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Libya native Ahmed Hamer Alshosha uses his mother's poetry as therapy for homesickness while attending school in Michigan (Andrew Norman)

Michigan’s weather may not strike Americans as the state’s primary selling point. But Ahmed Hamer Alshosha moved from El Agelat, Libya, to attend school in East Lansing, Mich., partly because of the 30 degree Fahrenheit average difference.

“I like the cold,” he said. “I like snow. I like the rain. We have rains in Libya, but we don’t have snow,” except for in the mountains.

The tall, 35-year-old with dark features and a kind smile had never been to America, and considered attending the University of Colorado. But when a friend told him there were many Arabic speakers in the school’s computer engineering program, he decided to attend Michigan State University. He didn’t want to be able to lean on his Arabic. He wanted to have to speak English.

Hamer Alshosha didn’t want to take the easy route with his education. But there’s nothing easy about the cultural adjustments required to make a home in an unfamiliar country.

When he arrived in East Lansing, he was shocked. The only image he had of America was of New York City. He didn’t know what to make of this place.

“I thought all the cities had skyscrapers, huge buildings and good roads,” he said during an hour-long conversation in a loud, bustling East Lansing coffee shop. “So when I saw this it was like my city. Maybe my cities’ roads are better.”

Hamer Alshosha and his wife Imjad found Americans to be friendly, which contradicted the popular images he saw on the news back home. One day, when he was walking along the street with groceries, a man stopped and offered him a lift.

“Americans are very kind,” he said. “[There are] maybe some cultural differences, but that’s OK. We can understand that.”

But he was struck by how Americans seemed to live their lives in isolation, rather than as part of a community. He lamented that he and his wife had not had any visitors to their house.

MSU Office of International Students and Scholars Director Peter Briggs said the school sees more students coming from collectivist societies, such as Libya.

“American culture emphasizes the individual achievements and the glory of the individual as contrasted with the affiliation with the group success that is valued in collectivist cultures,” he said.

The difference is true in family relationships as well, Briggs said.

“There’s nothing we can do to recreate family — that’s part of growing up and going away,” he said. Instead, OISS offers programs to students and faculty to help create a new social support structures. The department’s mission is to confront head on some of the cultural adjustments required of international students.

Last fall, about 240 student volunteers helped greet new students with hopes of forming relationships to get students off to the right start, Briggs said. About 250 students meet every Friday on campus for a European-style coffee hour, where students can come and make friends, or get involved in campus groups.

The department also teams with the community for programs like Friendship Family, where area families connect with international students by having them over for dinner, taking them shopping or having them as holiday guests.

Ravi Ammigan, OISS assistant director, moved to the Chicago in 1997 from Moritious, a tiny island nation off the coast of Madagascar. He began working at MSU in 2003. He said getting involved with international student clubs allowed him to reconnect with his family.

“There’s a sense of sadness, because it makes you realize that you’re far away from them, but it helps to be able to boast about your background,” he said.

The coffee hour, too, has helped Ammigan make friends and deal with culture shock.

“Having a sense of belonging, I think would help any international student cope with the differences and the pressures of being away from home,” he said.

Briggs said the school was lucky to have the Islamic Community Center of East Lansing near campus, offering Muslim students like Hamer Alshosha a place to pray and gather.

Hamer Alshosha prays at the mosque two or three times a day. He also meets regularly with a loose group of fellow Libyan students at MSU.

But some assimilation therapy techniques come from more internal sources. When Hamer Alshosha gets homesick, he turns to Arabic poetry, the first literature he ever read. Specifically, he finds solace in the poems of his mother.

“Poetry is like therapy,” he said. When he reads his mother’s poems his homesickness vanishes.
Hamer Alshosha’s favorite poem of his mother’s is one about him. Translated into English, it begins: “Slim and tall, and I like the way he walks/I called, ‘Oh Ahmeada.’ He echoed, ‘yes!’/He is valiant, and I admire him/He has a splendid look when he came back from the university/Oh my God, save him from envy/I supplicate the god and he doesn’t frustrate me/Make his days vivid and blissful/I hope in my golden years he won’t leave me.”

Like a river provides water to drink, and food to eat, Hamer Alshosha said poetry “can feed your soul.”