Writing out of limbo international childhoods, global nomads and third culture kids 1443833606, 9781443834087, 1443834084

Table of contents :
Introduction / Gene H. Bell-Villada and Nina Sichel --
pt. 1. Foundations. Third culture kids / Ruth Hill Useem and Richard D. Downie
Cross-cultural kids : the new prototype / Ruth E. Van Reken
Raised in the margin of the mosaic : global nomads balance worlds within / Norma M. McCaig
Explaining differences : TCKs and other CCKs, American and Japanese TCKs / Ann Baker Cottrell --
pt. 2. Reflections. Finding home : John Liang
Reframing / Faith Eidse
Jubilee / Charity Schellenberg
The colors and culture of home / Nancy Miller Dimmock
A canary sings on the road to Athens / Kathleen Daniel
Artist in transit : a fusion of art and identity / Cathleen Hadley
Returning to my parents' foreign "home" / Emily G. Hervey
Continental shifts / Anna Maria Moore
Outsider / Nina Sichel --
pt. 3. Explorations. Lemonade for the Gringa : advice for and from teenaged global nomads / Patricia Linderman
Vignettes from another perspective : when cultural hierarchies matter at an international school / Danau Tanu
The religious lives of adult missionary kids / Nancy Henderson-James
Echoes of loss : long-term grief and adaptation among third culture kids / Kathleen R. Gilbert and Rebecca J. Gilbert
Four third culture kids : one portrait / Laila Plamondon
Memory, language, and identity : the search for self / Liliana Meneses
Finnish expatriate families and their children : a complementary viewpoint / Anu Warinowski
Domestic students or foreign? When U.S.-global nomads return "home" to college / Bruce La Brack
Global nomads : cultural bridges for the future / Alice Shu-Hsien Wu --
pt. 4. Reconfigurations. Documenting mobility / Maureen A. Burns
Khartoum Romeo, Delhi Juliet / Greg Clinton
"I know who I am" / Leyla Rouhi
The stranger self : a pattern in narrative / Elaine Neil Orr
On Jean Rhys, Barbara Kingsolver, and myself : reflections on a problem that has no set name / Gene H. Bell-Villada
Colonial mothers and cosmopolitan third culture kids : Doris Lessing's Under my skin / Alice Ridout
Checked baggage : writing Unpacked / Elizabeth Liang
On making BRATS / Donna Musil --
pt. 5. End paper. Le français / Maya Goldstein Evans.

Citation preview

Writing Out of Limbo

Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids

Edited by

Gene H. Bell-Villada and Nina Sichel with Faith Eidse and Elaine Neil Orr

Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids, Edited by Gene H. Bell-Villada and Nina Sichel with Faith Eidse and Elaine Neil Orr This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Gene H. Bell-Villada and Nina Sichel with Faith Eidse and Elaine Neil Orr and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3360-6, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3360-8

for the children—here, there, and everywhere

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Definitions ................................................................................................... x Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Gene H. Bell-Villada and Nina Sichel Part 1: Foundations Third Culture Kids..................................................................................... 18 Ruth Hill Useem and Richard D. Downie Cross-Cultural Kids: The New Prototype.................................................. 25 Ruth E. Van Reken Raised in the Margin of the Mosaic: Global Nomads Balance Worlds Within ........................................................................................... 45 Norma M. McCaig Explaining Differences: TCKs and Other CCKs, American and Japanese TCKs.................................................................................... 57 Ann Baker Cottrell Part 2: Reflections Finding Home............................................................................................ 80 John Liang Reframing .................................................................................................. 92 Faith Eidse Jubilee...................................................................................................... 102 Charity Schellenberg The Colors and Culture of Home............................................................. 118 Nancy Miller Dimmock

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Table of Contents

A Canary Sings on the Road to Athens ................................................... 132 Kathleen Daniel Artist in Transit: A Fusion of Art and Identity ........................................ 152 Cathleen Hadley Returning to my Parents’ Foreign “Home” ............................................. 165 Emily G. Hervey Continental Shifts .................................................................................... 180 Anna Maria Moore Outsider ................................................................................................... 196 Nina Sichel Part 3: Explorations Lemonade for the Gringa: Advice For and From Teenaged Global Nomads.................................................................................................... 210 Patricia Linderman Vignettes from Another Perspective: When Cultural Hierarchies Matter at an International School ........................................................................ 220 Danau Tanu The Religious Lives of Adult Missionary Kids ....................................... 232 Nancy Henderson-James Echoes of Loss: Long-term Grief and Adaptation among Third Culture Kids............................................................................................. 246 Kathleen R. Gilbert and Rebecca J. Gilbert Four Third Culture Kids: One Portrait..................................................... 263 Laila Plamondon Memory, Language, and Identity: The Search for Self............................ 278 Liliana Meneses Finnish Expatriate Families and Their Children: A Complementary Viewpoint ................................................................................................ 291 Anu Warinowski

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Domestic Students or Foreign? When U.S.-Global Nomads Return “Home” To College ................................................................................. 313 Bruce La Brack Global Nomads: Cultural Bridges for the Future..................................... 332 Alice Shu-Hsien Wu Part 4: Reconfigurations Documenting Mobility ............................................................................ 356 Maureen A. Burns Khartoum Romeo, Delhi Juliet ................................................................ 371 Greg Clinton “I Know Who I Am” ............................................................................... 380 Leyla Rouhi The Stranger Self: A Pattern in Narrative................................................ 391 Elaine Neil Orr On Jean Rhys, Barbara Kingsolver, and Myself: Reflections on a Problem That Has No Set Name ................................... 411 Gene H. Bell-Villada Colonial Mothers and Cosmopolitan Third Culture Kids: Doris Lessing’s Under My Skin............................................................... 426 Alice Ridout Checked Baggage: Writing Unpacked..................................................... 440 Elizabeth Liang On Making BRATS .................................................................................. 455 Donna Musil Part 5: End Paper Le français ............................................................................................... 476 Maya Goldstein Evans Contributors............................................................................................. 477

DEFINITIONS

Third Culture Kid A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background. —David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken

Global Nomad A global nomad is anyone of any nationality who has lived outside their parents’ country of origin (or their “passport country”) before adulthood because of a parent’s occupation. —Norma M. McCaig

INTRODUCTION GENE H. BELL-VILLADA AND NINA SICHEL

The origins of this volume are truly serendipitous. In 2008, Gene Bell-Villada organized a special panel entitled, “Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Third-Culture Kids, and Finding the Words to Tell about Them,” to be presented at the annual conference of the Modern Language Association (MLA) in San Francisco. Fellow panelists were to be Nina Sichel, Faith Eidse, and Elaine Neil Orr. It was, to our knowledge, the first strictly literary session to focus on 1) the experience of being raised outside of one’s passport country, and 2) the study of narrative works, fiction or non-, that call forth, recount, and reflect on that curious experience. That November, much to our delight, we received a communication from Amanda Millar, of Cambridge Scholars Publishing. She had happened to see the panel listed in the MLA’s official published program. And she was writing to inquire if there might be a potential book that could grow out of our session. Three years later, this collection comes as the end result of that initial inquiry. When the two of us assumed full co-editorship of the projected anthology, our larger purpose in recruiting authors was to gather, for the first time, a suitable mix of personal essays and scholarly articles; of memoirs, “hard” researches, and thought pieces; of subjective evocations together with more objectively oriented psychological, or sociological, or literary investigations of the issue of growing up globally—and its long-term aftereffects. In addition, we were aiming to encompass a wide geographical horizon, a broad spectrum of nationalities as well as a variety of parents’ occupational backgrounds. We thus hoped to include instances of business kids and missionary kids, of foreign-service children and so-called “military brats.”

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Introduction

We asked for vivid, compelling writing that would appeal to a general audience, writing free from academic jargon. We sent a call for submissions out through our various networks, and suggested individuals might forward the call to others. Responses came from around the globe. From these, we have selected thirty representative essays that, we feel, illustrate the spectrum of the Third Culture Kid/Global Nomad experience. *** How the editors initially made contact and then ended up collaborating on such a book has its own circuitous history. It begins with Gene Bell-Villada noticing that his 2005 memoir, Overseas American: Growing up Gringo in the Tropics, was being paired on Amazon.com alongside a collection entitled Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing up Global (2004), edited by Faith Eidse and Nina Sichel. He ordered the volume; it arrived; he promptly devoured its twenty essays, all of them emotionally rich, thoughtful, sometimes broodingly and wrenchingly so. In the anthology, he discovered immediate points of contact that echoed some of the issues he had written about: childhood mobility, displacement, and loss; identity among the children of expatriates (as he put it in his memoir, “an identity that is in permanent dispersal”); and the paradoxical estrangement and enrichment that goes hand-in-hand with living an international life. Its roster included literary luminaries on the order of Carlos Fuentes, Ariel Dorfman, Marie Arana, Pat Conroy, and Pico Iyer, but also lesser known if equally eloquent wordsmiths. The memoirists all shared in common their having been raised…well…global, “unrooted” (a striking neologism not yet listed in the standard dictionaries), with no set home or even a country. The gathering served as yet another instance of a scattered demographic that Bell-Villada, while eagerly pursuing research for Overseas American, had begun to glimpse: a kind of “virtual community” of adult Third Culture Kids. One essay in particular caught B-V’s eye: “Going Home,” a wistful account, written by Nina Sichel, the anthology’s co-editor, of her return visit to Caracas, Venezuela, where she’d grown up as an American. Inasmuch as Bell-Villada had also spent time there in the 1950s and graduated from one of the two local, overseas-American high schools, his response to Sichel’s story was immediate, personal, visceral. In her remembrances he recognized the capital city’s lights, the air; the home

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deliveries of tropical fruits; the instant skyscrapers and boom-town atmosphere; the racial mix of the street crowds and the sad, squalid hillside slums; and of course the expatriate enclaves and the oddities of leading a family life in such a setting. And more: young Nina, as it turned out, had attended the other American school, the same one where Gene’s kid brother Kanani had completed junior high (as it was called back then) some eight years before she’d started. Feeling compelled to reach out to this kindred voice, Gene wrote Nina a long note of appreciation. Not knowing where she might be employed, nor able to locate an address for her via the Internet, he mailed the letter c/o her publisher, Intercultural Press, to the firm’s Maine and London offices both. The missive, it seems, took an indirect, roundabout, meandering journey: she received it several months later. The envelope had been opened and then scotch-taped shut. She replied promptly by e-mail; a lively correspondence ensued; B-V and Sichel became fast e-pen pals. Their exchanges started in mid-October 2006; they were writing each other at least twice a week as they shared past history and present insights relating to matters Third-Culture-Kid of every sort. In the months that followed, Gene began conveying to Nina the thought of proposing a special session on the topic of TCK writing, to be held at the next MLA conference, with Sichel herself, her Unrooted Childhoods coeditor Faith Eidse, and memoirist Elaine Neil Orr as fellow participants. Personal reasons caused the delay of the panel; it was held the following year at the 2008 MLA convention in San Francisco (though Nina was unable to attend). The book was commissioned, its contents gathered. We are here. *** Readers of this volume will most likely possess some familiarity with its overall topic. Still, it won’t hurt to spell out, if briefly, the subject matter being addressed in these pages. The phrase “Third Culture Kids” (TCKs), while far from a household item, is a handy bit of shorthand, a formula designating the children of couples who, because of a parent’s expatriation due to professional assignments, have been raised and educated elsewhere than in their country of formal citizenship. Also applied to these subjects is the term “Global Nomads” (GNs).

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Introduction

The time-span a TCK spends abroad may range from as little as a year to the entirety of one’s childhood and/or adolescence. It may have unfolded in a single foreign location, or in half-a-dozen of them, or more. (Such cases indeed exist.). Whether they are mobile TCKs who frequently relocate or stationary TCKs whose friends and social circles keep changing, these children grow up among worlds, transitioning in and out of places, cultures, and friendships, and the frequent changes in their lives can be as challenging as they are rewarding. When TCKs do eventually repatriate to their passport nation—generally to attend university—they may find it culturally as alien as were their former places of residence. Such returnees who have gone “home” are occasionally referred to as “hidden immigrants,” and often find themselves more comfortable among international students, who typically have a widerranging worldview, than among their own citizens. Their reentry into the culture of “home” can be one of the most difficult transitions of their lives. The terms thus denote a social reality that, though as yet unacknowledged by a wider U.S. culture, is accepted as fact among international educators. Organizations such as SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research) and NAFSA (Association of International Educators), university branches of Global Nomads International, and magazines and websites devoted to the subject have done much to disseminate information and expand awareness of these returning students. Interestingly, Japan has long had a program for returning students, and many U.S. universities and colleges are now accepting the need for transition services, support and recognition of these global citizens.1 *** Although “TCK” as a concept dates only from the late 1950s, and has scarcely started to gain anything like broad cultural diffusion, the experience (the vivencia, as they say in Spanish) had long been out there, in great measure as a result of colonialism. The British and French empires, as a matter of policy, had encouraged sizeable numbers of European citizen-settlers to populate and “civilize” their overseas outposts. Many of these voluntary expatriates would in turn have offspring, who grew up as what we might today consider TCKs, and who might feel the 1 See essays by Norma McCaig, Ann Baker Cottrell, and Bruce La Brack for further discussion.

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same conflicting emotions vis-à-vis their “mother country.” We can thus now look upon literary figures such as Doris Lessing, Jean Rhys, and (in some measure) Orwell in England, and Marguerite Duras, Camus, and Le Clézio in France, as Adult Third Culture Kids (ATCKs) whose work at times reflects TCK preoccupations and dilemmas. Hence, colonialism, in a sense, first created Third Culture Kids, along with the conditions and the settings for a TCK literature that chooses to take on such themes. In the U.S. case there were subtle differences. The United States was not a “world power” until after 1945, though it did have its sphere of influence in Latin America (where American schools had existed dating back to the earlier decades of the 20th century). In addition there were religious missionary efforts all over the world. (Publishing tycoon Henry Luce and novelist Pearl Buck, for instance, were each of them the children of missionary parents in China.) It was only with the post-War expansion of the U.S. global presence that larger numbers of young Americans started being raised abroad, whether at the expanding corporate compounds or on the 700 military bases, as well as in the more traditional faith-based missions. As a result, several million American youngsters have grown up as TCKs, though without necessarily being aware of the fact. Not accidentally, the very term “Third Culture Kids” was coined in the 1950s by American sociologist Ruth Hill Useem after having been stationed with her family in India, where she studied both Western-educated Indian citizens and American professionals assigned for work in that newly independent nation. Of course, Useem was writing largely from an American perspective. Yet the term she devised was never intended as necessarily U.S.-specific. Indeed, as several of our contributors demonstrate with a wealth of data and testimony, there are also Japanese, Finnish, Brazilian, Danish, Monagesque, and Iranian TCKs—and others, not covered here—with issues both shared and very much their own. This leads us to a new stage, a whole new setting for what Bell-Villada in his essay refers to briefly as “the Third Culture Kid condition,” namely, the rise and spread, since 1989, of what has been dubbed “globalization:” the increased interconnectedness of the world through international finance and trade, through entertainment media and information technology, through employment outsourcing and voluntary legal migration, and with English as the dominant lingua franca. The trend was vividly summed up

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Introduction

in the catchy title of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s 2005 best-seller, The World Is Flat. As a side result of this inexorable wave, educational institutions across the globe have been seeing an increasing international and cultural diversity within their student ranks. Many of these budding minds presumably have not yet worked out in full their personal identities within this new, stillfluid and developing situation; they may well spend years sorting out the various strands in their cultural make-up. The Census Bureau recognizes this trend and adds new categories of ethnicity and race periodically to reflect the changing U.S. population. And what comes next? What of the larger, evolving picture? Even as globalization “flattens” the world, and more and more people relocate across boundaries and borders and time zones, it is no longer simply a movement from one culture into another. Nations are becoming increasingly multicultural, migrations and immigrations altering the texture and tone of a place as new people pass through or settle. The cultural mosaic that is humanity blends and expands, and new selfdefinitions are dizzying in their variety and complexity— cross-cultural, bi-cultural, multi-cultural, inter-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-national... As Ruth Van Reken states in her essay, perhaps a new language or model is needed in order to talk about the many permutations of individual identity. Such dilemmas and confusions are implicit in the intentionally ambiguous title of our collection, Writing Out of Limbo, an evocative phrased coined by contributing editor Elaine Neil Orr. Its prepositional phrase could be construed either as “Writing from Limbo,” a simple matter of location (or of perspective), or as “Writing One’s Way Out of Limbo” and hence a kind of active quest, a struggle analogous to that of “Finding One’s Way Out…”—and with the pen, using the written word as the means of scouting, discovering, emerging, and, at long last, arriving. The many shades of meaning are reflected in the contents of this book. Here, then, are foundational works that have defined Third Culture Kids and Global Nomads, and that expand our understanding of cross-cultural childhoods; memoirs that reflect the arc of TCK experience, from childhood mobility to adult identity; analyses and explorations of the many issues that TCKs and Global Nomads face, in their lives “abroad” and their reentries “home;” and reconfigurations of artistic expression as interpreted through the unique TCK lens.

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Foundations We begin our collection with the writings of foundational thinkers. It is useful to step back and see how concepts have evolved about this “other” identity, and how they continue to grow and change and be applied to various groups of internationally mobile children. We see how the theorists grapple with contemporary anthropological and sociological frameworks in their attempts to articulate what it is that pulls together a group of such far-flung, disparate people, whose individual narratives encompass the globe, yet who share some traits—not language, not geography, not culture, not religion, not history—in common. Who are these outsiders? What is it that they share? And where do they find common ground? Ruth Hill Useem, the originator of the term Third Culture Kid, and coauthor Richard Downie, write of “the interstitial culture”—what others call “liminality” or “neither-here-nor-there”—that is “created, shared, and carried by persons who are relating societies, or sections thereof, to each other.” This is the Third Culture, and this is where transnational children feel most naturally themselves. They observe that, while children of families with stable roots find continuity in the culture of their homeland, TCKS find their sense of continuity primarily in family, international schools and the sponsoring organizations that are the stable parts of their lives, rather than in the culture around them, which changes with every move. They grow up to value their cosmopolitanism, even if it is not recognized by others in the dominant culture. Useem and Downie conclude their piece with recommendations for schools to help TCKs make use of the skills they have learned in their travels, as chances are they will want to continue an international life. Ruth Van Reken, together with David Pollock, took Useem’s concept of Third Culture Kid and refined and polished it into its current definition. Their now-classic Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds was the first book in the field of intercultural studies to describe in detail the experience and general profile of the TCK. But as more and more people began to study the profile, and to find themselves to some degree reflected in it, Van Reken began to search for a more inclusive name, an umbrella term that would cover not only traditional TCKs, but also any number of other groups whose identities are formed by crossing cultures in their childhood years. Her essay describes how she moved from her work with Pollock to an expanded view, one that calls for

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a new language and a new model: the Cross-Cultural Kid, the new prototype for an interconnected world. Norma McCaig coined the term Global Nomad to define anyone who had moved internationally because of a parent’s career. She advocated for recognition of the leadership these people could provide—people “whose vision and experience extends beyond borders,” who are “cross-culturally skilled and globally aware.” Focusing on how these children internalize the transnational experience, so very different from the ways their parents do, she calls on schools and universities to recognize the many gifts these children bring and to recognize that, though they may live outside the mainstream, they belong “to a functional rather than dysfunctional marginal reference group.” Ann Baker Cottrell, at one time a student of Ruth Hill Useem’s, breaks down the various labels we have for expatriate children and analyses them in close detail. She then compares two vastly different societies in their understanding of and treatment of their TCKs: the United States, a multicultural, multiethnic society founded on principles of individualism, and Japan, a culturally homogeneous society that values conformity far more than individuality. Her study looks at socialization of the TCK within the “home” culture and concludes that, as the world becomes more globalized, both nations “increasingly value lives transcending cultures.”

Reflections Who are these Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids? And how do they remember their experiences of growing up global? What does it feel like to live outside the mainstream? How do they build identity? Even as we reach for universal statements about the lives of TCKs, and as we attempt to articulate the common denominators of TCK identity and create a “typical” profile, the fact remains that each child is going to have a very different experience, and the way that their childhood informs their adult choices is as unique and as individual as their character. Interpretation of what may seem to be the same childhood experience varies from person to person even within families. To illustrate this, we have included the writings of two sibling pairs: Elizabeth and John Liang, and Faith Eidse and Charity Schellenberg.

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Elizabeth and John Liang share the same moves, the same background, basically the same family history. Yet their approach to writing for this collection, the issues they focus on, and the ways the experience has formed them, are radically different. Elizabeth Liang has taken her multiple identities—and her ease with change and adaptability—and created an acting career where her very identity changes with each role she takes on. It is a way of bending her history to her purpose. In the world of theater, she finds a home that reflects the TCK experience. But John Liang, frightened by each move he made with his family, struggled throughout his childhood to tamp down his anxiety and what he calls his feelings of “out-of-placedness.” The many strands of his multiculturalism —his mixed ethnicity, his multilingual names—mark him as different with every move. Who he is, ultimately, is challenged by a trip to Taiwan, where he expects to enjoy a sense of belonging and where he feels like more of an outsider than ever. Faith Eidse and Charity Schellenberg return to their childhood home in Congo to celebrate their mother’s legacy after her death. Yet the journey, though a turning point for each of the sisters, leads to very different outcomes. For Eidse, the trip is the dawn of a new awakening as she pulls away from childhood resentment and pain and begins to understand the depth of her missionary parents’ service in Africa, and to ponder how she can mirror their commitment at home in the U.S. She takes in a homeless woman, manages her care through surgery and recovery, and is able to “reframe” her own history from a new perspective. Her sister, Charity, is forced to confront the submerged and unacknowledged grief she experienced as an adolescent when she left Congo for Canada. Cut off for years from her past, she is unable at first to even recall the language that would open doors of communication. When she does, suppressed memories and pain flood through her with such force that she is swept away in a tide of confusion and unhappiness. With the support of her husband, she emerges from this experience newly resolved to return to Africa, and they move back on a permanent basis to devote themselves to building a life in Congo. Nancy Dimmock also returns to her African roots, bringing her missionary background forward in a new and unexpected way. She and her husband first settle in Lesotho to direct a health care facility. They later move to Malawi, where Nancy has a vision that she turns into reality, starting a clinic to save the lives of sick and starving infants, and to find new families that will adopt the orphans. Along the way, she creates her own

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Introduction

peach-and-brown family, giving birth to two children and adopting six others. Knowing who you are and who you will be, developing and nurturing a solid sense of self, can be challenging for children raised moving around the globe. They dip in and out of sometimes conflicting cultural worlds and values, and for some, this causes confusion, and for others, it is exciting and enriching. Their personal growth becomes more than simply an education in the ways of the world, as they question and select from the various influences that shape them, and cobble together a unique identity. Moving back and forth across North and South America as a child, Kathleen Daniel continues moving to and through places as a young adult, following a spiritual and healing path that takes her from the study of psychology to yoga to acupuncture to personal coaching to women’s leadership—and back to her ancestral home in Budapest. It isn’t so much re-invention as it is expansion of self, opening up to the many cultures she immerses herself in while simultaneously following her own true north. She stretches the boundaries of self with new learning and expression, continually shaping and reshaping who she is. Cathleen Hadley’s memoir is the story of a similar sort of journey, though its focus is one of artistic expression. In her sojourns through the Americas and Indonesia, she pieces together an artistic identity that merges expressive visual art with a traveling life. Painful lessons of dispossession and outsiderness teach her that she, and her art, can survive, that art is both process and identity and can be taken from place to place, expressed with the objects and materials at hand—and then released. “I use art to inhabit the worlds I move in,” she writes. Emily Hervey applies her personal experience of being raised in Chile, the U.S. and Kazakhstan to her studies of cultural adjustment among TCKs around the world, and contributes an essay that is part-memoir and partresearch, delving into topics that so many TCKs are familiar with: the loneliness of being an outsider, exposure to danger and uncertainty abroad, the pain of too many farewells, the struggle to articulate her experience to uncomprehending friends and family, the entire transition experience. The topic of home surfaces and resurfaces in the memoirs of TCKs, though “home” is a concept that shifts and slides depending on who is writing about it. “Home is an ephemeral place... my sense of home is a plural

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concept,” writes Anna Maria Moore in her memoir of constant relocation. Moving across continents and cultures (and she has covered the globe: South America, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa), she creates a sense of home from fragments of her past—her collections of letters, shells, rocks, pieces of cloth—talismans that remind her of where she has been. She carries these “like a shell upon [her] back,” a shell which can expand with every move and hold within it all her memories. Nina Sichel writes achingly of missing the sensuality of the tropics after moving from Venezuela to a small town in the northeastern U.S. for college, where she encounters the culture shock typical of the “hidden immigrant.” Moving from place to place after college, she wonders when she will find the America she has been taught to believe in, and when she will feel she is part of a community. Eventually, she comes to accept that she feels most comfortable as an outsider. For her, home is not a geographical place, but a comfort zone, a sense of familiarity she shares with others raised outside the dominant culture.

Explorations Our third sub-section brings together articles that are the result of rigorous empirical researches; that deal with TCKs within corporate or academic contexts; that explore in some theoretical way the larger question of TCKness; that offer practical counsel for interested parties (children, parents, college administrators)—or that provide some combination of all these. The authors of most of the essays employ to some extent the method of the survey, whether written or via personal interview. The statements by their interviewee subjects can often prove quite powerful and moving. Patricia Linderman conveys a perspicuous, bird’s-eye glance at the entire, yearslong process of being, literally, a Third Culture Kid—the preparation for the move, resettlement, schooling, finding (and losing) friends, outsideschool activities, visits back “home” and, finally, the uncertain future that awaits them. Her expertise in the field, and her own experience as a mother of two TCKs, come together in an essay offering both background knowledge and concrete advice. Danau Tanu applies the participant-observer technique in carrying out her ethnographic study of an international school in Indonesia. She captures the complex web of relationships that arises between the enrolled Asian students and their Western peers and non-Western parents both, as well as

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Introduction

the ways in which tensions involving race, nationality, and language play themselves out day-by-day on the school grounds. Nancy Henderson-James, who herself grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) in Africa, surveys a number of adult MKs and traces the divergent paths they have taken with regard to their parents’ religions—from intensification of faith to loss of belief to various positions in between. The results she comes up with are often surprising; and her own recollections of experiencing doubt as a university student, and of opening her mind to the philosophical tradition from Socrates onward, brings a personal touch to her thoughtfully objective study. Four of the essays work in the best traditions of empirical social-science research, deploying their fresh insights with a wealth of detail. Kathleen Gilbert and Rebecca Gilbert illuminate a hidden, mostly scanted aspect of TCK life and its perpetual state of “liminality:” the unacknowledged grief, the unceasing feelings of loss—loss of relationships, loss of identity, loss of a home. Multiple childhood losses, both recognized and ignored, are the submerged downside of the mobility, flexibility, and cosmopolitanism of TCK existence; and sorrow over these losses can continue to trouble TCKS into adulthood, a long process that the Gilberts bring clearly into view. Laila Plamondon’s study puts the spotlight on TCK delays in maturity and in identity formation, and the ways in which these postponements impinge on the course of reacculturation and repatriation, and on the ties with one’s parents. In a finding that might surprise readers, she notes that the numbers of years spent abroad, and of countries lived in, actually make no discernible difference in identity development, whereas frequent repatriations “home” can in turn lead to increases in a TCK’s confusion. The essay is especially remarkable in having originated as an Honors Thesis at Smith College. Most TCKs tend to be competent in two languages or more. In the field of academic linguistics, bilingualism is an established subspecialty, but Liliana Meneses breaks new ground in her provocative look at how the fact of having different languages interweaves with issues of social identity, group membership, the life of inner emotions, and the construction of a personal narrative. (Language, then, as signifier both social and affective.)

Gene H. Bell-Villada and Nina Sichel

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Anu Warinowski’s article, with its highly theoretical and graphics-rich apparatus, brings an unusual perspective in examining the problems unique to TCKs from Finland. She sets forth the special characteristics of Finnish families at home and abroad, and brings into view the manifold interactions with the host countries and diverse expatriate groups, and, inevitably, with international schools that, in their curricula and language of instruction, may be entirely alien to Finnish children just beginning their experience of expatriation. The situation of returnees and their identities as post-adolescent or adult TCKs are the focus of two of these pieces. Bruce La Brack deals with a question of academic policy for these hidden immigrants: Are they, or are they not “international students?” If so, then, should their curricular requirements differ accordingly? From his home institution, the University of the Pacific, he offers one plausible set of solutions. Alice Wu, having organized conferences of Global Nomads at Cornell University and produced videos of those events, cites from them to give us some eloquent oral testimonials from her widely diverse participants. Covering a period of almost fifteen years, her longitudinal report presents the views of a dozen or so TCKs on matters of career choice, spouse choice, and children, and their thoughts on home, friendship, and community. It is a rare glimpse of the current lives of ATCKs when they are well beyond being, as it were, “kids.”

Reconfigurations Our fourth and final portion assembles essays by eight TCKs of varied stripe, who bring their mixed backgrounds to bear on the concrete realm of culture—literary classics, physical artifacts, even creative products of their own making. Maureen Burns, in the most theoretically oriented of the articles, takes on the larger topic of mobility in a world where migration at many levels has become commonplace; she forcefully demonstrates the importance of maintaining any sort of documentation (e.g. photos, a ring) as a means of articulating identity via representation. Many TCK readers will discern here their own past attachment to small, portable objects—a toy, a book, a scrapbook, musical recordings—that they clung to with each subsequent move abroad, elsewhere.

