter into the kitchen and start looking for the sugar and tea bags to make yourself a cup of tea. There is a social convention which just dictates that as a guest, you have to behave in a certain way. Wait for the sugar and tea bags to be brought to the table, then make your own tea.

I think I got to a stage where it really did not matter for me.
For my last 2 to 3 weeks in Europe, for many reasons, my place of residence went from semi-permanent to...where my head hit the pillow.
Not that I'm complaining, these were the best weeks of my whole stay!

I stayed with one host family for a week, and then stayed with another host family for another week, after which a couple of friends and I decided to visit several different cities before heading home. So I literally had a new bed every 2 or 3 days in a new hostel in a new city.

There really is not that grace period that allows you to be shy and reserved in a new 'residence', hoping that your hosts will walk you through everything before you get comfortable enough to start doing everything for yourself.

Sometimes there would be no one but me home, and I had to fix up my own meal. Sometimes everyone was busy doing their work. Then when it came to the hostels, really, it is no one's home while at the same time being everyone's home!
I just had to fit in and get comfortable because there was no other option.
When I get to a host family and they say...'Make yourself at home, I would take it literally!!'

Find me...opening the fridge and scavenging for a snack just as I would at home.
Find me...propped on a sofa at a hostel living room, warm and cosy under my blankie, laptop on my lap watching a movie oblivious of all the strangers around me.
Find me...trying to fix myself a meal, opening every single cupboard and drawer looking for the knives and spoons, cups and plates and the likes.
Find me...going through the movies and books collections looking for a good read or a good movie to watch.
I learnt to make everywhere as comfortable as home.

Fast forward to me being back home, the other day we had a guest over, a friend from school. He was hungry, so we went into the kitchen to see if there were any left overs from lunch.
Instinctively, I pulled out a plate for him, took off the covers from the dishes that held the food, gave him a serving spoon, showed him where the microwave is and then started to head in another direction.

I would not have thought anything of it, except he said to me...'Wow, no such thing as being a visitor in this house, huh?'

Why I Said YES to Hosting an Exchange Participant

I said YES to hosting an exchange participant!!! Yes, I did.
I'm sure you already gathered that much from the title, so let's keep moving...

While on my trip, I spent two weeks with two separate families. Having a host family was not a foreign concept to me, last year, 2012, I spent 3 months in Australia and I stayed with a host family there as well.

Before I meet my host family(ies), there is always so much I hope for and expect, about the kind of people I want them to be, the composition of their family, perhaps that they have similar interests with me...that kind of thing. Well, none of what I ever expect happens, ironic, but I have never been disappointed. Not in all my 3 times of being hosted by a family.

I always find that even though I imagined and hoped for something different, what I get is normally exactly what I would pick if I had the chance to do it all over again.

I imagine it is very difficult to open up your home to strangers and invite them to be part of your family. It must be, right?
But others have done it for me, and I was not out to cheat or steal or anything of that sort, but they did not know that and they still did it. How is that for trusting in the goodness of mankind?!

Well, with my first ever host family...I went with a friend of mine, Mwende.
We had a wonderful time with them...they literally made us part of the family. We got a sister and 5 brothers, since then a new little brother has been born...yay!!
They cleared out their garage and had it beautifully furnished and converted into a self-contained guest unit. A few weeks down the line, they told us how they had expected to host 2 German girls but instead 2 Kenyan girls showed up at their doorstep...we had a good laugh about that.

At my second family, I was once again seamlessly integrated into the family despite the fact that I could not communicate with 50 percent of the house hold due to lack of a common language...
The parents spoke Russian and Polish, one of the kids Polish and English, the other Polish and French. That was an interesting week...imagine the conversation at the dinner table...in a minimum of three languages!!
My host sister gave up her room for the week so I could have it. My host mum would wake up and prepare breakfast earlier than she usually would because I had to leave for work really early, then everyone would come and have breakfast with me before I left, after which they would return to bed, and then wake up at their normal hour.

