We can help keep homesickness at bay for the foreigner

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

With our modern technology I’m wondering has homesickness been banished from the earth? I doubt it.

Last week I said hello to a new member of staff where I work.

He looked so young. I had not seen him before, so I stopped and greeted him. We ended up chatting. He told me he was from southern Poland and when I said that I had been in Cracow in 1985 he looked surprised. He was only in Ireland a few days. His English was good. 

Looking at him I got the impression that he was profoundly homesick. 

Of course I didn’t ask him. Just as I walked away I was reminded of the chronic homesickness I experienced in Cologne in the summer of 1972.

I still remember the morning I arrived at Cologne rail station. I was 23 and probably had three words of German. After one or two hiccups I arrived safe and sound at the Dominican Priory in Lindenstraße, which was about a six or seven-minute tram ride from the main station.

I could not have received a better welcome. One man in the community had studied with Irish Dominicans in Oxford and spoke good English, so he took me under his wing. 

In 1972 it was not possible to phone Ireland directly.

And it was warm, some days over 30 degrees Celsius. I was attending classes in the city centre, which made the heat even more oppressive for a freckled-skinned man from Ireland.

I felt alone, away from family, friends and familiar surroundings. I was extremely homesick. And it came in waves. There were times when I was fine, kept busy, with things to do and then it would come down on me and I’d feel paralysed.

Even with modern communications I can imagine being away from home can still bring pangs of homesickness. That’s why it’s important to greet the stranger. We never have any idea the impact our kind words may have on another person.

Every day we pass foreigners on the street and we have no idea the difficulties they might be experiencing. Imagine what it must be like for someone coming from far away, from a different culture and trying to settle in a new place. They certainly need all the care and kindness we can give them.

My encounter with the young man in my place of work really brought home to me the scourge of homesickness.

What must it be like for foreigners who come here and work in low paid jobs and are forced to live in sub-standard accommodation? Only this week I heard of a young foreign woman who was upset by repeated questions she was asked by a prospective landlady.

Life can be tough enough for all of us but being away from home, away from our familiar surrounds and support systems, can make people feel extraordinarily isolated, the perfect condition for homesickness to reign supreme.

A friendly word, a kind deed from us, might well prove a lifesaver to the stranger, the foreigner among us.

Have you ever thought of asking a foreigner if they were homesick? Try it.