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Introduction

Greg Clinton in turn tells of consciously channeling his TCK past into the study of philosophy and, later, the teaching of literature overseas, dramatically demonstrating to us that a 9th grade group of 15-year-olds at an international school in Sudan, four centuries later, can still be gripped by the ending of Romeo and Juliet, can be profoundly moved to pity and fear by the death of the star-crossed lovers. The great works of the past are alive and well, he suggests, in TCK enclaves. Perhaps not accidentally, Shakespeare’s contemporary and artistic equal, Cervantes, becomes the medium whereby Leyla Rouhi, with her kaleidoscopic mix of Persian, English, Muslim, and French backgrounds, and with Spanish added latterly, finds a living mirror of herself in the fluid identities captured in Don Quijote’s ever-shifting world. In her search for roots and a transnational “family” following the upheavals in and her displacement from Iran, she sets out to locate a long-range historical precedent to her own being, first in medieval Spain’s Muslim past, and then in Cervantes’s complex and subtly subversive “take” on early-modern Spain’s submerged Muslim present. The imaginative literature begot by colonialism, and the emergence of what we now recognize as Third Culture Kids, are closely addressed by three of our contributors. Elaine Neil Orr links up a concept of an identity that is dual (one of the two an inner “stranger”) with her own upbringing as a Missionary Kid in Nigeria and with her readings of works by three very different novelists: Jean Rhys, J. M. G. Le Clézio, and the Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga. Orr highlights in novels by these authors the conflicted relationships between their youthful European (or Europeanized) protagonists and the local, non-white folk they deal with every day. Bell-Villada for his part revisits the life and oeuvre of Rhys alongside that of novelist and essayist Barbara Kingsolver as instances of the TCK phenomenon; in the very plots and characters of their more outstanding books he discerns analogous patterns from the cultural dynamics and the shattered family history of his own, problematical TCK youth in the Spanish Caribbean. Alice Ridout examines in special depth the autobiography of Doris Lessing—the latter a natural subject for TCK literary studies. Ridout at one point takes note of a scene of the child Doris seated serenely in a tree in the Rhodesian bush—a memory of innocent bliss that will be dashed by

Gene H. Bell-Villada and Nina Sichel

15

the Nobel-Laureate-to-be’s avowed future struggles to locate a “home” and by her clashes with her mother (who serves almost as an allegory for England’s less savory side). Two of our contributors reflect on their own creative, artistic efforts at making sense of their respective TCK experience, while the sole author in our “End Paper” evokes one of its more nuanced complications via a lyric poem. Elizabeth Liang, who grew up in six countries, draws commonalities between that multiple-identity existence and her chosen profession as an actress, and tells us of her one-woman play-in-progress that aims to give dramatic shape to her childhood peregrinations and confusions. Her childhood moves between Panama and Guatemala, her first exposure to Moroccan Arabic, the shock of winter cold in Connecticut, the woes of a street cyclist in Cairo or Philadelphia—these and other roaming experiences form the fabric of a vivid stage monologue. Donna Musil, the only “military brat” among our authorial ranks, conveys the “feel” of growing up military in the 1960s and ‘70s (the racial politics on the bases, the constant relocations, Vietnam), then goes on to narrate the harrowing logistics of producing the first documentary film ever made about that life—and finally the amazement and shock at the range of responses (negative and positive, angry and sympathetic, hostile and joyful) that such a movie can elicit from military wives and children. We close with a poem by Maya Goldstein Evans, who grew up Jewish in Egypt, where she attended French schools, and then later emigrated to Venezuela, there graduating from an American high school. In the subtle rhymes and rhythms of her crystalline verse she captures the inner linguistic battles familiar to many a polyglot TCK. Given their composite souls and complex personal trajectories, TCKs at some point may find themselves faced with two or more languages and having to choose from among them the one in which they prefer to dwell, and Evans’s lyric meditation lends eloquent artistic shape to such a conscious decision. *** We the editors take pride in this meeting of minds and experiences, of straight facts and inspired epiphanies. It is our hope that other TCKs, their relatives, friends, and colleagues, and readers both familiar with and new to the topic, will all profit from savoring these highly variegated writings, and the fresh and unusual glimpses they bring of a world in flux.

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Introduction

We gratefully acknowledge the following: Faith Eidse and Elaine Neil Orr, for their invaluable help in reading and editing manuscripts; Elaine Orr, again, for having first suggested the title of our volume, and Cathleen Hadley for allowing her luminous painting Arrival to grace the cover; Amanda Millar of Cambridge Scholars Publishing, for making the volume possible; Carol Koulikourdi, also of CSP, for guiding us through the process; our families and friends around the world who encouraged and supported this effort—and, above all, the contributors who responded to our call for submissions, many of whom have bared their souls about information with which they may have been less than comfortable.

PART 1: FOUNDATIONS

THIRD-CULTURE KIDS RUTH HILL USEEM AND RICHARD D. DOWNIE1

“The first day, the teacher stood me up in front of the class and said I was from Singapore. The kids at that school were tough. They started calling me Chinaman and harassing me. I didn’t like being called that. I thought it was something bad to be. I did well in school, though. The teachers liked me, and the school was easy. The schools I went to overseas were tougher.” “When I was 16, I came from Japan to a small town in Indiana. I remember the first time I was out on a date—all we did was drive around to McDonald’s and different places. The whole night! I never really got involved much in the school life. A lot of the kids were not planning on going to college, and so we didn’t have much in common to talk about. I think I was pretty strange for them, too.” “I think part of the problem when I came to the States was I looked American but I did things that were not quite American. I had fun trying to be an American. It was an act in a way.” No, these are not the observations of new immigrants or foreign visitors. These are the reactions of American third-culture kids (TCKs) who have come “home” after living abroad as dependents of parents who are employed overseas. Although they have grown up in foreign countries, they are not integral parts of those countries. When they come to their country of citizenship (some for the first time), they do not feel at home because they do not know the lingo or expectations of others--especially those of their own age. Where they feel most like themselves is in that interstitial culture, the third culture, which is created, shared, and carried by persons who are relating societies, or sections thereof, to each other.



1 This article appeared originally in Today’s Education, September-October 1976. Reprinted by permission of the National Education Association.

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Although some Americans were living outside the United States before World War II, the great burgeoning in numbers of Americans moving overseas began after the War. Now, there are approximately 300,000 school-age American children overseas. Their fathers are missionaries; visiting professors and teachers; representatives of the U.S. government (e.g., employees of the Department of Defense, the Department of State, etc.); employees of international and multinational corporations and financial institutions (e.g. Exxon, First National City Bank, Bell Helicopter); and American employees of international organizations such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF. These fathers are usually highly educated or highly skilled people who are forging the networks that intertwine and interrelate the peoples of the world. (The mothers may be employed overseas, but in most cases, the families have moved because of the fathers’ employment.) To be sure, Americans are not the only ones involved in third cultures. For example, Japanese businessmen work and live in the United States and in Southeast Asia, and diplomats from all countries represent their governments in posts all over the world. Their dependent children can be found in university communities, in the United Nations International School in New York, in the capitals and large cities of the world, and in some of the same overseas schools as American children. In this article, we shall limit our discussion to American TCKs. The parents’ sponsor in the overseas area is crucial in determining the specific part of the third culture in which the TCKs live, the kind of school they attend, the host nationals and third country nationals they will know, and the languages they will learn. These children even have labels that reflect their parents’ sponsors—“Army brats,” “MKs” (missionary kids), "biz kids ," and most recently "oil kids." Overseas, one of the first questions a TCK asks a new arrival is “What does your father do?” or “Who is your father with?” The answer helps to place young people socially. If, after returning stateside, a TCK asks such a question of a young person who has been reared here, the latter’s reaction may be one of puzzlement or resentment. Unlike that of TCKs, the social life of young people reared here is not directly influenced by the father’s employer. TCKs are attached to the third culture through their parents’ employers, who hold parents responsible for the behavior of their offspring. (If a dependent

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Third-Culture Kids

grossly misbehaves, he or she may be sent home, and the employer may reassign the father or terminate his employment.) Therefore, fathers take an active role in their children’s lives and in making family decisions. In one study of third-culture families, only six of 150 TCKs reported that their mothers always or usually made final decisions about family matters. (It should be remembered that almost all overseas American families have both parents present.) Fifty-three percent of Department of Defense dependents claimed that only their fathers made final decisions; 41 percent of children of missionaries said their fathers had the final say in family decisions; and the others involved in the study, including 75 percent of children of those representing the federal government, reported that both parents, and occasionally the children themselves, were involved in decision making. Most children and youth overseas do not resent strict parental controls, because all of them attached to the same sponsor come under similar rules and, hence, there is community reinforcement. Besides, the overwhelming majority of TCKs (close to 90 percent) like, respect, and feel emotionally attached to their parents. There are many reasons for this. The high mobility of third-culture families, who usually move every one, two, or four years, seems to have the effect of bringing individual family members closer together. They share the common experience of moving into unfamiliar territory and offer each other mutual support in the face of change and strangeness. Parents are often the only people with whom TCKs have a continuing relationship as they move from one location to another. American families overseas spend more time together (unless the children are in boarding school) than do their stateside counterparts—and the time together is often not taken up with mundane aspects of living. Mothers are home managers rather than housewives, because they usually have servants to clean up the spilled milk, make the beds, cook the meals, and chauffeur the children. As one overseas mother said, “It’s amazing how pleasant conversations with children can be when you are not frantically trying to get the supper on, answer the telephone, and nag the children to pick up their clothes.” The family provides one form of continuity for TCKs. The schools offer another.

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There is a remarkable similarity among the approximately 600 schools attended by American children overseas. There are also great differences. These include variations in the size of the student body (from ten or twelve up to 6,000 or so); differences in sponsorship (e.g., Department of Defense schools, schools assisted by the Department of State, private and entrepreneurial schools, those sponsored by corporations, and those run by Catholic orders and Protestant churches); and widely different make-ups of student bodies (e.g., from Americans only to Americans in the minority). All of these schools place a heavy emphasis upon academic performance, and the secondary schools are college-prep oriented. The curriculum resembles that of stateside schools with the same orientation, but the overseas schools usually offer enrichment courses in the local language and culture. Books and materials (which often don’t arrive or come late) are generally imported from the United States. The avowed purpose of most American-sponsored overseas schools has been to prepare American pupils for entering the mainstream of American society; stateside schools and colleges, to the extent to which they notice TCKs at all, have been concerned with their “problems of adjustment” to their peers. Neither the overseas nor the stateside schools have seen the TCKs as people who, as adults, will be following in their parents’ footsteps and fulfilling mediating roles in the increasingly conflictive but interdependent global system. Nor do the schools see that solving some “problems of adjustment” offers TCKs valuable experience that can help prepare them for their future roles—which will probably be international. One reason the schools lack appreciation for the great potentialities of these young people is that few educators have studied TCKs. In a bibliography on third-culture education that we compiled at the Institute for International Studies in Education, only ten of the fifty dissertations listed concern TCKs—how they feel and perform, what they value, what they aspire to, and how they view the world and themselves in relation to it. (Given the rather thin reeds on which to rest generalizations about these youth, and given the rapidity with which third cultures and national cultures change, we warn the readers that what we are reporting here is suggestive rather than definitive.) One study of 150 college-enrolled TCKs of varying sponsorship and residence abroad (but all of whom had spent a minimum of one teen year

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Third-Culture Kids

overseas) produced a dramatic finding: Not one preferred to pursue a career exclusively in the United States. One-fourth named a specific place overseas where they would like to work (usually the location where they had lived during their teen years); 29 percent expressed interest in following an overseas-based occupation but to move from country to country; 25 percent wanted to be headquartered in the United States with periodic one- or two-year assignments abroad; and 12 percent wanted to be employed in the United States but to have opportunity for overseas jobrelated travel. In order to qualify for careers in the third culture, these young people recognize that they must be well-educated and/ or highly skilled. (There are few unskilled or even semiskilled third-culture occupations.) Thus they aspire, even when in secondary school, to attain college degrees, and many anticipate getting professional and advanced or mastering highly special skills. One important reason that TCKs want to work in an international occupation, whether pursued entirely or partially abroad, is that they feel most “at home” in third-culture networks. Only 7 percent report feeling “at home” with their peers in the United States, while 74 percent say they feel most comfortable with people who are internationally oriented and who have lived abroad. Yet such preferences do not imply that a person is rootless or has a “poor adjustment.” As one TCK with Asian experience says, “I guess I could live anywhere and be comfortable. I have always liked to think I get along with all different people. I don’t feel bothered by a lack of roots, and I don’t think I have a lot of problems because of that.” To be sure, some TCKs have severe emotional problems that cannot be resolved without outside help—and some problems not even then. But the rate is probably not greater among these foreign-experienced youth than it is among the general American population of the same age. The reported experiences of these youth suggest that they cope rather than adjust, and, as one student of multicultural persons describes them, they become both “a part of” and “apart from” whatever situation they are in. A TCK with Asian and African experience explains, “I find myself sitting back and objectively observing Americans and American society, occasionally smiling and occasionally shaking my head. I get along

Ruth Hill Useem and Richard D. Downie

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comfortably with both, but then again, there is a bit of me that remains apart.” Most third-culture kids are more familiar with foreign languages than are their stateside counterparts. One researcher reports that 92 percent of the TCKs she studied learn one or more foreign languages, mostly languages used in many parts of the world, such as Spanish, German, and French. Twenty-six percent claim knowledge of languages other than, or in addition to these, such as Yoruba, Hausa, Urdu, Kijita, Swahili, Amharic, Kalagan, Marathi, Kisukuma, Chinese, and Quiché. (In U.S. public secondary schools, less than .5 percent learn languages other than French, Spanish, German, and Latin.) TCKs learn some languages in schools abroad and some in their homes or in the marketplaces of a foreign land. One-third of these youngsters are children of cross-cultural marriages and/ or foreign-born parents, and they use a language other than English at home or when visiting relatives. Some pick up languages from the servants in the home or from playmates in the neighborhood. Although most third-culture kids lose their proficiency in the foreign language when they return to an all-English-speaking environment, many pursue languages they have already learned, and some become literate in the languages they can speak. Few have emotional blockages about learning a new language—particularly if they perceive it as useful for the career they want to pursue in the future. What can stateside teachers do to assist these youth when they return to the United States? Perhaps the best answer is for teachers to challenge them academically, both because this gives them continuity with their past and because this helps prepare them for the futures they desire. Teachers should also try not to make these students’ uniqueness a problem for them in school. Each TCK wants to be treated as an individual, not stereotyped as the “new student from Kuwait.” One TCK who lived in the Far East sums up her feelings about her experiences upon returning to the United States in this way: “I was made to feel like an odd person, a creature from another place—and I wasn’t. I speak English, and I understand everything Americans say. My teacher and the people in the town where I was living didn’t really see me—they

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Third-Culture Kids

just saw the difference.”

Bibliography Soddy, Kenneth, M.D., editor. Identity: Mental Health and Value Systems. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1961. U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1970 Census of Population. Americans Living Abroad. Subject Report PC (2)-10A. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973. Useem, John; Donoghue, John D.; and Useem, Ruth Hill. “Men in the Middle of the Third Culture: The Roles of American and Non-Western Peoples in Cross-Cultural Administration.” Human Organization 22: 169-79; Fall 1963. Useem, Ruth Hill. “Third Culture Factors in Educational Change.” Cultural Challenges to Education (Edited by Cole S. Brombeck and Walker H. Hill). Lexington, Mass: D. C. Heath & Co. 1973. —. editor. Third Culture Children: An Annotated Bibliography. East Lansing: Institute for International Studies in Education, Michigan State University, 1975.

CROSS-CULTURAL KIDS: THE NEW PROTOTYPE RUTH E. VAN REKEN

Sometimes our lives are shaped forever by seemingly innocuous moments. Such a time came for me one nondescript day in 1984. We were living in Liberia and my husband, David, brought our mail home as he did each day when returning from work. Nothing unusual there. As he sorted it, however, Dave tossed a letter my way. “Here, you might want to see this. It’s from your mom.” My mother had always been a faithful letter writer through all the years our family lived apart because my parents were working in Nigeria while my siblings and I went to high school and university in the United States. Thus, the fact that she had written a letter didn’t pre-warn me that my life was about to change forever. I opened her letter, expecting to find only the usual family news and chitchat. Instead, another carefully folded enclosure fell to the floor. I picked it up and opened it to see an article by David C. Pollock simply titled “Third Culture Kids (TCKs).” “Why did she send this?” I wondered. Maybe she presumed we’d be interested since my spouse Dave was a pediatrician working with children in what some might then have described as a “Third World” country. I almost laid it aside. How relevant could it be? But, since I wanted to thank Mom for at least thinking of us, I took a moment to read it. Suddenly I realized this article described me—not someone else! It had nothing to do with poor children raised in the “Third World.” Instead, it focused on people who, like me, had grown up in a culture or cultures outside the one their parents called “home” because of a parent’s career choice.

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Cross-Cultural Kids: The New Prototype

Still, I puzzled over the term “Third Culture.” At first reading I thought it meant that TCKs simply took pieces from the various cultures in which they had lived and somehow amalgamated them into a new, personal, and individualistic culture. But that didn’t (and doesn’t!) make sense. While people can be individualistic within a culture, no one can have or be a culture all alone. Culture is something shared with others. So what exactly was this Third Culture idea? I admit that initially I did what I think many others do—I let go of my questions regarding the precise meaning of the Third Culture term itself while I focused more on the profile Pollock described. He wrote of how children raised outside their parents’ passport culture(s), often feel they belong “everywhere and nowhere” at the same time. I remembered my own Adult TCK (ATCK) father telling me once, “You know, I’ve never felt like I quite belong any place.” As a child, I had remonstrated with him, explaining all the people who loved and accepted him. Now Pollock had named this as a common experience for TCKs! Pollock also described how TCKs often had a large view of the world and understood the cultural nuances in the lands of their upbringing. On the other hand, many were woefully ignorant of the social customs in their own culture once they returned. I remembered my own reentry to the USA as a thirteen year old. Although I could bargain well in any market in Nigeria, I had no idea that when I ordered a hamburger for the fifty cents I had in my purse, the bill would be fifty-two cents because of tax and I wouldn’t be able to pay it. As I read Pollock’s article, I realized he had put words to some of the very issues I’d been struggling with. At the age of 39, I had begun journaling to try to understand my own story. I wanted to know why, though I’d had a great childhood as a U.S. American in Nigeria, a quiet depression had dogged me at various points in my adult life. As far as I could see, there was no reason for it. I had never been sexually abused, my parents weren’t alcoholics or divorced, I had (and have) a great husband and three wonderful daughters. Even more, I believed that my life had purpose. So what excuse could I have for these places of depression, unseen by any but those closest to me?

Ruth E. Van Reken

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My mother’s letter had come at a critical time for me. And thus, on that unlikely day in 1984, a journey began that changed the course of my life. Soon after reading his article, I made contact with David Pollock and shared my journaling with him. He invited me to attend the first International Conference on Missionary Kids (ICMK) in the Philippines and do a small presentation from my perspective as an ATCK. David also encouraged me to publish my journaling. In 1987, after rejections by many publishers who said there was no market for a book that appealed to such a niche group, Bill Van Dyke, a friend who ran a printing company, offered to print it for free. That was an amazing gift in and of itself, but it also meant that everyone in the world who wanted to buy the book would have to contact me because it was self-published. Once it had appeared under the title Letters I Never Wrote (later changed to Letters Never Sent), I began to receive letters almost every day from adult TCKs, or parents of TCKs, who wanted to tell me their stories. After a while, I realized the details in the letters might be different, but it seemed the basic story was the same. Questions related to belonging, identity, unresolved grief, or joy in the wonder of experiencing so much of the world first hand were common themes, no matter what nationality the TCKs were or where they had grown up. During this time, Pollock continued to develop and refine his classic TCK Profile™. This included a list of common characteristics he had noticed that TCKs around the globe shared. Obviously, no single TCK had all the traits or characteristics, but the benefits and challenges that he described in his profile were common themes for them as a group. As Dave Pollock began to take awareness of this topic from the halls of academia to where the people who were experiencing it lived, I began seeing short articles by other writers here and there discussing the profile. Usually there was a reference to his work, but often it seemed the authors didn’t make clear that most of what they were writing was a rephrasing of the profile. One day during a phone call, I said, “Dave, you need to write your material up. Pretty soon you’ll be having to quote those who are quoting you!” Dave responded, “I know, but I don’t have time.” And, in another

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Cross-Cultural Kids: The New Prototype

life-changing moment, I heard myself say, “Then I’ll help you.” (After all, I figured he had this profile of the benefits and challenges of the TCK experience all worked out. How hard could it be?) Seven years later, after our then editor David Hoopes had said, “But you can’t just describe the characteristics. You have to explain them,” the first edition of what is now Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds saw the light of day. Pollock sharpened his description of TCKs to what is now the classic definition: A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background (19).

He added this last line after I called him to tell him of an experience I had had the night before. Someone who was working on her Master’s degree wanted to study how this process of amalgamating two cultures into a new one worked, the common way people were describing the Third Culture at that point. She gathered several of us who were by then adult TCKs married to non-TCKs to ask what we had incorporated into our lives from our host cultures. We had all grown up in different host cultures but we found ourselves laughing at each other’s examples and frustrating her to no end. “I didn’t know what polish to use on my floor when I got married because I grew up with all cement floors,” said one of us. The others followed with their examples of cultural ignorance as they had moved into adulthood in the U.S. Each time someone started a new theme and others followed, she would break in. “No, that’s not what I’m talking about,” she said. “Those examples are just because of living in your expat world but I want to know what you took in specifically from the host culture that you still do.” We were a bit nonplussed. Finally, I said, “I really can’t think of anything that I do specifically because I lived in Nigeria. I knew I wasn’t going to get married as a young teen like many of my Nigerian friends. My mother made me wear shoes so I wouldn’t get hookworm even though most of my Nigerian friends often went barefoot at that time. What we’re talking about is what we experienced, even if it came from being part of the expat world we lived in.”

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After that, I called Dave and told him of the evening. “Dave, if the Third Culture is simply a phenomenon in which each TCK takes pieces from the home and host cultures and joins them somehow to make a third, TCKs will remain forever isolated. Ultimately, no one else will have come from exactly the same mix of home and host cultures as the next person. And the exact opposite was true last night. We all laughed and knew exactly what each other was talking about even though the details were different depending on where we were from or had grown up. But there was something profound we shared in the experience alone.” In time, Dave came to refer to this instant, almost magical connection when TCKs meet as a “reunion of strangers.” But more importantly, this shared experience reflects more accurately what Drs. John and Ruth Hill Useem’s original work describes as the Third Culture when they went to India in the mid-1950s to study how people from two different cultures would do business together. Dr. Ruth Hill Useem was interested in what she saw among the expat families who had come to India from different countries and with different sponsoring organizations. She soon discovered that “each of these subcultures [communities of expatriates] generated by colonial administrators, missionaries, businessmen, and military personnel—had its own peculiarities, slightly different origins, distinctive styles and stratification systems, but all were closely interlocked” (12). The Useems realized the expatriates had formed a lifestyle that was different from that of either their home or their host culture, but it was one they shared in that setting. Dr. Ruth Hill Useem called the children growing up in that world Third Culture Kids and our name was born. Dave’s expanded definition and description offered TCKs a place of belonging. They now had a tribe. Although this tribe is not one named in the traditional way of defining groups by nationality, ethnicity, or race, it is a model of a new way to describe culture as that of a shared experience. But some researchers believed even Dave’s definition and Dr. Ruth Hill Useem’s definition that TCKs are simply “children who accompany their parents into another culture,” weren’t complete enough. Neither one said specifically why the parents had gone to another culture, although Useem had conducted all her research in the mid-1950s among those who were overseas directly as a result of their parents’ career choices (e.g., military, corporate, missionary, educational, or foreign service). Since then, many who grew up cross-culturally for all sorts of other reasons than a parent’s

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Cross-Cultural Kids: The New Prototype

career choice had heard or read the TCK Profile (Pollock and Van Reken, pp. 77-184). They identified so strongly with the characteristics described that they claimed membership in this group as well. Without a clear statement of the reason parents made a cross-cultural move, who could blame them for adopting this language to describe their own experience? The blurring of the line, however, caused researchers and interculturalists in the field to engage in scholarly debates about who might rightfully be called a Third Culture Kid. Questions were asked, e.g., “Should the term include a child who accompanies parents into another culture because of immigration or as refugees?” Or, “What about children whose parents change cultural worlds within national borders?” Norma McCaig was one researcher who took great exception to the failure to keep the definition clear. An ATCK herself, Norma didn’t like having the word “kid” describe her when she was obviously an adult. In response, Norma coined the term Global Nomads to replace the TCK term and defined them clearly as those who “go overseas with a parent because of an international career” (McCaig, p. 2). She, and others, believed that if all types of cross-cultural experiences were mixed, researchers couldn’t study any of them because there would be too many differentiating factors. For some years we were stuck. Those who wanted to maintain the “purity” of a TCK as only someone whose parents moved between cultural worlds due to a parent’s career, had to agree that others who grew up as immigrant children or refugees experience feelings similar to those of traditional TCKs. Others (including me) who wanted to let everyone into the “TCK Club” if they had grown up among various cultural worlds for any reason, had to admit things were getting a bit muddled. How could we meaningfully compare children who accompanied parents to a refugee camp with other children circling the globe as a multinational company paid their airfares and fees for their international schooling? Yet, why did refugees (and others who grew up in non-traditional TCK ways among many cultural worlds) respond so strongly when they heard about TCK characteristics? While such discourse was necessary, it began to detract from productive conversation about the impact of a cross-cultural childhood in today’s fastchanging world. Several events made me realize we had to find some sort of solution to this quandary if we were going to move ahead.

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First, I got an email from a then-stranger, Paulette Bethel. Paulette was doing her PhD work in China. She had read the TCK book for an assignment, and wrote to ask me why she, as an African-American who had grown up her entire life in New Orleans, had found language for her own story while reading Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds. Soon after, I received a phone call from Kenny, an Asian immigrant’s teenaged son. He wanted to know whether or not he was a true TCK. He had recently realized that, although classmates at his school in Indianapolis saw him as one of them, he entered an all-Chinese world every day when he left that school and returned home. His grandmother lived with them and spoke no English, his mother only a few words. Then I met Fiona while doing seminars with ATCKs in Australia. Fiona had never left her country at all but had grown up in the Outback of Australia before attending secondary school in Sydney and related strongly to the TCK Profile. After the meeting, she came up to ask if she was a TCK or not. What should I say to any of these questions? Another apparently random moment in 2002 finally offered a key to open that door to new dialog on these issues. The principal of a private local school in Indianapolis asked me to talk to her teachers about TCKs because several international business people had recently placed their children in this school. I realized during the presentation that most of the teachers were unimpressed because they saw these students as “rich, spoiled brats.” They did, however, want to talk to me about the “multicultural kids” in their diversity program. As they explained how they divided students according to their “affinity groups,” I realized that for them, at this moment in the early 2000s, multicultural essentially meant various racial groups. The idea of the deeper levels of culture being any particular part of their planning seemed totally lacking. I pondered what I should do for my second (and last) day with them. Obviously, the term Third Culture Kid seemed irrelevant to them. But I feared if I used their term, multicultural kid, they would not be able to get past seeing it in racial terms. Because most of the TCKs in their school were white, they didn’t fit the usual criteria for diversity or multiculturalism. I decided we needed to find new, more neutral, language if we were going to try to compare and contrast “multicultural” and “Third Culture” matters. The next day I proposed that we use a neutral term, Cross-Cultural Kid (CCK) so we could try to hear each other’s views without prejudgment and even see if there might be some connecting points between our two

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seemingly disparate groups. And it worked. We had a conversation looking at issues rather than labels. I felt happy to have survived the day with a bit more discussion and didn’t think much more about what seemed like an isolated incident.

A Look through the TCK Lens Despite observing the effectiveness of changing our language that day in Indianapolis, I still wondered, “How can we begin to examine the impact of this changing social scene when it crosses all the traditional lines of culture, of identity, and within the context of such diverse experiences?” I began to reflect on a statement that I had heard Dr. Ted Ward, then a sociologist at Michigan State University, make in October, 1984, during an international conference on TCKs in Manila. There he declared that Third Culture Kids were the prototype citizens of the future (57). At that time, I thought Dr. Ward meant that TCKs were a model of what others should be like because of their “unique” cross-cultural backgrounds (if you can call an experience that millions share unique!). Later I realized that Dr. Ward hadn’t said that TCKs were what everyone else should be like but rather they were what others would be like. Suddenly I had an “Aha!” moment. Conversations and interactions with Paulette, Kenny, and Fiona, let alone the teachers at this school and many others, were happening because the day that Dr. Ward predicted had come. If the main characteristics of a TCK lifestyle include growing up among many cultural worlds with a high degree of mobility, then the responses of those not officially TCKs according to old models began to make sense. In a world hurtling towards cross-cultural mixing at every level, and with the ease of transportation taking people back and forth between different cultural worlds on a regular basis, there are many other ways besides a traditional TCK lifestyle whereby people can experience the same realities of living a cross-cultural, highly mobile lifestyle. Paulette as a child was bussed to an all-white Catholic school. Like Kenny, she essentially crossed cultural worlds each day when moving back and forth between home and school cultures. Fiona switched cultural worlds whenever her family moved to different areas in her country. I met other young people who had grown up in a less externally visible, yet no less real, changing cultural world. They were children living behind what was

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then known as the “Iron Curtain” and now came of age during the time the Eastern Bloc of Europe had opened up to the West. They told me that their world and the one their parents had grown up in felt totally different. Did it count as a cross-cultural experience when politics changed the cultural landscape between generations in a family? I wondered if we could take Dr. Ted Ward’s idea of TCK as prototype another step farther. What would happen if we looked at other crosscultural experiences through the TCK lens to see if some of the characteristics of the TCK Profile were also common to those who had grown up among many cultures for all sorts of other reasons? If there were such commonalities, what were they and why did they occur? Obviously, in the TCK world, we had assumed that certain characteristics, benefits and challenges occurred specifically because the children grew up outside their parents’ culture. But if others from very different backgrounds were sharing some of these descriptions, perhaps there were more universal reasons than we had considered. Most importantly, if we joined our discussions with these other communities, perhaps we could all begin to develop better understandings of how to maximize the new opportunities and deal effectively with the new challenges that many children and families face. It seemed worth a try.

Back to the Drawing Board For a starter, I remembered the throw-away term I had used at the Indianapolis school and decided to create an official definition for CrossCultural Kids: A Cross-Cultural Kid (CCK) is a person who is living in—or meaningfully interacting with—two or more cultural environments for a significant period of time during the developmental years of childhood (up to age 18). An Adult Cross-Cultural Kid (ACCK) is a person who grew up as a CCK.

This new definition is not based on a parent’s experience or choices in any specific way but rather on what the child experiences. As we can see from the diagram below, while we can look at similarities, it also makes it possible to see what the differences might be between the different types of CCKs. In addition, we can begin to see the many cultural complexities that children and families face in today’s changing world, given that many can be placed in more than one category at the same time.

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This group includes (but not exclusively): Traditional TCKs—Children who move into another culture with parents due to a parent’s career choice Children of bi/multi-cultural home—Children born to parents from at least two cultures. May or may not be biracial Children of bi/multi-racial home—Children born to parents from at least two races. May or may not be bicultural Children of immigrants—Children whose parents have made a permanent move to a new country where they were not originally citizens Educational CCKs—Children who may remain in their home or passport country but are sent to a school (e.g. an international school) with a

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different cultural base and student mix than the traditional home culture or its schools Children of refugees—Children whose parents are living outside their original country or place due to unchosen circumstances such as war, violence, famine, or other natural disasters Children of borderlanders—Children who cross national borders on regular basis International adoptees—Children adopted by parents from a country other than the one of that child’s birth Children of minorities—Children whose parents are from a racial or ethnic group which is not part of the majority race or ethnicity of the country in which they live Domestic TCKs—Children whose parents have moved in or among various subcultures within that child’s home country Many other types of experiences could be added, including even less visible categories such as children of divorced parents who switch family cultures on a regular basis as they live between their two birth parents’ households, or foster children who move between many family cultures.

Initial Impressions Some unexpected results emerged from those early attempts with this new model. When Dr. Ruth Hill Useem coined the term Third Culture Kids in the 1950s, most TCKs had parents from the same country, who spoke the same mother tongue, and these families often remained in one, or perhaps two, host cultures while overseas. In recent years, however, I have heard some TCKs say, “Well, I think I must be a third or fourth or fifth culture kid. My parents are from two countries and races, I have their two passports and a third from the country in which I was born, and I’ve lived in six countries on three continents since then. How many cultures do you count for those?” Brice Royer, the founder of TCKid.com, is a TCK who describes himself as “culturally complex.” His father is a half-French/half-Vietnamese U.N. peacekeeper while his mom is Ethiopian. Before he was eighteen, Brice

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had lived in seven places: France, Mayotte, La Reunion, Ethiopia, Egypt, Canada, and England. He writes, “When people ask me ‘Where are you from?,’ I just joke around and say, ‘My mom says I’m from heaven’.” President Barack Obama himself is in six of these CCK circles: traditional TCK, biracial, bicultural, domestic TCK, educational CCK, and minority. Ironically, as I began using this CCK model, I saw that this diagram was also a way to demonstrate—and normalize—this growing cultural complexity that even many traditional TCKs now confront.

