How integrated do you feel in your community?

Every 4 months, one of the responsibilities as a volunteer is to complete a report about my activities. As you would imagine, I list all the work that I have done over those months. but in addition, I report about basically all the aspects of my life in my village – how my language skills are, if I’ve had any security or safety issues, culture exchanged, etc. Well one of the questions we are asked is ‘How integrated do you feel in your community?’ I find this to be one of the most difficult questions to answer. What does it even mean?

I feel like so often when we talk about life in another country as a volunteer, we talk about how we have ups and downs, how it can be so challenging with a different culture and how we try to integrate into our community. But really what does any of that mean? I think we often too easily say that our life is so different just because we are in a different country, but is it really? Why do we put such an emphasis on the highs and lows and that we are working and living in another country? I mean do you not have good days and bad days when you are back home in America? Do you not have moments when it feels like nothing is working how you want when you are in America? Maybe other people don’t but I definitely do. When I look at my life here and compare it with my life from before, I realize that really there are so many similarities. Yes, of course some of my daily activities are different, but in essence, isn’t most of it the same? I have my friends here who I care about and spend my time with. I have my work and responsibilities. I have days that I wish would never end and some that don’t end soon enough. But isn’t that all part of life no matter where you are or what you're doing?

So back to the first question – How integrated do you feel in your community? – Well for everyone back home, I mean do you ever ask yourself this question? No who does. And well if you did, what would you even say? It’s not something you think about and even when you do, how do you determine an accurate response. But here it’s something we discuss at times a lot with one another and I would just like to say that sometimes I find it to be an absurd question that we would otherwise not ask one another if it weren’t for living in another country and culture.