A Forever Foreigner

(For "A Forever Foreigner" post by a good friend of mine, check out http://millerbrian.com/stories-n-stuff/a-forever-foreigner)

Ferengi.

Mzungu.

Waiguoren.

It’s interesting the words we almost understand as synonymous with our names after a while in a place that we call home.

Traveling in the Bible-belt of the US this past summer, I got very used to being called ma’am.  I didn’t necessarily like it (I mean, come on…my mother is ma’am…), but I got used to it.  There is a level of respect that comes with it.  A level of courtesy and kindness.  But not every cultural phrase has that same connotation.

I still remember the kids running up to the car in the countryside of Ethiopia when I was in middle and high school, pounding on the windows of the car chanting ferengi and money in the hopes of getting a little something from the out-of-towners.  (Oddly enough, now when I am in Ethiopia they call me China…if only they knew…)

Or in Kenya, riding on the roof of the Land Cruiser while kids playfully said mzungu and pointed from the side of the road.  I don’t know why, but in Kenya it always felt a bit more loving, being pointed out as an outsider.

Or who can forget that one time in my complex here in Chengdu, when a biker gang (multiple ten year olds on bikes…the title fits…) circled around me chanting wei-guo-ren, wei-guo-ren. It has a ring to it, sure.

But isn’t it obvious?

Of course I’m a foreigner.  Of course I don’t fit. Of course I will always be an outsider.

I get it, I do.  I understand the tendency to focus on the differences.  But it still cuts a little…

Just a little, though.

What cuts deepest is when I’m back in the United States and I blend in.  I’m merely a face in an eclectic sea of faces that don’t at all look the same and yet all seem to be at home. People have their routines, their plans, their lives…and they belong.

And when I’m there, there is something inside me that is screaming YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!  YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE!!!  And I smile, sometimes through grated teeth, because that voice can get very, very loud inside my head.

It gets loud when I think I’ve finally figured out a cultural custom (after four years in college and 3 year working Stateside I certainly should have a few customs down) and then realize that I am more foreign than ever. 

It gets loud when I’ve just had a conversation with someone from a different place and a friend wonders why they don’t head back ‘home’ if they’re having such a hard time in their new surroundings. 

It gets loud when someone asks why I haven’t moved back ‘home’ yet. 

It gets loud when I’m in my current home and have a not-so-great-China day.

So why is it that the loud voice in my head on those occasions is the voice that I so often am tempted to listen to, but the loud voices of reality in so many places barely scrape the surface?

Sure, the names get annoying. And, of course, I’d rather have all of my people in one place.

But I am at home.

I am comfortable in the discomfort. I’m at peace in the chaos.

This being a foreigner is, in some strange way, home.  Being a foreigner is simply who I am.

A forever foreigner.  Always a waiguoren. Forever a mzungu.  Permanently a ferengi.

Wherever I am, I’m likely to stick out just a bit, whether it’s because of how I look or the sometimes quirky things that I say or think.

And yet, somehow, there is always at least one person who understands me, in all of my foreign uniqueness.  It’s taken a lifetime to become the tapestry of cultures and ideas and places that I am.

And, believe it or not, even on the worst of days, I really wouldn’t change a thing.

“This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through…”