(Written by Will Brown)

Growing up in Tucson, Arizona, and ultimately deciding to study abroad in Russia was one of the most shocking, terrifying, beautiful, and rewarding experiences of my life.

No matter how much I practiced Russian and how much I prepared myself, there was no way to truly experience a complete and total cultural immersion in a new country until I arrived bags and translating dictionary in hand.

As I walked through the lively streets of Moscow, surrounded by people, I could not help but feel more isolated. In the beginning every street sign seemed so complex, every business advertisement made no sense, and colloquial phrases were so foreign to me. I quickly realized that not many people were too fond of Americans. Russian nationalism is so intense it sharply competes with the United States, if not surpasses us.

At first I was concerned I would stand out like a sad Jewish American thumb for the remainder of my time in Russia, but I fell into a routine, and with that routine, I immersed myself within the Russian culture. You don’t become one of them, but you’re no longer who you were.

You’re in this weird cultural limbo, and it’s the epitome of strange.

In order to compensate for my cultural misidentification, I threw myself into my studies and tried to learn as much about Chekhov as humanly possible. Or you procrastinate and watch Suits on some sort of Netflix rip-off because that blasted country hasn’t been blessed with the glory that is House of Cards or Bojack Horseman. You get Tinder just to talk with random Russians. Hiding behind the vastness that is the Internet is way easier than face to face communication.

Either way, you find methods of coping and providing yourself with this much needed cultural in between, and you try to culturally define yourself, because let’s be real; it’s so much more comfortable when you feel like you belong in some way, rather than feeling like the distinctive American rocking LL Bean because your duck boots are fly as hell. Even if you’re not 100% one of them, you’re at least, like, 50% part of them, and that feels pretty good.

Of course after a few months, these once isolating factors eventually catalyze your connection to the city in the first place. You become much more familiar with your surroundings, and have dramatically improved your linguistic proficiency. Your foreign experience becomes more familiar and inviting as time goes on.

In the few months spent in Russia, you’re not setting yourself up for a new life. You’re simply participating in life as a citizen of another culture as a way of learning and growing, occasionally making mistakes and smashing your face on a toilet and losing a tooth or getting scammed by a local.

However, what people do not often express is the impact of returning from such a dramatic cultural experience. Suddenly, after 27 hours of travel, your flight descends into the USA, and you are greeted with that same familiarity and culture that you left behind.

You think that you will fall back into your normal routine and every street sign, advertisement, and colloquial phrase will seem the same, but that cannot be further from the truth.

I had these expectations of what life was going to be like when I returned. Granted, I did not predict those freakin hoverboard things…but other than that I predicted that things would be the same.

I assumed my roommate would snore too loudly, my dogs would make sleeping in my bed impossible and my mom would cry when she saw me at the airport. However, it wasn’t until I pushed my car key into the ignition that I realized how much I had changed.

I was so grateful I could drive somewhere, and had the freedom to be and go wherever I wanted. I was able to cook an omelet in a kitchen that isn’t infested with a new breed of ant. These things should make you feel good.

However, instead of being grateful for your clean kitchen and car, you feel as though the part of yourself that you have been building while abroad got left in the airport. That part of you is no longer needed to excel back in your hometown. I felt so ostracized when I came home, since I was constantly searching for that improved Russian version of myself.

You initially think that it will be so great seeing your friends who you have missed dearly.

However, as you sit on the floor playing with their dog you find yourself being so self-conscious of what you’re saying.

You have lost all connection to what a cultural norm in the United States is compared to how you have been communicating in Russia. So you sit there on this dirty floor questioning your cultural identity. You realize you are this American born kid who has some Russian cultural insight and you just don’t think you belong anywhere.

At first I could not shake this feeling of my cultural limbo. However, with time I began to realize that my changing and growth never stopped in Russia. Russia helped push me to become the person I am meant to be and for that I will always be grateful. I realized I may have been overreacting when I felt awkward talking to my friends.

At the end of the day, being abroad teaches you about going outside your cultural and social comfort zones, while ultimately pushing you to be a better person yourself. I am constantly readjusting, but I wouldn’t change my abroad experience for anything. Ok, maybe I would not have lost my front tooth, but other than that I would have kept it the same.

So as the year progresses I will continue to readjust and continue my quest of becoming as culturally astute as possible.

