(Un)Settling In: Building a Home Away from Home as a Foreign Student

By Maham Kamal

Graduating as a foreign student and settling in as a new immigrant is a unique transition experience. One has the opportunity to carefully construct a future yet embrace the challenges that come with being away from home. A bachelor’s degree and countless meaningful personal and professional experiences later, I can describe this journey as being aboard two boats with one leg in each. The expectations, values and dreams from home sail parallel to the hope, joy and excitement for a new land.

If I may say so myself, I struck this balance of staying connected with my identity – ethnic, spiritual and cultural – while allowing myself to grow into the opportunities offered in a multicultural place like Canada. I now thoroughly enjoy curling up with a good book, the Vancouver rain pitter-pattering on the windowsill, a cup of David’s Tea beside me and a fresh pot of dal simmering on the stove.

As I reflect back now, adjusting to life beyond studies while going through the pandemic was a constant effort at doing what I knew best: connect, cherish and embrace uncertainty. The latter is the most active of the three, given that I recently walked the stage for a degree I completed two years ago. Building a home away from home isn’t easy, so here is my advice after doing so myself.

Community Counts

‘Building a community’ was one of those clichéd lines they kept using during transfer student orientation, but it’s important; it seems even more obvious years later, now that I am working full-time. As someone deeply rooted in the bustling South Asian city of Karachi, life in Vancouver for me had early nights, no late-night food adventures and no family in the city to visit every weekend for dinners. It may sound trivial, but once the clock strikes 5 pm on a desk job, it is the little things that make a huge impact on one’s mental and emotional health – two things whose stability determines whether one can survive when they are oceans away from home.

This challenge was an opportunity to shape my community with new relationships and routines. Instead of the usual weekly visit to an aunt or uncle as I had done in Karachi, I ventured out with friends on the UBC campus for a community event. Gathered around tables, folks from various academic majors, countries and cultures would sip coffee while discussing global issues and playing board games. Often at these gatherings, the chatter would fade into the background as I smiled to myself, thinking about how strange and wonderful it is that a familiar feeling is held in an activity so new to me.

The comfort of conversation, hot drinks and a lingering aroma of food transcended the Pacific and transported me to cosy evenings of family dinners at restaurants by the Arabian Sea. Instead of relatives and family friends, there were young people from different cultures sharing experiences from their own upbringing. Finding a diverse community has been the gift that keeps on giving; it is my fellow young people who comfort and question me when needed as we all embark on crucial stages of adult life.

Home is Within

When I found myself coming to terms with the fact that life after university is more open-ended and mine would be spent in Canada, I scrambled to reflect on what kept me connected to home. Understanding that I carry my home within me through a hundred small actions and choices was a momentous realisation that sunk in gradually over the past few years. It was not a striking epiphany arriving one night but a constant act of reflection on various events.

I recalled when I published the recipe for a humble potato-cauliflower curry in Ubyssey magazine at UBC. Being able to cook a family-favourite dish miles away from home and seeing it printed for my new community to see was a rare moment of perfect belonging. At that time, it was about reading my byline in the school paper. But years later, it meant something different.

It may sound trivial and even self-othering that sharing a Pakistani recipe made me feel at home but eventually belonging does come down to feeling accepted as we are, through small windows of being seen. Being able to carry a piece of home, whether it be my faith, clothes or food, across the various addresses I have lived at in Vancouver enables it to become my home. I carry home within me and it is my choice to express it that eventually leads to a sense of belonging.

At first this took courage because our surroundings associate succeeding as a new immigrant with detaching oneself successfully from what we have left behind. Reflection, reading and conversations with people (especially women) going through similar experiences gave me the courage to embrace the fact that straddling two worlds is not a self-inflicted punishment but rather a part of living abroad that must be cherished.

Looking Ahead

To say that finding my feet in Vancouver has been all fun and frolic would be a stretch. Even as privileged as I have been with supportive family and friends, I have still had to wade through the murky waters that building a new life in an unfamiliar place entails, which is made harder by the fact that I am from a generation of young people that carry a thousand storms within me while feeling like the most Instagram-worthy photo of my breakfast means that I have made it as an adult. Not to mention the added layer of life-admin required in obtaining the right permissions and completing paperwork that allows one to actually live here.

Nonetheless, reflecting back only fills me with gratitude for the experiences that have emboldened the person who caught a flight from Pakistan seven years ago into the one writing this. With this gratitude comes a drive. I migrated for greener pastures, and I will water those pastures with kindness, resilience and creativity.