Comparing and Contrasting Cross-Cultural Kid Experiences The next step in looking at the larger CCK model involved taking some of these particular situations that people were asking about and seeing if we could isolate the shared factors between the TCK model and the other types of cross-cultural stories. I began by meeting with Paulette Bethel, the woman who had initially written me from China but who grew up in Louisiana. Paulette and I decided to compare and contrast our stories by looking at four common characteristics of the Third Culture experience itself: a cross-cultural lifestyle, high mobility, expected repatriation, and a system identity. I was born in Kano, Nigeria, and grew up living between Nigeria and the United States, obviously two different cultural worlds. Paulette was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and grew up in one place—New Orleans, Louisiana—but she was a child in days when school integration had barely begun in the United States. Each day, Paulette climbed onto a school bus near her home and got off at an all-white school in another area. Each evening she took the reverse trip. While I exchanged my obviously different cultural communities every few years, she made that exchange daily. In addition, her family roots included white Creole as well as African American heritage. What about mobility? That was simple. I took airplane rides, Paulette took bus rides, yet still there was physical movement back and forth between these different worlds. We got to the next characteristic of the TCK lifestyle—expected repatriation. My remembrances included returning to the United States at age 13 where others scorned me for acting so differently from themselves in the culture my passport said was “home.” Surely, repatriation was one aspect of my TCK experience that was quite distinct from Paulette’s CCK lifestyle. I remarked rather confidently,

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“Well, Paulette, I don’t think we share this characteristic as you never left New Orleans.” She looked at me with some surprise and replied, “Ruth, don’t you realize I repatriated every single night? At school, I had to speak a different dialect—“white English”—but if I spoke that at home, cousins said I was being uppity. While I looked the same physically as those around me at home just as you did with your classmates in Chicago when you repatriated, my life experiences were very different from theirs and shaped me in ways they could not see. Maybe people are paying attention to this now that white people are doing this, but I’ve been doing this all my life!” What she said made sense. So what about the last characteristic—a system identity? When Dr. Useem first studied TCKs, she noticed that many of them seemed to be in “representational roles.” Even the names used to describe their groups reflected this idea: Aaramco Brats, Military Brats, Foreign Service Youth, Missionary Kids, etc. These children knew that their behavior could impact a parent’s career adversely if they misbehaved or that they could reflect well on their parents if they did behave. Since Paulette’s family didn’t belong to any particular organizational system, I assumed this was one place of difference for sure. Wrong again. “Ruth, don’t you understand that every time some terrible crime is committed, every African American hopes it won’t be a black person who did it because, if it is, our race is blamed, not the person. If a white person does it, then it is an individual’s crime, not one that represents the race. You aren’t indicted in people’s minds just because the perpetrator is white.” After this interchange, I looked more closely at the other stories. Kenny, the Chinese immigrant’s son, had the same daily interactions between two distinctly different cultural worlds as he went from his Chinese culture at home to the U.S. American based system at school. The young Australian woman, Fiona, had parents who worked in the Aboriginal communities in the Outback. Certainly, this was as equally distinct a cultural world from her life in Sydney as my life in Nigeria had been from life in the United States. I heard from others. A friend born of Korean ancestry, adopted by a white U.S. American couple, told me others expected her to know the Korean language fluently even though she had never been there. Another friend of Chinese ancestry, born and raised in Brazil, attended international schools so she spoke with an American accent when she attended university in the U.S. but no one knew she thought in Portuguese!

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Isolating a Common Theme—Identity Although there were differences in the details of these stories, obviously there were definite cross-cultural interactions going on in each of those experiences. But what was the bottom line issue? One common theme became obvious: the search to find a clear sense of identity. Based on traditional ways of defining identity by race, ethnicity, or nationality, CCKs of all stripes told me how often they didn’t fit the mold of who others expected them to be based on appearance alone. Since questions of identity are among the top issues TCKs struggle with, I decided to look at the stories of other CCKs through the lens of the PolVan Cultural Identity model that we had designed for TCKs and see what we might discover. Relationship to Surrounding Dominant Culture

FOREIGNER

HIDDEN IMMIGRANT

Look different

Look alike

Think different

Think different

ADOPTED

MIRROR

Look different

Look alike

Think alike

Think alike

Pol/Van Cultural Identity Box Copyright 1996-David C. Pollock/Ruth E. Van Reken

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This model initially grew out of a conversation I had with David Pollock wondering why two TCKs I knew were behaving in ways common during reentry yet they weren’t assimilating. One had become a “screamer” and the other a “chameleon”—but in their host, not their passport, cultures. In the end, we concluded that the one differentiating factor between these TCKs and many others related to the fact that the TCKs in question physically resembled their host culture as well as their home culture. My screamer had to adopt certain behaviors and dress to proclaim to the others, “Don’t expect me to be like you. I’m not!” And my chameleon did all he could to make sure no one ever knew he didn’t fit internally. He simply wanted to belong. I realized that up until that point, most TCKs I had interviewed looked distinctly different from people in their dominant host culture so they didn’t have to scream to proclaim their differences. They also didn’t have the choice to be a true chameleon in their host environment. After our prolonged discussion, Dave distilled our conversation into the above model that demonstrates the various patterns of relationship TCKs might have with their surrounding dominant cultural worlds – be they host or passport culture. Because of mobility, how they are defined is always changing, depending on where they live at any given moment. When TCKs are in the foreigner or mirror box, who others see them to be is, in fact, who they are. A community will make allowances for what foreigners don’t know about this group’s cultural habits or colloquial expressions. True mirrors will not only know but follow the accepted behavioral patterns, practices, and shared values just as the community expects them to do. Life is relatively simple for all in both these categories because what others expect these TCKs to be is who they, in fact, are since it defines who they are in relationship to this community. When, however, people are in the hidden immigrant or adopted box, life can become quite complicated. At school, educators may assume that students who are hidden immigrants know the historical or cultural references in the curriculum and don’t give them the extra tutoring or help that they would give a clear immigrant. Those in the adopted box sometimes find others speaking to them with particular care, or even condescension, to make sure they understand the language. Often when folks ask these TCKs, “Where are you from?” and they say the local town, the inquisitor asks, “No, I mean, where are you really from?” meaning “It’s obvious you’re not really from here or you would look like the rest of us.” Educators may assume a student in the adopted category will have

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knowledge about the language or cultural practices of the ethnicity or nationality he or she appears to belong to when, in fact, that student may know no more about those things than anyone else in the classroom. So how does this PolVan Cultural Identity box relate to the larger world of CCKs? As I listened to the stories of many CCKs who are not traditional TCKs, I realized the bottom line for many was that they had also lived in the hidden immigrant or adopted categories at some points in their lives. For various reasons, some had also frequently switched the ways in which they related to the surrounding dominant culture. For example, when Paulette went to her all-white private school, she related as a foreigner in that community by day, but each night when she went home, she became a hidden immigrant. Others assumed she was like them but her experiences at the school were shaping her in different ways from her siblings and cousins. Kenny was in the adopted box at school each day, looking different from most of the other students, but taking on many of their Western ways. Each evening, however, he became more of a hidden immigrant, appearing to be Chinese but no longer seeing the world through the same lens as his family. In the Australian Aboriginal community, Fiona stood out as a foreigner but when she returned to school in Sydney, she lived as a hidden immigrant. Once this light went on for me, I began to interpret CCK stories using the new perspective of how they identified relative to how they physically resembled or differed from the dominant culture around them. The nuances became ever more complex. Chinese-Australians working in China had children who were hidden immigrants in China and adopted when in Australia. Liberian refugees’ children who had been mirrors in Liberia supposedly became foreigners when their parents fled to the United States, but the reality is that this was only with the white community. When they were around African-Americans, they were in the hidden immigrant box. After the war ended and some tried to visit Liberia, instead of being the mirrors they had once been, now they were hidden immigrants there too. No wonder so many other types of CCKs grappled with the questions of identity similar to those with which TCKs have long struggled! When they saw the different patterns of how they and their various cultural worlds related to each other, it made as much sense, and gave rise to the same sort of “Aha!” moments for them as it had for traditional TCKs through the years. At last they could understand their story and their responses to different environments and they could

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overcome the shame many had felt for years related to, “What’s the matter with me? I don’t seem to clearly fit anywhere.”

A Second Common Theme—Hidden Loss As it became clearer to me why CCKs of many different backgrounds shared the search for identity common to traditional TCKs, I began to seek other points of connection between all the CCK groups. During seminars and private conversations, many seemed to relate to the topics of hidden loss and unresolved grief that are often present in traditional TCKs and the ATCKs they become. Again, the question of “Why?” arose. For many TCKs the hidden losses often relate to mobility patterns of their global experience. With one airplane ride, they lose an entire world they may love and emotionally claim as home, but others don’t recognize the degree or impact of this loss because, officially, it is not the TCK’s “home.” Even for those TCKs who live in one host culture for their entire childhood, their best friends are frequently leaving them as their parents’ career moves them on. But many of the CCK circles aren’t nearly as mobile as the expatriate world of traditional TCKs. So what, in fact, were others CCKs relating to as they listened to, or read, this part of the TCK Profile? In time, it became clear that each of these other categories of CCKs also have losses invisible to others (and often themselves). Bicultural children may never become fluent in the original language of at least one parent. When they go to a family reunion held for that parent’s family, they realize they cannot have extended conversation (or any) with their grandparents or other relatives. Children of refugees have also lost a world, the world their parents once knew and still declare as “home.” International adoptees have lost connection to the land of their birth as well as to knowledge of their biological history. Educational CCKs can lose a strong sense of connection to their local community because they attend school in a completely different world from that of most others who live around them. As I’ve talked with various CCKs about these types of losses, I have realized that they often share the same unresolved grief that is present in the TCK world. Not only are their losses invisible, as noted above, but if they admit they miss this or that, those around often try to encourage them to think about all the good rather than comforting them by simply acknowledging their loss for what it is and allowing the process of grieving to go on.

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Recognizing Common Benefits It is not, however, only the challenges that are shared. If we begin to look through the TCK lens, we can see many gifts that are also present among other types of CCKs, but perhaps have not been consciously recognized for the value they offer in a globalizing world. For example, if we consider how TCKs often function as cultural bridges, have we seen that potential gift in these other types of Cross-Cultural Kids (CCKs)? What intercultural skills do the children of minorities develop as they negotiate two different cultural worlds each day while going from home to school and back? How can we help all CCKs not only recognize but build with intentionality on those strengths as they move out towards careers in an increasingly globalizing world where cultural mixing is becoming the norm rather than the exception? We laud TCKs for the language skills they often possess because of their interactions with very different language groups in their childhood. But what about immigrant children who also speak in various tongues? Or the educational CCK, or children from bicultural families? Perhaps if we named this ability to move between languages as the gift it truly is, more families and schools would work harder to keep the original language of the parents even though the dominant culture speaks another one. Oftentimes a “large world view” is cited as a benefit of the TCK experience because children growing up internationally have had opportunity not only to see the world first-hand in a physical sense but they have also learned that people of different places and cultures may interpret the same situation very differently. This may help them be more understanding and listen well to differing points of view with the hope of coming to better understanding for all. The same type of broader awareness is true for many other CCKs. Minority children may not have traveled the globe, but, in their homes, discussions of politics and cultural assumptions may be quite different from those in the majority culture. Children of refugees have likely heard viewpoints of the dynamics behind the reasons for their displacement from home that differ greatly from what others may understand about that same situation based on a sixty second byte on the nightly news. This ability to see world events with cultural complexity is another gift to be developed and used in today’s world. Newscasters such as Fareed Zakaria or Christiane Amanpour are examples of CCKs using this gift well.

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The Way Forward The more we look at the TCK example, the more we can see that we may need new language and models to discuss the changing realities of culture and identity in our globalizing world. What would have happened in the 2008 U.S. presidential race if political pundits had stopped focusing on the traditional ways of defining identity by race and looked instead for the candidates’ “hidden diversity”—a diversity of experience that shapes a person’s life and world view but is not readily apparent? (Bethel and Van Reken) They might have discovered that both candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, were adult TCKs who had far more cultural complexity to discuss than racial complexity. What we are discussing here is only the beginning of what I hope will be many useful exchanges between those living in these cross-cultural situations and the people who study and observe such things. The old models and categories of cultural or social identity are no longer accurate for many people in today’s world, yet they still inform many of the diversity programs promoted throughout at least the United States. Hopefully, a more thorough discussion of the new realities of cultural interactions that countless children now experience in their formative years will lead to finding new models that are large enough to include the many changes we see around us. The truth is, in today’s world, until we know someone’s story, we cannot make assumptions about him based on what we see alone. Perhaps, in the end, if we learn from the TCK example how to see interpret culture as a shared experience as well as shared nationality, race, or ethnicity, we will find new ways to overcome the barriers that have so easily divided us in the past.

Bibliography Bethel, Paulette, and Ruth Van Reken. “Third Culture Kids and Curriculum Issues in the International School System: Recognizing (and Dealing Effectively with) the Hidden Diversity of Third Culture Kids (TCKs) in the Classroom.” Unpublished paper presented at the Comparative and International Education Society Conference, New Orleans, 12-16 March, 2003. McCaig, Norma. Global Nomads. Brochure. Washington D.C.: Global Nomads International, 1988.

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Pollock, David C., and Ruth Van Reken. [1999] Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing up among Worlds. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2001. Useem, Ruth Hill. “Third Cultural Factors in Educational Change.” In Cultural Factors in School Learning, eds. Cole Brembeck and Walker Hill. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1973, 1-19. Ward, Ted. “The MK’s Advantage: Three Cultural Contexts.” In Understanding and Nurturing the Missionary Family, eds. Pam Echerd and Alice Arathoon. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1989, 4961.

RAISED IN THE MARGIN OF THE MOSAIC: GLOBAL NOMADS BALANCE WORLDS WITHIN NORMA M. MCCAIG1

At a time when the term globalization carries both positive and negative connotations worldwide and international cooperation is vital to the health of the planet and its people, the leadership of persons whose vision and experience extends beyond borders is critically needed. Global nomad students—who are raised and educated internationally due to a parent’s career choice—arrive on campus cross-culturally skilled and globally aware at the age of eighteen; they are prime candidates for such leadership roles. On campus and beyond, they can be the glue that holds the cultural mosaic together, encouraging intercultural synergy rather than confirming the tacitly “separate, but (somewhat) equal” reality common in much of today’s multiculturalism—on campus and elsewhere. Numerous international educators come from this global nomad background and make use of who they are to make valuable contributions to the field of international education. Tanith Fowler Corsi, associate director of The Center for Global Education at George Mason University, is clear on how her heritage informs her work: “Because of my global nomad background, I find I bring personal understanding of various cultures and traditions. I can explain the cycle of culture shock from experience and mediate crosscultural frictions that may arise. I find that I have an easy time making connections with overseas partners as well. I have worked with Moroccan, British, French, Polynesian, Italian, Spanish, Australian, German, Indian, and Latin American colleagues on various programs, and most of the time we end up forming a very tight working relationship which bridges the cultures. My intimate knowledge of French and overall European customs has helped out in more ways than one—be it translating for students, 1

© 2002 NAFSA: Association of International Educators. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in the Spring 2002 issue of NAFSA’s International Educator magazine and is reprinted with permission.

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explaining specific customs, or simply giving personal tips. I feel so lucky to have found this path that makes full use of who I am.” Look at student populations around the globe and you still may not see them. The repatriating indigenous global nomads are the “hidden immigrants” of whom Charles Franck (Cairo American College) speaks in his article. In the United States they carry U.S. passports and melt into the multi-ethnic mélange of this country’s citizenry. In Sweden, for example, they may be back in Stockholm after having lived abroad with their parents for ten years. Most don’t readily present themselves as international students, but they are. The expatriate global nomads may also be hard to spot. Sometimes, like cultural chameleons, they blend into another population—the traditional international student population. “Wanjiru,” who spent two years living in the country of origin stamped in her papers, has left pieces of her heart in five different countries over sixteen years and has no plans to return to her parents’ homeland—because it isn’t hers. Because, as Anthony Hogan said in Alice Wu’s video Global Nomads: Cultural Bridges for the New Millennium, “the world is her ‘hood.’” At first (second and third) glance, her “packaging” fails to suggest the many layers of rich intercultural experiences and high geographic mobility that have left their imprint on her soul. She is actually a diplomat’s daughter whose advising needs may be vastly different from those of the Kenyan student, born and raised in Kenya, who will return there after graduation. Fanta Aw, director of International Student Services at American University, herself an expatriate global nomad from Mali, is particularly eloquent in drawing attention to the experience of such non-dominant culture global nomads. These are those whose ethnic languages and cultures may differ widely from those of both their host countries and the dominant expatriate culture (typically colonial cultures--British, U.S. American, or French) in those countries. She points out that many in this group are, for example, unable to speak the language of their homeland, to converse with their grandparents or cousins, as a result of the “culture override” of English or French learned in the global corridor for expediency and social survival. Others, particularly female global nomads, may feel pressured by parents and other family members virtually demanding they return “home” to marry and pass on a culture they may never have truly experienced firsthand.

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Why are any of them (of any nationality) abroad to begin with? As Franck and Elizabeth Murakami-Ramalho have indicated in their articles, these students (both repatriating and expatriate) are the offspring of, for example, international business executives, missionaries, employees of non-government organizations (e.g., Red Cross); intergovernmental organizations (World Bank, United Nations, etc.), and foreign service or military personnel—parents sent abroad to represent “the church, the company, or the flag” as it were. They are the archetypal Third Culture Kids (TCKs) of Ruth Hill Useem’s definition, as used in more than four decades of research. In addition to these sponsored global nomads, other global nomads, such as the children of international educators and scholars, grow up globally because a parent chooses to study or work abroad independently rather than in a representative role. Regardless of parental motivation for cruising global corridors, most global nomads develop invaluable cultural insights and attitudes at an early age, and they do so simply in the process of adapting and adjusting to each new cultural venue abroad. Further understanding of the dynamics of their identity formation, nuances of their varied experiences, ways some institutions are currently guiding them, and how various organizations have expedited this process may encourage more international educators to respond to this unique, but again, often hidden, cultural community on campus. In the process of this exploration, you will undoubtedly note similarities between the global nomad experience and that of other student groups, such as refugees, immigrants, first generation students, and study abroad students. This is not surprising as these experiences intersect at the point of cross-cultural transitions and intercultural interactions. To effectively guide each of these groups, it is critical to maintain the separate integrity of each experience rather than expanding established terminology such as TCK or global nomad, to include a wider variety of experiences. Unlike the experience of many refugees, my own TCK/global nomad experience as the daughter of a pharmaceutical executive abroad did not include fleeing down a hillside while being shot at by my own countrymen. Where my experience does cross that of the refugee is in feeling that I had to leave home. Where it again differs is that in leaving my home abroad, I was returning to my country of passport, the United States. My parents, on the other hand, were leaving work to go home. Therefore perceptions of the return were viewed differently even within my family. Unlike the study abroad student who chooses to study abroad, my internationally

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mobile experience as a student was one chosen for me by my parents whom I accompanied abroad. Control over when and where we moved rested with them (much to my dismay at the time!). These personal experiences are shared to make a point. It is through maintaining these distinctions that each group can weave its own unique experience, clearly named, as a separate thread into the complex tapestry of cross-cultural awareness, identity formation, and intercultural dialogue. It is both the intersections of these experiences and the distinctions between them that inform understanding and action.

Global Nomad Culture How global nomads develop a sense of identity and belonging depends on the interaction of a number of variables in each of their lives: • How were they educated? Home schooled? In a local host country school? In an American, British, or French “international” school? In a Christian missionary boarding school? • With whom did they primarily interact? Other expatriates? Others of the same nationality (i.e., on a military base)? Host country nationals? • How long were they in any one place? As global nomad and study abroad adviser Fowler Corsi would ask, are they stationary global nomads like herself, born and raised outside her passport country with others cycling in and out of her life? Or are they (like her Burmese-Italian husband, Giancarlo), mobile global nomads, uprooted and replanted every two or three years during childhood? How does personality affect the way different cultures are internalized? These and similar questions underline the fact that, just as we understand the importance of avoiding stereotypes when interacting with individuals from recognizably different cultural groups, so too it is critical to recognize variation in individual responses to the global nomad experience. The descriptors “global nomad,” “TCK,” and “overseas brat” speak only to the fact of being raised abroad due to a parent’s work, not to the impact or quality of the experience, or to how each expresses his or her cultural identity in the course of a lifetime.

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And what gives rise to this identity? It finds its origin at the point where the culture (or cultures) of the global nomad’s parents meet that of the host country nationals with whom they interact (see Figure 1). (These population bell curves, while not literal or grounded in specific data, offer an approximation of how this could be mapped.) At that point, both the expatriates and the host country nationals, particularly in the work setting, develop a unique system of intercultural communication that is a blend of the cultures each brings to their interaction. What is here termed “international cultural adaptation” is similar to Useem’s “third culture” concept. The significance of this adaptation is that for the parents, this is a cultural overlay on a solid, often mono-cultural, nationally based cultural core solidified in childhood. For their children, whose childhood cultural experience often is rooted primarily in the world abroad, the experience is internalized quite differently (see Figure 2). In his article, Charles Franck refers to characteristics common to many global nomads. These traits are shared by many whose knowledge and experience of their passport culture often are received secondhand, filtered through the lens of their parents’ direct experience and reminiscences, along with those of other expatriates who share the same citizenship. Canadian Timothy Dean aptly describes the global nomad reentry experience in this way: “We come back riding on our parents’ mythology of ‘home’” (Global Nomad Quarterly, Winter 1992). The mainstream cultural values, then, that form the backbone of many a global nomad’s cultural identity, arise from that point of cultural intersection that is, for their parents, an international cultural adaptation. For most global nomads, this academic interpretation of their cultural reality comes alive when they are in the company of others who share their internationally mobile childhood heritage. It is then that they experience the wholeness of common culture, a sense of kinship and homecoming that is at once vibrant and palpable. Look closely at the dotted line and you will see the face of Georg Simmel’s “stranger,” mentioned in Elizabeth Hartung’s article on “The Student as Outsider.” The stranger’s profile is never more evident than when global nomads reenter (or enter) their country of passport.

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Figure 1. International Cultural Adaptation

Figure 2. Global Nomad Identity Continuum

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International transition consultant and global nomad Barbara Schaetti draws on the research of former NAFSA president Richard Downie and others in examining how global nomads respond at this point in their journey: “Downie’s research suggests that global nomads transact repatriation to one of three potential resolutions: homecomer, stranger, or cosmopolite (Downie 1976). Homecomers are those who return to a country where they expect to belong and where they find that they indeed do. Strangers are those who return to a country where they expect to belong, but where they find that they do not. Cosmopolites return to a country where they do not expect to belong in any singular sense, already knowing themselves [to be] at home in many places .... The expectations [emphasis added] which fuel transactions of repatriation influence the degree to which the transactions challenge global nomad identity. The degree of inner dissonance will necessarily be greater for the stranger—those who had expected to belong in their passport countries, but who found that they did not belong in the ways that they had assumed. Research suggests that, historically, most global nomads transact repatriation as strangers” (Schaetti 2000).

Raised in what David Pollock calls “the interstitial culture” that connects cultures, those who share this internationally mobile childhood heritage are, again, like Simmel’s stranger, always both a part-of and apart-from all cultures. Permanently. As Franck comments, they may adapt, like chameleons, but this is not a phase or a transition, it is a state of being, an experience that informs the rest of their lives. Perhaps what the global nomad identity graphic (Figure 2) best illustrates is that it is, indeed, a continuum. Some global nomads remain identified primarily with their cultural reference group, others may claim closer association with a parent’s culture of origin, still others might show greater cultural affinity with a country in which they have lived as children or choose as adults. It is not uncommon for siblings to arrive at different cultural identity destinations, as is the case with Tanith Fowler Corsi and her brother Derek. U.S. Americans born and raised in Monaco as the children of a UN employee, each manifests cultural identity in an entirely different way. Aside from a familial resemblance, one would be hard pressed to imagine they sprang from the same pod. Both present themselves authentically to others: Tanith is U.S. American. Derek is French, no doubt about it .... or is he? “When I go back to France,” he writes, “I see myself as an American, but when I am in the U.S., I see myself as a French person. I never seem to want to belong to one or another for some strange reason. Perhaps I enjoy being different when I’m

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in one environment or another, getting the best of both worlds. But then sometimes I feel completely excluded from one culture or another, not being able to connect with the people my age either in France or in the United States. I have an easier time in France, however.” Would this mean, he asks, “that I am still French after all these years [in America]?”

Constructive Marginality Buffeted by competing cultural realities, unable to find grounding, and resisting identification with his marginal cultural reference group, Derek personifies the encapsulated state described in Janet Bennett’s concept of cultural marginality. Schaetti and interculturalist Sheila Ramsey echo some of the challenges and possibilities attendant to being a cultural marginal: “Living in a world textured with threads of changing cultural contexts, they live in the place in-between … [As such] they have the opportunity to achieve identities informed by all, constricted by none, balanced on the threshold of each; to live in a both/and world rather than an either/or world.” This place in-between, then, can be anywhere from confusing, chaotic, and paralyzing (encapsulated) to powerfully and positively dynamic. Derek’s ambivalence and cultural identity confusion, and that of many other global nomads suspended in this cultural state, reflect emotions captured by Mary Taylor in “The Emigrants”: If you came back, you wanted to leave again; If you went away, you longed to come back. Wherever you were, you could hear the call of the homeland like the note of the herdsman’s horn far away in the hills. You had one home out there and one over here, and yet you were an alien in both places. Your true abiding place was the vision of something very far off, and your soul was like the waves, always restless, forever in motion.

Where Derek would place himself on the continuum between the United States, the global nomad culture, and French culture may well differ from day to day. For someone in the throes of this acutely uncomfortable point

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in the identity development process, this would be typical. For the majority of global nomads, their point on the continuum is rarely fixed throughout their lives. With each significant (or subtle) life transition—new career, marriage, parenthood, or retirement—different voices may call them to lost homes from past journeys or to new homes in lands begging to be explored ... or not. In peeling back layers of their cultural lives, some may shift somewhat, finally burrowing down deep, never again to “pack-out,” take bids from movers, or worse, bid a friend farewell. Others may glance sideways at their aging-but-active spouse, envisioning a post-retirement stint in Africa with the Peace Corps, golden years in Mexico or Thailand, or a permanent home on a cruise—anywhere but Florida or Arizona. Where they choose to alight may depend to a certain degree on how they transact identity. As Schaetti puts it: “Global nomad identity development is a search for identity congruence. It typically is initiated by an oppressively marginalizing event but may instead begin with an event which highlights the values and fabric of the expatriate life. In either case, often interwoven with experiences of nationality and plurality, the effect is to make individuals conscious of the fact that they are in some way different from others. The subsequent search for congruence is one directed more by instinct than by conscious intention until such times as individuals are introduced to the term ‘global nomad’ or ‘third culture kid.’ This serves for many as a pivotal identity development moment: They now have a map with which they may become intentional in their search for identity congruence” (Schaetti 2000). Nora Egan, in the Global Nomad Quarterly (1992), describes this epiphany in her life: “Suddenly it came out, blurting like a geyser from the ground: I am a global nomad. Nothing has felt the same since. After three decades of learning other peoples’ cultures, and still being an outsider, I look to the future ... I no longer have to embody someone else’s culture. I have paid my dues, trying to be French, then Italian, then U.S. American, then Chinese. Now I have found my own culture. The recognition has been life changing. For me, it is as if three-fourths of my life has emerged from shadow into full color. ... What a gift it is to have been given a name, and with it a whole community and culture.” This naming process, the sense of belonging to a functional rather than dysfunctional marginal reference group, is critical to the marginal person’s

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migration from encapsulated to constructive marginality; from feeling “terminally unique,” as Bennett says, to feeling part of a whole. In describing the identity transactions associated with constructive marginality, Bennett says: “The suggestion [in Muneo Yoshikawa’s ‘dynamic inbetweenness’] is of continual and comfortable movement between cultural identities such that an integrated, multicultural existence is maintained, and where conscious, deliberate ... management of alternative frames prevail... In terms of Perry’s scheme, the individual has moved into relativism and perceives that knowledge is constructed from context... This stage depends on the person’s ability to tolerate ambiguity, respect other perspectives, and define his or her own frame of reference. Ultimately, it requires the person to make a commitment to a value system honed from many contexts and an identity actively affirmed and based solidly on self as choice maker. It requires an ability to empathize with others, balanced by skill at withdrawing from empathy, and flexibility of boundaries, balanced by skill at defining them” (Bennett 1993). To get there, the global nomad must privately and—and often publicly— negotiate answers to the seemingly innocuous question, “Where are you from?” not to mention the multiple cultural, social, psychological, and spiritual layers of the quintessential existential question, “Who am I?” While this process of self-definition is common to most who call themselves human, it carries with it a different set of complexities for those raised abroad. The process, while difficult, is akin to peeling back layers of an artichoke. Eventually one uncovers the core, the heart of it— here to bear witness to the struggle and the promise it brings—to be able to say, as Mahatma Gandhi did, “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” For global nomads the promise includes using early acquired vision that extends beyond borders to effect positive change in the world, within the family, locally, nationally, and globally. In coming from this place of constructed marginality, they are equipped to respond effectively when (to quote Walt Kelly’s character “Pogo”) “ ... confronted with insurmountable opportunities” for using their leadership skills in mediation, public service, international development, or any setting involved intercultural interaction and global awareness. If they are to get there, they must be acknowledged, valued, and guided along the way. But as Bruce La Brack of the University of the Pacific has commented, “It is not enough to have someone on campus who can

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respond to global nomads individually and informally. You have to go from having a person to having a program.” Clearly, global nomads are on their way to becoming more widely acknowledged, valued, and properly encouraged at an ever-increasing number of colleges and universities, actually now in several countries. Much more is being done than has been mentioned in this article and more, of course, remains to be done. Those of us involved in this work welcome your comments, suggestions, and participation in our effort to launch global nomads who are well-equipped for today’s global realities. Ted Ward of the University of Chicago long ago said global nomads are “the prototype citizens of the twenty-first century.” With the new millennium, we have the opportunity to guide them in claiming their heritage with pride, in celebrating their cultural marginality with enthusiasm, and in manifesting who they are in the world intentionally, constructively, and continually throughout their lives.

Bibliography Bennett, J. M. 1993. “Cultural Marginality: Identity Issues in Intercultural Training.” In R. M. Paige (Ed.) Education for the Intercultural Experience. Yarmouth: Intercultural Press. Dean, Timothy. Winter 1992. “A Global Nomad’s Journey of Self-Discovery.” The Global Nomad Quarterly. Washington, D.C.: Global Nomads International. Egan, Nora. Summer/Fall 1992. “A Moment of Insight—A Toast to the Future.” The Global Nomad Quarterly. Washington, D.C.: Global Nomads International. Franck, Charles. “The Hidden Immigrant.” International Educator. Spring 2002: 18-22. Hartung, Elizabeth. “The Student as Outsider.” International Educator. Spring 2002: 28-34. Murakami-Ramalho, Elizabeth. “Globally Mobile: Talking with Ruth Useem and Ann Baker Cottrell about Cross-National Educational Experiences.” International Educator. Spring 2002: 24-27. Park, R.E. May 1928. “Human Migration and the Marginal Man.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 33, No. 6. Schaetti, B.F. 2000. “Global Nomad Identity: Hypothesizing a Developmental Model.” Doctoral Dissertation, The Graduate College of The Union Institute, Ann Arbor, MI: Bell and Howell Information

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and Learning Company. Schaetti, B.F. and S. Ramsey. September 1999. “The Global Nomad Experience of Living in Liminality.” MOBILITY, Employee Relocation Council. Taylor, M. In The Emigrants: Early Travellers to the Antipodes. Eds. H. Bolitho and J. Mulgan. Wu, Alice. 2001. Global Nomads: Cultural Bridges for the New Millennium. Video.

