At the time, it was a no-brainer for me, I would take up the offer to remain in Australia for 6 months without breaking the law or breaching my visa conditions, so I could think about how I wanted my life to unfold.
In those six months, I stayed grounded in my desire to find myself. My identity had been shaken and as a result, my self-esteem gradually eroded. I found no joy in my studies nor my surroundings – I didn’t enjoy even the most basic things like eating – my tastebuds had now become accustomed to the lackluster taste of genetically modified foods, and I had accepted that no excess of spice would ever make the food taste organic like the food I had taken for granted in Kenya.
How I missed tuning into Kenyan radio and listening to songs that evoked something, anything. I just wanted to hear people speaking my language, eating my native food, and laughing at things that I too found funny. The question “when did you start speaking English?” had exhausted me and I was desperate to fit in effortlessly, but I found that extremely challenging.
As a migrant, there were a lot of gaps in my lived experience in Australia that I had never accounted for. The movies had deceived me in their depiction of a glamourous uni experience – the loneliness I experienced was unlike any other period in my life up to that point. I didn’t understand Aussie humor, I had barely began to understand their accent to facilitate my code-switching especially in the hospitality industry where my pronunciation of words forever threw customers off and left us the unwilling participants of a staring contest.
God forbid anyone asked me about footy – the national sport of Australia and one that only exists there. Footy is so native to Australia that it’s commonly referred to as “Aussie rules” – then my cluelessness would leak whether I liked it or not.
Bottom line? There is no translation for loneliness and culture shock. In those six months, I located my love for music and writing once again. And began to connect with my community through social outreach where we would meet as migrants and share our struggles, both personal and professional.
Day by day, I began to feel like life was inflating me with purpose again, and by the time the six months were up, I had made the decision to stay on in Australia and complete my studies. In that period, my mum had enlisted prayer warriors to convince me not to give up, and it worked – I had less time ahead of me in terms of studies than I had behind me – so it made sense to complete the journey, even though at the time, I was blind in both eyes to any kind of foresight regarding my future.
This is where experience is crucial – there are people who have walked before us, and in so doing have opened doors that I still walk through to this day. It’s therefore senseless to suffer in silence because quite literally, the school of life is a curriculum of repetition – whatever you’re going through whether good or bad, someone else has already gone through it and can offer invaluable advice and insight. If there isone thing I took away from that experience, it’s that asking for help is a super power and not a weakness.
Early life as an international student – Part 1
The Harsh Reality of Migration: When the Dream Abroad Turns into Survival – Part 2