It’s been 8 years since I first hopped to another continent for what would later turn out to be my longest time away from home thus far.

I spent almost 6 years on a foreign continent, thousands of miles away from home or anything familiar.

This is what I can tell you about that experience.

Embrace those cultures

The natural instinct of every “foreigner” in a foreign land is safety. But that is often sought out in the things we think are familiar.

When I was abroad, I first bought into all of that. In my first months there, I spent most of my time with Africans since they were the closest to what I was familiar with.

I soon found this behavior to be extremely limiting as I found the need to explore hobbies outside my African group’s interests.

When I tried to step out of those groups, I could feel the guilt and lonely feeling of not belonging anywhere and it stirred up a lot of negative emotions in me, including resentment toward everybody.

Embracing the cultural diversity in the place where I was helped me realize that I didn’t need to resent anybody as they were all living the best way they knew how (which was to live according to their cultures and beliefs).

This made me open up more and make connections with so many people across different cultures.

Be prepared to challenge your dear beliefs about the world

What makes the world beautiful is not just the pretty scenes scattered around the earth’s geography. It is also the various cultures and beliefs that people hold.

Different cultures survive in different regions because of the knowledge and adaptations that they’ve had to take on to exist there.

Some of these adaptations are passed down as belief systems, many of which push those people to push toward becoming better.

You will find equally limiting beliefs like those imposed on women in several cultures. Trust that your virtues, if they are noble, will prevent you from taking on these types of limiting beliefs.

But for the most part, you should also be able to recognize the beliefs and practices that could serve you as well.

Instead of wasting your time trying to prove how you still believe that your native’s limiting belief or practice is still right, try to adopt the new practice if it is more enriching to you.

Create friends across different social and economic groups

When I was abroad, sometimes I had to visit friends who stayed in six feet ceiling grass-thatched mud huts.

There, we had to dig mini pits in the bush to answer nature calls or we had to wait for the night to look for the darkest parts of the surrounding so that we could bathe and hope there was no one especially girls bathing nearby as well.

I also visited friends who lived in mansion-esque-type homes that made me feel like royalty.

But having all these experiences helped me deeply appreciate the place in which I lived.

It helped me recognize the privilege or lack thereof that I had which helped me get the best lessons on how I could better my life.

Having these social groups will naturally do for you what no book or guide will ever do. But you also need to exercise caution as horrible people exist everywhere.

Expect the noticeable resentment towards you

Countless times I had the experience of “shopping while black”. I got rejected several times when I was trying to rent an apartment and they were open enough to tell me that it was because they were scared of black people like me.

I got rejected from jobs that I was the most qualified for among all the people that were being interviewed only because I was not a “native” of that country, I also got the usual passive-aggressive looks from some people that any non-welcome individual gets anywhere.

Call it racism or any form of bigotry, I got most of it. When someone tells you that you can get rid of the black skin by simply bathing, you learn that it is not always about racism.

People aren’t always going to stay away from you because they hate you. If you find yourself in a group of people who don’t look or speak like you, they will get curious, they will form opinions about you and some of those will be good while others will hurt you.

Learn to be patient with people, listen to them talk and this will help you judge if they may be open to alternative thoughts. If they are, thoughtfully engage them in these more helpful beliefs about the opinions they have of you and let them be.

Some will pull away from you while others will fall in love with everything “you”. Such is the nature of human relationships.

Maybe you will not cross oceans or find yourself in a totally different culture but you will generally find yourself dealing with these thoughts in your mind.

You will find the differences between you and your new environment and these experiences of mine could help you navigate some of that.

In the meantime, just have fun and know that everything will be alright.