EXPLAINING DIFFERENCES: TCKS AND OTHER CCKS, AMERICAN AND JAPANESE TCKS1 ANN BAKER COTTRELL

As we all know, the world is globalizing, people are increasingly mobile and most societies, especially the highly developed, are increasingly multicultural. This means that large numbers of people are now socialized in culturally complex environments. Because the phenomenon is so common, it is important to understand what being raised in a cross-cultural environment means for these individuals, called Cross-Cultural Kids (CCKs),2 and to think about the various kinds of cross-cultural socialization. This paper is about one kind of individual raised cross-culturally, the Third Culture Kid (TCK). Although I estimate there are several million TCKs of all nationalities, very few people (including most TCKs) have ever heard this term. Japan is an exception, TCKs there have a widely recognized label; they are called kaigaishijos when they are living abroad and kikokushijos when they return. In this paper I will explain what a TCK is and how TCKs are similar to and different from other kinds of CCKs. I will explain why they are called “Third Culture Kids,” talk about the experiences and characteristics of TCKs and finally, compare American with Japanese TCKs.

1

This is adapted from Cottrell (2007) The term CCK is a response to the fact that many individuals with a variety of kinds of cross-cultural socialization have wanted to claim the term TCK. Others, arguing the need to recognize different kinds of cross-cultural socialization while acknowledging commonalities, coined the umbrella term CCK to encompass the many and sometimes overlapping kinds of cross-cultural socialization. (Pollock and Van Reken 2009:31-2, Van Reken and Bethel 2006:3)

2

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Cross–Cultural Kids: Variations on a Theme A CCK is “a person who has lived in—or meaningfully interacted with— two or more cultural environments for a significant period of time during developmental years” (Pollock & Van Reken, 2009:31-2, Van Reken & Bethel 2006:3). It is important to note that CCKs, whatever the nature of their cross-cultural socialization, share some broad similarities such as an expanded worldview and adaptability. They also often question who they are and where they fit in, partly because others see them differently than they see themselves and apply simplistic labels to these complex individuals, labels the CCKs often feel do not fit. Within the broad category, CCK, different types can be identified according to the primary reason their lives encompass more than one culture. Table 1 distinguishes between socialization that transcends national cultures, and socialization that incorporates different sub-cultures within a country. It also distinguishes between children whose lives incorporate more than a single culture because of a decision their parents made or simply because they live in a bi-cultural or multicultural situation. Table 1: Types of Cross-Cultural Socialization PRIMARY REASON FOR CROSSCULTURAL EXPERIENCE PARENT DECISION (FAMILIAL) PARENT DECISION (MOBILITY) SITUATIONAL

INTERNATIONAL

Cross-National Marriages International adoptions Immigrants Expatriates TCKs Nationals associating with/impacted by new foreign population

DOMESTIC

Cross-cultural/racial marriages Cross-cultural/race adoptions Move between cultural groups Ethnic/race/religious minorities Multi-ethnic communities

To understand what a TCK is, I begin by placing them in the broader context of CCKs; in this paper I will limit the comparison to children socialized to more than one national culture because of parents’ decisions.

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The types of international CCKs identified here are “pure” types, or archetypes, classified by the primary reason for cross-national socialization. Use of these archetypes facilitates comparison, but clearly oversimplifies reality. While many individuals fit these archetypical patterns, there are also many variations and some individuals experience more than one kind of cross-cultural socialization. For example, a TCK may also have parents from different ethnic or national backgrounds, may also be a refugee or a racial minority in her passport country.

Children of Internationally Mobile Compared to Cross-Nationally Married Parents A child who moves with her parents to a new country starts as a member of a society where she and her family are recognized as members and see themselves in the same light. When they move they are seen, and see themselves, as outsiders. The family is monocultural and adds new cultural elements by virtue of contact with the new cultural environment. The child of the cross-national couple, in contrast, grows up in a family which is itself bicultural, often a blended culture (assuming they choose to incorporate both cultures). Assuming, for the purposes of conceptual clarity, this archetypical family lives in one parent’s home country and in a homogeneous community, the only cross-cultural element in the child’s life is the foreign parent. The child of such a marriage is a full member of that parent’s country; she just happens to have a foreign parent. She may be seen as somewhat different or exotic because of looks or cultural practices inherited from the foreign parent, but she is in her home country and culture.

Children of Internationally Mobile Parents: Expatriate Compared to Immigrant Families3 Both immigrant and expatriate families, in this archetypical representation, are monocultural, full members of their home society and culture. When they migrate to a new country they are outsiders who do not belong, but gain a new cultural dimension by virtue of living in a different cultural environment. The difference between immigrant and expatriate families is their future plans. The immigrant family’s move is intended to be permanent; 3

Kanno (2003:125-30) elaborates on the difference between immigrant and sojourner (aka expatriate).

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they expect and are expected to acculturate to their new home and become full members of that society (if allowed to do so by the dominant group).4 Children typically acculturate more rapidly than parents and introduce an intergenerational cross-cultural dimension to family life. Expatriate families likewise move from a place where they are full members of the society to a new country where everyone agrees they are outsiders. In contrast to immigrants, they intend to remain outsiders with the goal of returning to their home country; they expect their children to do likewise, for college if not before. Expatriates expect and are expected to maintain their home culture while adapting to the new environment as necessary to work and live.

Third Culture Families: Expatriates with a Difference For the purposes of this discussion, expatriates are individuals who work for a period outside their home country. TCKs’ parents are a subcategory of expatriate, distinguished by the fact that they work abroad in a representational role. They are doing the work of their sponsoring organization, for example, their home country (diplomats, military) a religious organization (missionaries), a home country or international business (IBM, Exxon) or an international organization (U.N.). In other words, they do not work for host country institutions or independently. 5 The fact that the family has a sponsor-employer does make a difference.6 The employee’s primary allegiance is to that sponsor, and that applies to his family as well. The children are often told to behave because “you are little ambassadors” or “you represent the church here.” The sponsor 4

Glick Schiller et. al. (1992) were among the first to recognize that, for many, migration is no longer a single one-way journey, but often involves moving back and forth, maintaining ties in both countries. Amer (2006), among others, echoes this point. 5 International Human Relations Managers refer to those who work abroad independently or for host country institutions as being abroad on self-initiated foreign experiences (SFEs) (Cho 2009:10) 6 Pollock and Van Reken (2009:52-54) discuss the impact of sponsor. Bushong (2005), focusing on healthy and unhealthy mission systems, provides an excellent discussion of the impact of sponsor culture on the Third Culture family experience. The titles of two works on military families underscore the impact of this sponsor: The Military and the Family as Greedy Institutions (Segal, 1986) and Military Brats: childhood inside the fortress, (Wertsch, 1991).

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greatly influences the family’s experience including where they work (what country, where in the country), how long they stay, how often they move. Within a host country, the sponsor influences whether the family will live in a relatively self-contained sponsor community or as a lone representative “up country.” Until the late 20th century the majority of Western expatriate families were abroad as representatives. Non-Western expatriate families were less concentrated in representational roles; many were abroad as laborers or students, for example. As the numbers of people living and working outside their home countries has exploded, so too has the number and variety of reasons for an expatriate life. The term TCK is generally applied to all expatriate children and it is likely that by now TCKs, as traditionally defined, are a minority of children/teens living abroad with expatriate parents. The following discussion is about TCKs as originally defined, and is based on the experience of American TCKs. With the exception of the sponsor related features of this lifestyle, most of what is said below applies to all expatriate kids. And it may be that the strong identification with a sponsor is decreasing among TCKs.

Why Are TCKs Called “Third Culture Kids”? TCKs are so called because their parent/s live, work and are raising children in a Third Culture. The term “Third Culture” causes much confusion. It does not, as many assume, refer to Third World and is not a blending of two other cultures. John and Ruth Hill Useem, who introduced the term, defined it as The behavior patterns created, shared, and learned by men (sic) of different societies who are in the process of relating their societies, or sections thereof, to each other. (Useem, Useem and Donoghue, 1963:169)

It is a culture created at the interstices of societies, by people who mediate. It is a bridging culture which obviously reflects the participants’ cultures (first and second). It transcends those cultures; it is not a blended culture. Third Culture is a broad term encompassing many different kinds of specific Third Cultures which differ on at least three dimensions. Third Culture institutions and norms are different in different historical periods; those of colonial Third Cultures were considerably different from those of contemporary post-Cold War Third Cultures. Specific bi-national and multi-national Third Cultures reflect the nationalities of those involved;

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the Brazilian-Japanese Third Culture norms differ from those in the German-Kenyan or British-Pakistani Third Cultures, for example. And, increasingly, we see examples of multinational Third Cultures created by those working for agencies such as the U.N. or a multinational business. Finally, Third Cultures differ according to their function; missionary Third Cultures are quite different from business or diplomatic Third Cultures.

The Third Culture Kid Experience Variations TCKs’ experiences vary widely. In addition to the fact that they are raised in different functional and bi-national Third Cultures, TCKs differ in how long they live outside their passport country, how many places they live in, where they live in a country and what kind of schools they attend. To illustrate some of these differences I’ll use data from the study of 604 American adult Third Culture Kids (ATCKs) living in the U.S. that I did with Ruth Hill Useem (Cottrell 2000, 2002, 2007; Useem and Cottrell 1996). These respondents were abroad from one to 19 years; nearly half (45%) were abroad at least ten years and nearly one-fifth (18%) 15 years or more. They lived in one to nine countries; the majority (60%) lived in three or more and 16% in five or more different countries. They also attended different kinds of schools, including host country schools, home country overseas schools, international schools and some were home schooled. Some TCKs were the only foreign child within hundreds of miles and others lived in highly Americanized sponsor compounds. Yet, in spite of these significant differences, TCKs from all different passport countries find an immediate bond with one another, a bond based on socialization in a Third Culture (see, e.g., Cottrell 2002:230, McCluskey 1994:ix). Two long-term TCKs in this study illustrate extremes of the TCK experience. One was a settled long-term TCK. This missionary kid (MK) went to India at age one. Her family lived in the same place, though she went to a mission boarding school in India, until she went to the U.S. for university. Several furloughs in the U.S. felt like being in a foreign country. By contrast, a TCK whose father worked for an oil company illustrates the mobile long-term TCK. He lived in seven different countries on six continents with very different cultures-–Venezuela, Cuba, Indonesia, Italy, Nigeria, Libya and the U.S. It is important to bear in mind that there are

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also many who were only abroad for a year or two; they may be said to have had a Third Culture experience rather than being TCKs. The most internationally mobile American TCKs are children of diplomats, for example, a TCK who experienced 13 different countries by age 19. Table 2

Reentry and Identity Because issues of identity and reentry dominate the TCK literature, they are only to be summarized here. Special attention is given to TCKs’ distinctive experience due to having a sponsor abroad.

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Living Abroad. Questions always arise, about people with culturally complex histories—where do they belong—where is home and what group/nationality is theirs? When the TCK is abroad there is remarkable consistency about these issues. Everyone—parents, teachers and classmates, host country nationals, and therefore the TCKs themselves— agrees that they belong to their parent’s home country and all agree that they are foreigners in the place of residence. When abroad their social and personal identities are congruent. There is a little less congruence, however, on the issue of where home is. Everyone but the TCK agrees that the parents’ home country is the TCK’s home. For the long term TCK who has spent little time in that country it most certainly does not feel like home, so they call it “my passport country” rather than home. The settled long-term TCK has no question that home is where she lives; it is all she has known. Visits, or even short stays to the parental home are experienced as a foreign country. The question of home is more complicated for the mobile long-term TCK. Place of residence is called home while there, but on leaving it no longer is home. It lacks the rootedness of a true home. For the mobile long-term TCK, home is defined in terms of people, usually family, rather than places. Culture shock does not appear to be a major issue for TCKs when living abroad. This is especially true for TCKs whose sponsors have strong identification, such as the State Department, missions, the military and some businesses (e.g. Aramco) This is, in large part, because when mobile TCKs move from country to country with the parent’s sponsor they are moving within the sponsor Third Culture. Relatively little adjustment is required because the diplomatic Third Culture, for example, is similar all over the world. The life of an embassy dependent in Africa is not that different from the life of an embassy dependent in Asia. There is, of course, some adjustment to a new host culture, but culture shock for mobile TCKs is not a big issue as long as they remain in a sponsor-specific Third Culture. Reentry. Reentry stress is a common theme in TCK literature because it is unexpected and because it is ubiquitous during repatriation (Sussman, 2000). Loss and grief, frequently mentioned in these discussions, is framed in terms of lost friendships, lost homes, even lost status. Rarely articulated, but possibly the most important loss of all, is loss of the Third Culture. For TCKs and other expats whose lives abroad are grounded in Third Culture institutions, such as international schools, this is loss of their culture and of a community which understands them and shares that

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culture. One TCK makes clear that classmates at her international school were other TCKs, suggesting this is not the case in “home” country schools. EVERYONE there spoke dozens of languages not technically 'native' to them, everyone had moved around, everyone understood what that was like. You didn't have to explain any of it. Instead, one just got on with the business of getting on, but in an environment that was never surprised at you or your background.7

More specifically, in addition to loss of friends and home, the TCK experiences loss of sponsor. At a basic level the sponsor organization provides orientation and logistical support, often arranging just about everything for the family. More fundamentally, loss of sponsor is a loss of identity. In the Third Culture, sponsor can define you as much as nationality. But sponsor identity often has little meaning to teens and young adults in the “home” environment. Once TCKs turn 18 they may actually loose formal membership in the sponsor community; for example, a military “brat” cannot go on a base alone because he no longer has a military ID. Furthermore, those whose primary affiliation abroad was with the sponsor community often can’t go home to that community abroad; typically, there has been a turnover of personnel and they would no longer know anyone (as is mentioned in numerous writings, especially autobiographies, e.g. Henderson-James, 2009). Identity. As is the case with “home,” TCKs feel they belong completely neither to their TCK country nor to their passport country. Many TCKs, especially the settled long-term ones, feel a strong emotional connection with their childhood home, but know they are not “of” that country. Coleman, for example, speaks of sadness realizing “I was an Ethopian ferenjie,…a perpetual foreigner to the place of my birth” [and sixteen childhood years] (2003:228). And 87% of our respondents say they feel different from Americans who have not had an overseas experience.8 This response comes from 80 year olds as well as 25 year olds. Initially feeling extremely marginalized, they become comfortable, but most never feel entirely one with that nationality/culture. A 50 year old MK illustrates this: 7 8

All quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from our study. Seventy-four percent agreed, 13% both agreed and disagreed.

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Explaining Differences I may be a citizen of the U.S. but I’ll never be an American at heart. I’ll never feel comfortable with normal American lifestyle, goals, assumptions, attitudes. I may never … be a true Nigerian, but my heart is more there than here. We MKs are truly between two worlds.

Note “between two worlds.” This MK does not say I am bi-cultural, because in reality most American ATCKs lack the depth of knowledge of two cultures to be truly bi-cultural. Another MK recognized this, saying “Although I love Korea and call it home, I don’t know that much about it. I’m terribly ignorant considering I lived there 18 years.” TCKs incorporate a feeling of connection with all the countries and people they have experienced as a TCK, but ownership of none. As one particularly traveled ATCK, one of the 14% in our sample whose parents are a mixed marriage, put it: My heart feels mostly South American, my intellect European. My drive is from the U.S. and my calm is Asian. With Filipinos I am Filipino, with Latinos I am Venezuelan, with blacks I am non-white, with Asians I am Asian, with whites I am mostly white. …..Whenever I have to fill out those little ethnicity boxes I am always at a loss. 9 Sometimes, depending on my mood, I put Asian, Filipino, or white — after all I’m half and half. But mostly I check other. I try with all my heart not to fit into these boxes.

ATCKs Seeking and Finding a “Tribe.” The adult TCK (ATCK) just quoted reflects a common attitude; ATCKs tend to resist being put into established categories. But the lack of a group, an “ethnic group,” with which they can identify is a source of frustration and concern to most, especially the long-term ATCKs. Many just say “I don’t fit,” “I don’t know where I belong,” “no one understands me.” Some do begin to understand where they belong but don’t have a handy name for it: I feel we are part of a population but no one recognizes that population. If you asked where I feel I belong, I couldn’t identify any geographical place. What I identify with is the overseas dependent community. The people I've stayed in touch with are not from college or law school but are foreign service brats. We can acclimate anywhere, we can have a life here, but it is not our whole life... The only people I can share with are the others who have lived overseas. Even my college friends grew up in Taiwan and Korea. Even though we weren't [TCKs] in the same country we can share because of the similar life style. 9

Americans are frequently asked to indicate their race/ethnicity on forms by checking one of several boxes.

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Learning about the term “TCK” brings great comfort and self-understanding as it normalizes this identity. Increasingly TCKs are introduced to this term through their sponsor community or an international school, but this is still not the norm. A recent email that I received from another diplomatic daughter expresses a typical response to learning what she is. I actually cried when I read your articles last year because I finally felt validated. There’s a NAME for what I am, … I can’t begin to tell you how much it’s helped me and on how many levels.

With broader awareness of shared identity, TCKs have created an exploding array of ways to learn about and meet TCKs. Some of these are older, face-to-face meeting venues such as campus organizations (e.g. MU Kappa for MKs, Global Nomads), overseas schools reunions and magazines (e.g. Among Worlds, Overseas Brats). Technology, of course, multiplies ways to learn and connect. TCKid.com, for example, links to resources and facebook; it also lists local groups throughout the world and has a way of finding others in any city. If not a tribe of TCKs, finding others who share bicultural or international perspective is a significant help, both honoring multiple cultural identities and providing a community with shared perspectives. After changing academic fields several times, Bell-Villada …found a solution to my dilemmas by moving once again, this time into comparative literature. The change allowed me to combine the best of both Spanish and English … Besides, I’d already spent most of my life comparing cultures … “comp lit” helped put me academically where I happened to be culturally: neither in “English” nor in “Spanish” but somewhere in between the two, yet also above, outside and even critical of both. (2005:187)

Comparing Japanese and U.S. TCKs Based on existing U.S.-centric TCK literature, one might easily forget that not only do TCKs go everywhere in the world; they also come from everywhere. Japan is an exception to the paucity of research on TCKs from countries other than the United States. Although Japanese and American TCKs have a great deal in common, there are important differences in their experiences as TCKs, related to the very different countries from which they come. The following discussion contrasts these two populations’ home countries, overseas and reentry experiences and issues of identity and belonging.

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Home Country Japan has long been, and largely remains, an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society with an intolerance for non-conformity. This cultural hegemony has been largely unchallenged (until recently) by association with outsiders; Japanese attitudes toward foreigners have historically been closed, resulting in a low level of international involvement and low immigration (Tsuda, 2001). Outsiders who settled in Japan have been considered inassimilable. Japanese interest in the topic of returnees stems from the fact that Japan moved from being relatively isolated to finding itself internationally involved in a short period of time. The number of Japanese living abroad exploded in the 1970s with the growth in Japanese international business interests. 10,11 In the early years Japanese TCKs returning from sojourns abroad stood out as so deviant that they were given two labels: Kaigaishijo (“while abroad”) and kikokushijo (“on return”). The kikokushijos were seen as so woefully unprepared for the rigors of Japanese schools or university that in the 1970s Japan introduced special schools, separate university admissions exams and reserved places in some universities or university departments for kikokushijos. To forestall the onslaught of more under-prepared kikokushijos, the number of overseas Japanese schools was increased three fold and supplemental Japanese schools six fold between 1970 and 1990 (Yoshida et. al., 2009:266). The number of TCKs has continued to grow, but as Japan has globalized the prevailing view of them has shifted from the focus on shortcomings-–largely cultural, especially linguistic-–to focus rather on their advantages-–knowledge of Western ways, and superior command of English. The U.S. is quite the opposite; it is a nation of immigrants and visitors with a history of involvement throughout the world under a wide variety of sponsors. The consequent diversity of peoples and cultures co-exist within a national culture that is generally decentralized, values individuals over the collective and tolerates, even celebrates, diversity. As a result, American TCKs are not noteworthy and there is no public awareness of this group. 10

The number of Japanese TCKs increased more than eleven fold between 1970 and 2000. (Yoshida et. al. 2002:430) 11 One difference between reports of Japanese and Americans TCKs is that the former does not discuss sponsor as a variable. Without families sponsored by the military and missions overseas, business sponsored families dominate.

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Overseas Experiences A major difference between Japanese and American TCKs is the degree to which their life abroad requires new cultural skills and diminishes home culture literacy. Because few outside Japan speak the language, negotiating the host community anywhere, even at the most basic level, requires at least new language skills. Japanese popular culture is not generally present outside Japan. Americans can negotiate public spaces abroad, at least minimally, without learning much of a host culture because English speakers are found throughout the world. Even in less developed countries a variant of modern Western culture may be found in cities, and American popular culture is a global phenomenon. School is the most important socio-cultural environment for children. The majority of Japanese kaigaishijos are in schools that diminish their Japanese cultural fluency. In developed English-speaking countries most parents enroll their children in local schools to assure fluency in English and Western culture (Kano Podolsky & Kamoto, 2005; Langager 2010:2). The experience of these children is more like immigrants than TCKs because they are immersed in the local culture, although, for some of them, placement in ESL classes inhibits association with host country classmates (e.g. see Sawako and Kikuko in Kanno, 2003). In non-English speaking Europe most Japanese children attend English medium / Anglo or American curricula international schools.12 This equally distances them from their parental culture but encapsulates them in Third Culture communities rather than integrating with the host culture. Japanese parents whose priority is maintaining a high level of Japanese cultural knowledge enroll their children in full-time overseas Japanese schools (nihonhingakko). That only a minority (31%) in the early 21st century made this choice clearly reflects the value parents place on fluency in English and Western culture. (Only two percent of kaigaishijo in North America and about one-quarter in Europe attended a Japanese school.) But where the local culture and language have less value, enrollment in Japanese schools is much higher (half in Latin America and the Middle 12

Japanese constituted the largest national group at the International school in Paris in the late 1990s, according to the Headmaster. Most American and British children attended their respective national schools in Paris. (Jones, 1998)

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East and nearly three-quarters in Asian countries).13 (All Japanese schools data is from Kano Podolsky & Kamoto, 2005). Many parents try to have the best of both worlds by enrolling children who attend English medium schools in a part-time Japanese Saturday school (hoshuko).14 In contrast, overseas schooling reinforces the home culture for the great majority of American TCKs. Sixty-five percent of the 1546 schools attended by our respondents when their parents were working abroad were some kind of Third Culture school, nearly all English medium. 15 Department of Defense Dependents Schools (24%) provide almost no disruption to U.S. education; U.S. State Department sponsored overseas schools (17%) also follow an American curriculum, although some are bilingual and include host country nationals. Other Third Culture schools (24%) attended were nearly all English medium and followed AngloAmerican curricula. These include sponsor schools, e.g. mission schools or oil camp schools, and a wide variety of independent and third nation (British, French, German) international schools. Only one in five of the schools ever attended by our respondents was a host country school. Many of these were in English speaking countries, including private English medium schools in countries such as India. A few respondents attended host country schools taught in a European language. 16

The Reentry Experience Although in general, reentry issues for these two returnee populations are similar (Uehara, 1986), the two respective literatures have different emphases. These emphases, while not reflecting exclusively different 13

Enrollment in Japanese schools in Asian countries is diminishing as parents increasingly value international skills. In the mid-1990s 90% of kaigaishijo in Asia attended Japanese schools. 14 In spite of the fairly small number of Japanese overseas schools (less than 100), more than 60% of Japanese expat children enrolled in either full or part time Japanese schools in 2003 (Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2003). Clearly most of these are in supplemental (Saturday) schools. 15 Because over half our respondents (54%) attended two or more different types of schools while stationed overseas, we recorded all the schools they attended and provide data on schools rather than on individuals. 16 This study undoubtedly under-represents the host country school experience. Because we recruited respondents, in large part, through TCK networks including international school alumni associations and friendship networks, TCKs more embedded in local communities are less likely to have come to our attention.

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experiences, underscore the fact that due to contrasts in their societies, the defining experiences of American and Japanese TCKs are dissimilar. Japanese literature reveals a collective reentry experience, consistent with the culture’s communal value orientation. The American experience, reflecting the importance of individualism in the U.S., is framed in terms of individual difficulties. In the following discussion it is important to remember two points: 1) Japanese attitudes toward the returnees have changed dramatically. Originally seen as deficient and problematic, then as privileged role models, they are currently paid little attention as Japan has internationalized and as public policy shifts to the needs of immigrant workers’ children (Kano Podolsky, 2004:74; Yoshida et. al., 2009:266). While the earlier references reflect a harsher reality for kikukoshijos, the thematic differences identified remain valid. 2) The experience of a kikokushijo who studied in a Japanese school abroad is likely to resemble that of American TCKs more than the kikokushijos described below. The kikokushijo’s reentry experience starts with the fact that the very behaviors that were appropriate, normal and good abroad are dysfunctional and disruptive in Japan (Muro, 1988). Many kikokushijos have, in fact, lost requisite knowledge (especially language) and skills for success in university or employment in Japan. Their westernized behaviors such as questioning, self-assertion, direct eye contact and informal speech offend sensibilities in a society that cares deeply about conformity.17 To deal with differences, seen initially as inadequacies, Japan responded by treating returnees categorically as “other,” giving them a label and separate programs. In this situation returnees know where they stand (outside) and know that others share this journey. Being identified as different and deficient, many returnees have reported experiencing stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination and bullying. Kikokushijos are now valued for the same reasons they were disparaged earlier. This is an improvement, but it is no less categorical and returnees now report some resentment for perceived preferential treatment or negative reactions possibly from fear of competition. Being treated categorically is frustrating, especially to someone who now values individuality. “Instead of seeing me as ME, they see me as a ‘returnee’… They do not try to understand me as a unique human being.” (Yoshida et. al., 2009:273). Given this treatment, returnees themselves often engage in 17

Kidder, 1992, provides a more complete accounting of ways returnees violate “Japanessness.”

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categorical thinking, as two kikokushijos illustrate: “I think I have always used it [kikokushijo identity] as a good excuse for evading responsibility” and “Are we [kikokushijos] inferior to the regular Japanese because we have been educated differently?” (Kanno, 2003:44 & 17) American TCKs don’t inordinately stand out because their overseas experiences, especially schooling, are largely compatible with U.S. cultural expectations. TCKs look, sound, and act enough like locals to blend into an already heterogeneous society. Invisible, they are often described as “hidden immigrants” (Pollock and Van Reken, 2009:102-4). To others they fit, but inside it is a different story. Reentry feels confusing and lonely to many TCKs. Without an identity for TCKs as a category, it is hard to realize others are in the same situation. Without a recognized status TCKs get no credit for their foreignness 18 or, they lament, for any special cross-cultural skills they may offer. Deviance is explained as an individual, rather than group, characteristic. Many wonder “what is wrong with me?” and others blame the individual as well: In India if I make a mistake they just say I am a crazy American. In the U.S. I don’t appear to be different, so if I openly deviate from my friends…they don’t say it is because I am a crazy TCK who grew up in India. They just say I’m nuts.

As in Japan, reentry is becoming easier as increasing numbers of Americans are CCKs and international experience is valued more, e.g. most universities encourage, even require, study abroad. The term TCK is more widely known among TCKs, if not the larger public, making clear this is not a solo journey. Ways of connecting with other TCKs are exploding, as was discussed above.

Belonging and Identity Questions of belonging and identity are prominent in both American and Japanese TCK literatures. Again, it is the difference in framing these

18 American TCKs who are of minority race or ethnic groups face a more difficult time. These race/ethnic categories are not salient in Third Culture communities so they do not learn nuances of these cultures. They often report being given a hard time, especially at college, by those who expect them to be “a bro,” i.e. an African American or Chicano, for example.

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issues that is revealing. Americans see this as an individual, personal, internal concern; for Japanese it is an external issue. Kikokushijos frame their identity questions in terms social relations: which socially recognized identity best fits and with which group should (or can) I align myself-–Japanese or kikokushijo? (Kanno, 2003; Kidder, 1992) This is initially viewed as a zero sum game. While their overseas experiences may have made the kikokushijo identity and association more comfortable, at varying times and in different ways each of Kanno’s (2003) informants devoted a great deal of effort to proving to themselves and others that they are bona fide Japanese. Returnees are pressured to choose because Japanese value conformity and tend to discriminate against anyone who is different (Yoshida et. al., 2009:266). The need to choose is immediate because they must decide whether to take the university entrance exam as a Japanese or kikokushijo student. (Younger returnees must choose a traditional school or one designed for kikokushijos.) Kanno (2003) reports that all four informants came to a more sophisticated understanding and appreciation of identity possibilities, understanding that it is not a question of either/or, but that identity can be additive and an individual can identify with more than one community. 19 This option has only become possible with an increasing openness in Japanese society. Language competency is widely discussed in the Japanese literature; it is important to kikokushijos because language is incredibly important in Japan. Without complete command of Japanese one is not Japanese. And now English fluency is a defining characteristic of kikokushijo (Kanno, 2003; Tanaka, 1994; Yoshida et. al., 2009). One example of the preoccupation with linguistic skill as related to identity is Kikuko’s concern that she is not really a kikukoshijo because she is not sufficiently fluent in English (Kanno, 2003:118).

19

Kanno (2003) maintains that her informants had come to this new understanding of identity possibilities within a year and a half. Enloe & Lewin (1987) found most children resolved adjustment problems within two years of return. Minoura (1988) argued that superficial adjustment occurred within 18 months, but that after two to three years they began to recognize deeper cultural differences. I am unaware of U.S. studies which put such a time frame on adjustment.

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Issues of identity and marginality are prominent in American TCK research. 20 But the focus is on self: “Who am I?” “Is there anyone else like me?” These questions appear to be asked not with a sense of choice, but rather from apparent lack of any suitable identity or community. TCK literature does report increasing appreciation of an identity that is not encapsulated by a particular group or national identity, but instead draws on, and is comfortable with, many (see, e.g,. Schaetti, 2000). TCKs are more comfortable with their identity now precisely because there is a recognized identity, one which they are increasingly introduced to in the international schools. Language, so prominent in the Japanese returnee literature, is largely absent in the U.S. TCK research, in spite of the fact that TCKs make greater use of other languages than the average American. (Three-quarters of our respondents make some use of a language other than English as adults). 21 This is because returnees have retained the national language and because foreign language literacy is not highly valued in the U.S.

