Reverse Culture-Shock: the feeling of being alienated by your own home; feeling out of place. There are some pretty stark differences between my life in Lesotho and my life in the US. They are alternate realities that only happen to share the same plain in the universe. Just the other day I was looking at my pictures of Semonkong and laughed at home strangely familiar steel corrugated shacks were. Similarly, the horses’ hitching posts and a picture of hundreds of sheep drew bittersweet memories.

As I sit here at the corner of 7th and H streets in Washington, DC, however, I’m being distracted by a man dancing in the street. If his singing and twirling style of dance didn’t draw people’s attention then maybe the fact that he was doing it in the middle of the intersection as he directed traffic should have helped. Of course tragically my eyes were also witness to vintage seventies booty shorts and cut-off shirt.

This man was definitely different but he brought fond thoughts of crazy witch lady living on the streets of Semonkong. Her skin orange and eyes yellowing because of the amount of alcohol she drinks instead of food, she carries her friends on her shoulder and has lengthy—and incoherent—conversations with them. She has called me white money on good days and white donkey the bad. Though I’m not in the same place when I meet these people I feel a comforting familiarity.

These special characters in my life are contrastingly supportive to the ‘overwhelmed’ feeling I’ve experienced since being home. Several times I’ve had to take a moment to collect my senses. I would pause to take a deep breath and catch up with all the excitement. It might seem silly to make a big deal about after spending a year watching sheep grazy, hanging out in a podunk town, and cheersing with real village people in mud/dung thatched huts makes the hustle and bustle something foreign.
Sitting down in a restaurant with all the sights and sounds of people’s busy feeding frenzy or the carnival atmosphere of Disney world shook me up. It was the muddled modern world with its innumerable sensual exploits that drove me so crazy.