From Culture Shock to Cross-cultural Adaptation: Narrative inquiry of a Kenyan student’s journey in Pakistan

Abstract

Travelling to a foreign country for higher education has its own challenges, as apart from dealing with academic stress, international students have to overcome various obstacles mainly because of linguistic and cultural differences between their native and the host country.The study explores a series of narratives shared by a Kenyan male student who had been in Karachi for the last five and a half years for earning a Pharm-D degree from a public sector university in Karachi. The aim of this qualitative narrative inquiry was to conduct an in-depth study of the challenges the Kenyan student faced during his five and a half years in Pakistan along with exploring how he succeeded in dealing with culture shock and adapting to the new academic, linguistic, and sociocultural environment in the host country.The data for this study were collected through a series of conversations with the participant collected in the form of stories, spanning over a period of 16 months. The collected data were analyzed through ‘a critical events approach’ based on highlighting critical events contained in the stories of experience. Although the findings of the study provide insights into the life experiences of only one international student, many international students, particularly the Kenyans can relate to it, as they pass through somewhat similar experiences during their academic journey in Pakistan. The findings of this study call for the need to facilitate international students irrespective of their race, religion, and nationality so that they do not feel marginalized in the host country.