Leaving home made me realize how much proximity helps in maintaining friendships and how much I took that for granted… Proximity also requires conscious effort to make the time to meet and nurture the friendships.
Ncobile Mukasa, 2026
Ncobie is one of the first friends I met when I relocated from home, and it has been two amazing years of knowing her. You could say that being two African girls in a foreign country navigating a complex education system was what brought us together, but it has ultimately been more than that. Naturally, we have had multiple discussions about living in two worlds and the meaning of friendships, and I thought she’d be the perfect person to speak about starting from scratch in building friendships while living abroad. I asked her a set of four questions, which she responded to, and the rest of this piece will be in her voice except for the questions I asked.
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- What does friendship mean to you?
Friendship means everything to me. I know that sounds slightly cliché, but it’s very true; especially now being in my late 20s and reflecting on my childhood, friendship has helped me grow into the person I am and am still evolving into.
Friendship has been a mirror for me, and the friends God has put in my path have helped me understand myself. As a young girl, now a young woman, I’ve understood what my interests and my values are. The friends I made in high school 16 years ago, from one of the high-performing schools in Eswatini, were some of the smartest people. It was hard for me transitioning from primary to high school in terms of making friends. When I finally made friends and got into the friend group, it helped me understand the value of education; all the girls in the friend group were all smart and beautiful and being around them pushed me to want to be better; be my best self.
The books my friends read, the shows they watched, and the conversations we had made me strive to be better in school because of this. These friendships helped me embrace parts of myself; the things I liked in my friends were things I had not taken the time to appreciate in myself: how funny I was, how I loved books and movies, and so seeing this as a mirror formed a foundation of where I am now in New York and pursuing a PhD program.
Being in a new environment as well, friendships were a really important foundation for discovering who I am, helping form my identity, and fortifying my understanding of myself. Since friendships are not biological connections, they are more objectively formed from familiarity and shared interests, contrary to being in a family that has the bias of knowing how you were as a toddler. Friends are second to family since it is a community you build consciously. Having a community is everything, and the people you surround yourself with ultimately shape who you are; “birds of a feather flock together”.
- What was the hardest part about leaving home from a friendship perspective?
Leaving home made me realize how much proximity helps in maintaining friendships and how much I took it for granted. When we were in the same place, we would meet up on the weekend, help a friend run errands, and go shopping. Moving, however, highlighted how much conscious effort it had to take for me to maintain my friendships back home, because they are very important to me. I struggled at first because I was moving to a new space, making new friends and building community, trying to assimilate to a new environment; things were happening for me on this side that made it harder for me to check on my friends. I can’t say it has been easy, but it is a hardship I am willing to take on.
Proximity is important, but even with proximity, we have to be conscious to make the time to meet because even being at home, we had different schedules with life happening to everyone. A lot has compounded with being so far away from each other: the distance, our lives changing, and the time difference to take into account, but it was me recognizing different ways to stay connected to my friends that has ultimately helped. I read somewhere that friendship is predominantly having shared experiences with others, and these are limited; you have to make the time to share experiences. I recently saw something on Instagram about a guy recommending that a group of friends intentionally share pictures from their gallery- very random pictures like their messy room, a café they went to, a selfie on their phone that they took during the week and share them on the group chat every Sunday to foster conversations and connections. We found a creative way to have shared experiences from a distance.
It honestly gets monotonous to always ask “how are you doing” and get the perfunctory response of “fine, thank you, you?” so finding a shared activity like this can be a way to spice up your friendships. Making an appointment with your friends to check in at least once a month has also helped us stay in touch, and the calls sometimes go over 4 hours, but this is a hardship I am willing to take because the same importance we put into romantic relationships is the same effort that has to be put into friendships and doing shared activities. Things like friendship dates, going for picnics, a call, and letting your friends know you are available for them.
Intentionality was something I realized was very important to sustain our friendships. Giving your friends the benefit of the doubt when they are not available and able to reach out is also very important.
The friendships I had when I was back home were started when I was younger; since they started in a particular time period, it took a lot for us to grow out of that phase and not be superficial. Being adults, real-life changes were happening, and it took effort for us to share the struggles we were having as adults, and getting the affirmation from your friends that you are there for them was important. We are evolving, and there is a need to be intentional to cater to this evolution.
- How easy was it for you to start making new friends?
It was relatively easy to make friends when I moved abroad, thank God. Thinking back to my experiences starting friendships, thankfully, it was easy when I was younger because proximity helped to bring us together and the shared experiences led us to gravitate towards each other. Moving to a new country, I came in low stakes and low pressure because I had it in mind that I would be moving to a new place, and I didn’t expect to make friendships in a blink. I knew it would take time for me to be comfortable before making friends began.
I made friends in the program I was in since we gravitated towards each other, and 3 years later, we are still friends. Thank God we were able to stay friends and sustain our friendships. I was really open when I moved, and I came in being open because I am a shy person and I knew I had to get out of my comfort zone to make friends because that was not something I usually did. I was not too afraid of rejection in the sense that if a conversation did not go well, I was okay with that, and if it ended in a friendship, that was great as well. It was not hard because I put off the pressure on myself to make new friends. Knowing it was a new place and a new culture, I was willing to try different things to see if they worked, and when the friendships formed, they formed organically.
- 3 years abroad, what are your key lessons on starting afresh and sustaining friendships?
I would say the first lesson is that it is okay to be myself, which sounds like an obvious thing to say, but when you move to a new place, there is a tendency to adapt and assimilate to the culture of the place you have moved to, which is a human thing to do. This adoption might look like changing aspects of oneself to gain acceptance in the new culture, which I made a conscious effort not to do. I chose to be myself because I wanted the community I make to be people who like me for me. The thought of faking a certain aspect of myself for a long period of time did not make sense to me. So I made a conscious decision to be myself. I was myself while reading books I liked, and I met some amazing people doing that; I was myself in class, and I found friends who felt comfortable being around me, and those were the friends I wanted to keep.
The people whom I spoke to and was not able to be friends with, was okay. It didn’t make them or me bad people, and I am really happy with understanding that being myself was enough and the friends I made feel the same exact way.
The second lesson is intentionality. Being intentional, as I mentioned with my friends back home, is very important. I notice that we are all busy as we are get older; we have to be intentional to check in on each other. When the semester starts, everyone is overwhelmed; some of my friends are working and have other responsibilities too, and I have had to be intentional about making time to meet with them, without necessarily spending money; building shared experiences, as I shared before, goes a long way.
The third is a lesson I learned from the friends I’ve had this year: the power of showing up. Having lost my mum, I don’t think I would have been able to be a functional human being without them, with my family being away. My community rallied around me during the loss when I received the news; my friends showed me how important showing up is. Showing up took different forms, like showing up and sitting with me, letting me vent, making me laugh, calling to check in, cooking, and offering hugs. This is something I will definitely take with me. I feel like I could have done more to show up for my friends in the past, but I learn from experience; learning is human. Showing up for your friends in a way that makes sense to you and the authenticity of your relationship is something that is very important.