At my third host family, I was just as warmly received. My host mum would not go to bed before I got home, (they lived a bit far from where I worked), and on one occasion, she came to get me when I was stranded at midnight!

At each house they would do little things like take note of my favourite foods then buy or prepare more of that, they tried to give me my own space and also made sure I had company.  They taught me about their culture by giving me that insight that you can only get by living among a people and experiencing their day to day life. They helped in every conceivable manner they could while still not making me feel suffocated.
 
At the end of the day, I was most thankful for the fact that I could say that I belonged somewhere despite being so far away from home.
Then someone asked if I would like to host an intern and if my mum would be okay with it...and of course I jumped at the opportunity of enriching someone else's experience in return and sweet-talked my mum into agreeing.

I figured, it is not as hard as we imagine. Pretty basic actually, a bed where she can lay her head at the end of the day and a community that she can feel a part of, everything else will fall into place.

It has been done for me, now I shall pass it forward.

Excited!!

De Paris avec Amour: Part 2

Let's pick up where we left off...stranded in Paris!

I cried to my heart's content after all the bad news and wished a thousand times I was at home with mum, but of course none of that did me any good.
I got up and decided I would call someone, question was...who?
Lets start at the fact that I had zero credit on my phone, and the only place I could buy credit for the sim card I had was in Poland, a country that was now miles away. Of course the only person that could help me was Aunt M, but I had no idea what line she was using.
So I got to a call box and decided I would call my mum, took out 2 Euros, which was the amount indicated for making a call and then dialed.
Sigh, enter foreign country problems...language barrier!!

Yes, I did French in high school for 4 years, but I could not make head or tail of what the operator said on the other end, then the line went dead.
No call happened, but the machine did not give me back my money...what a rip off!!!
So I moved to the next call box and tried again, same story. Another 2 Euros gone.
This was an airport for goodness sake, why the call box did not have an option to change language to English...is beyond me!!!

I turned to a lady nearby and asked her if she spoke French, then handed her the phone hoping she could decipher what the operator kept saying. She explained to me that I needed to dial the number before putting in any money and that whenever I heard it beep, I needed to insert another 2 Euros.
Thieving machines!! I must have spent about 30 euros trying to call my mum that day...and in the end fine, it went through, but she could not hear a thing I said!
I heard her voice, and she just kept saying 'Hello?!', over and over again. The fact that I could hear her voice, she was that close but still so far away just got me crying again.

'Mum, please ask Aunt M, to call me. Can you hear me? Just get Aunt M and ask her to call me!!', I kept wailing into the phone, yes, I was wailing, and everyone in the vicinity kept staring. I imagine they were thinking to themselves...'Poor girl, who let her go traveling all on her own.' Ha ha!
So i finally ran out of change and I thought it was not worth it to keep trying.

Once again in between sobs I thanked the lady who had helped me, she looked like she was going to start crying as well...and then I went back to my earlier spot, took out my pack of tissues again and cried some more.
 Pathetic, right?

I got another bright idea and decided to go online, on Facebok. There had to be someone online who could tell my mum to tell Aunt M. to please call me immediately, right?
So I took out my laptop, and connected to the airport wifi, first 15 minutes is free so this was do or die!!
I got online and I find none other than Aunt M there, God answers prayers!

So I immediately tell her I missed my flight, and at first she thinks I am joking. Then it really hits home...what to do?She had me check with other airlines if anyone else would be flying to Poland, but no luck. Once again all flights were booked. (What in the world were people going to do in Poland anyway?!)

Long story short, Aunt M who had already gone through customs and had been about to board her flight had to 'come back into the country'. I can only imagine the drama it was to try and explain why she was not boarding the flight and that she needed her check-in luggage taken off the plane. Then she came and found me...and I felt safe again!
Airports can be scary!

So we searched high and low and finally got a flight that would take me back to Poland albeit not to Poznan, my city. But that was way better than being stranded in Paris. I flew to Warsaw and from there took a train and finally I was home(away from home).
We had another night in Paris, she loved us so much she just could not let go...that's the story ;-)

She finally let us leave the next day.