The Tufts' study abroad booklet abounds with bold and colorful images, from historical Oxford on one page to haute-couture Paris on the next. It's no secret that Tufts is a huge school internationally - last year Newsweek rated it "Hottest School for Studying Abroad," reporting that 40 percent of juniors spend time studying in another country. But while some may choose to culture themselves around the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe, others are immersing themselves in a far different - and sometimes trying - experience.
Students who travel to less developed countries such as Chile, China and Ghana are sometimes thrown into the midst of a community very different from the one they left. In contrast to the relative comforts of life at Tufts, some students witness need and inequality firsthand during their time abroad.
Though eye-opening, the abroad experience can also have a less pleasant side effect: guilt. Every year, there is a dinner meeting in which students returning from abroad can share their experiences. The event is planned in conjunction with the Tufts Counseling and Mental Health Service (CMHS), which sends a counselor to talk to students who have feelings of guilt.
Junior Shelby Deeney, who is currently studying in Ghana, says she was prepared for such feelings.
"I always knew that when I was going to Ghana I would see examples of poverty," Deeney said in an e-mail. "In Accra, the capital of Ghana, you see either the really rich or the really poor. There is hardly any in between here."
Junior Laurel Schrementi, also studying in Ghana, said she has seen women and children who make a living selling bags of plantain chips for 35 cents each, people living in straw huts with dirt floors, and even university students living eight to a room.
"[I] definitely think about how different my house back home is," Schrementi said in an e-mail. "The thing that gets to me the most is to see young children out selling things in the market or working ... on tro-tros [large vans] ... These children have little hope of doing anything else but just making enough money to live on by continuing to sell fruit, or used clothes imported from the west, or fake watches or sunglasses."
Study-abroad students also encounter another source of guilt besides just what they see. Schrementi said she is often approached while walking around: "A lot of times kids will come up to us asking for candy or pens or occasionally money. They are taught from a very young age that white people have a lot of everything and are wealthy enough to give things away," she said.
According to Schrementi, desire for closeness with visitors often occurs solely because of skin color. Before traveling, students are warned not be too helpful and to watch out for "professional friends" who try to make friends with international students and then beg for money. Some professional friends make more by begging than those with honest jobs.
Some students, however, have had a different experience. Junior Marc Marrero, remarked on the isolation he has experienced during his time in the Tufts in Chile program.
"We live with families in some of the nicest neighborhoods [and] go to the best schools in the country," Marrero said in an e-mail. "Yet I feel as if this disconnect comes not from our program, but rather from simply being American in a foreign country."
Marrero said that as a result, the distribution of wealth he has witnessed does not "feel any different than in the United States with beggars or homeless people."
Senior David Werth, who studied in China last year, also reported feeling removed from poverty. According to Associate Professor of Economics David Dapice, this is because one would have to drive several hours outside a major city in China to start seeing signs of poor rural areas and pointed out that there is also an enormous difference between the privileged class and the less fortunate in our own country.
Dapice outlined reactions students might have to what they experience in other countries. "When people see great disparities there are a variety of reactions, and one is to ignore it," he said. "More often people get very upset and react strongly and want to do something; those people are already predisposed to being empathetic, and they often try to do something that will make a difference."
Associate Dean of Programs Abroad Sheila Bayne agreed, saying that she has made immersion and the understanding of other cultures the main philosophy behind studying abroad and knows that when traveling to certain countries it is impossible to avoid the reality of different living conditions.
Bayne hopes that students are spurred by what they see in a positive way and try to make a difference. "We encourage [students] to take whatever they experience or learn and to act upon it; there are lots of ways for students to get involved in the short run as well as in the long run," she said.
Deeney has embraced this ideal. She volunteers in an NGO two days a week, tutoring a crowded room of 30 children, which proves to be both tough and rewarding. Schrementi has already learned something important that she keeps in mind as she tries not to "judge the lifestyles of people here with Western eyes," she said.
Schrementi said that "just because people may be living in a small, bare house with no electricity or running water, that does not mean that they are necessarily unhappy," and referenced the strong community ties and rich cultural traditions in Ghana. The best toy that Schrementi has seen was a sardine can tied to a long thin palm leaf that a boy pulled behind him like a toy car; "to him, that can on a string is a real toy and makes him genuinely happy, so that's all that matters."
