Over the Sea and Far Away
For about a month, students from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka came to Seattle for a program coordinated by FIUTS: the Study of the U.S. Institute for Student Leaders in Journalism and New Media (SUSI). This program brought 20 undergraduates participants to study journalism and new media, and to participate in volunteer and service activities, leadership workshops, and cultural excursions. The students returned to their countries a week ago, and wrote their reflections about the program and their experience. Here's Akhila Pingali, from India:
There are two kinds of situations in which you struggle to express your emotions – when you have no feelings whatsoever, and when you have too much of them. As I sit to write this, a multitude of emotions fight to flow out of my pen all at once to form words that can only convey a fraction of the meaning they are meant to carry.
My mind came up with a weird way of compensating for the vacuum left by all the wonderful people I’m not taking home with me. I looked twice at someone because I thought she was Bushra. A stranger on the plane sounded exactly like Asish. I half-expected Suprasanna to tap me on the shoulder to ask when the flight was going to land. Everybody made an appearance in my dreams in that state halfway between sleep and consciousness. It’s incredible, how friendships have budded and bloomed in just five weeks, with people I didn’t even know existed until three months ago.
People – that’s what we all are. Whether Indian, or Bangladeshi, or Nepali, or Sri Lankan, or Maldivian, or American. People of flesh and blood and bone. How easily we forget this when we divide ourselves based on superficial things like caste, religion, race, sex. As if it matters. As if it matters if a thin layer covering your body is black or white or wheat-coloured; or if you kneel at a mosque or church or temple (or if you don’t kneel at all); or if you relish a tomato-cucumber sandwich or a chicken burger. Any argument supporting such segregation can be torn to pieces when people meet people, and realise they’re all – well – people. And SUSI 2015 provided such a platform for all of us.
The concept of unity is one I’ve always stood by, but this experience has engraved it in my mind permanently, and made it more…real. I shared my love for literature with a Vietnamese, a Bangladeshi, an American. I had deep philosophical discussions with a Sri Lankan. A Nepali had the same fears and apprehensions as I had. I shared light moments with a Maldivian (I still get my visa, bro). I had something in common with every single person I met on this trip, and I learnt something from every single one of them. Skin colour, sex, religion, nationality – nothing came in the way. All thrown out of the window. Defenestrated, as Aqsa would say.
So many other things, big and small, will remain with me forever. Sleeping through four alarms and still being on time (more or less) for class (thank you, Nancy and Pragya). Smiling through a mouthful of beetroot and leafs when my hosts were eating grilled salmon. Being taken for a walk by a dog one-tenth my size. Pushing myself up a few more metres just to touch some snow although my body had given up long before. Learning to be prepared to get homeless in spite of having a PhD in Math. Learning that getting homeless is no reason to give up on the PhD, or on life. Smelling fresh earth while digging to the roots of life – literally and figuratively. Speaking up. Speaking to people I’ve never met before, even interviewing them without appearing suspicious. Trying to be better, not necessarily the best. Being ordinary. Being me.
And most important of all, being free. The very environment was conducive to freeing myself of all shackles of doubt and fear. In fact, nature itself seemed to invite openness and liberty – my first observation after getting out of the airport at Seattle was that the sky seemed to be higher and the world seemed to be more – spacious – somehow. I could feel my mind expanding beyond earthly congestion. Strange and poetic, I know. But there it is.
This doesn’t even begin to cover what I’ve taken home from these five weeks. So many lessons, irrespective of their significance. And oh, so many books. But let’s not get started on that.
All this was possible only because of the people I met. All my co-participants, the FIUTS staff, the ambassadors (I loved the fact that we all shared ambassadors and didn’t just stick to our own), the lecturers, the guest speakers, the hosts, all the people at the site visits, the service projects, the people at cash counters who greeted everyone with a big smile and with genuine enthusiasm. It was their magical human contact that made everything fall into place, that made a very, very scared girl break out of her shell and take life as it came. Two feeble words for you: thank you.
“Whatevs,” ultimately, we all created an inclusive space for ourselves, on a common ground, and – “gawsh!” – a quick fun-fact (not about Maldives though), it was pretty amazing, right?
The Study of the U.S. Institutes (SUSI), sponsored by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, promote a better understanding of the people, institutions, and culture of the United States among foreign students, teachers, and scholars. Study of the U.S. Institutes are short-term academic programs for groups of undergraduate leaders, educators, and scholars from around the world.
The program in Seattle is coordinated by the Foundation for International Understanding Through Students (FIUTS), a local non-profit organization affiliated with the University of Washington that promotes international friendship and cross-cultural understanding in the region. The Seattle Globalist, a daily publication covering the connections between Seattle and the rest of the globe, is collaborating with FIUTS to deliver courses on topics in journalism and new media.