Summary Remarks The modern world is characterized by an increasing number of CrossCultural Kids, people whose lives, for one reason or another, incorporate several cultures. CCKs can all relate to feelings of being connected to two or more established cultures and feeling that others fail to appreciate their inner complexity. The many variations of CCK relate to the nature of their exposure to multiple cultures and to the countries in which they reside. TCKs differ from other CCKs in being socialized in Third Cultures developed around sponsor-host national relationships. The Third Culture, in contrast to national and ethnic cultures, is a culture that draws on and transcends national cultures but is not a blending of cultures. TCKs of all 20

Identity is an especially popular topic for TCK dissertation research, possibly because so many authors come to this question out of their own personal concerns. Schaetti (2000) is just one of many examples. 21 In contrast to Japanese for whom a single foreign language dominates, respondents in this study reported at least occasional adult use of 61 different languages. Reflecting the time these respondents lived abroad (between the end of WWII and the end of the Cold War) it is not surprising that only three respondents reported any facility in Russian (possibly from college study). The two most commonly used languages are Spanish and French (36%). Twenty percent use German also reflecting the post WWII time frame.

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kinds often struggle as they return to their home country to find a place and create an identity that reflects their complex social histories. TCKs from two countries, Japan and the United States, have much in common; nevertheless their reentry experiences and identity issues are quite different. The prominence of external issues among Japanese compared to internal concerns of American TCKs, reflects their very different home cultures. Difficulties associated with reentry are diminishing for both Japanese and American TCKs as both countries place greater value on international skills and relationships. TCKs, and others, in Japan and America increasingly value lives transcending cultures.

Bibliography Amer, Mona. 2006. “Grappling with Conceptual and Practical Limitations of Acculturation Models.” Paper presented at American Psychological Association Conference, New Orleans, LA. Bell-Villada, Gene H. 2005. Overseas American: Growing Up Gringo in the Tropics. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Bushong, Lois J. 2005. “ATCK Trauma: Recovery into Triumph.” Workshop presented at Families in Global Transition Conference, Houston, TX. Cho, Eun Bum. 2009. “Global Nomads for Global Managers.” Paper presented at International Academy for Intercultural Research Conference. Coleman, Daniel. 2003. The Scent of Eucalyptus: A Missionary Childhood in Ethopia. Fredericton, NB, Canada: Goose Lane Editions. Cottrell, Ann Baker. 2007. “TCKs and Other CCKs.” Japanese Journal of Family Sociology, 18(2):54-65. —. 2002. “Educational and Occupational Choices of American Adult Third Culture Kids.” In Morten G. Ender (Ed.), Military Brats and Other Global Nomads (pp. 229-253). Westport, CT: Praeger. —. 2000. “Global Mobility and Personal Identity.” Paper presented at Pacific Sociological Association Meetings, San Diego, CA. Enloe, Walter and Lewin, Philip. 1987. “Issues of Integration Abroad and Re-adjustment to Japan of Japanese Returnees.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 11(3):223-248. Glick-Schiller, Nina. Basch, Linda, Szanton Blanc, Cristina. 1992. “Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding

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Migration.” In Glick-Schiller, et. al. (Eds.), Toward a Transnational Perspective on Migration (pp. 1-24). New York, NY: New York Academy of Sciences. Henderson-James, Nancy. 2009. At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa. Austin, TX: Plain View Press. Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 2003. Annual Survey on Japanese Overseas Children, cited in Kano Podolsky and Kamoto, 2005, Ibid Jones, Gareth. 1998. Personal communication. Kanno, Yasuko. 2003. Negotiating Bilingual and Bicultural Identities: Japanese Returnees Betwixt Two Worlds. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Kano Podolsky, Momo & Kamoto, Itsuko. 2005. “Challenges of Home Culture Retention Among Expatriate Families.” Paper presented at Families in Global Transition Conference, Houston, TX. Kano Podolsky, Momo. 2004. “Cross-cultural Upbringing: A Comparison of the ‘Third Culture Kids’ Framework and ‘Kaigai/Kikoku-shijo’ Studies.” Contemporary Society: Kyoto Women’s University Bulletin, 6:67-78. Kidder, Louise H. 1992. “Requirements for Being ‘Japanese:’ Stories of Returnees.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 16 (4):383-393. Langager, Mark. 2010. “Childhood Academic Language environments of Japanese Sojourners: A Principal Components analysis Study.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 13(1): 1-22. McCluskey, Karen Curnow. 1994. Notes from a Traveling Childhood: Readings for Internationally Mobile Parents and Children. Washington, D.C.: Foreign Service Youth Foundation. Minoura, Yasuko. 1988. “The Psychological Reorganization of Overseas Experience after Returning to Japan: A Symbolic Interactionist Approach to Returnees.” Shakai Shinrigaku Kenkuu (Journal of Social Psychology, 2(2):3-11. Cited in Yoshida et. al. 2002 Op.Cit. Muro, Mariko. 1988. Acquiring the American Way of Learning: The Cultural and Intellectual Assimilation of Japanese Children into an American Elementary School. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. Pollock, David C., Van Reken, Ruth E. 2009. Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds. Boston, MA: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. —. 2000. Global Nomad Identity: Hypothesizing a Developmental Model. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Union Institute,

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Segal, Mady Wechsler. 1986. “The Military and the Family as Greedy Institutions.” Armed Forces and Society, 13(1):9-38. Sussman, Nan M. 2000. “The Dynamic Nature of Cultural Identity Throughout Cultural Transitions: Why Home is Not So Sweet. “Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4(4):355-373. Tanaka, Manami. 1994. The Educational Experience of Japanese “Overseas” Youth in the United States. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2001. “Reluctant Hosts: The Future of Japan as a Country of Immigration.” Research & Seminars, 7(4). (http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rs/more.php?id=39_0_3_0) Uehara, Asako. 1986. Comparison of Reentry Adjustment Between Japanese and American Students: An Interactionist Perspective. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. Useem, John; Useem, Ruth Hill; Donoghue, John. 1963. “Men in the Middle of the Third Culture: The Roles of American and Non-Western People in Cross-Cultural Administration.” Human Organization, 22 (3):169-179. Useem, Ruth Hill, & Cottrell, Ann Baker. 1996. “Adult Third Culture Kids.” In Smith, Caroline, (Ed.), Strangers at Home (pp. 22-35). Bayside, NY: Aletheia Publications. (This is based on five short articles available at www:tckworld.com) Van Reken, Ruth E.; Bethel, Paulette M. 2005. “Third Culture Kids: Prototypes for Understanding Other Cross-Cultural Kids.” Intercultural Management Quarterly, 6 (3). (This may also be found at http://www.crossculturalkid.org/cck.htm.) Wertsch, Mary Edwards. 1991. Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood inside the Fortress. New York: Harmony Books Yoshida, Tomoko et. al. 2009. “Contrasting experiences in Japanese returnee adjustment: Those who adjust easily and those who do not. “ International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 33(4): 265-276. —. et al. 2002. “The Japanese Returnee Experience: Factors that Affect Reentry.” International Journal of Intercultural relations, 26(4) 429445.

PART 2: REFLECTIONS

FINDING HOME JOHN LIANG

I had come to Taiwan looking for home. Exhaust fumes permeate the inside of the bus. The windows are open. The small, thin Mitsubishi truck engines run at a slightly higher pitch than the deeper rumble of the eighteen-wheelers in the United States. Houses and buildings are crammed together with signs all over the place that I can't read. It's hot and humid. Chinese music—the melody is western, but the lyrics are foreign—blares from the bus's speaker system. The signs are strange. Not a single building looks familiar, so I'm not sure if I'm getting closer to my destination. I keep getting distracted by people on scooters weaving in and out through traffic, coming within inches of being flattened by a truck or bus or car. Everyone around me looks the same. Chances are, the person sitting next to me speaks perfect English, but I'm so caught up in my own internal world that I don't notice anything other than my own fear. It's the first time I truly am aware of being in a foreign place, know I'm in a foreign place, know I'm afraid, instead of just internally shutting down and not acknowledging this fear like I did when I was a kid. After I get off the bus and know where I am physically—I can see the apartment building where I'm staying a couple of blocks away—I realize I have no idea where I am emotionally. Here I am, thinking I should be liking where I am, I should be wanting this experience, and yet all I want to do is to go "home" to someplace more familiar. The worst part? I don't know where "home" is at this point.

I was spending the summer of 1996 in Taipei, Taiwan, as the guest of the Costa Rican ambassador. My father had taken an early retirement offer after twenty years of working for Xerox in Central America, Connecticut and the Middle East and my parents had decided to settle in Costa Rica. Their next-door neighbor in the mid-1990s was a Costa Rican-born woman of Chinese descent who had been appointed ambassador to Taiwan. My father—also Central American-born of Chinese descent—had known her since his college days in Massachusetts, where they both had

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studied. I was three-quarters of the way through graduate school at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, CA, a school I chose because 90 percent of its students had lived, worked, or studied outside of their home countries. My first two weeks in Taiwan had been a whirlwind, because the country was celebrating the inauguration of Lee Teng-Hui, its first democratically elected president. The then-president of Costa Rica, José Figueres, would be attending the ceremonies. Due to the embassy's small staff—the ambassador and a consul general, and that's it—I found myself writing press releases and escorting the traveling Costa Rican press corps as we rode in motorcades from one end of Taipei to another. Since South African President Nelson Mandela had declined the invitation, Figueres at the time was considered the highest-ranking “world leader”—one of a steadily dwindling number of countries that officially recognized Taiwan and not mainland China—and thus gave the keynote speech at the diplomatic ball the night before the inauguration. A few days after Figueres left and we all had managed to catch up on our sleep, I arranged an unpaid internship for the rest of the summer with the Taipei office of Bloomberg News. I'll freely admit that I had become completely spoiled by traveling around town in motorcades, able to cross Taipei in less than fifteen minutes. Now, I was boarding a normal bus and spending an hour crawling through traffic to get downtown, and it was a lot less fun than the motorcade. Taiwan was completely different from what I was accustomed to. I was used to U.S. culture; I was used to Latin American culture; and I was used to Arab culture. Now I found myself in a city I’d never been to before, the street and store signs in Chinese which, despite my having studied it for three years in college and another year in graduate school, I couldn't make hide nor hair of. The Chinese I was used to hearing in class was slow, articulate Mandarin, not the rapid-fire street mix of Taiwanese, Hokkien and Cantonese that blared out of the radio or out of the mouths of the bus passengers. I might as well have been on the far side of the moon. This out-of-placedness was a familiar feeling. It was not exactly a welcome feeling, but it was something I knew. My dilemma was this: here I was, in a country I chose to be in, rather than being somewhere because of my father’s job, and I yet was going through the same fear and out-of-placedness I had always felt whenever I started out at a new school

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in a new country. If I were to feel it today, more than a decade later, I would be able to process it better, would talk to myself and assure myself that yes, I’ve been in this kind of situation before, and it’s never (physically) hurt or damaged me before and it’s not about to start now. But I wasn't at that point in 1996. All I really felt at the time was Oh God, here we go again—that same old feeling of unfamiliarity and uprootedness. That summer of '96 was a bewildering convergence of cultures. I was helping out at an embassy where the dominant languages were Spanish, English and then Chinese. It wasn't me with a bunch of Gringos up against the furriners, it was me with a bunch of Latins up against Los Chinos. And to top it all off, these folks were ethnically Chinese but culturally Latins. Despite being of Chinese descent, the ambassador didn't speak a word of Mandarin, Cantonese, or any other dialect. It was terribly frustrating to watch her get berated on the street by local Taiwanese who couldn't understand why she didn't speak “Guo-yu” (Mandarin). My Mandarin accent was good enough at that point that, when I’d speak on the phone, people on the other line responded in Mandarin, but if I spoke face-to-face with another Taiwanese with a perfectly-accented question in Mandarin, they would automatically answer me in English, be it fluent or halting. It's as if they didn't recognize they'd been spoken to in their own language. I came out of that summer in Taiwan royally confused. I thought I would feel “immersed.” Yet, it was more like I was feeling drowned. Being the son of a three-quarters Chinese, one-quarter Spanish father (born in Guatemala) and an Irish-Jewish-English-French-German-Dutch mother (born in the United States), I had never felt so "white" in my life. Whenever I would go out with the ambassador and her two nieces—all three of them Costa Rican of Chinese descent—all I had to do was look away from them for a second, and they would be lost in a sea of Chinese faces. I was unsure of what I wanted with my life. I mean, I knew I wanted a career in journalism, I just wasn't sure where I wanted to pursue it. I went to Taiwan wanting to understand a part of myself, a part of my family background. Somehow I thought it would be somewhat more familiar and not foreign, given that I'm part Chinese.

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By the time I got to Taiwan, I had lived the peripatetic life of a typical Global Nomad, residing in six different countries between my birth and high school graduation. I had my answer to the “where are you from” question down pat: “My Dad worked for Xerox, so we moved all over the place—from Guatemala where I was born and lived for two years, to Costa Rica for two years, then Connecticut for three years, Panama for four, back to Connecticut for 18 months, Morocco for 18 months, then Egypt. I was there for three years and my folks were there for four, because I graduated from high school and came back to the States for college.” It's the memories of that uprooted childhood that I find rather fascinating, especially how selective the mind can be, with many of the truly horrible memories not blotted out, but suppressed until later in life when something completely unrelated brings that one recollection back. Sometimes I joke that those moves were what caused my voice to change—not puberty. Rather than acknowledging my fear of having to uproot myself and meet new people, I would choose not to feel anything at all. If I didn't acknowledge the fear, then in my mind in those days the anxiety didn't truly exist. Yet despite the fear of moving, there were also happy memories of some of those places, like camping in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco with the Boy Scouts, or riding horseback in the desert outside Cairo with the Pyramids of Giza just beyond the dunes, or scuba diving in the Red Sea off the Sinai Peninsula. One of the few things that didn't change in all those moves was spending Christmases in Guatemala, which is why the memories of ten days in that country once a year are stronger than those of the time we spent in either Connecticut or Morocco. We would stay at my grandmother's house, all four of us crammed into her main bedroom. She would sleep in the smaller, second bedroom. Her bathroom had a tiled floor, with squiggles embedded in one tile that resembled a pair of faces, to which I would say hello and goodbye upon arrival and just before departure. My granduncle's house a couple of blocks away had a huge nativity scene in the living room. He, my grandmother and the rest of their four siblings as well as my father were all born in this house. As a kid in the late 70s and early 80s, I would run around with my other male cousins, playing with our Star Wars pistols.

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I remember the smell of pine branches that had been scattered across the floor of the house's open-air courtyard, the odor of gunpowder at midnight of December 24th when fireworks roared across the whole city, the “TooToo-TACK-Koo-Too” sounds of us drumming on turtle shells as we sang in between reciting the mysteries of the Rosary. But other memories are more troubling. There were places we lived where we were made to feel different, or not understood, or not accepted. My sister Lisa remembers, while we lived in Connecticut, kids asking us if we could see less because of our “Chinese” eyes. Being Hapa—partCaucasian and part-Asian—has a strange effect, I suppose. The only time I ever noticed it (but only came to fully realize it thirty years later) was when I was in Kindergarten through 2nd Grades in Connecticut and would get invited to classmates' birthday parties. The name on the envelope would be addressed to “Won.” At the time, I was just irritated that they couldn't spell “Juan.” It wasn't until many years later that I began to think, “Maybe they were thinking 'Won' as in the Won-Ton soup they saw on the menu when they went to a Chinese restaurant,” which angered me even more. What's in a name, after all? My full one, Juan Harry Liang, reflects my multicultural background even if you don't look at my face or know where I come from:

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Juan, after my great-grandfather on my dad's side, a man born in Guangdong, China, who emigrated to Guatemala at the turn of the 20th Century and took the Spanish name Juan;

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Harry, also my father's middle name (who in later years reverted to it as his main nickname) and his father's (a Nationalist Chinese diplomat who came to Guatemala in the mid-1930s to help set up the embassy there) and his father's father back in Shanghai who all went to the same school run by British missionaries, who in turn, couldn't pronounce their students' Chinese names, therefore nicknaming each student Tom, Dick, Harry, etc; and

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Liang, the last name of my grandfather, Shaoming Harry Liang.

You could even go one step further, if you wanted, taking the Spanish custom of including the mother's last name, in which case mine would be

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Juan Harry Liang Hall — Hall, shortened from Josephthal at the turn of the century by an ancestor who wanted a less-Jewish-sounding name. I was known as Juan in elementary school—both in Connecticut and Panama —up until the fifth grade, but at home I was Johnny or John (only among those who spoke English. In Spanish, it was Juanito until just recently when everybody pretty much calls me John). I switched to John in the fifth grade solely by accident. On the first day of school in Panama at a new elementary school in the Canal Zone (Diablo Elementary School—what idiot names a school after The Devil?!?), when the teacher did roll call by asking us to say our names (perhaps to hear how we pronounced them rather than embarrassing us by mispronouncing them on her first try), I inadvertently blurted out “John— I mean, Juan.” At which point she asked to my surprise if I'd prefer John, and I said yes and that was that. That cemented the nickname I would use in public and private for the rest of my life, even though I remain proud to have Juan as the name on my oft-stamped U.S. passport. Other kids' names when I was growing up reflected where I was living — more of Miguel or Roberto or Gómez or Gutiérrez in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama; more of Bobby, Rick or Alan in Connecticut; and Ahmed, Mohammed or Hossam in Morocco and Egypt. By the time we were in Cairo, though, my classmates' names were all over the place, reflecting the international culture of that school. In fact, at least half if not more of the seniors in my yearbook had more than one nationality next to their names. Another memory is of moving to Morocco, which for a family like ours—a mix of U.S. and Latin cultures—might as well have been like living on that other side of the moon: Men walking down the street holding hands. Women covered head-to-toe except for their eyes. French spoken with a Moroccan-Arabic accent (almost like Spanish with the “r” sound being trilled). Men in long, hooded djellabah robes. Some guy yelling out of a tower five times a day. The Moroccan Arabic spoken on the street sounding guttural and beyond even “foreign.” The relief we felt when we would cross the border into Ceuta, Spanish territory on North African soil, and be able to read the billboards in Spanish. Of course, whenever we went to tourist attractions the locals smiled and were friendly, but day-to-day, walking downtown or through the market,

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people on the streets would stare (read: glare) at me in a way that I interpreted at the time to mean “You are not welcome here. Go away.” It's said that body language is more than eighty percent of all communication. It wasn't until much later when I read how the French colonial authorities had dealt with Moroccans that I understood the possible reasons for that hostility I felt toward me. The early 1980s guidebooks even noted that Moroccans took a while to become friends with foreigners, but when they did, you were friends for life. Contrast that with moving to Egypt, where—while the locals still stared at you—the body language I felt from them when they did that was more of curiosity than hostility. The Egyptian message we got was, “We've been invaded by just about ever major world power since we built the Pyramids, you all have come and gone, but we're still here and will be here when you leave. Welcome to Egypt.” In Morocco, I first went to the Casablanca American School, which was a villa that had eighty-odd students from kindergarten through eighth grade. At the end of my eighth grade, the then-principal adamantly refused my mother's entreaties to start a ninth grade. So the options were to commute an hour to the American School in Morocco's capital Rabat, which had a normal campus with basketball courts and science labs and the like, or enroll in a local Moroccan high school. But then my mother found a Spanish Catholic school in Casablanca—or two, rather, one for grades K-8 and the other for grades 9-12. Consequently, Lisa was enrolled in the K-8 school for her 8th grade year— which for her (a straight-A student) in a sense wouldn't be so bad for her future education because, 8th grade was, well, 8th grade. And I was enrolled in the Spanish high school. I still remember walking up the driveway to the school building on the first day of classes and feeling the curious stares of the other students hanging around while I kept my eyes squarely on the ground, ignoring my Mom's whispered entreaties to “Look up, straight ahead, it's gonna be all right.” Fully half of the students in my class were one to three years older than me, having flunked out at the end of the previous year, for some their second or third round in ninth grade. My first act as a student was a colossal failure: Writing my name down. I couldn't understand why the teachers in every class kept calling me “Juan Harry.” The answer, of course, is that in Spanish culture one always assumes that the second-to-last name is one's paternal last name. And I of

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course, having most recently lived in Connecticut and being the Gringo that I was, had written Juan Harry Liang instead of either Juan Harry Liang Hall or just Juan Liang Hall. Also, all the students capitalized their paternal last names to minimize any confusion if they had more than four words in their names (such as “José Antonio GÓMEZ Jiménez García”). Classes were based on a rote-memorization method of learning, which explained why so many students had to repeat their years. There was absolutely no critical thinking being taught at all, except for the religion class where the students just sat there, mute, whenever the teacher tried to get them to talk about the meaning of a particular passage of the Bible. Suffice it to say that I lasted about two months before I told my mother I couldn't take it anymore, at which point she went back to the Casablanca American School and asked the new principal if there was any way they could set up a 9th grade. He said, “Sure,” and next thing you know, I've got a 9th grade teacher. As a result of this, the parents of two students—both Moroccan—who had been my 8th grade classmates the year before promptly yanked their daughters out of boarding schools in New York and Cairo—where they'd been having a grand old time as independent young women—and brought them back. The girls’ coming home to more-conservative Morocco didn't make me their favorite classmate. The only thing that has stayed with me from those two months in the Spanish school is that to this day, I still write my last name in capital letters. Cairo, while its people were friendly, was chaotic, dusty and overcrowded. Ma'adi, the neighborhood where we and a lot of other foreigners lived, though somewhat less chaotic, had enough garbage and rubble in the streets that it prompted my mother to ask on her first visit whether the area had been recently bombed. Contrast that with the wide, clean avenues and whitewashed houses covered with bougainvillea in Casablanca. Another memory I have that has stuck as a positive lesson of how to adapt to a foreign place is my mother's insistence that we learn the local language and be able to communicate with people on the street. During our first year in Cairo, when I would accompany my mom to the local market, we'd be waiting in line to buy tomatoes. In front of us was an

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American woman, who when her turn came up would ask for a couple kilos of tomatoes from the grocer in English. The grocer would very efficiently and politely grab a bunch without looking at them much, measure them on the scale, bag them and hand them over to the customer. My mom would then step up and ask for the same amount of tomatoes, but this time it's: “Itnayn kilo tamatem, min fadlak.” Five simple words. The grocer would then grin ear-to-ear, happy to hear a foreigner make the effort to learn the local language, and inspect each tomato individually, only selecting the choicest ones, and add a couple extra. (I was really surprised at how fluent she had become when I heard her speak to the house gardener after I returned to Cairo for my sister's high school graduation following my freshman year in college.) Gradually, of course, I became accustomed to living in Egypt. The American school in Cairo even had two full-time psychiatrists/counselors who also taught a class to any recently arrived students on the ins-and-outs of adapting to Egyptian culture. One of the things the counselor would do was to have two male students stand in front of the class and tell them to hold hands, which they would grudgingly do—to the titters of the other students until the counselor would explain that this was completely normal in Middle Eastern culture with very few homosexual overtones. Indeed, years later, during the first war with Iraq, there was a picture of President George H.W. Bush walking hand-in-hand down the tarmac with the head of an Arabian Gulf country. The caption read: “President Bush walks down the tarmac holding hands in the Arab way with xxxx, leader of xxxx.” The orientation class would also cover how the different sexes are treated in Arab society. I, for one, was never verbally harassed when walking down the street alone in either Casablanca or Cairo, but my sister was, even when dressed conservatively but without a veil. That is something that evidently has not changed. I read a news article soon after the popular uprising in Egypt that led to the downfall of longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak. The article described a fear that the new constitution being drafted for the country would not include protections for women, who— whether they chose to wear a veil or not—made up a sizable proportion of the demonstrators during the eighteen-day revolution. Additionally, ninety percent of the students either had gone through or were going through the same trauma as my sister and me vis-à-vis being “new students,” and the teachers as well as the kids who had been there

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more than a year knew that. There was none of that “Class, meet your new classmate John,” and more of “OK, here we go with roll call.” You could ask a student for directions to a particular class and they would show you how to get there, or help you with opening your locker. Living in the Arab world became so familiar that when I spent the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college in Jordan, my arrival in that country was, as I wrote to my parents in my first letter home, “like putting on an old pair of jeans.” The bus had pulled up in the early morning at the men's villa in Irbid, near Yarmouk University in northern Jordan, and as I stepped off the bus I heard the Muezzin's morning call to prayer from the local mosque. It was almost reassuring, in that it was so familiar and beautiful and no longer threatening to me, that I knew I'd be okay. That summer in Jordan also helped reinforce the uniqueness of each country in the Middle East, in that the call to prayer is chanted in Jordan differently from how it's done in Egypt, which in turn is not the same as in Morocco. I fell in love with Washington, D.C. when I came over on a school trip with the “Close-Up” program, which takes high school students and shows them the Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, etc. for a week. Because we were from an international school, we spent an additional few days in Williamsburg, Virginia, studying colonial government (although the day we spent at the Six Flags Busch Gardens amusement park was more memorable) and New York, visiting the Stock Exchange and United Nations, among other sites. We kids from Cairo intermingling with kids from across the USA was an education in itself, but I'm not sure who learned more—the ones living in the States or the ones living abroad. The local kids looked at us rather quizzically when we pored over the newspaper headlines about the latest skirmish between U.S. Naval forces and Libya over a right-of-way dispute in the Gulf of Sidra. For them, it might as well have taken place on another planet. For us, it was almost right around the corner. The mid-1980s also saw multiple airline hijackings and terrorist attacks at European airports, so while in transit in Frankfurt going over to the United States and coming back to Cairo, our chaperones would tell us to pack our Cairo Eagles letter jackets in our suitcases or carry-on bags and be as “low-profile” as possible. I was enthralled with international relations and languages, so walking

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past the Capitol and looking in the distance toward the White House and Washington Monument—both during that Close-Up trip and in the ensuing years afterward as a Georgetown University undergraduate—I felt like I was at the nerve center of the world. By the time I graduated from Georgetown with a degree in languages, my best friends were, of course, the students I had met in my sophomore year while living in the “International Student House” dorm building where many of the foreign students, as well as Americans who had a more “international” outlook, resided. Following graduation from college, I worked for a defense contractor that was putting together two reading-comprehension exams for a U.S. intelligence agency—one in Arabic and one in Chinese (I had majored in Arabic and minored in Chinese. The man in charge of the Arabic exam had been a friend of my parents in Egypt who also wrote me a letter of recommendation for Georgetown), until federal budget cuts put an end to that effort in the Spring of 1992. That was the first and last time I would actually put my college major to direct use. My parents—who had paid for it—still roll their eyes about that. I spent the next eighteen months living in Seattle, Washington, working as a door-to-door canvasser with limited success for the Public Interest Research Group, before my father suggested I come back to live with them in Costa Rica. It was during that year—1994—that I began working as a journalist for The Tico Times, the English-language weekly newspaper, and absolutely fell in love with the profession. In journalism, I found a job where I could watch, listen and write down what I had just seen and heard. It was almost an extension of what I’d been doing my whole life, where one of the few things I could actively control as we moved around the world was being able to watch and listen, and decide what should be remembered and what shouldn't. I have a strong, overwhelming desire for things to stay the same and not change at all, probably one legacy of my being a Global Nomad. Since moving back to Washington, D.C. after completing my graduate school studies in early 1997, I rented and lived in the same apartment until the summer of 2010. During that time, friends of mine moved away, moved back, had nervous breakdowns, died, got married and divorced, had children, changed jobs—the whole gamut of normal life. For me, things stayed gloriously the same.

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Living in the same place longer than anywhere I've ever been was in one sense a godsend, in that I finally got to do what I had wanted to do when I was growing up: Not have to move again. Throw away all those cardboard boxes that I would flatten and store under the bed, ready for the next move. Not to have to go through the mourning and sense of loss of the friends I'd made in the last place I'd lived, nor the fear of living in a new and unfamiliar environment. Several years into living at my former place, I would find myself somewhat surprised about the strong feelings I would have about my abode. I would find myself resenting it whenever the landlord would notify the tenants that a pest control expert would be entering our units to apply a bug killer, or when my parents would visit and be surprised at the vehemence of my reaction to their well-meaning attempts to suggest small changes to my apartment. And yet, in June of 2010, my offer to buy a condo about a five-minute walk away was accepted, so I found myself going into that old and familiar “prepare-to-move” mode where I had to figure out what stuff to keep and what to throw away. No question, the same old feeling of apprehension was still there, but for once, the positive anticipation toward the move was much stronger, and I actually found myself looking forward to my new digs. Maybe I've found my home, after all. But as a Global Nomad, I'm not willing to commit any further than “maybe.”

