For Barán, the biggest cultural difference has been how much people care about others. She feels that the people in Benin are so much more interested in each other, and so much kinder than what she is used to in Finland, where, she admits, it often feels like people simply don’t care about others’ daily concerns such as flus, stressful life situations of funny everyday occurrences.
All in Life
My hands are sweaty, My heart beats too fast (not fluttering like the wings of a bird but
thumping like stones being thrown into water).
I’ve said the words “no, Finland doesn’t have polar bears” about a dozen hundred times and friends’ birthday parties were actually massive barbeques. We took a car to a school located 300 metres away and our burglar alarm went off almost weekly. I’m a third culture kid, nice to meet you.
The sneeze-like sensation warms up your long-time memory and drowns your consciousness in expired feelings. The voyage of déjà-vu can take you from overwhelming happiness to sinking sadness in a couple of seconds. It acquaints you with your memories afresh, releasing what I am addicted to: nostalgia.
The Difference A Year Makes
You might look at the year that we have had as having been a year of loss, a year of death of different sorts be it more tangible as in the case of Carrie Fisher or the hundreds in Aleppo, or more abstract as in the things that some people think that were lost in the US elections. As humans we tend to reflect things through our own experiences and this leaves me in a strange place. You see it could be argued that I wouldn’t be in the university right now had there not been death and loss in my life.
I distantly registered the pastor speaking. I’m sure he was telling everyone present how good of a person my mother was. Had been. He went through the typical stuff people get graced with when they die. I thought it was nonsensical. Everyone here loved my mother, that’s the reason they were here mourning her in the first place.
The scent of the pages of fifty-year-old booksup in the cold up, Your breaths twirling up,