"Exchange Student" Chagnon Among the Yąnomamö

It must be scary to be a foreign exchange student in the United States.  I admit that I myself have close to no experience with foreign exchange studentship, but I can only imagine how completely terrified out of my pants I would be if ever put in such a situation.  I mean, think about it.  You've lived your whole life in someplace like Spain, Germany, Russia, or Australia...and all of a sudden you fly over alone to someplace as crazy as America.  As busy as America.  As complicated as America.  As alien as America...and you're expected to conform to society ASAP.  But what if you don't know what fork to use for your salad?  What if you don't know how to eat salad?  What if you don't even know what salad is?  By our standards, you may as well be culturally doomed.

I read an article today about an Anthropologist by the name of Napoleon A. Chagnon, a man who spent nineteen months in a situation not unlike that of a foreign exchange student.  However, his experience was probably a million times more scary and intense, as Yąnomamö culture is so different than that of the rest of the world.

As you can see from the photograph above, the Yąnomamö people look very different from us.  They wear barely any clothes, no shoes, and most have facial piercings that look like this:

Ouch.  How strange this must have seemed to Chagnon!  The culture in which he lived for nineteen months was one with what seems like no similarities to that of the United States.  And what's worse is that he had to adapt and try his hardest to fit in.  As you can very well predict, that was not easy.  Everywhere he went, he received stares from the Yąnomamö people.  They seldom talked to him, and when they did it was solely in the hope that he would share his food with them.  It goes without saying that Mr. Chagnon must have felt like a complete outsider among these people.

In class this week, we finished watching a documentary on the Lost Boys of Sudan.  One of the Lost Boys, Peter, was flown in to Houston from his home village in Africa and was "given" an opportunity to live in the United States and to find work, education, and eventually money.  Shortly after his arrival, Peter decided to move to Kansas City and enroll in High School, where he more or less acted as a foreign exchange student.  From what I saw in the video, Peter's experiences in High School are very similar to those of Mr. Chagnon.  Both Peter and Chagnon felt a strong surge of culture shock when they first arrived to their new homes, and were treated as the outcasts that they felt they were.

The main reason why i took particular interest in the concept of being the "new kid" in a new environment is because I have been exactly that.  Four times.  Moving from school to school can be hard, even if it's just from one part of the country to another.  Everywhere in the world has its own culture, whether it be a town, city or entire nation.  Being in an unfamiliar place always comes with a case of culture shock and creates symptoms like discomfort, homesickness, confusion, and external exclusion.  Peter, Mr. Chagnon, and myself all know what these feel like.  And even though they immediately are very negative feelings, they always end up turning into a very enriching and amazing life experience.