We’re told it takes 1 year for every 3 years you’ve been away to feel settled.

The early years of cross-cultural service feel like living as half a person. Eventually, you take the bits you have left over of your original culture and the bits you’ve accumulated from your new culture, and you start to feel somewhat whole again, as you make a life that fits in this new place.

But then, on return to your passport country there is too much of you. It’s like you are a one-and-a-half person. You remember what it is to live in this country in which you were once a whole person but you in addition now also carry other experiences, identities, language, and practices. And it’s too much, like trying to wear low-rise jeans in the 2000s, with your muffin top and your love handles spilling out the top because you simply can’t be contained. There are bits that bulge out, that don’t fit. It looks ungainly.

Because it’s not as simple as shedding one identity for another, as if you can slot into your passport country. To do that, you would have to amputate the last 10 years and who you became. And even then you wouldn’t fit because things are different in your passport country to what they were when you left: the old you wouldn’t fit either. You can’t pretend the last 10 years never happened, and some people might even say they appreciate your unique perspective. But even if you’re not setting out to shear off parts of yourself, there are parts of your old life that slip away. Language becomes a little harder to reach for; clothes and fabrics wear out; the details of faces and places fade. This is a necessary contraction but not necessarily welcome. And there are expansions too, that feel just as uncomfortable: skills and relationships and ways of being to learn, to make life in Australia work. Adding these can feel just as painful.

This is the tussle and tension of repatriation, learning to be a new person, again. Which is why I’m thankful for our friend who told us, ““Be welcome. Be half-people as long as you need to be. But remember, before the Lord, you are always whole.” How precious. My friend has passed away now but sometimes I imagine her saying, “Be welcome. Be a one-and-a-half person as long as you need to be.”

I’ve been thinking, before the Lord, am I wearing high rise jeans? Jeans that are high enough to keep all the bits in. Except, I don’t wear jeans, after 10 years living in Tanzania. But I love overalls. Which I would also not wear in Tanzania; overalls belong to my Australian life. But they don’t dig in or bulge out in the wrong places; there’s room to move, even if wearing denim again feels unfamiliar.

Categories: Written by Tamie

Tagged as: living as half a person re-entry repatriation

Tamie Davis

Tamie Davis is an Aussie living in Tanzania, writing at meetjesusatuni.com.