HIGH LIFE: A Weekly Forum for High School Students : A Bittersweet Homecoming : Culture shock: After six years in Africa, Chris Coleman’s not sure he can make adjustment. He worries that he’s ‘changed too much.’

Chris Coleman has resettled in California after six years in Africa, where his father was a missionary--a period highlighted by his being driven out of Zaire by political unrest and suffering from dysentery in nearby Zambia. He is now struggling through U.S. history and trigonometry classes at Sunny Hills High School.

The culture shock hasn’t been easy to overcome, and Coleman, 17, has been spending his time searching for acceptance and trying to make the grade.

Since returning to the United States last October, Coleman has discovered his ideas about life as an American teen-ager were full of misconceptions.

“I’ve become kind of a realist,” he said. “I used to imagine pep rallies and dances and football games, but I thought we would have them all the time.

“I also thought that football games would be more like the NFL, where everyone would really get into it and people would paint their faces different colors.

“The one thing that disappoints me (about life in the States) is that in Zaire, my friends and I used to talk about politics, and (here) it’s who’s dating whom. It’s a totally different mentality, and I don’t quite fit in with the kids here. I’ve changed too much.”

Unfortunately for Coleman, the Belgian-influenced educational system he grew accustomed to in Africa is taking its toll on the junior’s academic life at Sunny Hills.

“I was working to get a French Baccalaureate diploma because with that you start off as a sophomore or junior in college. I was in my last year, so I should be a senior.

“I wanted to continue working toward the French Baccalaureate, and someone told me of a school in Fullerton that they thought offered it.

“I found out it wasn’t the same thing, and to graduate with the International Baccalaureate diploma (offered at Sunny Hills) I would have to stay in high school for another year,” he explained.

Before starting school in Zaire, Coleman and sister Chandra “had four weeks of tutoring.”

“School was totally in French, so I would write down everything the teacher wrote on the blackboard and then have it translated by the tutor in the afternoon.”

It took him a year before he could understand everything his teachers said. “I’m learning in English for the first time in years,” he said.

Though Coleman was being taught in a second language, he failed only one class in six years.

“When I was 9, my father announced we were going to Africa,” Coleman said. “It was totally unexpected. It was so amazing, I didn’t know what to feel.”

The Colemans spent the next 13 months traveling the United States, visiting 13 Southern states and 200 churches in search of financial support for Pat Coleman’s missionary work.

On Aug. 2, 1985, the family left for its new home by way of Belgium and Kinshasa, the capital city of Zaire, finally arriving in the city of Lubumbashi, where they were based.

“Coming from Indiana, I had only seen a few blacks,” and for the Zaire natives “white children are a novelty,” said Coleman, describing the shock he felt upon his arrival.

“When we got there it was the end of the dry season, so it was very hot and very dusty. The city is dirty and they have open sewers. There is a copper refining company, and you could taste the sulfur.

“I thought we would live in the jungle like Tarzan.”

Instead, the Colemans lived downtown in a five-story apartment building, one of the tallest structures in Lubumbashi.

They devoted most of their time in Africa to the work of the church.

The government of Zaire has never been stable, and recent political unrest and conflicts reached such a boiling point that the U.S. government asked all Americans to leave the country.

The Colemans fled to neighboring Zambia, where Chris contracted dysentery. He lost 30 pounds in three weeks, lost his breath after only a few steps, and began to hallucinate.

“My hands would be talking to each other, and I saw people who weren’t there,” Coleman said. “My Mom (Cindy Coleman) thought I was going to kill her, and a lot of people thought I was going to die.”

During his four-week illness he was seen by seven doctors in Zambia and, once he returned to the United States, a doctor who specialized in tropical diseases.

Despite the many challenges, Coleman maintains he “would rather be in Zaire, not because America is any better or worse, but because I was comfortable there. I had my friends and I knew what I was doing.

“It’s a totally different lifestyle. The white community in Zaire was so small, everybody knew Chris Coleman.”