The other day, I tuned to a program on NPR discussing the story of soap operas on TV. It made me laugh, as long-shelved memories began to reemerge and I realized this topic ties to why we settled in Wilton. Let me explain.

In the late 1960s, I moved to Africa for the first time. I had already experienced culture shock when I moved from an island in Washington State to New York City. I traveled to New York by train from a rural community on the shores of Lake Washington where everyone knew each other, to a New York where I was told, as I stumbled across a man lying on the stairway in the 42nd Street Subway Station, “Lady, just leave him. He’s either dead or drunk. If he’s dead there’s nothing you can do, and if he’s drunk you don’t want to try.”

I swore I never would be that callous. Years later, when I found myself stepping over a man lying on the sidewalk outside a neighborhood hotel, I realized it was time to leave New York before I lost myself.

So when I moved to Nigeria, I was ready for a change. And a change it was, from the red soil we walked upon each day instead of tarmac, the papaya trees outside our windows instead of oaks, humidity so intense you almost felt like you were breathing through a soaked cloth, the lilt of languages I could only hope to one day understand, the ever-present danger of snakes that coiled at the base of the steps we climbed to our home, to the unforgettable smell of earth and spices that spoke “Africa” to me. But it was the people I met in Nigeria and later in Chad that roped me in.

Through them I learned that the historical patterns followed by those living in villages made sense. In the rural parts of the country, each person had a place where they fit into their village community and fulfilled a purpose essential to the well-being and survival of all living there. Everyone was needed and respected for the roles they filled within their community structure. This fractured in a city environment where people had no hope of knowing all those living around them and no one was expected to participate in the lives of their neighbors. Services and all other needs had to be paid for rather than offered by neighbors to neighbors as part of community life.

I learned this mostly from my year-long experience living in the small village of Bougoumene in Chad as well as spending time in that country’s capital city, N’Djamena. By the time I was to return home, I had no idea how I would reintegrate into the world I had left almost two years previously. I knew my life had changed and I had become a different person than the one who boarded that plane at JFK airport.

My questions concerned how the world we were to reenter worked. I had no idea how to approach it, nor even understand what the norms were within the country in which we would be living. In reflection, I knew that what I had previously accepted as “normal” behavior before I left New York City now seemed outrageously self-centered, far too judgmental and even rudely inhumane. Had the world I left changed as much as I had over the past two years? What could I expect and how would I fit in?

We landed in Boston and moved to a family home on Martha’s Vineyard, and there I was introduced to soap operas, something I had never thought of watching in the past. But these soaps were the way I found my way back to understanding the culture in which I was now living. They presented what was accepted (or was in the process of being accepted) as normal behavior.

I was able to witness what current society expected and rejected in the way of family structures, social expectations, political and religious movements, the strength racism held in the current world, changing cultural mores, dress and hairstyles and even the food people ate and entertainment they sought.

Another thing I realized was that I no longer was attracted to cities like New York or Boston. I knew I wanted to raise a family and what I sought was far closer to the life I led on the African continent than it was to anything a city could offer. It was the soaps that helped me form these opinions combined with living for a total of five years on the African continent in Nigeria, Chad and the Ivory Coast. Soaps were my window into current U.S. life.

Largely because of what I learned from my immersion into weeks of reacculturation via them and taking “refresher courses” after each trip back from Africa over the next few years, I knew I wanted to settle in a smaller community in a more rural part of the United States.

I looked for a place where we would get to know my neighbors and become part of that community, a place where I could share in whatever it took to make it a good place to live. I must thank soap operas for teaching me how to understand a society in which I felt a little like an outsider; a place I could understand from a perspective I hadn’t directly experienced. I merely witnessed it through a box in our living room, and learned what I needed to know until I became comfortable being back in the country of my birth.

This is what eventually brought us to Wilton. We chose well.