We were very gratified by the response to our story contest. You can look forward to seeing several of the many fine entries we received published in these pages in the weeks to come. This week, we feature one of our Second Prize Winners, Thomas Kibuthu, who is from Kenya, and studies at Towson University. His essay capures the sense of wonder and displacement that landing in a foreign land can bring.

My American Experience
by Thomas Kibuthu

"You are new to America. Welcome to Towson University, and to our culture, too." I may not be very sure of the words she used, but today I remember Sunanda Bhatia elaborated much on culture. She even mentioned how international students may suffer from culture shock due to differences between their beliefs and those reflected in the American lifestyle, and promised that her office could offer help in such instances. It was during my orientation program that all this happened. To me, I thought this was no big deal. It was only my second day in America, and I was really having a nice time. The whole idea of my brother dropping me off at school with his car! It was simply unbelievable. ATM machines almost everywhere around Towson University? In Kenya, they are restricted to the capital city. What about the idea of students walking in to class with snack foods and with hats on? It would never happen at home, but I surely admired it. I paid little attention when she explained how she herself faced culture shock back in India, and I thought that India must not be the right place for an American, but America was surely the right place for a Kenyan.

Today, I look at it from a different point of view. I am already struggling to evade it, but I will possibly lose the fight in the process, for sometimes it grows to a serious extent. I thought the whole difference was only hugging and kissing in public, for that never happened in my country, but I just took this to be a better deal. It sounded good that this was acceptable. But there is much more to it than just this. When I spend a day without meeting someone to speak to in my mother tongue, I feel that I am completely out of place. I get home, and I am thinking about a meal that would completely impress me, but I cannot get one. There is a special link that I have to my traditional food and there is a unique taste to it. Or what about the teacher making a joke in class? It might sound odd, but that rarely happened, if it did at all, in my country - maybe only once in my high school.

But the real problem lay further beyond these. How can I represent my whole self in English? In Kenya, this language came from the colonies, and to simplify the whole issue, it is meant for the learned. It is to be used for those who work in offices, and only when they are working. You may not realize what I am driving at but it really becomes difficult to compose a joke in English. Whenever someone speaks to me about something I need to correct, I always assume that I am being quarreled with. This is a language to be used seriously and really fast by the headmaster when he is completely annoyed with a student. That is why I may be talking to some of my friends in class, and with whom I usually make jokes, but whenever they laugh at something they find unique about me, I usually assume they are intimidating me. I recently came to realize that this is not always the case.

My classmate was laughing at my unique ability in balancing chemistry equations, which made him feel impressed, but I thought he was laughing at the way I sit in class, because I am always changing my position. I could not figure this out - not until someone else told me what made him laugh. It may take me time to use English freely when talking to my teachers and when talking to my friends, when serious and when making a joke.

When my mother is never here to tell me what is wrong and what is correct, I am left with decisions too big to make. And when my father is never here to tell me how to spend my money, I have to get much more cautious in my spending habits.