REFRAMING FAITH EIDSE

Shelly came to stay. I embraced her at church Friday night, feeling I had met my alter-ego. She was homeless, transient, in limbo and she needed a home. She had lived in many places, bits and pieces of her scattered from Chicago to Miami, Dallas to Tallahassee. For years I had been hoarding memories of swimming in the Congo, surfing the Atlantic and sledding Canadian slopes. I had kept these images alive in photos, poems, essays and travel. I had visited my Canadian family and—after Mom died—my Congolese roots. That Christmas 2010 trip was the most liberating journey of all, returning with my father and two of three sisters to my natal village in southwestern Congo to memorialize my mother. I touched down and welcomed longdenied emotion. I was embraced by the village mothers who had raised me, and I realized for the first time how I dwarfed them. I was greeted by the girls who had run with us singing to the river, only now they were the mothers in charge—and I was their age! Their children were my children—relationships expanded in a village culture where everyone depends on everyone else—from each according to her wealth, to each according to her need. Shelly appeared in my life three months after my return from Congo, and though she was 46 and had a grown son in Texas, she often relied on others to speak for her, shop with her and drive her around. She had a bus pass and knew the system but was becoming weak with several fibroid masses growing in her uterus. She had a need, I had resources. Besides, I felt in my extremities the rootlessness that had blown her into my life—the memory-rich, artifact-poor past that had landed her in Tallahassee to prop awhile in our branches. I stretched out my arms and she walked into them, tears streaming down her face. She laid her auburn head on my shoulder—long wavy hair just like my mother’s—her gaunt

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cheeks and frail arms just like the African woman who had also laid her blue-scarved, wooly head on my shoulder, sobbing for my mother at Christmas. The African woman had walked from the leprosarium, one of two women who had stayed to tend their bean fields after the others had danced out of quarantine. They praised God for the people who had made the cure and the people who brought it. My mother had also brought a handful of colorful beans, which they had planted, harvested, eaten and sold, growing strong, healthy and prosperous. I patted Shelly’s bony back and consoled her. Yes, she could stay with me; I had filed for divorce—who would object to her moving in now? For three years she had been unable to find the stable home or medical help she needed. What better place than my anchorhold? Surely if my divorce went through, my home could become green pastures and still waters for her and others like her. Hadn’t I lost friends and family too—hadn’t I endured pain and recovery? I wanted to let her shelter in my pond, if only my pond were still. It rippled each time the door opened and my husband came to shower or cook dinner. Our separation arrangement was that he would live in the RV in the driveway and use the house bathroom and kitchen. We greeted each other politely and sometimes he even made me cappuccino or talked briefly about the household budget. But I had long ago realized I couldn’t hang onto him or control him, so I had let him go about his own life while I tended to my teaching and public relations jobs and attended Celebrate Recovery, a Christian twelve-step program. In small share groups I struggled to learn good listening skills—hearing with my heart, emptying my ego and feeling along with the person sharing. I focused on attending deeply without interrupting or attempting a quick fix or solution for others. I also struggled to bond with people who wanted more than superficial friendships. They wanted to know, after pouring out their pain, that I cared for them completely, would come to their aid and protect their feelings. According to psychologists, a principal function of support networks is to tell our stories, which can make meaning of our shared experience (Carnes

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150). Carl Jung wrote to Bill W., founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, that change would probably not happen if alcoholics did not pass on their story. This “testimony method” is key to pulling fragmented pieces together—as in a stained glass window. They cohere in a larger context, enabling other survivors to see their story as part of a larger picture. This is called reframing. It unites storytellers with other human beings who care deeply about them so that survivors feel their value in surviving. This begins a process of restoration and healthy bonding. During thirty years as a Global Nomad, I had avoided listening and bonding on deep emotional levels, to protect my tender self from the riptear of parting. I had practiced a guarded self-sufficiency, thinking girlishly that I would one day fill my emptiness with a lover whose attentions I could hold at a distance or reel in as I chose. As a Third Culture Kid, I had avoided dealing with conflict and hardship. I had grown up moving from country to country, culture to culture, making new friends and leaving old ones. It had often been easier to pick a fight before leaving than to linger and work out differences. I discovered as I led our CR small groups that I had to permit people to discover for themselves what pressures caused their unwanted behaviors and how to deal with them. For my part, I had to stop blaming others and learn to acknowledge my own weaknesses. Over three years, I had worked through childhood issues of neglect and abuse, and had progressed to adult issues of love-romance-sex addiction. As a young child, I had been separated frequently from my parents, and sent to mission dorms. In my adolescence, I had dated constantly, using superficial relationships with boys to fill a perpetual need for attention. I saw that I had denied myself healthier, more beneficial relationships. It had not been necessary for my happiness to have a steady boyfriend. Nor was it necessary to carry around a familiar load of guilt over broken relationships. Instead I could acknowledge my part in the hurt, and make amends as the opportunity arose. I could believe that I was reconciled, favored, forgiven, chosen. As the stress lifted from my broken marriage, I moved on to Step 12, the most healing step of all. “Having had a spiritual experience as a result of these steps, we…carry this message to others...” On Wednesdays and

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Thursdays I took the program into a women’s prison and work release center. The women could so deeply relate to my broken marriage, it almost seemed a requirement of serving them that I journey through this passage. I could feel my mother’s compassionate spirit as I interacted with the prison women, and remembered how she had opened her arms and her heart to so many others. As I prepared for Shelly’s arrival in my home, my husband was initially cooperative, suggesting I give her the master suite with the nearby bathroom. He helped me move into my son’s room and emptied several drawers in the hall bathroom for my things. I vacuumed the master bedroom and cleaned the bathroom, as though it were a hospital suite. I picked up Shelly that Sunday afternoon and ushered her into the master suite. I told her how, after my husband moved out three years earlier, I had been lonely and tearful in this place. But one evening, I heard my name called in an inward, audible voice, “Faith.” It was the same loving mother-father-God who had accompanied me at age eight to school away from home when the 1964 Simba revolution broke out. The skies were black with smoke and fly ash; guns and spears bristled from the grass around the airstrip as the women and children crowded into rescue planes. We barely cleared river jungle and waved at the disappearing fathers who would not be rescued until nightfall. We landed in Kikwit where my family waited. My big sister hugged me, exclaiming, “You’re alive!” Until that moment, I had been numb to the danger we had faced. From there we were taken to live in a U.N. refugee camp in the capital city, Leopoldville (later Kinshasa). I spent hours fantasizing that I had colored pencils to capture the sunset over the Congo River and a chocolate cake to share with friends for my birthday. At age nine, I was again sent from home, this time to the mission dorm in the capital city. At night, the mango bats screeched and sucked yellow pulp—and the dorm “father” pinned us down and “whiskered” us, scraping long bloody gouges on our cheeks with his unshaven face. I longed for my parents. Instead, my pillow became God’s strong shoulder, my sheet his robed arms around me.

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Shelly glowed with joy to be in my home and blessed me daily for taking her in. She rose at 4:30 or 5 every morning to read the Bible and pray. We shared the early morning commute, a sacred time of exchanging comfort and hope for her surgery and healing. I dropped her off at Tallahassee Community College where she was majoring in culinary arts. “Have a blessed day,” she’d say, “I’ve already prayed you up so I know you will!” Soon I realized Shelly had blessed my marriage too. As the date for my husband’s reply to my marital dissolution filing neared, he made amends and asked to try again. I accepted, elated that the standoff had finally ended. Shelly and I would attend a church retreat and when we returned, my husband and I would start dating again. However, before the church retreat ended, my father was admitted to the University of Manitoba Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg with body-wracking spinal-cord spasms. I bought a ticket and flew home, resolved not to miss his end like I had missed my mother’s. But when I got to the hospital, Dad was putting on his shoes, determined to go home. He had found a way to manage his spinal-cord spasms and the doctors were releasing him. Meanwhile, back in Florida, Shelly had experienced massive hemorrhaging of her fibroid cysts, waking in a pool of blood. She was weak and alone that night, trying to clean up the soiled mattress. In the morning, she called a friend from church to take her to the emergency room. I returned home to find her shaken but buoyant. She believed the hemorrhaging was in some way healing. That Thursday afternoon I accompanied her to a gynecologist appointment. The doctor conducted a biopsy of her uterine lining and after the painful procedure, took her hand and pulled her up. “You’re a special woman,” he said. “No, Jesus is special,” she said boldly. “Well, He told me that He thinks you’re special,” her gynecologist grinned.

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Their bond was sealed in that moment. The doctor added, however, that if the test indicated cancer he could not perform her surgery but would have to refer her to an oncologist-gynecologist. As we left the office, Shelly believed she had just met the surgeon who would perform her longawaited hysterectomy. Her faith sustained me. Before the week was over, however, a blood test came back indicating cancer. It seemed more urgent than ever to operate, but Medicare gears ground to a halt. There was no gynecologist-oncologist in Tallahassee to perform the surgery. A doctor at a distant hospital would have to agree to take on the surgery at a deep discount. Shelly might have to wait weeks and perhaps months for the procedure. My husband was frustrated by the surgery delay, hoping Shelly would be more independent afterwards. He also realized the strain I was under while caring for Shelly morning and evening. He felt uncomfortable with a guest in the house and disappeared until late each night. Finally, one evening I asked how he felt about the marriage. He admitted he was stressed about living in a boarding house and believed I was stressed too. I met with my counselor who advised me to put my marriage first. My husband had made amends and I was still trying to fix and solve for everyone else. I needed to focus on my personal relationships and let Shelly direct her own solutions. I spoke with Shelly the next day telling her how torn I was between my responsibilities. To myself, I admitted that I had failed to be my mother. After Mom and Dad had retired to Canada, and Dad became Steinbach Bible College president, she had opened their home to the homeless and transient. My grandmother was embarrassed by my mother’s egalitarian ways, believing she should behave more like a college’s First Lady. Instead Mom added doors to the living room, turning her last public entertainment space into a bedroom for the dispossessed. In Congo, she had been a crusader who convinced pharmaceutical giants to send her barrels of free medicine for the leprosarium and tuberculosis ward. With Shelly’s presence, I recognized my mother’s strength, courage and dedication. I no longer saw her choices from a jealous child’s perspective, resentful of the urgent knocks that called Mom from the dinner table or woke the household at night. I no longer felt I had given

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too much already in sacrifice and service. In fact, it seemed I had missed the family mission to serve “the least of these.” Once, as a teenager in Congo, when I had become a material girl concerned with American fashion, boy bands and popularity, I stumbled on Mom in a peaceful moment. She had risen early to read the Bible and her face glowed. She rose to hug me and when I returned her embrace, she seemed more vapor than flesh, more ethereal than real. What she had given her entire life for, I had barely given a month for with Shelly. While I had ventured to take in one needy person for a month, she had taken in dozens over the years. She had surrounded herself with them and served them joyfully, accepting them as gifts from God. The last day Shelly stayed with me, it was she, not I who noticed the dark fog I had entered. My usual joy had been sapped by activity and I longed to spend a few moments in solitude. For once, I didn’t want to be concerned with making breakfast, lunch and dinner. I didn’t want to worry about whether I’d chased my husband away. I didn’t want to be anxious that I’d forget my brief case if it were a teaching night, or my prison badge if it were a CR Inside night. I was grey with fatigue and lifeless with exhaustion. Instead of dropping Shelly off at the grocery store, as I had done every Friday, since she didn’t have classes that day—I took her to school. She didn’t correct me, just got out, and after I left, got on the bus to the Publix Supermarket. There free coffee flowed all day long and she could do homework, visit with other transients or ride the city bus when she needed a nap. That evening, she was waiting for me at school when I drove up. I was still in a fog. Later that night, Shelly hugged me good-bye, saying she was moving in with another church friend—I could bring her belongings in the morning. As soon as I got home, I collected her large t-shirts, toiletries, and an envelope that was the last of her Pell Grant money, and organized everything carefully in her four canvas bags, wheel-on suitcase and purple child’s backpack. I carried them to the car resignedly, remembering how I, too, had moved between homes, across oceans, with one suitcase and one carry-on. Sometimes, what I wanted most was a permanent friend, someone who

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would accompany me through every storm and see me safely to the other side. What I needed at the moment, though, was some time for myself. As I closed the car door on all Shelly’s earthly belongings, however, I knew I would go on caring for her. The following week, with the help of a dear ex-prisoner friend, we found Shelly a small apartment. I had to ask for assistance from several women who had met Shelly at the church retreat, but we managed to pay her deposit and rent. Meanwhile Shelly’s gynecologist had called Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola where he had been a resident. He asked his mentor, a gynecologist-oncologist, to donate his services for Shelly, and the oncologist agreed. Shelly, however, would still have to pay hospital costs and needed disability benefits during months of healing. Another church friend knew the head of Florida’s Social Services emergency medical benefits. I called and was given the number of a federal office in Washington D.C. I was advised to use the words “terminal illness” to describe Shelly’s case. “You realize this means we have to schedule an appointment for benefits in three days?” the federal case worker asked. She had put Shelly on the conference call, so I asked, “This doesn’t mean she can’t be cured, does it?” “No,” the case worker said. My cell phone battery ran out during the interview or I’d have completed her emergency benefits application, as well. This Shelly managed independently and I realized she was more capable than I had imagined. I continued to help her, calling from the grocery store to see what she needed, finding her a second-hand sofa and chair and asking when her surgery was scheduled. At last she told me I had helped her enough. A friend from church drove her to Pensacola and she called me to pick her up several days later. The surgeon had removed seven pounds of fibroid cysts and Shelly had lost fourteen pounds with the complete hysterectomy. Best of all, the growths were not cancerous.

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“God removed the cancer and the surgeon removed the fibroids,” Shelly declared. All the way home, my heart sang. I was elated at the outcome of the surgery, and filled with joy for Shelly. Meanwhile, I was recognizing the ways in which I had grown. I was learning to care for people in a genuine, yet realistic, way. I was becoming willing to see my parents’ radical choices as life-giving. And I was discovering how to balance a learned need to try and fix and solve for others with others’ needs to find solutions for themselves. Where once I had longed for a solid and secure home, I was beginning to accept the risk my parents had taken in giving theirs up to serve the needy. I was beginning to value what they had sacrificed in family and financial security to improve lives around the world. I am completing my parents’ memoirs and recognizing that, though Mom’s legacy lives in me, it will be expressed differently in my life. I had traveled back to Congo and thawed my loss-hardened heart. On Sunday morning the women’s choir swayed and moaned their anguish over death in the family—then built to a joyful, dancing crescendo. My mother had loved these rhythmic homegrown melodies that expressed all the emotions of life, and I felt her spirit rise again within me. After a week of sharing their tears and laughter, my heart had softened. I was finally fitting together emotional puzzle pieces of red sunsets, emerald waves and a love brighter than diamonds. Also, I began seeing more of my husband—even planning a trip to the Virginia mountains where we first met in college and fell in love. Back then, he fell for my wanderlust and I fell for his rooted family. I recently helped Shelly extend her apartment lease and find her clothing that flattered her restored girlish figure. I continue to take Celebrate Recovery into women’s prisons and help prisoners transition to society. But I’m no longer hoarding the experience for myself or believing I must respond to every problem. I’m developing co-leaders on the journey. Together we are sharing the struggles and joys of reframing our lives and seeing them as parts of a much larger whole.

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Bibliography Carnes, Patrick J. The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships. Deerfield Beach: Health Communications, Incorporated, 1997. Eidse, Faith and Nina Sichel, Eds. Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global. London: Nicholas Brealey/Intercultural Press, 2004.

JUBILEE CHARITY SCHELLENBERG

My ancestors were Anabaptists from the Russian steppes, who had come to Canada to practice their faith free from state dictates. Through blutt, black gumbo mud, on Red River ox cart they came to Manitoba, prying the sticking stuff off of shoes or wheels. Three vast continents and an ocean away, on the Lunda Plateau, the trails are footpaths of sand that sifts between naked toes. Here in the Kahemba Territory of southern Democratic Republic of the Congo my missionary parents buried my umbilical chord and my heart hails home. “Why don’t you wait five years and then we will go to Congo together?” was John’s way of proposing marriage to me in 1975. He was a budding dairy farmer and I a college student, two years new to the Canadian prairies, doing freeze-dried time until I could return to my African home. It was a warm, Manitoba, August evening, and I accepted. We didn’t know that political, social and economic upheaval would prevent my return to Congo for thirty years. The break for us came when former schoolmate, Bassel Fares, planned the first ever alumni reunion in Congo for students of The American School of Kinshasa (TASOK). The reunion was scheduled for June 2005, the exact timing of the first democratic elections since Congo’s independence from Belgium in 1960. However, the tenuous peace agreement between President Joseph Kabila and four rebel warlords from the East did not facilitate timely preparations, so elections were postponed till the following year. The delay incited significant restless protests among Congolese students towards the international community supervising the transition to democracy. Yet Bassel, a seasoned pilot of special missions to conflict zones, and son of plucky medical doctors, couldn’t be deterred. He contacted me to deliver the keynote address for the alumni reunion and also to be the invitational alumni speaker at TASOK commencement

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exercises, sharing the podium with guest speaker U.S. Ambassador Roger Meese. Flying into Nairobi, the humidity and smells of the tropics tweaked a torrent of tears from somewhere deep inside my core. We were still two countries away from Congo. So John and Rachel, our niece, were particularly focused upon my reaction when we circled Kinshasa. Were they surprised when they saw me not melt but straighten with heightened vigilance! The runway was lined with tanks and men in military uniform and camouflage. In the ’64 rebellion, Simba insurgents would line the airstrips shooting at planes that were trying to land in occupied zones. “Something’s wrong!” I said, applying the lesson of that distant memory to the present. “We better stay close together.” Upon our landing, armored tanks and military personnel surrounded our Kenyan Airways plane for more than forty-five minutes. Finally we were allowed off, but under continued heavy surveillance. Inside the terminal, there was no one there to meet us as promised, with an identifying sign saying, “Welcome, TASOK Alumni!” Instead, two guards each flanked us, pushing AK 47s against us. When I was ushered to the checkpoint alone, John quickly mustered all his understanding of African ways. “Can we not stay together?” he dared to approach the surly face behind the gun. “This is our first time in Congo. Our niece here cannot speak French. That is my wife, Mama Zango, up there. She is Chokwe. She was born and raised here and is returning to Congo for the first time in thirty-two years to ‘nurse at her mother’s breast.’” “What? Your wife is Chokwe? So is mine!” exclaimed the soldier. He took John and Rachel warmly by the arms and escorted them to where I was enduring a grilling. “Muoyo, Mama Zango! Kuchi?” he greeted me in Chokwe. With that he ushered us past any further formalities. We didn’t even have to show our health cards! We had already collected our checked bags and were chatting like old friends with the soldier and a group of his uniformed colleagues, when a flustered TASOK emissary

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finally squeezed onto the scene, wondering how he was going to extricate us from their grip. Then he noticed us laughing. “Ho-how did you get through without a protocol?” stammered Emmanuel, the English-speaking Congolese pastor designated by TASOK and specially authorized to meet the foreign arrivals in the security zone. “They’re Congolese,” the guard answered. “She’s Chokwe!” Then Emmanuel recounted his story. One of the country’s four vicepresidents had arrived on the same plane as we. Because of the one-plusfour power sharing agreement, each of the heads of state maintained his own army and little love was lost between them. With the arrival of a vice-president and the threat of competing security forces, we tasted the palpable tension that pervaded Congo at that point in time. The funny thing was that the TASOK school bus driver was used to driving school children in his bus, rather than coming to the airport to pick up newcomers to Congo. Upon his arrival, he had unwittingly entered the VIP parking lot, which was overfull because of the dignitaries meeting the vice-president. Immediately, soldiers swarmed the school bus, sticking their rifles through the window into the chauffeur’s face. “Back up! Back up!” they screamed. The chauffeur slammed into reverse, eager to save his life, only to smash into a brand new Mercedes Benz sedan stopped behind him. After a lengthy negotiation, Emmanuel finally appeased the irate Mercedes driver with seventy dollars USD. “I am so glad it was you to be the first ones of the alumni to arrive,” said Bassel, face beaming from his perch on the parking lot curb outside the terminal, where he had been waiting for us. “You had the language and the connections to make it through without a protocol under these circumstances!” We could tell he was taking this as a sign that the reunion would go off without a hitch; at least not one that we couldn’t handle. *** As we drove into town, memories began to flood into consciousness. I remembered the ’64 conflict and how my dad had loaded Congolese students into our VW van to bring them past rebel front lines to their

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homes. My older sisters Hope and Faith and two-year old sister Grace and I stayed with Mom in the village. “Mama Eidse and the children will be safest in Kamayala,” Dad strategized with the elders, displaying his confidence in the LundaChokwe network of influence that spans six countries in central and southern Africa. “If the rebels do come and you flee to the forest, you’ll take our family along. You know that we eat whatever you eat, and can forage and fend with the rest.” At age seven, I had planned and packed a pillowcase with survival supplies: a little cooking pot, spoon, sharp knife (for preparing food or making twine for constructing a shelter), an extra divunga cloth, which could serve as a shawl in the cold, a kata rolled up to cushion loads carried on my head, or a sling for tying fussing babies onto my back to quiet them, leaving the mothers free to carry on with their work. Cooking outdoors was a game I had played every day with my girlfriends. Girls our age tended the village babies. To be able to do this while camping out in the bush thrilled me. I was ready to join the growing line of people fleeing rumors of war on the path to the forest that passed our front door. The rebels never did bring their grievance to the Kahemba region. Mwant’ Yav, Chief of the Lunda-Chokwe Empire, from his seat in Katanga Province, convinced the Simbas to leave the Lunda-Chokwe people untouched, citing historical alliances. People said that David Livingstone and his Lozi and Kololo-speaking companions had walked this very path in his explorations of Africa. Well-worn, it beckoned me also, with its offerings of adventure and intrigue. At one point it yielded orphaned twin baby foxes that became our pets, along with the monkey, an ancient tortoise, African Grey parrots and a gazelle. The little white girl inevitably would gain a following, which gave me the opportunity to develop leadership skills quite young. When I got tired of being asked to haul out my dolls to play, or just wanted to play with one friend, I became quite assertive in my own strategies for crowd control. One time, at age eight, I had climbed high up into the huge mango tree in our front yard, a favorite get-away. Some boys a few years older than I came by and were watching me from below. At that age, I considered boys to be barely human.

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“Go away!” I shouted. “Stop looking up my dress!” This only incited them to laughter. I promptly climbed down and chased them off with a machete. The Lunda-Chokwe are traditionally hunter-gatherers. As I grew older I was allowed to join the expeditions of women, hunting field mice immediately after the dry season fires had cleared the ground of metershigh elephant grass, or gathering mushrooms and fiddlehead ferns in the rainy season. On one smoky dry season hunt Mama Bea, a vivacious mother of the village, spotted an antelope fleeing the fires heading straight toward us. Immediately she threw her hoe at it and nailed it in the neck, dropping it on the spot. We strung it onto a pole and carried it triumphantly into the village that evening. Of all the men who had gone out to the hunt that day, not one had come home with an animal. Mama Bea became a celebrated legend. It was a rite of passage to join the women in gathering makoso, tree caterpillars that feed off the leaves of the mukoso tree, found in the wooded savanna. We left at four in the morning to make the four to five hour hike, up steep climbs and across rushing, crocodile-infested rivers high up on slippery, fallen giant tree trunks. The mamas with the adolescent girls kidded and chattered in easy banter. Arriving in the caterpillar forest we set to work in the lingering morning mist, sliding the smooth, moist bodies carefully off the leaves with our fingers, taking care not to kill or squish them. Competition on who could gather the most fed us, along with the odd grasshopper we’d catch and pop, raw, into our mouths once we had removed the pokey legs. After several hours, with all our containers full, we began the long hike back, hips swaying as we balanced our harvest on our heads, with no hands. We arrived in the village well after dark, and were welcomed with enthusiastic whoops and hollers. I felt proud to be part of this esteemed work team bringing in one of the principle cash crops of the year. The caterpillars had to be processed immediately, so everyone gathered by the fire, eager to hear the stories of the day’s adventures, while we all worked quickly to squeeze out the excrement from the caterpillars. Then the caterpillars were boiled in lightly salted water after which they were laid out on thatched platforms to dry in the hot sun. Thus preserved, they could be used in delicious palm oil sauces, or fried as a salty, crunchy snack.

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These deeply forged relationships of trust and identification were the subconscious signals communicated to us, that even though we were the only “yimbadi,” red-skinned children in the village, we could fully belong. In fact, our family name, “Eidse,” when pronounced in Chokwe, became “Ayize,” which means, “They’re the ones.” When Mom and Dad first arrived in Kamayala they poured themselves into mastering the language, lore and life of the Lunda-Chokwe people. Mom and Dad’s desire to identify as closely as possible with the people was a beat of a different rhythm than the colonial status quo of the time. The people adopted them as their own. Lunda Chokwe elders said, “The Eidses are not like other white people. They are really Chokwe ancestors who have been reincarnated as white people. You can trust them.” For me it was the most natural thing to be raised by the village. Kamayala was clearly my home. *** Three weeks in Congo in June 2005 allowed us to spend one week in Kahemba Territory, taking advantage of a scheduled weekly commercial flight into the region during election preparations. At Ndolo, the local airport, we boarded the WWII era Russian Antinov of Malu Aviation through the underside of the tail section, ducking and balancing on a rickety stoop. Though we were the first ones aboard, the only available seats were right at the back. The cargo filled the front half, with only stretched netting separating it from the passengers. There seemed to be no insulation in the tin walls to soften the deafening noise of the engines, nor to shield us from the freezing temperatures of 3000-meter altitudes. When John called Rachel to smile for the video camera, she didn’t respond. He tapped her shoulder, thinking she hadn’t heard. Stiffly she turned, her brown eyes wide in an ashen face. I burst into laughter, but suddenly realized she wasn’t putting it on. What to me enhanced the adventure seized her with the horror of a last breath. But I felt elated. For the first time in thirty-two years a familiar knowing engulfed me. These wings would take me home. With new conviction, and because no one could hear me anyway, I broke out into the spiritual that used to be our flying song, “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” We arrived safely at the Kahemba airstrip and our friend Pastor Chibilenu Robert met us. He was the Legal Representative for the Community of Mennonites of Congo in southern Bandundu province. He had a convoy

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of dirt bikes to carry our baggage and us the last four kilometers to our village of Kamayala. Nothing bigger than two-wheeled vehicles could be found in the region. The glory days of the ‘80s and ‘90s had long since fizzled, when diamonds trafficked freely across the Congo-Angola border and the city of Kahemba grew from a population of two thousand five hundred to fifty eight thousand. The population remained, but no wealth. On the contrary, people who had left natal villages and ancestral fields to settle in the city of Kahemba during the boom now had no land or means of growing food to nourish themselves. We were told that there are about seven thousand homeless children in Kahemba city. An epidemic of konzo was on the rise, ravaging a full five percent of the population with a paralysis for which there is no cure. Konzo is caused by cyanide poisoning that comes from eating the food staple, manioc, when it has not been sufficiently soaked, at least three days, in clean running water. It attacks adults and children alike, and can drop a person in a day, beginning in the legs, and progressing to the larynx. The city of Kahemba is vulnerable because of the high rate of malnutrition and the fact that the nearest potable water is fourteen kilometers away. The last leg of our journey, to Rachel’s consternation, involved careening through deep sand, sometimes off-roading in tall grass to avoid getting stuck. I found it exhilarating! Fresh plateau air, tinged with the faint smell of smoke from distant brush fires, marking the beginning of dry season, tickled my nostrils and whipped through my hair. Each bend in the road evoked images of times when we had walked it, biked it or learned to drive motorbike and car on it. The elephant grass that slapped cheeks and shins summoned, not a wizened grandma of forty-eight, but a blossoming seventeen year-old. By the time we approached the outskirts of Kamayala, with people lining the roadside shouting my name, “Zango! Zango!” (Love! Love!), I felt I was returning as the blonde princess of the village, on the cusp of womanhood again, as I had been when I left. Entering the clearing with the church before us, the village houses to either side, we dismounted to drums beating, school children dancing and singing in full harmony songs composed specifically for us, in renowned Chokwe musical tradition. Men, women, young and old, embraced us under woven arches of palms and bougainvilleas. I had told John about the Chokwe welcomes, like no other we had experienced. He was ready with the video camera to capture my homecoming, the fulfillment of his promise to me during what seemed a lifetime before. People draped us

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with colorful scarves and pressed flowers into our hands, dancing with us now, in exuberant procession, down the palm-lined lane, past the stonemason church with its cast iron bell ringing from the steeple, and on to our house. The elders had done a painstaking job of organizing timed visits by groups, all wanting to see us and reminisce with us: first the official representatives of community associations, then the women of the station, the men, the elementary students, youth, women and men from outlying villages. Three old women hobbled on stumped limbs from the leper colony two kilometers down the road, proudly presenting gifts of eggs and multi-colored “Mama Eidse” beans—their own produce. They had continued what Mom had taught them to cultivate, to enhance their nutrition and dignity with self-sustaining agricommerce. The stories! The enduring impact of a life of service! All led to the same refrain: “Mama and Tata Eidse really loved us!” On the afternoon of the second day the living room was full of men, when elder Wenyi, (Bea’s husband and resident expert on agricultural development) asked me, “Do you know who’s sitting beside you?” I looked blankly at the man with shaved head, who had slipped in somewhat earlier and sat across the room, never having said a word. As others arrived, he had moved to a seat beside me. “That’s Kalema!” said Wenyi quietly. John had observed him before I had. But when Wenyi mentioned his name, John couldn’t believe that I wouldn’t have recognized him. Kalema was the heartthrob of my youth. Tall and handsome in his ‘70s Afro, he had been a soccer star, scouted by big city teams. I had told John about Kalema, and for years John put up with hearing me recount nightmares in which he and Kalema were competing. How often hadn’t I dreamt about our reunion? But it had never happened. Now, completely embarrassed, I wondered at how deep my Chokwe self really lay buried. My lack of ability to converse in Chokwe troubled me. When I wanted to speak, I could only produce Jula sentences, the trade language of West Africa. When somebody made a disparaging remark about it, I admitted, “I don’t know why it is not coming back to me!”

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“It will come,” Kalema assured me. “You spoke Chokwe out of love for the people. Your love will bring it back again.” The second day was slipping by and we were still stuck inside, with no end in sight to the line-up of visitors. The next day was scheduled to be a tour of Kahemba city, twelve kilometers away, to visit all the urban churches that had been planted since the original two started under the initiative of my parents. Feeling restless, I became more assertive and insisted we go down to the Kamayala River, a place I wanted to revisit and show Rachel and John. John was not sure that we should tell the Chef de District what to do. Impetuously I said, “He’s not the boss over me. This is my home. I’m going to make sure we do what’s important for us.” Down by the river, raised garden beds stretched for many kilometers. With Wenyi’s initiative, Kamayala had become a key supplier of fresh produce for the city of Kahemba. He had single handedly turned around the infant mortality rates, always higher in the dry season, due to lack of food. Now people were planting and eating vegetables the year round. Walking the mile up from the river, Kalema and I had fallen in step beside each other behind John and Rachel. He pointed to a large rock off to the side of the path. “Remember this place?” he asked. I didn’t. “This is where Bea caught us sitting and talking one morning. She became hysterical and went and told your parents. You and I were summoned to an intervention in your living room, with Wenyi, Bea and your parents. Bea and your mother wanted to forbid us to see each other. Your father and Wenyi felt that was too drastic, preferring to take a wait and see approach. They decided that we could continue our friendship.” I looked up and noticed Justin coming down the hill toward us, wreathed in smiles. Justin and his parents, Pastor Shambuyuyu and Mama Elizabeth, had been neighbors of ours. The pastor was a repository of oral tradition, and Mama Elizabeth had arms that welcomed all her children’s friends. I had spent evenings sitting around the fire at their place listening to Chokwe folklore: fantastic tales of chingandangadi, mystic men of the forest, transforming into animals, the craftiest (an esteemed Chokwe value) killing the less adept guy and then burning his fingernails to bring back to life all his victims. Pastor Shambuyuyu spun the stories with finesse, the scripted scenes punctuated with haunting musical refrains

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delivered by the audience at points where suspense was mounting. With magic thumbs he cued us, conjuring descending minor arpeggios in complex rhythms from the tines of the kakolondondo, the Chokwe thumb piano he held in his hands. Masterfully, he released the spirit of that little wooden instrument to lead and fade with the cadence of his spoken word. As the hour got late, as I relaxed against the next body by the fire, I’d begin to drift to the lullaby voice. Draped in darkness, gazing into the thick, equatorial Milky Way, the Southern Cross reached down to close my heavy lids. The scene in the story slipped easily into the stuff of my dreams, weaving inextricably into my soul. In our mid teens, our girlfriends began to get married and move away. The guys became my close friends. I hung out with Justin, his brother Raphael, Kalema and the other local guys every day on school breaks, either sparring in competitive community teams on the soccer field, refining our volleyball technique, going for long hikes, talking about the hunt, the professions we wanted to pursue, or simply singing and listening to music. One day, to my chagrin, Kalema told me that he had been the boy at the bottom of the mango tree whom I’d chased with a machete. Who could have known that he would become my best friend? Shortly before I left Congo for Canada, Kalema and I had walked to Kahemba, where his mother made a special meal for us as a farewell gift, a toast to our enduring friendship. We parted for the evening, Justin and Kalema to Kahemba, and Rachel, John and me back to the house and the Chef de District. The next afternoon Kalema and his wife, Monique, hosted us with a big feast. How they could pull it off in such a short time, I don’t know. Monique, as the president of women of the largest Kahemba church, was also in charge of the coordination and music in a special service in our honor that day, attended by thousands. She welcomed us at their front door, unrattled, tall and slender, with smiles as effusive as her strong embrace. “Soyez les bienvenus!” she beamed. What a reunion with many friends! We played games we used to play by moonlight. I was surprised that I remembered the games and songs better than they did. When I got stuck on words, Kalema would help out. These were the games of our generation.

