It has been exactly one month since I last posted here. That is a much longer gap than I originally intended, but I guess it is just another manifestation of what I predicted in my last post--that the real story starts when you come out of the clouds. Before leaving on any study abroad adventure, the typical student will hear hours, perhaps days of rhetoric about 'intercultural exchange', 'the immersion experience', and of course the usual talk about language learning and academic standards. Yet, at least as far as study abroad in Egypt is concerned, I am coming to think that the value of study abroad is much less specific, and probably a great deal less ambitious (at least on the surface) than any study abroad brochure will tell you.
My biggest struggles in Egypt have not really come from any so-called 'clash of civilizations', or even, really, the famous 'culture shock.' What has exhausted me most, (even kept me from posting for quite some time) is not my experiences themselves, but the struggle to keep perspective on everything I experience. Before leaving home, I had several encounters with people who expected me to come back with a particular story of Egypt--one that either focused on the glory of the Ancient Egyptians (and ignored both the existence, and the history, of any Egypt after that point), or the threat of radical Islam, terrorism, fundamentalism, misogyny, etc.
Here, I find myself in conversations with professors, random people, etc., who expect me to be the kind of American they saw in action movies and music videos on satellite television (every time I see a Britney Spears music video in a coffee shop, I think there must be another American businessman I want to kill...or at least permanently injure...) Side note/crackpot theory: Satellite tv, which I think is responsible for most of the world's view of American culture aside from foreign policy, is full of the worst of American television. When I'm not expected to be a stereotypical American, I am expected to have stereotypes about the Middle East like 'everyone rides on camels' and 'all Arabs are terorrists.' Barring that, I am expected to admit that Americans are just like Egyptians and in fact everything is exactly the same. Except Egyptians are friendlier. Of course not all, or even most of my conversations run this way, but enough of them do. I end up feeling caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between these defensive discourses about America, about Egypt, about the 'East', about the 'West'...so caught up that there is hardly any room for me to have any impressions of my own! Part of the problem, of course, is that I kept seeing myself as that 'student ambassador' that study abroad programs love to glorify, rather than a person.
Living in Egypt, or living in the Middle East at large, means (for a westerner) living in the middle of one of today's most problematic cultural misunderstandinsg. This is difficult for professional ambassadors, let alone students, to handle. We are in a particularly strange position as we are neither connected to an expat community, nor truly immersed in Egyptian society. Over the past month, I began to realize that as long as I viewed myself as this mythical 'student ambassador', I would feel frustrated and anxious. The real benefit of study abroad, I've come to believe, is something much more subtle and simple.
What we are learning here, bottom line, is how to make a life for ourselves in a new place. This is something that is hard to do; it involves making a certain amount of sacrifices, but it also involves making decisions about what aspects of your culture, your identity, your history, and your privilege you want to preserve. It also involves huge questions of identity, adaptation, and growth. Of course, making a life for one semester under the care of a college study abroad program is much different than making your life over as an immigrant or refugee in a new country, but some of the basic questions and issues are still the same. I do think that what I learn during my time here will be valuable in helping me to understand other people...I don't think that the most valuable aspect of this time will have been 'learning to appreciate Egyptian culture.' I could just as easily have done that from the U.S., by 'appreciating' Egyptian cinema, music, literature, etc., and not having to even think about the many problems in Egyptian society, or even those aspects of Egyptian society that, while they are not necessarily problems, make me uncomfortable.
I'm not saying that I don't appreciate Egyptian culture, or that living here has made me appreciate it less, but I do think that our program directors are missing a huge part of the picture when they sell study abroad as a way to learn to appreciate something. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you choose what you will and will not learn to appreciate. I think it would be very easy for me to live here and learn to dislike, even hate, huge parts of Egyptian culture. It would also be very easy for me to live here and pretend for six months that I had forgotten American culture. Neither of these options is at all appealing or even helpful, aside from being very crude survival tactics. What I am here to do, bottom line, is to learn...good, bad, ugly, and to grow.
I am still figuring out how and where to grow, but ever since I came to the above conclusion, I have felt much less anxious about my position in the middle of America's testy conversation with the Middle East. I am trying to make a life in a new place; sometimes that means listening to myself more (and listening to the 'rules' less), and sometimes that means pushing myself farther, to meet new people, to build new relationships (even if they don't always work out). I think an understanding of that process will ultimately be much more helpful than acquiring a taste for Egyptian movies (which I actually don't mind, they're sort of a weird in between step, part Hollywood, part Bollywood, and part hurry-up-and-get-it-over-with), eating foul and falafel every day, or watching hours of music videos on satellite television.
