Learning to Swim in Someone Else's Sea

by S. E. Vidrio, Field Staff, Uzbekistan

Are we part of the problem? Probably. But the harder question is this: Which problems don't we even see?

Because humans are imperfect, we all make mistakes, which contributes to the problems that are inherent in every culture. The strange thing, though, is that we often don’t notice the problems in our own.

Seismic fissures near the former west coast of the dried Aral Sea, allegedly from underground nuclear testing.

We become so accustomed to the water we're swimming in that we forget we're wet. All of us face the same problems daily, and yet they are so ubiquitous that we often don’t realize we’re swimming in them until we are removed from our pond and enter someone else’s.

When we move somewhere else, we suddenly notice everything: the water, the currents, the places where everyone seems to be doing things the hard way. Only then do we begin to realize that we, too, have been swimming in our own currents all along.

Getting Wet

I started work with REI five years ago in Indonesia. In parts of Southeast Asia there is a sickness Indonesians call masuk angin: “wind’s entering.” Masuk angin can be caught in circumstances such as driving without a jacket, sitting in front of a fan or going to sleep with wet hair: any activity wherein the wind enters your body and makes you sick, which happens frequently.

Many people from outside Southeast Asia scoff at this supposed sickness, but the fact of the matter is that it is not any more or less of a “problem” than the Medieval English concept of “catching a cold.”  Whether “cold” or “wind,” current scientific theories assert that it is not the atmospheric conditions that cause our symptoms, but microscopic pathogens.

However, if one is working in medicine trying to help a community be healthier, it’s often counterproductive to go around saying “there’s no such thing as the common cold!” It generally builds more trust to understand the person's experience first and then offer helpful medicine and information to treat the illness.

Many hands make light work: installing a four-ton wastewater treatment tank in Indonesia

Drowning

 The same idea can be applied to other problems in other places.

In both Indonesia and my current country of Uzbekistan, I’ve often heard versions of the same question: “What is the biggest problem keeping us from reaching the level of the United States?”

I think this question misses something important though. While there are obvious differences in economic measures between countries, every country has problems that people become accustomed to living with every day.

When we move into a new country, our outside perspective makes us notice very quickly the things that people living there have learned to accept as normal.

A student attempting to “discreetly” use a phone during an exam

The initial impulse to judge is strong. When we see problems that are obvious to us, it’s tempting to assume that people living with them don’t see what we see. Anyone who works cross-culturally has accumulated their own stories of “good ideas” failing because they collided with local priorities, relationships and realities we don’t understand.  

You must pick your battles. But how do you decide which battles matter when every problem is entangled with another? If we’re really being honest, how can we build up people when we ourselves are just as stuck in the stormy sea of life on this earth?

Learning to Swim

This last academic year I taught in the Design Department, and our department head asked us to meet one-on-one with students to get to know them on a more personal level. This then helped us gain a better understanding of how they learn and what problems they face.

One thing that struck me from these meetings was this: although the details of the problems were often things you would never see in the United States, the types were the same sort of things I struggled with as a college student: balancing work and school, managing romantic relationships, family drama and other things we’ve all faced.

Students and faculty of the SIUT Design Department, November 28, 2025

It reminded me that, even when the context changes, human beings are fundamentally the same.

When we balance intellectual understanding with genuine love and care for those around us as individuals, the overwhelming deluge of issues can become clearer. There are still hard choices to make, but as we learn to see how people are struggling in the same water we’re swimming in, we notice the currents pulling them under.

The harder part comes in accepting the currents we can’t change – some are too strong and the danger too imminent; it’s beyond our ability to help. At least that’s what it looks, and sometimes feels, like.

The truth is we can’t solve every problem we see, and we can’t even see every problem that matters. But we can learn to swim together.

And we can remember that the people beside us are not problems to be solved. They are people who, like us, are trying to find their way through the same complicated waters. When we learn to swim together, we discover that hope doesn't wait for calm waters. It is often in the struggle itself that strength, endurance and transformation take shape.