My experience of living or travelling abroad from Tanzania

By now, a lot have been written on the internet about this topic. But i thought i share some the experiences i found as i am living abroad myselft. Living or travelling abroad is one of those things that one get excitend before they actually go abroad but the experiences changes as the time increases. Some experiences my be negative and some may actually be positive. It depends with a lot of factors one of them being a country you are living/travelling to among others.  My first experience of being abroad is when i travelled from my country in the first time for my masters studies when i went to Germany in 2014. It was an exiting experiences being a first trip from Tanzania. That time one would only imagine how it would be travelling in a developed country like Germany. Its the imagination that one can not comprehend as it is based on the pictures, videos shown on the televitions such as movies and football games or just social media. Compared to one’s life from African small towns or village, developed countries are considered to be the dreams come true place where one could travel. Hence, if you have your first trip from your country to a place that you can only imagine, the exitiment is a lot bigger than one could show. So you can imagine how i was exited

Culture differences
When you land to a new place in the first time, there are lot of differences from your home town. So, it is difficult to know what is actually the customs and cuture of the place you have just landed ie. what is allowed, and what is not allow to be done in the street for example. You don’t want to do something then everybody around you start steering at you. You won’t know of course, but it might be very ockward to have that experiences as you are doing it confortable but if nativelly not allowed. 

One wierd example is that in Tanzania, it is not confortable socially to kiss your partner on the street, but it is okay to do that in Germany and many other countries. So that was a moment of realisation that the culture is different in Germany just by seing people or lovers kiss on the street. This was the shock for me to actually start to understand that i needed to know what was allowed and what was not allowed. You can only try to be as flexible as possible to adjust to the custom of the place you have travelled 

Missing home
Since you are going aborad for a spefic purpose, the only people who will be close to you will relate to the program you are doing. If it is studies, then your classmets or program workers should be close to you to show around. In principle, you should make new friends while you are abroad. However, based on the culture and customs in Germany and many other countries i have been, you can not just say hi to anyone in the street as it is in Tanzania where socially is acceptable. So you have to keep the distance a lot of time to avoide again the ockward situation. It is also based on everyday interaction you have; for example it is very easy to get new friends if you have everyday’s interaction with people, but it might be challenging to get new friends if you don’t have interactions. That’s where you start to missing home. 

Learning opportunities.
Being away can highly contribute to your everyday learning. This is due to the fact that you need to learn different things arround you to cope with a new environment. The learning i am talking is not necesarily going to the formal class learning but just social understand of what need to be done arround on very simple things. One of the first thing to learn is usually the language. The language provide you an easy way to understand your environment. This is due to the fact that everything will be using the language of that country, i mean everything. So things like street advertisement will be in that language, or when you want to buy something in the shop you have to use their language, the radio is in their language, etc. Therefore it is important that you learn the language and the culture in general in order to cope with the new environment. I have learned many language over the past years because of travelling in different countries. I have learned Germany when i was in Germamy, i learn Portuges when i went to portugal, i learned spanish when i travelled to Mexico and Chile and now i am learning Finnish because i am in Finland when i am writing this blog. However, apart from the languages, i gained many proffesion experiences travelling to these and other countries over the years that has added the value of my proffesion and cerrier over the past years.

Making friends
Of couse when you travel to a different country, it is most likely that you can get new friends. Sometimes you might think that it is not possible, but i can assure you that there are very good people arround the world. You only need to be open minded to receiving new people. Sometimes it is challenges to some of the countried due to the culture background but most of the time new friends always comes around.

There are a lot that could be said based on living or travelling aborad as the topic, but i would like to end this blog here. All i can say is that, at least for my experienses, it has been an eye opener everytime i visit a new country; A lot to learn, a lot to enjoy, just a lot to see new places and have fun.