The snap

Culture shock is the term they use to describe the anxiety a person endures when transitioning into a culture different from the one they are accustomed to. I believe, when going from a developed country to a developing country, there is a distinct moment where you decide to either resist or concede.

You snap, and there are two ways you can go.

I know exactly when I snapped. It was on the way to Mt. Wilhelm to climb the mountain - a maddening ride with ridiculous complications that were contradictory and puzzling. During the ride, I gave up. I stopped trying to control everything. Everything became very simple. Since then, I have floated through my time like in a strange dream.

Another friend of mine snapped - the bad way. He was furious with the selection at the grocery stores. He was enraged by the phone service and his inability to email his friends. He was frustrated with the progress he was making with his placement. He refused to accept life in PNG. He snapped and made the call to VSO. He is going home in two weeks - 1 ½ years ahead of schedule.

Things are going to happen. You are going to schedule a meeting and nobody is going to show up. You are going to be talking to you parents for the first time and the power is going to cut out. You are going to purchase a phone card with 100 minutes and when you go to use it, it will say your minutes are used up - and you will not get your money back. You are going to order a beer and open it and discover that the bottle is filled with dirty water.

I saw my friend Robert yesterday. A rather stoic, tall Dutchmen who works in Kundiawa. He has the arduous task of visiting the remote schools in the province and promoting the use of a relevant education matrix: a complicated development tool that I barely understand. He was almost robbed. He has walked terrible distances in the mud. His phone has not worked for months.

He travels half a day to meet with representatives of a school to find that they all went home for the weekend. Despite all this, when I saw him step out of his truck yesterday he was brandishing the goofiest smile I have ever seen. His mannerisms were such that I thought he was drunk. And then I understood: he had snapped. He has given up and is now on auto-pilot. He's here for another year and there is not a doubt in my mind that he will make it to the finish line.