Expectations versus experiences

By ISSABRE Hamadoun

When you come in an unknown country, it is human to have some expectations but sometimes there is a confrontation between these expectations and the reality, sometime it is not that different, sometimes they are completely opposite, and it is called a culture shock. If I got to classify the three main one I encountered here, the first one will be the language barrier:

language barer

--DULLES international Airport, June the 27th, if my memory serves me well, it was the Sunday of my arrival. The weather was… different, neither cold nor hot but just different, different from the weather in the A380 and its noisy aces, different from Paris Charles De Gaulle and it’s cloudy ceiling, and above all, different from the Malian infernal tar macadam from witch I took off 20 hours ago. It was a strange sensation of heaviness .The kind of feeling that makes the breathing difficult. I was dressed with a black suit, a bright white shirt under it, black suede chooses and above all, a big dark blue coat which made me looks 10 years older and made this heavy sensation more strong.”I told you…” I could hear, deep in my head, the little voice of my elder cousin remembering me that, once again, he was right. What a wonderful way to learn. So, even if it wasn’t my first time, as a good African getting out of his hometown, I was well dressed and had my perfect prejudices well organized in my brain, ready for “the” confrontation but, How could I knew that it will be that close? I was walking, following the crowed until the police station, where they check international travelers. Just before me in the queue was standing an old woman with two heavy packs. She was white with flesh chicks, I remember her from the flight from Bamako to Paris. She was wearing huge glasses and transparent hearing devices. An odor of apple, I don’t even know why, but her fragrance made me think at my grandmother gardens with all kind of fruits. It was her turn and the policemen asked her something but she didn’t get it. She was taking very loud. I came closer to try to help her and to come up smelling like a rose. I bowed to the policemen, he bowed back to me, and then he said the thing. I thought it was because of the noisy hall so I asked him to repeat it and he did it but I still didn’t get it. For me it was just a mumbling. I was here, petrified, as if I have seen the invisible, as if I heard what I ‘m not supposed to. I was just here, wordless. That was definitely not the way I learnt and spoke English. I could hear again the little voice.—

on the bill there is my mother 's signature

It don't have any importance in this project finally

(neither expectation nor experience) but I love my mum =)

--One week over here and of course I had my second culture choc: the image of El Dorado almost every foreigner had of the United States versus the reality. As a matter of fact, in our mind, everything should be perfect in the richest country of the world. Each single place must be clean; each single person must be well dressed and wealthy and so on and when I arrived at Washington DC the fact that I hadn’t seen any beggar strengthen this thought until the day I arrived in my university dorm. There were some workers outside trying to fix a defective light. Cherry was waiting for me out side of the building so when I showed up, we went together in and in this precise instant, I thought we had switched country. We weren’t any more in the United States but in a kind of mixture between a prison environment and a ghetto one. Cherry was talking but I didn’t get anything of what she was saying. I was trying to find the reason why that many slurs were written on walls and what can motivate people to write these unpronounceable words. I was trying to find the reason why tissues were through in the hallway. I was wondering why all these things were different from my thoughts. “Any Question” said Cherry. “Hum no” I answered. Then she lived the building. I didn’t felt comfortable over there so I took my IPod and went to take a walk. Thirty minute later, I didn’t really know where I was and, of course nobody could help me cause I didn’t even know the name of the building.—

Criminality

--CSI Miami, S.H.I.E.L.D, Criminal minds and all that American criminal series occupy animportant place in the insecurity vision that gives the United States. Of course these are just fictions and I got to wait to be here to understand that …It was more serious than only series. Every single day there are gun shots in Memphis and most of the time people get killed. As my mentor say “Our stupid cousin are killing each other again”. Yes, most of the time these gun shots are between black people or Mexicans one, and from this point of view, we cannot complain after that we are stereotyped and each time I heard that one black man killed another I fell disappointed. After all that people fight and die for our emancipation and for us to get the same rights as anyone else, these make people who think that we are not human being fell verdict.