Some REI Staff Share Their Experiences of Homesickness

Cardboard boxes piled around the living room, the sound of duct tape coming off the roll, leaving a kitchen that you’ve loved to cook in: our REI staff are familiar with the actions of moving.

But the actions are not the difficult part. It’s the emotions that bite. When you move, you miss whatever you are leaving behind.

Sometimes our staff get homesick….

Amy Black and her family serve with REI in Jordan. She and her family have lived overseas for six years now, and it is not that these feelings are finally catching up with her. For Amy, her grandfather died. When she went home for the funeral, she grieved his death all over again. Then her sister had a son, her first nephew. Then the town where they live got an Ace Hardware store—and she couldn’t get America out of her mind. She missed one home even as she loved her life in her other home.

Marlen and Paula Eve had a different experience. Paula had worked in the U.A.E. with REI for years, up until this past summer, that is, when Marlen lost his job as a contractor for a local company. They found themselves being forced to move back the USA when all they wanted to do was continue their work in the U.A.E.

When their next-door neighbor, the Eves closest Omani friend, found out they were leaving, he asked Marlen to come over to his house. When Marlen walked inside, his neighbor said, “I want to give you something.” He pulled out his father’s rifle that had been made in the 1800s, his family’s most valuable and treasured heirloom. Shocked and honored, Marlen refused the gift, but was again reminded of his sadness to be leaving his home and his Omani brother.

Paula never got to say goodbye to the house they’d lived in during their time in the U.A.E. She remembers seeing the family who was going to be renting it after them come to the door just as they were driving away, eager to make her home theirs, and her heart broke.

What could make REI’s resident staff voluntarily put themselves and their families through the difficulty of moving and making a new home wherever they are? Only whole-hearted commitment to REI and commitment to their work with local people in their new homes.

We are thankful and honored to have such people be a part of REI’s work around the world.