Expats, Immigration & Integration ...... Oh My!

Almost every meal, my host mother asks me, “Do you have this dish in America?” Not could you make this in America? But more specifically, do you eat this in your everyday life? Sometimes the answer is yes. Yes, we eat beef and broccoli stir-fry. Yes, we eat yellow curry sauce. More often than not though, the answer is no. We do not eat fermented fish paste, no boiled fish soup, no bland rice porridge, and definitely no chicken feet. Every once in a while, when I say we (“we” meaning all Americans as far as Cambodians are concerned – the concept that the United States is as large and diverse as, well, 50 separate countries, is impossibly difficult for this tiny, extremely homogenous culture to grasp) she gets a puzzled look on her face. “But, Whitney-oi, when I visited my family in America, the Cambodians there had this. America is just like Cambodia.” …Just like Cambodia if you’re living in Long Beach, California or Jacksonville, Florida perhaps (the two most highly Khmer-populated cities outside Phnom Penh), but probably not if you’re from Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania or even Sacramento, California.
Whenever she says things like this, I can’t help but think about cultural integration and what that means. How many times have you sat in a nail salon listening to Vietnamese and feeling like a complete foreigner in your own town? Do you consider your barbeque spareribs from China Sea Chinese food or American food? Does the Spanish-speaking population still have a claim to the American dream if they can’t speak English? Now, I don’t want to start a political debate about immigration laws, so let’s take it one step farther: if you studied or have traveled abroad, how often did you speak the native language? Did you hang out with mostly Americans, doing “American” things? Do you have to fully integrate to appreciate a culture? Should you fully integrate if you immigrate? And where’s the balance when you’re living abroad as an expat, hoping to share your culture?

When we first arrived for training, Peace Corps pushed us to integrate, integrate, integrate—or as I like to call it, “go native.” Live as Cambodians live, eat as they eat, speak as they speak. But is that realistic? As humans, we are programmed to seek out like-minded people, a sense of the familiar, and a taste of home. Even in France, every once in a while my American classmates and I would get together and go bowling or hit the Hard Rock Café for some good ol’ fashioned American fun. And trust me; the Hard Rock is très American. Similarly, here in Cambodia, birds of a feather flock together. Christian and I are always on the lookout at our site for other foreigners because let’s face it, sometimes we just need to speak English, or I just need to vent about how many times a child screamed “HELLOBARANGWHEREYOUGOWHATYOURNAME” as I biked down the dirt road near my host family’s house for at least the millionth time.

That isn’t to say that we aren’t happily adjusted. I can honestly say that I love teaching my classes, I love biking back from Sustainable Cambodia at night and looking up at a billion and one stars, and I love walking by the river with my students talking about everything and nothing. I eat rice two to three times a day, wear a traditional teaching skirt to school, and never show the soles of my feet to anyone. For all intents and purposes, I live like a Cambodian. But, I’m not Cambodian. And I never will be. I am much too independent and outspoken to fit neatly into the traditional female model, I’m too much of a snowbird to cover my shoulders when it hits 104 degrees outside, and I fear that I will never grow accustomed to the slow pace of life here after 22 years of fitting as many things as I possibly could on my “to-do” list before I rushed off to yearbook, painting class, piano lessons, cheerleading, horseback riding, theater rehearsal, or a sorority meeting.

One of the volunteers once told me she never really fit in America, and so coming here and being an outsider and minority was less difficult. At least here she stands out because of the color of her skin rather than some indefinable question mark. Not an unfamiliar story. Many of the expats living in Cambodia have “escaped” to find a familiarity they never could at home. I have seen volunteers fall so deeply in love with the culture that their integration seemed more like a homecoming than a willful assimilation into a new culture. But that certainly isn’t the case for everyone who travels abroad. I would venture to say for my host mother’s family living in Jacksonville, eating Amok fish, speaking Khmer, and attending Pagoda regularly, they are no more American than I am Cambodian. That is to say, we have witnessed another culture, and let ourselves be boiled down into that great melting pot without giving up our essence. We are wholly part, and yet wholly separate from the place we are living in.

I will take with me a deeper appreciation for my family as a result of living in a world rarely dominated by thoughts of the individual. I am more tolerant, more peaceful, and forgiving as a result of watching Cambodians step back from conflict that won’t benefit anyone. I am proud to say I am no longer afraid of spiders and creeping night-time things. And I understand that living with less does not make you less happy. At the same time, I hope to leave my female students with a sense of bravery and courage in the face of adversity. I hope to leave my co-teachers with a passion for their work as opposed to a feeling of obligation. And I hope to see my community embrace their civic responsibility more fully as a result of my service to make a brighter, more sustainable future for Cambodia.

No doubt about it -- Cambodia has left its mark on me. That’s not to say I identify with or am willing to embrace every aspect of this culture, but it has polished some of my undefined edges, and helped me fill in some of the blanks to that age old question, “Who am I?” With every step we take farther from home, we leave footprints behind us, but in the end, it is us who are changed the most. Give me a wheel of brebis and a bottle of côte du rhone and I’ll happily tell you what a Francophile I’ve become as a result of my junior year abroad. For those of you thinking, “I told you so” (ahem, mother), go ahead and say it. Each place I’ve lived has changed me – I believe for the better – and yet, as I look forward to the next chapter in my life, I am happy to say, “There’s no place like home.”