(Written by Madison Snelling)

More college students are traveling and volunteering abroad than ever before.

I have volunteered with multiple organizations in multiple countries, seeking a combination of work and travel experience. My desire to see the world and work abroad is by no way unique; my generation, more than any previously, is interested in supporting initiatives that “better the world.”

We are concerned with increasing the welfare of people globally, invested in philanthropic societies and ideals. However, while we are avid supporters of good causes, we hardly ever criticize the programs and organizations that serve them. In an era when we are so focused on development and volunteerism, it is important that we look at the ideologies that are driving certain programs, and the program’s unintended results.

A big push is being made in the development world to implement programs that target women’s financial status.

The generally held belief is that money invested in impoverished women is more likely to be invested back into the family, as women are “instinctively maternal” and will want to improve their family’s well-being.

Sounds good right? These programs seem to be empowering women, and directly focus on families in need of additional income. However, if we investigate the ideologies and theories driving these programs, there are serious weaknesses in the way in which development has been conceptualized and implemented. Maternal altruism is one of the persisting limitations with development ideology and practice particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Maternal altruism, as defined by Richard Schroeder, is the “ideology that stipulates that women are, by virtue of their identities as mothers and wives, ‘naturally’ predisposed toward nurturing and self-sacrifice,” (Schroeder, 9).

Maternal altruism is the driving force behind many women-centered development programs.

The inherent assumption of maternal altruism is that women’s own aspirations are heroically neglected in order to prioritize the needs of their family members.

Further, by characterizing women as a homogeneous group defined by selflessness, “maternal altruism” also erases class, race, or any kind of individuality that may influence women’s motivations to take care of family members or perform traditional work. It is an ideology that encourages the ascription of sameness. The elimination of diversity of body and belief amongst women in developing nations makes all hundreds of millions of them a single uniform group.

Picture an “African woman” in your head. What do you see?

Does she have something balancing on her head? A baby strapped to her back? Is she standing in a field? Holding a bucket of water? All of these images portray a woman defined by maternal altruism. These are the only pictures we see of “African women” in development campaigns. I do not believe these pictures are staged; women do fetch water, they do take care of children, and they do preform agricultural work.

My problem with these images is that development organizations and the public are taking them at face value. No one is asking why. Why are you preforming the agricultural work? Is it really because you only have interest in ensuring that your family has something to eat or is it because it is your ethnic custom? Is it because it is your only source of income?

If it is, would you rather be doing something else? What would that be and what do you need to do it? Many development non-profits invest in women’s agricultural work to better ensure family food stability. While full stomachs are a noble cause, these programs need to be asking if women aspire to do something else.

Women’s development initiatives need to move away from the mindset of maternal altruism and truly empower women by giving them the tools to make their own diverse choices.

When I volunteered at Give a Heart To Africa (GHTA) in Moshi, Tanzania last summer, I worked for an organization that focused on women. GHTA’s school aimed to give local women the tools and skills they need to open their own small business. My students had widely different interests; Mariamu wanted to expand her current business, Esther wanted to open a fabric shop, Tausi wanted to be an English translator, and Faraha wanted to be able to read English books to her kids at night.

Each woman had an invested interest in their family, but also had interests of their own. The diversity of aspiration in one small school shatters the notion of maternal altruism. We would never expect women in the US to universally forgo personal interests for those of the family. We would never categorize US mothers as a homogeneous group.

There are bad mothers, ambitious mothers, childless women who do not fit the idyllic category put forth by the ideology. The fact is, there are bad mothers, ambitious mothers, and childless women in developing nations, so why do we hold them to a different standard?

No group of women is the same.

Why do some development organizations throw the blanket of maternal altruism over all of these women? Because we, as non-profit supporters, volunteers, and fundraisers, allow them to. As consumers on the development market, we can use our “purchasing power” by investing in organizations that have well-constructed programs; programs that do not ascribe homogeneity to their recipients, programs that give people the power to make their own choices.

We, as college students, are the largest group ever to be invested in development initiatives. Whether by volunteering, fundraising, or raising awareness we often support the operations of organizations without truly understanding the ramifications behind their actions.

We receive the benefit of feeling good about contributing to “bettering the world,” and walk away before we witness the aftermath, or look too closely at the labels we place on those receiving a program’s benefits. By turning a critical eye to non-profit organizations and their work, we can influence the way in which future programs are constructed.