How Nice

"Your self-esteem isn’t helped when no one seems especially interested in what you’ve been doing for the last two years. You have just gone through what may be the seminal experience of your life – an experience which has transformed your view of the world and of your own country – and yet your family and friends somehow aren’t bowled over. You have so much to explain, but alas, their capacity to absorb is not nearly matched by your need to recapitulate; they’re filled up before you’re even half empty. Martha Gellhorn writes in Travels With Myself and Another:

Upon your return, no one willingly listens to our travelers’ tales. “How was the trip?” they say. “Marvelous,” we say. “In Tbilsi, I saw…” Eyes glaze. AS soon as politeness permits or before, conversation is switched back to local news, such as gossip, the current political outrage, who’s read what, last night’s telly;

“When someone asks you about your experience,” a Volunteer from Cameroon observes, “give them five minutes and then shut up.”"