During the holiday season in Malaysia, there’s a special phrase for going home. When people return to their hometown — for Chinese New Year, for Hari Raya (Eid), for Deepavali, for Christmas — they say it’s time to “balik kampung.” Directly translated, it means “return to village,” but I’ve learned that it’s so much more than that. It’s a return to family and to our roots, to what makes us feel most at home.
All year, my community welcomed me into their homes for different holidays, and I witnessed the joy that is balik kampung — seeing family for the first time in months, sharing a meal, practicing traditions, holding open houses to offer kuih to everyone in the neighborhood, giving ang pao, and celebrating the holidays together. And now, it’s time for me to balik kampung after 11 long months.
I’m writing this on my phone (I’m coming home with a laptop on which I spilled contact solution on my last day in Malaysia) between flights in the Hong Kong airport, and by the time many of you read this, I will be at home. It’s dizzying to try to sum up the year, so instead, I want to tell you about a special student.
This year, I helped students apply to a competitive study abroad scholarship. For students in my small rural village, it’s a ticket to see the world outside the place that has been their entire world. Tan, a very smart and very special senior who is always smiling, wrote and rewrote essays, practiced after school and before extra classes for interviews, cried from the pressure, and braved a national round of interviews. And in August, she won. I nearly cried when I found out, as did my mentor teacher. It’s the first time that anyone from my school has received an award of this prestige.
Tan will leave Malaysia — her first time out of the country — in one month. She received her placement a few days ago. As her flight to New York approaches, she has been peppering me with questions and fears about going abroad. Will she be able to understand enough English? How can she prepare for American high school? What clothes should she bring? How do time zones in America work?
Most importantly, will there be snow in Iowa?
I answer her questions in voice messages to try to help her sustain her English skills over the school break. I tell her, bring a warm coat and lots of sweaters, heavier than you think you’ll need. Bring cubes of tom yam to make your favorite soup in America and yes, hot soup tastes even better when you slurp up after coming in from the cold. No, don’t worry about your grades, or “results,” as they call them in Malaysia, too much.
I want to tell her everything I’ve learned this year about living abroad, but I know she needs to learn it, and then some, on her own. I want to tell her, Tan, will be nights when all you want to do is go home. There will be days when you can’t stand the weather, and times when all you want is to hear and speak your native language. You will make mistakes and be too hard on yourself. The pressure of representing an entire country will be on your shoulders, and it’s heavy. You will miss your favorite foods and favorite places and most of all, your favorite people, and you will have to learn to choke down and numb the lonely sadness so that you do not suffocate from it.
But Tan, there will be days when you will never want to leave. You will find a home in a place that once felt terrifying and strange, and it will be because of the people who welcome you. They will share food with you, and show you places that seem ordinary to them but are extraordinary to you. You will laugh, oh, you will laugh. You will find that friendships can cross cultures. And you will realize that they are real friendships when you walk into friends’ bedrooms and see your photo on the wall alongside everyone else, and when you get spontaneous video calls from them. You will try new things and realize you are so much braver than you thought you were. You will overcome so much, and when you balik kampung, you will be more fearless, more empathetic, and more full of love for the world.
She is so excited; I am so grateful and so tired.
I am tired of most of my communication with loved ones being through a screen. I miss the smell of my house in Rhode Island. I miss the chill of the cold, fresh New York bagels, and the view of Manhattan from Brooklyn as the sun sets. I desperately miss my family and friends.
At the start of 2019, I didn’t think I would be saying this, but I’m ready to come home. The weight of this year wore on me more than I cared to admit to most people, and I know I need to rest.
As I closed out the school year in October, I wasn’t sure if I had made the right decisions. Had I helped my school enough? Had I done enough for my students, could I have been there more for people in Malaysia and back home? I found my answer at the final meeting of Fulbright ETAs, when I received a letter that I had wrote to myself at the beginning of the year.
When I read the letter, I remembered how much hope I had for the upcoming year. I was so curious about what was outside of America’s borders; I had to see it for myself. And I found it. I am so grateful for this year and for the people who treated me as one of their own in a small village in the middle of Malaysia.
I am privileged to get to travel the world. I know the photos make it look glamorous and exciting. And it is exciting, and there is a rush when you make it to the top of a volcano or dive into a waterfall after a 45-minute hike. But after days and weeks of solo and group travel, I’ve learned that adventure is much more meaningful when you have good friends to share it with. Peking duck tastes best with a side of red wine and gossip, nasi kerabu is better when you look over and your roommate’s right hand is as covered in grains of blue rice as yours, and fresh coconut water is sweeter when you drink it beside someone you love.
Alongside the letter to myself, I had tucked into the envelope a written a copy of a poem that I read and re-read, especially in times of transition. I’ll leave you with that poem as we enter the holiday season and new year.
I’m traveling around to visit friends this December, and I hope to be settled with a job (send me openings!) by February. Thank you for coming on this journey, even though I didn’t update this blog as much as I thought I would. (In a way, though, it’s appropriate. Nothing about this year turned out the way that I thought it would.) It’s time to let go, live in one place for an entire year, and plant some roots in the U.S.
Hopefully, I’ll see you very soon, and it won’t be through a phone screen. (I’m back to my U.S. number.) Selamat jalan (safe journey) as you balik kampung for the holidays.
All my love,
Julia
***
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Julia Munslow 