At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe

by Tsh Oxenreider

Instead of settling down into family life, I applied for a teaching position that required a move to Kosovo, a war-torn pocket in former Yugoslavia, a country fresh from a genocide spearheaded by the dictator Slobodan Milošević. This was my resistance against registering for tea towels and gravy boats and settling into picket-fence suburbia.

I wanted to sink into the unpredictability of a cross-cultural life, yes, but I also wanted a bona fide home. This was a season of refinement, of acknowledging there were multiple sides to me that were equally true. I was infected with an incurable sense of wanderlust, but I was also a homebody.

We may not have soul mates in this life, but most of us have my-God-if-I-don’t-walk-through-the-rest-of-my-life-with-that-person-I’m-an-idiot mates. Kyle was a like-minded American living a few villages over, rebuilding houses for widows who had lost everything during the horrific genocide instigated by Milošević. We hit it off instantly. There was someone else in the world willing to work a horribly paying job in order to play a small part in restoring a ravaged country to its former, if not makeshift, ancient glory. I wasn’t looking for him, but when you find that special someone swimming with Albanian teenage boys in a lake potentially swirling with all strains of hepatitis and you’re still attracted to him, you don’t walk away.

We then queue for a toboggan ride down the hill, the most enjoyable method of egress for children leaving the wall and returning to the parking lot. The man governing the slide warns the Westerners in line, “No yeeeehaaaaaw! Be quiet. No America here.”

In 2007 we stayed in the northern city of Chiang Mai for two months. We lived in Turkey at the time, and after I was diagnosed with severe depression, it was suggested that we visit this medium-sized city tucked into the mountains and misty forests of Southeast Asia as therapy. The perplexingly sizable expat population includes therapists and psychiatrists who speak English and can prescribe low-cost antidepressants with aplomb. It is cheaper to fly across five time zones and rent a house for two months than to travel back to the States and deal with health insurance, wait times, and medical red tape.

My favorite day’s agenda anywhere mimics a life in tucked-away European villages—walking to the market for the day’s groceries, sipping coffee that isn’t in a to-go cup, drinking wine with lunch without judgment.

Venetians have an odd obsession with pocket-size dogs; most stride the sidewalks dressed up in sweaters and hoodies as if they own the place. Why a city with no actual grass and plentiful opportunities to descend into dark waters is a haven for miniature canines, I’ll never know.

He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

The nuns at Our Lady of Mississippi Abbey say that by taking a vow of stability, they are “resisting all temptation to escape the truth about ourselves by restless movement from one place to the next.”