The best part of summer is that you can have extensive travel plans and experience two entirely different worlds within three months. After spending four weeks in Zanzibar, Tanzania, as a volunteer and teacher, I flew directly to London, where I will work for the rest of the summer.
Living in the most expensive city in the world after my stay in Zanzibar was a drastic transition. Upon returning to London, a western culture that is much more familiar to me than the African lifestyle, I was met with some cultural shocks. This kind of cultural shock is different from those that we experience when we return home from college to find that home is different from what it used to be. Rather, I was shocked upon my return to the West because I see it in such stark contrast with my experience in a developing country.
The time spent there has really allowed me to see the wealth, sophistication and luxury of Western civilization. When I first arrived in my apartment in central London, I found myself amazed that the toilet flushes and the water comes out of the faucets. I no longer had to use flashlights after dark, but simply turn on the light switch. The streets are clean and tidy. The subway, bus system, shopping malls and other magnificent infrastructures that we take for granted appear to be a somewhat magical network, allowing people to swing across the city like Tarzan.
We don’t think much about the convenience and comfort around us because we grow up with them and can expect to have them every day. But these advances and intricacies are pure luxuries in the eyes of the third world.
Despite the talks about unemployment rate in the news, most people have jobs. People are normally able to afford health care. Kids are able to buy drinks spontaneously on their walk back home from school. On the other hand, most of the households in I know in Zanzibar receive no income and live self-sufficiently on a farm. Very few of them can afford to see a doctor. Arbitrary spending on food, drinks and other leisure is a rarity on the island, as people don’t usually have spare budget lying around. If they do, every penny seems to be carefully saved for something essential to life.
This social gap that I learned about so many times in textbooks, lectures and discussions is more than true. In fact, it might seem that this realization came too late — shouldn’t I already know that the world is extreme in its differences from day one of school? Well, I’m still stunned by the truthfulness of this fact and how different the world can be within one plane ride.
A temporary removal from the first world, while difficult at times, allowed me to experience the simplistic lifestyle and think in the third world’s perspective. There are countless perks of living in the familiar first world environment where I was raised. But the time apart from where I grew up has not only opened a new world to me but helped me understand my world better.
Rita Chang is a rising sophomore in the College. Perks of Summer appears every other Wednesday at thehoya.com.