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We got down on our haunches for the punishing grab-your-ankles-andwhip-your-feet-out-from-side-to-side break dancing of Mbota, the frog. In another physical feat we sat on the floor with legs locked straight. Alternately, every other one was standing, holding the seated ones between them by the arms. They lifted our taut bodies like spokes of a wheel, winding us up in circular motion to the rhythm of the song, Ndeke Avion (the airplane bird). We took off with just our heels grounding us in the center as our human propeller spun faster and faster. When we crashlanded in a heap we laughed until our sides hurt. After most of the people had gone, Kalema, Monique, Justin and his wife, Adele, stayed and we exchanged gifts. John and Rachel, exhausted, finally went to bed. I, who normally am unable to stay up late, didn’t want the evening to end. Here in the presence of long lost bosom friends, I was known like no one else knew me. They resurrected stories from our youth that had atrophied below the regions of my consciousness. When I couldn’t recall someone, they knew just what connection to make that would bring it back. My ability to speak in the Chokwe language finally broke the surface on this third day, as Kalema had predicted. The euphoria of belonging possessed me. Reawakened, I wanted to know all, experience all. Everything I had lost from my childhood had washed up, in this happiest place of my life. I had one intense week to pry off the rim that had rusted shut the barrel of a life stashed in storage. In a frenzy, I pulled out the cherished pieces, modeling one after another to John, who observed them from behind the camera lens, as he documented this first return through the wardrobe to my Narnia. That camera, a physical barrier, kept him from fully participating. Through the lens he watched me slip away from him and the life we had built together. The final evening of our week up-country, after a meal around the fire in front of Wenyi and Bea’s kitchen hut, under a moonless, sequined sky, we generated gales of laughter as women and children played the old games one last time while the men cheered us on. We acknowledged our reconnection with a gift exchange, as tangible reminders for when we’d be far apart. I marveled again at how expertly the Lunda-Chokwe do homecomings and farewells: celebrating the reunion with joyful largess, affirming the specific significance of the other, offering words of hope and comfort, not guilt or self-pity, and entrusting the future into the benevolent Higher Hands of Nzambi.

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I lingered after John and Rachel went to bed. When Wenyi and Bea also wanted to turn in, Kalema offered to walk me home. It was the first time that week that we weren’t surrounded by a large group of people. I took the opportunity to tell him what I had always imagined I would say if we ever met again. “I want to thank you for the way you always treated me with respect when we were young.” “Mhm,” acknowledged the quiet bass voice through the darkness. “I’ve always said that it was due to the way you valued me during those impressionable teen years, that kept me from settling for unhealthy relationships, even through the lonely adjustment to Canada after I left here. I’ve found a husband who loves me because you showed me I was worth it.” “That’s very kind,” returned the voice. man!”

“Yes, John is an exceptional

The ensuing silence wasn’t empty or awkward. It suddenly struck me as déjà vu. At exactly this spot, long ago, on just such a night, we had said our reluctant good-byes. That time we had suddenly noticed Mom come out on the porch looking for me. I had flown through the blackness to the back door, my long legs easily taking the stairs two at a time to my attic bedroom. I’d crawled into bed and extinguished the storm lantern just as Mom came inside and mounted the steps. I feigned sleep, though she was not gullible. She touched the lantern glass. Then I felt her discerning eyes on me before she turned and left without a word. “Are you going all the way back to Kahemba tonight?” I asked Kalema now. “No. I’ll sleep at Wenyi’s,” he replied. “Are you tired?” “Not bad. Are you?” “Me? No! I know I won’t sleep at all tonight. Do you want to talk awhile?”

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“What would John think?” “Oh, he’ll understand,” I assured him. “If he wasn’t so tired he’d be out here with us.” We talked as constellations slid across the sky, the dense dry season dew descended, and restless goats filed by to re-settle on the still warm cement of the front porch. Neither of our lives had shaped up as we had imagined. “What is your biggest regret?” I asked. “My biggest regret is having lost you.” His words, articulated so candidly, stunned me. At the same moment they resounded in me with the force of truth that refused to stay buried. I literally felt the jolt in my solar plexus as the full realization of the love I had lost erupted from my core. I couldn’t even begin to decipher the implications. *** John was sitting across the table from me in the transit lounge of London’s Heathrow airport on the return to Canada. His lips pressed together traced a taut line as if they were the soul gatekeepers holding back his inner agony. “Charity, what is going on with you and Kalema?” “I’m in love with two men,” I said helplessly. “I’m not built that way!” he protested. “I know. But there must be some precedent,” I responded. “What do people do who have been separated in war from a loved one without a word for many years and then they get reunited?” I was thinking specifically of friends in Manitoba whose father had had that experience in World War II. They had found each other after thirty years and their families maintained contact from then on. John looked at me incredulously, unable to comprehend this person that his wife had become. He cried all the way back on the plane and for a

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week after we got home. He suffered chest pains so severe that he couldn’t get out of bed. Tests showed his heart to be strong, but he was experiencing the physical pain of a heart being broken. Though we were back among family and friends, I could no longer ignore the pull to Congo. I was driven to find answers to questions of a most fundamental nature. How did it happen that what had been so dear to me and had defined who I was, had lain discarded all these years -- the expressive Chokwe language that I had been so proud to speak (one of the most difficult of the four hundred Bantu languages and one spoken across six African countries), the cherished friends with whom I had invested myself, a future with Kalema that we had dreamed about together, believing our love to be strong enough to cross cultural and racial divides? Who had made the decision that this could not come along with me into adulthood? Why had I let it all slip away, only returning now in older age? How could I have utterly abandoned and hurt the people I loved and who always loved me? How could I leave now, call it “closure,” and inflict the same pain again? For clues I dug out the only shard of my history I still possessed, a forgotten little box of correspondence I had kept up after leaving Congo, before I had succumbed to the pressure to let go of my Congolese past. The separation, so profound, had felt like I was being torn from my very self. Alone, I had bandaged it in amnesia to dull the pain. My youthful soul, nurtured and identified in Kamayala, shriveled unnoticed and unmourned, here in the Red River Valley, the river of my Babylon. The people who realized the loss and grieved were a distant universe away. My own grief now cracked me open. Sitting cross-legged on my bed, blue aerogrammes strewn around me, I sobbed in the way I had learned to lament in Africa, naming not only what I had had and lost, but also all that could have been and would never be. *** Former TASOK schoolmate John Metzel had been nudging us for a year and a half to serve as international election observers for Congo’s first democratic elections in forty-five years, to be held in July 2006. The promise of an extended stay in my beloved Congo filled me with excitement. John faced it with foreboding. It was as if a lion had just run, unbidden, through the middle of our camp. We had no choice but to face it head on. We decided to go.

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Returning would not be simple. It would turn my world upside down, as I began to face up to repressed memories. Adolescent doubts and pain came rushing back: the unresolved teenage love, the guilt of leaving those I loved and the loneliness of the little child who had been sent far away to boarding school. All those years of feeling different in Canada, of feeling misunderstood, tasted bitter in contrast to the sweetness of being known and cherished in my village home. John and I ended that election year on the edge of a breakdown, grasping for the only help we knew. We returned to Canada, and booked three weeks of outpatient counseling with Dr. Duncan Westwood at the Missionary Health Institute in Toronto. Our friend and counselor, years earlier he had administered our pre-field personality tests, prepared us for overseas service and debriefed us upon our repatriations. A veteran himself of living across cultures, the gift he gave us was listening to our hearts, applying his understanding beyond the words we spoke. His analysis emanated from his exceptional intuition and love. He diagnosed my regressive state stemming from the traumatic, complete separation of myself from my formative identity. “If you seem to be unhinged,” he concluded, “it is because you ARE apart. Your adult self has never encountered your adolescent self before now. Your two lives have never had a chance to integrate.” There was no precedent case to guide us, no formula to apply. He referred us to the only residential crisis counseling facility in North America tailored for crosscultural, expatriate personnel. In November we checked into an apartment at Link Care Center in Fresno, California. There, in blessed anonymity, in the context of several months of individual, couple and group therapy, we would sort through the fragments of our lives, recovering the values on which we were to rebuild. Our marriage survived because of our experiences of loving one another up until that point. We had a rich history to draw on, of loving doing things together. For four years, we had driven a semi truck long distance, from one end of North America to the other, as we saved up for the election year we would spend in Congo. We could not get enough of each other. We just loved being together. We enjoyed life the same way. In March 2007, after our return from Fresno, we celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary by renewing our vows in the circle of our children and grandchildren, in the intimacy of our Manitoba country home.

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Completing the event with a ring ceremony, our three-year-old grandson proudly presented the rings, dressed only in his favorite batman underwear. We also said farewell to the family that weekend, as John and I had accepted new jobs in Congo. This time we were each returning with hope, because of the concerted personal process we had already undertaken. We were encouraged by the opportunities that Congo would offer due to our deep-rooted connections there. *** Five years on, on June 30, 2010, the Democratic Republic of Congo celebrated her jubilee, the fiftieth anniversary of Independence. As a permanent resident now within her borders, I can appreciate her struggle to dig out of the wreckage of decades of dispossession, dictatorship and international conflict waged on her soil. Bravely we point to the valuables we are recovering: the transition to peace, free and fair elections, the hopeful gearing up for the next democratic elections. Standing here under her new standard, the original flag reinstated, I affirm her inherent beauty: the soul of her people who persevere every day to emerge with an identity of truth and justice. In solidarity, I am proud to raise my unique voice in singing what ranks as one of the most beautiful of all national anthems: “Dressons nos fronts, longtemps courbés.” Let’s lift our heads, so long bowed down! This is my own return. My jubilee.

THE COLORS AND CULTURE OF HOME NANCY MILLER DIMMOCK

I was born on a muggy September night in the heart of the Belgian Congo. Throughout my growing up years, my missionary parents worked with national church leaders, doing a variety of things in different villages and towns in the central and western parts of the country. How I wished, through all of those years, that I had deep chocolate brown skin and curly black hair like my friends. Being a blue-eyed blonde was a terrible disadvantage when playing “capture the flag” or hide-and-go-seek at night. And I stood out like a neon sign when walking with my friends through the market. I wanted so badly to blend in but never could. I lived in the Congo for most of my first seventeen years, punctuated every fifth year with a return “home” to the U.S. But there I discovered alienation that was more than skin deep. People looked at me expecting a middle class suburban American kid, when, in fact, I often didn’t have a clue what they were talking about and seemed to have completely different ideas about what was important. This peach colored skin covered an African heart. This was not “home” to me. I wanted to blend in but never could. I remember particularly the year I turned nine. Flying into Tri Cities Airport, Tennessee, I felt my stomach churning. It wasn’t caused by the airplane. We had been on five of them already, since leaving Africa three days earlier. As we landed and taxied up to the small terminal, my parents excitedly pointed out a huge crowd of relatives there to meet us. The churning increased. I wanted to run away. But before I knew it, we were ushered off the plane and were being hugged, kissed and exclaimed over by all those strangers. The year was 1965. I had been four years old the last time I had seen these people. Now I was nine, and I didn’t know any of them. Furlough for this “mish kid” was a frightening experience. My relatives were, indeed, virtual strangers when we visited the U.S. for one year in

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every five. And, more disturbing, I tended to feel strange and “out of it” for the whole year. I didn’t know how things worked, either mechanically or culturally. I didn’t belong. And it was always a relief to head back HOME across the ocean at the end of furlough. Those occasional returns to the U.S. occurred when I was four, nine and fourteen. Eventually I graduated from an international high school in Congo (then Zaire) and faced a much longer stay in the U.S. I went to college—to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst—and found myself psychologically and physically MILES away from “home”. I remember sitting in a bus shelter one day, on the way to class, listening to John Denver over the intercom. He was singing “Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy.” I looked out at two feet of snow on the ground and cried. Throughout my early college years, I struggled with feelings of alienation and isolation, and of being a misfit in American society. “Well, this is only temporary,” I thought to myself. “I can endure it, and in a few years will fly back across the ocean where I belong.” One day, however, during my junior year of college, as I was studying the Book of Acts in the Bible, the early verses of Chapter 17 jumped out at me. The Apostle Paul was forced to go to Corinth and wait there for an unknown period of time. Did he just endure? No. He went to the market and began to preach. And the Church was established and grew in that place. The message I heard for myself was that I needed to be willing to stay in the United States and give it my all, like Paul did in Corinth. But I didn’t really understand. Why would God want me to give up my desire to serve Him in Congo? After all, I wanted to go, I knew the language and the culture and I loved the food! Serving Him there would be so easy. Why was He saying “No?” As I tried to obey, I slowly realized that God had things to teach me about Himself and His world, things that could only be learned (for me) in the U.S. I joined a local church and became involved in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on campus. What I learned during the next couple of years was that loving and serving God are the priorities of life, especially (and perhaps hardest of all) in the mundane things of every day. The “where” doesn’t really matter. Needs are everywhere to be met, and people are everywhere to be loved.

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I completed four years of college and joined the Peace Corps, working as a cattle feedlot manager in the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho, in southern Africa. Ahh. Back “home” finally. But it wasn’t really home. It was very different from my childhood home in central Congo. Yet, I learned the language and integrated quickly, feeling more AT home than I had in the U.S. This facility with language and the ability to relate and integrate into another African culture, while identifying areas of need in the society, served to confirm my desire to spend my life serving God overseas. But I had learned my lesson, and was willing to serve Him anywhere. I returned to the U.S. for a Master’s degree in International Agricultural Development at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, thinking I would train to help with food production. In early 1983, I was asked to speak at a Hunger Symposium organized by the animal and crop science departments of my school. Afterward, a young man, with the bluest eyes, came up and introduced himself to me. His name was Frank Dimmock and we clicked right away. A native of North Carolina, he had served as a mission volunteer in my old hometown in central Congo! He had plans to return to Congo for more summer follow-up work. We knew many of the same people and found lots to talk about. As Frank was pulled away that evening, by the people he had come with, he quickly jotted me a note to make a date for the following weekend. He didn’t know it, but he had won my heart then and there. He had written the note in Tshiluba, the language of my childhood. We became engaged in December of that year. However, we already had commitments for 1984, so the wedding had to be postponed. I went to Nebraska, to work as a cowgirl and learn about beef cattle production, and Frank went back to central Congo, as a specialist in a Church-based, urban health center. During our year of separation, we kept the postal systems busy on both sides of the Atlantic and made our plans for a June wedding in North Carolina. Frank’s goals and calling were similar to mine. He wanted to put his Master’s degree in Public Health at the disposal of the African church, and we applied together for a term of service through the Presbyterian Church (USA). Their partner church in Lesotho was asking for someone to direct a large community health care program from a mission hospital and we accepted the assignment eagerly. Following our marriage in June 1985,

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and a brief orientation program in July, we arrived in Lesotho to begin our challenging new work. We jumped into the new assignment, getting to know the communities and the staff and the needs of the area. However, I was 29 and Frank was 32, and our biological clocks were ticking loudly. We rejoiced when we discovered I was pregnant in late 1985. I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy the next July. But adjusting to parenthood proved much more difficult than I had expected. Parenting a newborn was all-consuming. No more village trips, or helping with rabies vaccination campaigns or working with farmers. My body was not my own. My time was not my own. I was stuck at home, not feeling very useful to anyone but my son, Nathan. Then, the day before Nathan turned a month old, Frank, most unusually, came home from the community health office in the middle of the morning, saying we needed to pray. A six-day old baby boy had been brought to the hospital from a nearby village. His mother had just died of complications following his birth at home. She was unmarried and an orphan herself. The extended family was poor, with no means of caring for an infant. Was there anyone at the hospital who could take the baby? As we prayed and talked, we arrived at the same conclusion. We would offer the baby a chance at life, in the short term, and God would take care of his future. So Mosiuoa (pronounced Mo-see-oo-wah, meaning “the one left behind”) came to us smelling of dried afterbirth and hungry as a horse. We bathed him and taught him to nurse. He ate voraciously, then promptly fell asleep in my arms. The bond was instant. His future immediately became clear to us. Some well-meaning friends counseled against our taking him. Do you understand the racial and emotional implications for you and your family? Another friend phoned from the U.S. quite angry at our “irresponsibility” to our family, and to the child and his culture. I had eyes only for my precious “second born” son and thought that his life was more important than “the implications.” We continued to take the steps toward making Moses (renamed after the one found in the bulrushes), a permanent member of our family. Nine months and many uncertainties later, Moses was ours, his adoption granted by the High Court of Lesotho.

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Nathan and Moses shared everything—a crib, a double stroller, and their mom. I breastfed them both. I had thought a single newborn was overwhelming, but here I was handling two. And I knew it was only by the grace of God! This was during the apartheid years in South Africa, when blacks and whites were kept apart from each other by law. As a result, this pair turned heads wherever they went. The reactions we received to “our chocolate and vanilla twins” in their double stroller, varied from disdain and anger to blessing. When our boys were about three, they received a box of 48 Crayola crayons. In going through all of those colors they identified their own. Moses was brown and Nathan was peach, and that is how we have defined the colors in our family ever since. Our daughter, Jessie, came along two years after the boys. Jessie was given the local name of “Ntsoaki” which means mixture. She changed the mix of our family of boys. She also brought—and continues to bring us— much joy. If Jessie brought mixture, Katie brought balance. We went looking for Katie to bring balance to our colors and sexes. It seemed important, especially for Moses, to have someone who looked like him in the family. There was no place in Lesotho to which you could apply to adopt a child. But we were open and available. In January, we attended the international church in the capital city and met a friend who was fostering an abandoned and desperately ill baby girl. She was five months old and weighed only eight pounds. Placed into our family in February, Katie turned into an “eating machine” and blossomed into a beautiful baby. Her adoption was granted in record time. She was ours by April. Four children in four years—two boys, two girls, two brown, two peach—nicely balanced, and plenty to care for by anyone’s standards… We had been in Lesotho for six years. Arriving as newlyweds, we now prepared to go to the U.S. for furlough with four children under the age of five. I felt that old sense of dread as furlough approached. My Americanborn husband didn’t understand. He was eager to see his family, go to museums, concerts and basketball games, eat breakfast at Shoney’s and enjoy being home. Maybe that was the difference—our sense of where home was. None of those things represented home to me. Home was the incredible brilliance of the stars in an African night sky, village sounds and wood smoke, dear friends with familiar customs. The U.S. with its

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neon nights and traffic sounds, unfamiliar faces and ways, and almost constant noise and motion, was a scary place for me. As I pondered my adult dread, however, I realized that it went deeper than my childhood fear of things unfamiliar and feelings of isolation. I felt threatened in my spirit, by the temptations I knew I would face in the States: the temptation to focus on myself and my appearance and be dissatisfied, the temptation to accumulate a lot of “things”, and the temptation to be distracted from God by the constant activity and noise. I anticipated that we would all experience culture shock to one degree or another, and so I prayed for God’s perspective and protection for our family. One week after arriving in the U.S. I lost my husband. He had gone to the grocery store down the street to buy some cereal and bread. TWO HOURS later (I was beginning to have visions of traffic accidents), he walked in the door saying, “Do you KNOW how many different kinds of breakfast cereal there are to choose from in this country?!” Our oldest son, Nathan, then age five, completely lost control in a department store filled with more toys than he had ever seen in his life. His acquisitive little soul wanted everything he saw and he screamed in frustration when the answer was “no.” We had to carry him out of the store. I ordered some address labels from a borrowed catalogue, and for the rest of that year we were inundated with junk mail, encouraging us to buy every kind of unnecessary item imaginable. We also watched too much television, ate too much junk food, and bought some things we didn’t really need. However, in the process, we gained some wisdom, self-knowledge, discipline, and some cultural “know-how,” which have come in handy during subsequent furloughs. And we met many wonderful people as we traveled around the country speaking in different churches. Overall, we really enjoyed that furlough year. But I have to admit that it was still a relief, at the end, to be heading back HOME to Africa. Frank had handed over his community health work to a local colleague in Lesotho, so at the end of furlough in 1992, we were assigned, by our church, to a new work in the country of Malawi in southeastern Africa.

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Our four multicolored children caused a stir in this new country as they had in Lesotho and South Africa. There were all kinds of interesting stories going around. My favorite was the one about Frank having two wives, one black and one white! The explanation of adoption met with absolute amazement. “These children are not of your own blood or even your own race. How can you love them and raise them as your own?” The answer to that was easy: “Adopting children who need us is only a very limited response to God’s unlimited grace and love for us. And children are a blessing. An African proverb says so!” They would nod their heads in agreement. “Yes, children are a blessing and you are four times blessed.” Yes, we were blessed. But I couldn’t seem to leave it there. Throughout our first term in Malawi, I asked Frank if we could put the word out to the hospitals that we were available if a child needed us. My husband said “No. If God puts another one on our doorstep, we’ll know it’s from Him, but we’re not going looking for any more children.” Still, all six of us continued to pray and think about expanding our family and often talked about the pros and cons. While on our next furlough, we discussed the slim possibility of adopting during the short year we would be in the States. We applied through Bethany Christian services and were called on Easter weekend in 1997 to pick up our two-week old baby boy! Andrew Thomas joined the family and traveled back with us to Malawi in July. The following Christmas, my husband commissioned a local artisan to sculpt a family—a mother, a father and FIVE children—IN STONE. It was his cute way of saying, “enough is enough!” But God had other plans. When we returned to Malawi for a second term, we found ourselves in the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. Southern Africa is daily devastated by this disease, which leaves literally hundreds of thousands of orphans behind. Traditionally, in African culture, the extended family cares for orphaned children, but AIDS is claiming the lives of the parent generation, and completely overwhelming the family’s ability to cope. I remember commiserating with one pastor who had eight children. Each of his two brothers also had eight children. They had died of AIDS, together with their wives, leaving him with twenty-four children to feed, clothe and educate. This pastor’s story filled me with questions. What was my responsibility? How could I help?

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In February, 2000, while my husband and I were taking a retreat at Lake Malawi, I had what I can only call a “vision.” A picture came into my head of our living room lined with baby cribs, and I was naming the babies in alphabetical order, using strong Bible names for them to grow into. There were Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Dinah, Esther, etc. I didn’t know what to make of it. I told my husband about it, and he turned a bit green at the idea, but didn’t know what it meant either. In order to get more information, I asked social workers, hospital workers and the police, “What happens to orphaned infants?” The consistent response was, “They usually perish.” I was both stunned and appalled. I had never thought about this problem nor this particular group of extra-vulnerable children. Was God asking me to intervene somehow? In April, 1999, Fletcher Matandka, a young Malawian pastor’s son then attending African Bible College—and a good friend of ours—began a ministry to orphans in his village outside the capital city. Taking a few other students that first Saturday, he organized “tea” and a Bible study for sixty children who had been identified as extra needy by the community. One child was carried by his grandmother to the gathering. He was four years old but with the classic stunting, orange hair, distended belly and withered limbs of extreme malnutrition. My friend urged the grandmother to take the child to the hospital where she could get help and supplemental foods. So she strapped the child to her back, walked the six miles to the main road and got on the bus to the city clinic. She hurried through the main gate to the front door, then stopped. She hung her head and sighed deeply. She was too late. She turned around and retraced her steps, back to the bus and the long walk home with the dead weight of her grandson on her back. This story shook my world. The heavy burden of that grandmother and the death of that little boy were unacceptable. I fiercely told Fletcher that we could not let that happen again. He had to let me know if he came across another such child, so that we could intervene in time. I didn’t know what we would do, but I knew we had to do something. In late September 2000, Fletcher urged us to visit what was developing into a community-based orphan care center in his village. He called it Ministry of Hope. We came around the corner of the building and saw a pathetic baby sitting on her auntie’s lap. Her mother had died of AIDS in February and the baby was severely malnourished. I was reminded of my vision and my desperation to prevent another infant death. I looked at my

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husband enquiringly, and he said, “She needs special care or she’s going to die.” We arranged for the District Social Welfare officer to talk to the family, and the baby was released to us for care. When I took her to the doctor the next day, he was not encouraging. The baby’s name was Alifa. She was two and half years old and weighed only twelve pounds. He gave her a 50% chance to live. I asked, “What do we have to do to give her that 50% chance?” He inserted a nasogastric tube and told me to feed her a rich porridge through the tube every two hours. I did this for a week. Then one day, at the dinner table, she reached for some food and began to eat by herself. There was a pause, then a cheer went up from the whole family! She was on the road back to life and health. A year later, we were able to officially adopt her, and she became our child number six. Alifa means “Alpha”, the first or the beginning. Alifa proved to be the beginning of our understanding about the needs of orphaned infants, and of severely malnourished children. She was the beginning of our getting connected to government and church organizations working with such children. When Frank heard her name, he laughingly said, “We have to change her name to Omega (‘the Last’)!” But she was only the beginning of what eventually grew into the Ministry of Hope Crisis Nursery. In time, we really did have cribs lining our living room wall. The Nursery officially opened on October 25, 2002 with the arrival of Angelina. She was found in the blankets of her dying mother in the hospital. Her big brown eyes stared into mine out of a wizened "old-lady" face. Her little body was wrapped in a cloth and she felt feather-light in my arms. Unwrapped, back home, she looked like one of the shriveled apple people of Appalachian-craft fame. Her skin hung loosely over perfectly defined bones. She was a living study of the skeletal system, unhindered by any muscle covering. She was five months old and weighed five and half pounds. She stole our hearts from the first moment. She spoke with her eyes, following every movement around her, and with occasional squeaks of discomfort or need. She didn't have the energy for more. We washed her little body and snuggled her into a diaper and soft sleeper. She had no energy to suck or swallow, so a doctor friend inserted a nasogastric feeding tube. We fed her precious, life-giving milk every two hours around the clock. She lay quietly on 12-year old Katie's lap during evening prayers. Alifa said, “She's a good girl. She is being quiet during worship.” She survived her first night with us and we rejoiced. Our 5-yearold Andrew prayed fervently that she would "grow strong and healthy,” but it was not to be.

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At her 4:00 a.m. feeding time early Sunday morning, I hugged her close, because her hands and feet were so cold. She looked at me again with those big, soft brown eyes. Then they suddenly lost focus. Her breathing became irregular. She hiccupped a couple of times and was gone. Our precious Angel was gone. I hugged her tight and cried and cried. If only we had known of her situation earlier. If only her family and hospital staff had known of our willingness to help. Angelina's death spurred us on to work with social welfare and officially open our home as a crisis nursery, fulfilling that long-held vision for ministry to extra vulnerable infants. We had the privilege of caring for over 100 needy infants in Lilongwe and the surrounding area during the next six years. “Why did Angelina have to go to Heaven so soon?” asked four-year-old Alifa. “God loved her even more than we did, and wanted her to be with Him,” I answered. “Why didn't she take her suitcase?” she asked, pointing to the tiny rattan bag of clothes at the foot of the crib. “She left it behind to share her clothes with Baby Darlene,” I said, looking at the new 3-week old occupant of the crib. Since that inauspicious beginning, Darlene, Benson, Moses and Selina came for care. We started with one crib, then four, then nine, each child with his or her own story. Ethel and Rachel, Abraham and Samuel and so many others responded to care and are happy and healthy now, either placed with a loving family member or into a new adoptive family. Adoption…There is no word for it in the local languages of either Malawi or Lesotho. It is sometimes translated “to raise for oneself” or, heavenforbid, to “buy” a child. A local couple working at a mission hospital in Malawi heard about the children being cared for at the Crisis Nursery. They were barren and wondered if it was possible to have one for their own? After being assessed by Social Welfare, a sweet, abandoned 10month old was placed in their arms. He blossomed into a well-loved toddler, and this courageous couple became our best advocates and educators about what adoption means. Mwana wanga—my very own child.

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In September, 2003, the Presbyterian Church in Malawi gave Ministry of Hope a plot of land on which to build a house for the nursery. The church had approved plans for a three-bedroom house and 100,000 burned bricks were already stacked on site. The contractor was able to begin right away and completed the building in nine short months. This gave us back our living room and enabled the Nursery to provide a better environment and more space to properly care for the babies. The new house technically has space for 25-30 infants, but regularly pushes those limits—with beds and babies being moved into the reception and play areas. This has been God’s project, and has been a blessing to everyone involved. We had no idea, when God urged us to start this ministry, how it would minister to so many—widows, single mothers, volunteers, jaded young people—and not just the babies. We also had no idea that it would lead to the addition of two more children to our own family . . . One of the early arrivals to the nursery was Baby Moses, so named because he was found, as a newborn, thrown away in the sugar cane fields north of Lilongwe. He stole our hearts in a particular way and joined the Dimmock family in 2004. We renamed him “Isaac.” It seemed appropriate because, like Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament, he was the “son of our old age!” Little did we know that we would be getting older still before it was over. In January of 2006, while sitting in church, I received a strong impression in my mind that God was asking us to take a hard-to-place, steeped-inwitchcraft 13-month old baby from the Crisis Nursery. We had been praying for a family for this child for a year, and now God seemed to be saying, “YOU are his family.” Everything in me rebelled at the idea. It made NO sense. We were only months away from packing to leave Malawi and the paperwork normally takes eighteen months or longer. And this would make child # eight, for goodness’s sake, when seven was already more than plenty. How would we finance another child? Where would we find the energy to raise another child at our age?? (I was turning 50 and Frank 53 that year.) And I cringed to think what Frank would say– -he who had been saying “Enough!” since child number four. I struggled with God about this for over a week. I was irritable, angry and truly miserable. Finally I told Frank and inwardly braced myself for his reaction. When it came, I was humbled. He listened, and then quietly asked, “Are you sure you heard Him right?” The implication was that if the answer was “yes” (and it was) then the response had to be obedience

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and trust. That simple question put it all into perspective for me. We had been doing this for years, and had found God to be completely trustworthy. Once we said, “Yes”, God worked out all the details, miraculously, and we went to the States, six months later, with our very unplanned eighth child, Jackson. By now, both Frank and I were in agreement that, in the words of the old TV show, “Eight is enough!” Looking at us from the outside, we are definitely a multiracial family. By birth we come from four different countries. By ethnic heritage we come from about 10 different sources, including Scotch/Irish/English and Zulu/Sotho/Chewa. People naturally relate to us from that outside perspective. I remember an incident during our first furlough, going into a grocery store in North Carolina. The girls were in the double stroller and the boys were pushing them. A large white man came out of the store, took one look at our multicolored kids and said, “What are y’all running, some kind of day care?” “Yes,” we replied with a laugh. “Some kind of 24-hour day care!” When our boys were five and attending kindergarten in the States, they were called “the brothers” by their classmates. Nathan was the only white boy in his class to be invited to a birthday party at the “Projects.” Moses has been made to feel awkward about his parents, in both Africa and the States, when asked with scorn or disbelief, “Is THAT your mother?” In a Georgia high school, they discovered that blacks and whites did not sit together in the cafeteria. While they were pulled at from the two sides, they decided to set up their own “mixed” table in the middle. As young adults, the four older children have had to deal with insults and skepticism regarding their being brothers and sisters. Whether peach or brown, we have all found it difficult to “blend in,” on either side of the ocean. People look at us and see the differences and expect difficulties. And while we have plenty of differences and difficulties, they are not necessarily related to our different races or ethnic origins. It’s true that our brown children have to be reminded to put lotion on their extra-dry skin in winter. And our peach-colored children have to be reminded to put lotion on to protect them from sunburn in summer. But they all have to be reminded to brush their teeth and clean up their room and be kind and thoughtful. Usually, our differences, as in any family, are related to personality and placement in the family. Our # four child hated being bossed by the older ones and wished she was # one. Our twins were in an almost constant state of macho competition throughout their growing up

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years. Our young ones are desperate to do everything the next oldest is doing, so as not to be left out. Normal family dynamics. During a recent furlough, I pondered the idea of family culture. I realized that every family, as it becomes a family-–whether by birth, adoption, or blending – develops a unique culture of its own. We do things a certain way. In our house we speak English. We hold hands around the table and take turns saying the blessing before a meal. We put a high premium on “please” and “thank you” and “yes, ma’am” or “no, sir.” Everybody has chores to do. We tease each other. We have rowdy wrestling matches on the living room floor. These things are a part of our family culture. Everyone belongs equally and is equally loved—and so we are often surprised when some remark or question makes us conscious of our outward differences. As an adult, still living in southern Africa, I have experienced both the advantages and disadvantages of being “white.” Now, when I go to the market with friends, they tell me to “stay in the car so the prices won’t go up.” Or they say, “You go exchange this money. It will be easier for you than for us.” It is a reality of our world that we are judged by the color of our skin. But it should not be so. We might be very different from each other because of our different cultures. We might be very different because of our economic status, or our educational levels. But why does color seem to matter so much to people, when there is no logic in it, as a basis for evaluating someone? Our physical bodies are essentially the same, with only different shadings of skin covering the same blood, sweat and tears. These days, our “big four” are in the States attending college and going through their own cultural adjustments. The “little four” and Frank and I are back in Lesotho. We were reassigned here in 2007, invited by the church to help in their response to the needs of children in crisis. While Frank advocates for improved care and protection of Africa’s children, at the macro level, I’m trying to do the same, on the micro level. Last night I was awakened three times. Two babies woke up needing a change and one yelled for a bottle. I never did do well with interrupted sleep. Whether I’m 35 or 55, it still makes me cranky. And these are not my grandchildren, sleeping over for a night or two. These are vulnerable, malnourished orphans, once again, sleeping in my living room for an

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indeterminate number of months. Ministry of Hope is being established in Lesotho. Some days I dream of “normal” life stages, and long for a pristine, orderly, quiet house in American suburbia. But most days, I have to say, I wouldn’t trade my messy, overpopulated, little house in southern Africa for anything. After all, this is home.

