My time here in Northampton has been very rewarding and educational both academically and personally. I have enjoyed the experience of studying abroad and I feel that being away from home has helped me take part in, and appreciate, the diaspora experience. Together my modules, volunteer placement and interaction with other students have aided my education in more ways than I’m sure I can recognize in this reflection. I have grown academically and as a person from this experience and now I can’t believe it is almost time to return home.
From the time of our arrival in London the three of us girls from Canada all established a friendship that has brought us everywhere together. At the beginning I think it was a comfort used to lessen the awkward feeling of being new students in the class and to help validate and comfort our feelings of culture shock. I didn’t predict before arriving in Northampton that I would experience any sort of culture shock because of the seeming resemblance to Canada. I assumed that because both countries spoke English, are ethnically diverse, and seemed to eat the same kinds of food that I wasn’t going to experience the much of a change. Through my experience and observation at the university and interaction with other students and community members I can now conclude at the end of my time here that I was naive.
There really are many differences that I have observed from living here for an extended period of time and through writing these journals. A visual first impression I had of England was just how old everything looked. The buildings are beautiful to me, as someone coming from a very new country. I felt like I was walking through a museum in many of the places I went. The age of the buildings also speaks to the history of the people and how well established the “English” culture is and the way of life is here. I felt a strong sense of comradery and unity from the people living here. From a trip to Scotland and Ireland I experienced the true division between the English and these other groups. I realize not everyone participates in this division, and it can be viewed as patriotic, but the impression I viewed was a stronger division than I had imagined. This division also helped me realize how much I still have to learn about British history.
There were social differences that I noticed upon arrival but now that I have been here for some time I’m finding it more difficult to point them out as I’m writing this entry. When I first arrived I had a difficult time understanding some of the colloquialisms and especially experienced difficulty in understanding the different accent. Trying to follow a humorous conversation among fellow classmates was very difficult for me at the beginning because I didn’t understand the humor at all. I have also never come across someone who wasn’t able to understand my own accent. Something so simple as the way I spoke struck up conversations about where I was from and why I was here. I had the feeling and experience of being the new exchange student because of this. I constantly had to repeat myself in public situations because I would get blank stares after I spoke.
There were also notable differences in the education system and I feel that I benefitted from the style of teaching I experienced here. I felt schooling is very much self-motivated and self taught. Lectures are much shorter than at my home university and there are no ‘required’ textbooks, just suggested readings. No homework is assigned during the term and, for us, our whole grade was based on a final project, presentation or essay for each module. I was given the freedom to choose to write and present on subjects that were of most interest to me.
Before arriving in Northampton I had an expectation of England being a very multicultural place. Our volunteer placement as part of this exchange was done at a South Asian Women’s organization. From this we were able to closely interact with the women from this specific diaspora. Something I didn’t realize before was how many other diasporas are present; there are large Irish and Polish diasporas in Northampton. Walking through the city I saw the many Bangladeshi and other ethnic restaurants that I expected to see but there were also many Polish shops selling specialty foods. The ethnic restaurants have been present longer and are not only popular with the diaspora groups that run them but the English population as well. The English culture very much embraces the food of the South Asian groups that live here and the restaurants are not only frequented by the people who are looking for a little taste of home, but also by the English population. The Polish shops I went into were filled with people from Polish diaspora community. I was happy to find perogies there which is a food I often eat at home. I wasn’t able to find them in the bigger grocery stores and because of this I realized the demand the different diaspora groups create for smaller specialty food shops so they can find items from their home country. The ‘ethnic’ restaurants, and even local pubs, sell food that is a combination English and different ethnic origins. I wrote about the ‘hybrid’ dish called Chicken Tikka Massalla and this can be found almost anywhere in England.
Chicken Tikka Massalla, as I said in my blog, has been said to be the national dish of England. I wasn’t aware of this before arriving and it is part of the reason why my understanding of the collective national identity has changed. I assumed before coming here that fish and chips was the traditional English dish. I made an assumption of this, among many other things, about England and the people living here. My assumptions were proved wrong and I realized how easily a group can be put together as a stereotype. I don’t feel its possible for me comment on the importance of England’s national identity, or what it even is, because everyone’s individual identity is different. As I spoke about in my blog there are extremes on either end of the spectrum; there are groups that stand for unity in English identity and there are ethnic groups that are just as proud to be from their home countries. In the South Asian diasporic communities we interacted with here I found that, for some people, their identity was still with their home country even though they had lived here for most of their adult lives. On the other hand some of them were very proud to British and said that England was their home.
My experience at our volunteer placement, Dostiyo, has provided a practical setting where I could apply and evaluate the theories of diaspora. Attending this placement has helped raise my awareness of issues that this particular diaspora group faces. It has also helped me to better understand the different identities individuals develop and why. One limitation of this experience from my point of view is that the group is the group at Dostiyo is secular. This benefits the group as it is a ‘South Asian’ women’s group and does not want to discriminate against any religion. Due to the issues surrounding Muslims in England I feel I could have benefitted from a discussion with the women there who may have been personally affected by this discrimination.
The experience of the three of us girls coming to a new country and trying to find ways to integrate and adjust was our own little diaspora experience. The three of us demonstrated some characteristics that I have learnt define diasporic communities. I feel that I can relate to some of the feelings that individuals may have from larger diaspora groups because of it, When I first arrived I felt very different and unsure of what was expected of me now that I was apart of this new community. We did things together to help create our own ‘Canadian community. Although we tried many new foods and drinks while studying abroad I found that all of us tended to reach for brands of things that were familiar to us from home. We all had different feelings about returning home which, I have found, mimics a true diaspora population. We experienced so much all together that I found it difficult to think of topics different from theirs while writing my blogs. We were very much outsiders, and still are, but at least now we are recognized as the ‘three Canadians’.
Studying diaspora has helped to further develop my understanding of how and why groups move and the individual strategems for adapting to new cultural environments. I have become more aware of the diasporic groups in Canada, some of the issues that they face and the diversity in each one. I have further developed my cross-cultural communication skills through interacting with the women at Dostiyo and have appreciated what I have learned from them directly. Overall this experience was invaluable! I learned so much, met so many new people, and have enjoyed living the life of an English girl for the past three months.
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