A CANARY SINGS ON THE ROAD TO ATHENS KATHLEEN DANIEL

The sun is blazing and insects buzz in the near distance on a late summer day in a small west Texas town. I am squatting in the dusty alley behind our house, practicing being still. I startled a lizard a few minutes ago. It hasn't moved a muscle or taken his bulging eyes off of me since. My plan was to lie in wait to outstare him, but then, suddenly a horned toad skitters across the periphery of my vision. The creature is just too tempting, and the game is off. Later, having fed and tucked my new pet into its box, I climb my favorite tree, and snug in its embrace, look down at our new black kitten, Krampus, eyeing my newborn sister in her crib on the porch, while my older sister is situated on her own sturdy limb nearby, reading. Tomorrow we'll walk the half mile to school together across town, past the neighbor's neat flowerbeds, the Dairy Queen, and the new "fast food" restaurant selling 30 cent burgers that were all the buzz when it came to town, but for now, I am content exploring the rhythms of life around me.

No perturbations upset my small town life in the early 1960s. My days were predictable. Mother was in charge of the household, Father went to work, we sat down to dinner together every night, piled into the station wagon for summer road trips, and rushed every Sunday to get to church on time. Yet what does a child know of her world? I knew that my mother's accented English caused the local grocer to call her “Zsa Zsa” and that moving from our last house when she was pregnant had been hard on her. And when I was very little and recently arrived in America, a first meeting with my tearful uncle left me confused. Why aren’t Aunt Katinka and my cousins Alexa and Ernoke with you? Who “won’t let them come?” Yet three years later we left that Texas town for another, and then another, until leaving home and all that went with it became part of the fabric of my life. Due to my father’s work, our family settled in four U.S. towns in two states in rapid succession before I turned 14, and then expatriated to South America where I graduated from high school a year early at 17. I lived in eight houses and went to seven schools, continuing that mobile trajectory for another ten years as a young adult in Austin, Madrid, New

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York, San Francisco, New Delhi, Madras, and Austin again before “settling down” in Annapolis, only to uproot again almost two decades later “back home”—to Europe. And my family? The last twenty years found us spread over three continents. And that little Texas town experienced its fifteen minutes of fame, sheltering a presidential dynasty. “Isn’t that beautiful?” my father says, eyeing a spindly plant topped by an unlikely yet glorious burst of red. “This is just like life, isn’t it? It just keeps going on, taking unexpected turns, and then out of the blue, it surprises you with a new blossom.”

Buenos Aires I came into this world as Catalina María Daniel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a child of Hungarian immigrants. I was born into a community of postwar European refugee families, each with a story to tell of what they had left behind in the wake of World War II. Our family was no different. In 1944, while occupying German forces were picking up men from the streets to ship them to fight at the Russian front, my father was evacuated by the administration of his university to safety in Austria. From Tyrol he migrated to Buenos Aires where, as a musician, engineer and passionate lover of the arts, he eventually opened an avant-garde art gallery. A year later, my mother’s father, a member of the Hungarian Parliament, led his family of eight to safety in three covered wagons in advance of an imminent Russian occupation. Seven years later my parents had met and started a family in Buenos Aires. But the dream of America called to my parents, and they were ready when the U.S. opened its doors to Hungarians in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. I picture my father today, prepared with an advanced degree in petroleum engineering picked up in Patagonia, checking oil rigs amid the tumbleweeds in the west Texas desert, and am awed by his ability to adapt. I remember how he liked to joke that he was the best engineer among violinists and the best violinist among engineers. In equal measure my mother, an extraordinarily keen observer of human life, diligently studied for her U.S. citizenship exam, and drilled us in the rules of etiquette required for acceptance and success in our new culture.

Texas I confess only to a slowly dawning confusion then, to an intuition that our little family was singularly out of place. Somehow we had appeared on

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this desolate terrain and were learning the ways of the natives. Indeed in post-McCarthy America we dutifully registered as “aliens” every year at the post office. Like tourists we gazed with equal curiosity at the neighboring suburbs in our small town as at the Grand Canyon. Meanwhile my sister and I learned to dive expertly under our sheltering desks during civil air raid drills at schools to protect ourselves in case of Communist attack, whatever that may have meant. That my parents inhabited universes of private trauma is a given, though it was not until many years later that they spoke about the lives they had left behind. By then they were philosophical. They knew that without the memories and stories of our extended family—impossible with censorship of mail behind the Iron Curtain—their worlds could not be bridged. As a child, I witnessed only stoicism, dignity, and curiosity. And my parents were nothing if not stalwart, practical, and forward-looking, delivering the oft-repeated message: America is our home. And, especially, as we left Texas to move east, that we should forget the past; opportunity lay in the future. It took me many years to realize that they spoke to encourage themselves.

New Jersey We were en route to our new home in New Jersey when we heard on the morning news that Martin Luther King had been assassinated in Memphis, not so far away from our hotel in North Carolina. Cultural tensions had risen to the surface after President Kennedy's assassination, and the Vietnam War had caused deep rifts in society. In quick succession student protests, the rise of rock and roll, hippies, a drug culture, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, the violence of the 1968 Democratic convention, Woodstock, the Kent State killings were changing the fabric of U.S. culture. Barely a teenager, and with intrinsically conservative parents confounded by the social upheaval, I experienced these events only as backdrop to my life. Even so, I have more than once been taken aback by the realization of the extent to which I assume that generational rebellion and social unrest are intrinsic features of family and civic life. To say I met my first Jew as a young girl entering middle school in a small New Jersey township is to point out my innocence of diversity. The few black kids I'd met in Catholic schools, though accepted, were an acknowledged novelty. In public school now I glimpsed a rawer edge of life, and quickly identified three distinct groups of kids. The cool and

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popular kids’ lives revolved around football, cheerleaders and clothes. Boys with packs of cigarettes rolled into their t-shirt sleeves, the tough set, had girlfriends who smoked in the bathrooms, and were fiercely gossiped about when they got pregnant and then disappeared. And then there were the nerds, the ones who studied and followed the rules. I was Kathy Daniel, a nerd. I quickly understood that following the rules was not cool, but it was a revelation to discover that rules were a construct, and for many kids who were defiant of authority, simply not relevant. Given my options, nerd was neutral and safe. It even offered a shield of invisibility. Even so, I was only too happy when my father announced after two years that we were moving to Caracas, Venezuela. The shield was constraining; perhaps I could express more of myself elsewhere. My classmates wanted to know if people lived in trees and got around in canoes there. I doubted it, but then I really had no idea. For my parents it was important that we travel with U.S. passports. So, for all its apparent significance, I remember becoming an American as a surprisingly minor affair. We made an altogether forgettable visit to a standard issue government office to recite an oath of loyalty to the U.S. That was it. And this disconnect: In those days the U.S. prohibited dual citizenship, so I had to renounce my Argentine citizenship—yet Argentina refused to recognize rejection of my birthright. How did that work? No one could explain it to me. I knew the drill of moving but I was tired of carting my body and things around again. As orchestrated by my mother, moving was an opportunity to pare down. Of what possible use was my big fuzzy stuffed abominable snowman? I was 14 now, it only took up space. And my sketches that had survived previous moves? Out. I was an introvert, and in each town I had left an important best friend behind: Claudia Abate, Maria Martinez, Bill Paxton, and now Cheryl Richardson. My father tried to rally my enthusiasm by talking about a new adventure, while my mother was sympathetic. “That's life, kiddio,” she would say. And there was a surprise in store for us. Before flying to Caracas, my parents had excitedly planned their first trip home to Europe since leaving almost 25 years before.

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Europe The trip was a revelation. I was enchanted from the moment we headed down the autobahn from Munich in our rented Volkswagen van. My sense of time, geography, and ethnicity exploded. The natural grandeur of the landscape, combined with a historical emphasis on refinement and beauty in public spaces, brought a powerful sense of both timelessness and continuity into everyday life. It was exhilarating. We drove through typically tidy Tyrolean villages, the magnificent Austrian Alps, and to grand, chaotic, and idiosyncratic Rome, where my sisters and I ripped the hems of our miniskirts to be allowed entry to St. Peter’s Cathedral. I looked forward to sinking into the thick piles of a goose down comforter each night and to a kaiser roll in the morning with fresh butter that held the flavor of the alpine scents around us. Without an extended family to mourn, I had never set foot into a cemetery before, but as we visited mausoleums of elaborately entombed monarchs like Maria Theresa, I could see that for my parents the Habsburg legacy was personal. They had had a hand in shaping our family’s history.

Hungary Nothing in those few weeks, however, prepared me for our visit to Hungary. Entering from Vienna through the dismal border checkpoint, it felt indeed as if we had passed through an iron curtain into another world. I saw flat uninspired farmland, and rolling green hills of what I came to call "Soviet grass." It seemed as if all of nature was mourning, dying under an invisible, toxic assault. I didn't understand the armed soldiers on the streets or how, if they spoke Hungarian, they could be a danger to us. Wasn’t Hungarian the language of intimacy, of family, and safety? We arrived like royalty in our big van into dark, shabby, beautiful, and magnificently faded Budapest, and were greeted at a noisy family reunion by strangers relaying snippets of memories, and mixing laments for the “old days” with bits of fury and despair. What I could make sense of in my smattering of Hungarian was a mystery. How I’d grown, they exclaimed! What? I'd never met them before; how could they presume to know me? And why were they speaking in loud whispers? How were we dangerous to them? Who forced them into tiny apartments to share with strangers? They called me Kati, and Katica, the same names my parents called me, though they bore no resemblance that I could see to my family.

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Yet, despite the long shadows filled with untold stories that they cast, I experienced them as vital and alive. My octogenarian great aunts maneuvered their shopping bags on trams and subways with gusto, and around labyrinthine streets that were checkered with smog encrusted Ladas parked every which way up the sidewalks. In elegant yet faded clothing hinting at lives lived in another age, they entered their overstuffed flats through decaying porticos still pock-marked with bullet holes. They enjoyed life, drank palinka brandy, engaged in lively conversation until the early hours, and laughed with the dark humor and unique Central European sense of irony that I came to appreciate only many years later. But then the summer was over and I had neither tools nor time to reflect on who these people were as we set out for the new life that awaited us in Venezuela.

Caracas Arriving in tropical Caracas was a sensory shock, the bustling metropolis nestled nearly 3000 feet above sea level in a verdant valley. The mountains cast a majestic backdrop to everyday activity, and were a stark contrast to the chaos of life below, with the blare of insistent horns in gridlocked traffic, scattered skyscrapers, hillside villas and colorful outdoor markets. My senses reveled in the chaos, and the lyricism and expressiveness of the Spanish language warmed my soul. Life was a study in contrasts. A special weekend treat was to pile into the car and head towards Cata, winding our way through the Spanish mossdrenched rain forest, while keeping an eye out for the first glimpse of our favorite sandy white cove, with its dotted palm trees and pounding surf, my little slice of paradise. Then Monday morning came, and to the tune of “Stairway to Heaven,” my school bus braved the early morning clouds, climbing past hillside shantytown barrios, some of which regularly disappeared during mudslides in the frequent, punishing rains, and just as regularly reappeared. We passed big cars parked in front of makeshift huts with dirt floors and oversized TV sets blaring. Barefoot children, whose occupation was begging, or selling the fried plantains I loved on city streets, played in tattered clothes. And then we arrived at the international school, a breathtaking oasis of quiet, nestled, dreamlike, on the top of a hill overlooking the valley and the noisy life of the city.

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The contrast and complexity of Third World poverty and privilege was stark. During breaks between classes we settled on the grass or into hammocks, to chat or lunch on white corn arepas and savory enchiladas from a local vendor. The native Venezuelans and many of my peers from Israel, Japan, Canada, Philippines, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. were sons and daughters of oil company executives. My best friend was an Italian girl who called me Katerina. Their stories formed pieces of a mosaic of lives I couldn’t quite see as a whole. I felt at ease. It was a place where being different was the norm. With somewhat wild abandon I drank it all in, enjoying an intense teenage social life until, precipitously, my father's company closed its Venezuelan operation. I accelerated my classes, entering school in my second year in Caracas as a junior, and graduated nine months later a college-bound senior.

Austin I reached the shores of the U.S. again, a 17-year old freshman in the forty thousand strong campus at the University of Texas at Austin. Land of football, beer and tailgate parties, country music, sorority rushes, born again Christians and homecoming queens coming from nearby small towns to experience life in the big capital city. Ironically, despite my family’s exertions that I become American, I was classified as a foreign student, and was rapidly lost in a sea of outsized classes without an anchor. The era of student protests was largely over, although with troops still in Vietnam, divisions remained that took the form of political action. Though I was American, sort of, my story was too complicated for most of my peers to take an interest in it. Hungary – or Venezuela, for that matter – wasn't on anyone's radar, and its location behind the Iron Curtain made Hungary suspect. The comfort and abandon I had experienced in Caracas receded, and my career as a marginal in American society was launched. As it happens, a thriving group of marginals of an entirely different breed populated the “Drag,” the street directly across from the forty acre campus. They were artists, healers, and craftsmen who spread their blankets on the street and sold hand carved leather belts and jewelry, read tarot cards, and organized around issues of social justice and the environment. This subculture of artists and activists served as my cultural informants, and it was from them that I received my education and insight into the undercurrents and recent turning points in American society.

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Yet being marginal to the mainstream in itself is not a sufficient basis to form a tribe. A portrait that an artist friend painted of me tells the story. It is a richly hued oil of dark purples and greens, showing a crouching woman peering out from behind high reeds. She called it Hidden Lady. To this artist I was an outsider, observing and absorbing, but revealing little. She couldn't know that I didn't know what to reveal to whom, or how I had a plethora of perspectives on a given subject, but not a single voice I could call my own. I shared neither the goals nor values of the subculture nor of the university students, both rooted in their distinctly American experience. I found no natural tribe, and preferred to stay in the background. Today I would describe my experience as a species of acquired autism. The rapid pace of my life, the changing identities and multiple instances of culture shock, had left little time to name, digest and integrate my experiences. I was disoriented, acutely self-conscious and often mute. Providentially, I came across a book at the campus bookstore that became my lifeline. It was called The Fundamentals of Yoga by Canadian psychiatrist Rammurti Misra, M.D. Practicing yoga poses for hours between classes was profoundly calming, while its metaphysics struck a chord. Surprisingly, the author spoke about culture. He likened cultural conditioning to a kind of hypnosis, suggesting that it encourages people to take on roles that harden into masks and to forget who they are. So they seek satisfaction from the world of possessions, distraction, or competition. He suggested that they won’t find it there, and that happiness comes only from within. I felt I had found room to breathe, and a voice that spoke to my experience. I didn’t know who I was or what to do with my life and desperately needed perspective. My parents had discouraged my interest in psychology, and with no direction, I decided to drop out of school to think. My father, however, wouldn't hear of it, and was convinced that a year of study overseas would focus me. I applied and was accepted, to my great dismay, by New York University in my junior year into their program at the University in Madrid.

Madrid In Madrid I was now perceived as an American. Spaniards wanted my opinions on CIA activities in connection with Salvador Allende's death in Chile and challenged me to defend U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the ethics of owning gas guzzling cars during an oil embargo. I felt defensive,

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uninformed, even embarrassed. I resented being painted with an American brush, and felt angry about the actions undertaken in my name by the U.S. government. But I delighted again in the Spanish language and temperament, though it was evident to any Spaniard that I was speaking a South American strain of castellano. I loved paella, tapas, Jerez de la Frontera, salted cod, chorizo, and manchego cheese with jamón serrano, and learned to use fragrant olive oils and garlic as staples in cooking. I was inspired by the sophisticated dress and attention to self-care of Spanish women. I gained confidence and developed my own distinctive style. As I traveled Europe, I began to understand the European character of Spanish people. They were not the same as the Spanish of colonized South America; their identity was rooted in European history, in Spain's long Moorish occupation, and in their history as conquerors. But with Franco still in power, Spain was a repressed, conservative and deeply religious society. So many girls and women in whose families there were no shortage of deaths were always dressed in black, observing each passing with a year of mourning. That spring I sat under a tree in the Parque del Este writing about the existentialism I had encountered in Nausea and The Stranger, and feeling profoundly adrift. Perhaps the yogis are on to something, I thought, and life is indeed maya, an illusion of the duality-creating mind. And what if what I was gleaning from Sartre and Camus was also true, and life had no intrinsic meaning? Well then I had a choice: I could continue searching and react to life, or I could make my own meaning. It was a life-changing epiphany. The thought filled me with vim and vigor and flipped my incipient depression on its head: Life is a vacuum to be filled as I choose – it is an opportunity to be creative. And creative I was. An Argentine roommate introduced me to Manolo, an outspoken Barcelona architect, city councilman, and a great lover of life. He countered my questions of identity with observations on what he saw as my veneer of American values, and shed light on the European source of many of the perspectives my parents had raised me with. After a romantic courtship we became engaged. I left for the U.S. to finish my senior year and then return to Madrid to become Catalina Daniel Mates Morales, the Hungarian American Venezuelan wife of a Spaniard.

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Austin But my life took a serious turn, and my marriage was not to be. That spring my friend John died in a car crash outside of Austin. John was a fellow marginal who had had a major influence on my life. After college and a tour of duty in the Navy, he had immersed himself in the study of spiritual traditions and lived as an astrologer. John introduced me to the Bhagavad Gita, the I Ching, meditative traditions and more. His expanded perspectives helped me extract meaning and impose order on my discontinuous and fragmented life. He told me that I'd left for Madrid a girl and returned a woman. When he died, my fragile new sense of self deserted me. Even today I find it hard to describe, except to say that in the fog of my grief, I stopped all forward movement. Though my fiancé also mourned John, whom he had met on a visit to the U.S., he became transformed for me into another artifact of yet another distant experience in my life. I seemed simply to collapse under the weight of ill-defined but deeply felt accumulated losses. When he came to the ashram in upstate New York the following year, I was remote and unreachable. When I returned to Granada to visit him several years later, he was remote, angry, and unreachable. That last year in college also radicalized me in other ways political and personal. I began to question everything. My adherence to organized religion had long ago yielded to a personal spirituality, with my belief that no one system had a monopoly on truth. I began to discern the long arm of corporate interests affecting every aspect of life from health care to agriculture to energy. It was the height of the Cold War, and in the wake of the Pentagon Papers, revelations about Agent Orange, and Watergate, I lost faith in the integrity of the political system. I had also visited Moscow, Leningrad, Warsaw and Kiev by then, and I concluded that an intrinsically curious and lively people were being kept dirt poor, demoralized and robbed of initiative under a repressive system, and the characterization of the monolithic danger they posed served to obscure another agenda, or was misguided at best. A visit home to my parents’ family doctor to get to the bottom of gastric distress I’d experienced since leaving Caracas yielded a diagnosis of "you're fine, just stressed,” and a prescription for Valium. I was offended by the doctor’s lack of curiosity, and by his dismissive attitude. In any case the drug put me to sleep in my morning classes and I promptly

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abandoned it, but dealing with the undiagnosed condition took a toll on my energy and focus, interfering with my social life and reinforcing my introversion, and ultimately influencing the direction of my life’s work. I was 22 and beginning to know my own mind.

New York After John’s death and my graduation, I increasingly relied on my interior self as the only constant in the changing landscapes of my life, and began the time-honored tradition of spiritual journeying. As my skepticism toward institutions took root, I experimented with herbal medicine, became vegetarian, and taught yoga and meditation in an artists’ collective. Then, to my surprise and delight, at a yoga conference in Chicago I met Dr. Misra, the psychiatrist whose book on yoga had so profoundly shaped my thinking as a college freshman. It turned out he was also an Ayurvedic physician, acupuncturist, Sanskrit scholar and the resident guru of an ashram which held yoga teacher trainings in upstate New York. The meeting was so serendipitous that I sublet my flat and headed north to attend summer training. An even greater surprise was the discovery of intentional communities. People can live like this? With its commitment to attuning to the inner self, I found in ashram life the gift of just being able to “be” that I had often longed for. I arranged to live in the San Francisco center to attend its school of massage and healing arts, initiating a period of incubation and activity that would take me twice to India and back. Alarmed, my mother, a parental emissary, paid a visit. Jim Jones had just led a mass suicide with his cult members in Guyana and they feared the worst. Though she never understood why I was there, the guru charmed her and laid their fears to rest. She later remarked that I had been angry for a long time and that the ashram seemed to have brought me a measure of peace.

San Francisco The irony of ashram life is that it's far from inactive. It is meditation in action in a pressure cooker far more intense than ordinary life. I was known as Gayatri Devi, and my days were filled with activity—morning and evening meditations, Sanskrit study, service, classes, house meetings, interning at the clinic, teaching yoga, and working—to develop the practice of self-awareness centered around the notion of identity. To train

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the observer self is to hold oneself to living liminally, in an in-between state where you cease to identify with the role you are playing, but focus instead on yourself as the actor. Are you speaking your heart, your mind, from habit, or from your ego, from a desire to please or to win, from beliefs taught by your parents or culture? Through what filter do you perceive this moment? What inhibits your authentic expression? What do you want? The goal is to stay grounded in the self, and to take responsibility for your choices rather than ceding them to what arises, often unconsciously, in this liminal state—what I later began to call “white space”—of the mind. Given the amount of my life devoted to the in-between state of transition, in many ways I found the practice was as natural to me as breathing. Having been intimately exposed to and identified with a number of perspectives and beliefs growing up, I lived in a very relative universe— what was right or wrong, public or private, friendly or intrusive, seemed culture-bound; there were no absolutes. I had to judge for myself. I was particularly sensitive about imposing my beliefs or values on anyone. I found the practice of silence to be invaluable. Wearing a “silence" sticker indicated one's unavailability to all but essential talk. “Will you cut the onions for dinner?” could be answered with a nod. The practice of deep presence to the chatter in the white space during my everyday activities allowed my judgments, beliefs, opinions, fears and the like to rise to the surface. In taking the time to examine them, I felt for the first time in my life that I had found ground to stand on in making choices that were conscious and meaningful to me.

India During my sojourns in India I visited temples in the privileged company of teachers, participated in ritual fire ceremonies, engaged in prescribed spiritual practices, and enjoyed incredibly spicy curries. I was curious to see Indian philosophies integrated into everyday life in their country of origin. Immersion in a culture on the opposite side of the world brought the assumptions of “West” and “East” into stark relief. I was able to use this perspective along with the ancient Upanishadic practice of neti, neti— not this, not this—to clarify my own beliefs and priorities and to cobble together my own path. Combined with the spaciousness and support of a community where everyone was engaged in seeking a life of personal integrity, this period of

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journeying worked its magic on me. If my college years had helped me locate my values in orienting to the outer world, I now felt more aware and in control of the inner forces that were driving me, as well as my own set of standards. I returned to Austin with great anticipation to build an acupressure healing and teaching practice.

Austin Though I was making my peace with living in the U.S., I still found it tiresome to confront people's assumptions about me. As Kathleen Daniel, I looked and sounded the part of an all-American young woman, but when asked where I was from the illusion shattered. My reference points diverged from the mainstream to say the least, and questions of blending in and adapting that had been operative till then were replaced with a desire to define my differences from the culture around me. Indeed, as I sought to expand professionally, these thoughts influenced my decision to pursue acupuncture. Though I was drawn to academia, I was an unrepentant holistic thinker by then and didn't have the heart or patience to operate in a mechanist and compartmentalized intellectual environment. I was also motivated to get to the bottom of my own lingering health issues. The field of acupuncture was emerging from a newly opened China, and three acupuncture schools had opened in the U.S. Being an acupuncturist is next best thing to expatriating, I thought, I won’t be mistaken for an average American. It was a good choice. As Chinese medicine draws its insights from a 3000year-old tradition of observing how nature sustains and nourishes life, I felt that it offered a lens on biology and physiology beyond the filters of cultural interpretation. Albeit mediated by ch'i energy—readily labeled by many as a cultural filter!—my experiences with yoga asanas, acupressure and the “body electric” were validation enough. In any case, I am pragmatic. What mattered to me were results, and they were apparent to me, and to my clients. I believe that the mixed cultural soup that I had absorbed while growing up made me a natural in the field of healing. I accepted people's idiosyncrasies. I was perceptive and comfortable working in the space left by western medicine's compartmentalization of the body, mind and emotions. Chinese medicine’s view of disease as patterns of imbalance makes it sensitive enough to resolve subclinical problems, and also useful

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for syndromes otherwise relegated to the fuzzy “other” category of psychosomatic illness. My work was to use needles to balance energy and to offer feed-back to patients about how their habits affected their health. Over the years, findings in mindfulness, psychoneuroimmunology, and the neurosciences continue to shed light on these links.

Annapolis Though I grumbled from time to time about my “whitebread” a.k.a. homogenous community, I adjusted to life in the U.S. I fell in love with a larger than life all-American Irish American, and we were married in Barbados in an idyllic seaside ceremony arranged by my sister, Muki, living there, and attended by my other sister, Erzsi, whose family came from Brazil, and by my parents, who had since made their home in Hungary. My husband was in broadcasting, assigned to the White House with a national news network in Washington, D.C., and had traveled and lived extensively overseas. In some ways he was also a marginal, raised in an orphanage without the family that most people take for granted. We had no children, and enjoyed an eclectic and active social life. I carved out a professional identity, serving on community boards, penning a health column and editing a professional journal. Teaching was a passion. I saw a need to define the underpinnings of natural and holistic medicine. Its assumptions about health and disease differ dramatically from Western medicine, so I began to facilitate seminars and retreats. I was also asked to develop an alternative medicine curriculum for a college nearby, which was a challenge and a source of professional pride. From my patients and students I came to understand what I call human norms, what it means to simply be human; we each construct reality as best we can to find our way in the context of an untold number of forces. I learned to listen, and that deep listening facilitates people's ability to listen to themselves in new ways, and more often than not, to find their own solutions. My personal passion was gardening. I enjoyed the rhythms of nature, growing vegetables and culinary herbs, and as a certified herbalist, cultivating and compounding formulas from a plot of medicinal plants. I also adopted my husband's joy of sailing and became a proficient first mate. I even took a year's sabbatical, leaving my practice in the competent hands of a colleague, to make the pilgrimage down the Intracoastal Waterway to the islands.

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Time incubates the choices we make in our lives and reveals new meaning in their purpose and direction. These insights emerge in their own time and for me often appear both as dissatisfaction with the status quo and as wanting something more. Indeed, as the years passed, I became restless. My own health had returned to its natural resilience as I understood the stressors that set off my symptoms. If truth be told, however, I found my work with patients less satisfying. Physician referrals increased with my success — as did my patient's expectations of being fixed! The culture was accepting the technique, but had missed the point. I became interested in exploring what makes people heal. I thought of my early patients as the courageous ones, identifying in them qualities that I called personal leadership, including a willingness to leave their comfort zones and to seek creative solutions no matter what. I sought to step outside the treatment room to work “upstream” with those committed to taking transformative action for personal growth. I trained in the emerging field of personal coaching, and began midwifing people through significant life or career transitions. Gradually, I left my acupuncture practice behind me. By now, at the turn of the millennium, the 24/7 world was in full swing. Outsourcing, downsizing, the burst of the high-tech bubble, and the crash of huge corporations like Enron were shining a light on issues of ethics and leadership, and the personal as well as spiritual development of leaders. To deepen my understanding of leadership, I enrolled in a women’s leadership development program at Johns Hopkins University that was to profoundly influence my life. Based on the notion that complex modern global organizations require a more holistic approach, the program focused on self-awareness and effective use of self. With eighteen other women, I underwent an intense year-long battery of values, learning, conflict, communication, and personality self-assessments designed to identify my strengths and preferences. We were introduced to models of power and influence, mental models, culture, gender, change, group dynamics, and changing definitions of leadership. We were also asked to maintain self-reflective journals to track our personal change through the program. Though I was comfortable with the deeply experiential approach, I was completely taken by surprise by the reservoir of anger that it tapped in me. I was accustomed to being an outlier in most groups, and this time I found myself among mostly MBA corporate managers, IT consultants and

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military personnel, with one psychologist and one teacher. It all came to a head during a fishbowl exercise on diversity. A young black Navy lieutenant remarked sharply that she was tired of being expected to represent the views of all African Americans. I snapped back that I was tired of having to tiptoe around the sensitivities and feelings of certain groups’ sense of entitlement. Had anyone ever given thought to how they had been making assumptions about me because of my WASP appearance and speech? I was shaking with fury. Whoa! Come again? Did I say that? Where did that come from? I thought my sense of being different was an issue I had put to rest. Apparently not. I began to pull together the pieces. Some years earlier, my father had taken the opportunity to open an overseas headquarters for his Dallas-based company and my empty nest parents picked up their lives again in Europe, living first in Vienna for several years before retiring in Budapest only months before the Wall fell and changed everything. For more than 15 years I had traveled “home” to post-communist Budapest, but only as people felt free to speak openly again, did stories of my parents’ early lives begin to surface. I came to realize that, in reclaiming their Hungarian roots, my parents were revealing mine. Obscured by history, politics, language, distance and circumstance, reference points to my Hungarian self had slumbered, unrecognized and unnamed. Other cultural influences notwithstanding, I realized that I had been raised through a very specific Hungarian lens. Central to my mother’s identity was her descent from ancestral Magyar tribes arriving in the Carpathian basin before the first millennium, and Hungary’s history of occupation and loss during the subsequent Mongol invasions and Turkish occupation. My father’s roots lay in his rich Hungarian-Armenian ancestry, in the 17th century diaspora of Armenians to Transylvania, and, later, forced relocation to Budapest in the aftermath of World War I. They shared the experience of being raised by parents born into the turn-of-thecentury flowering of Hungarian culture. The formal and patriarchal values that had shaped my parents’ worldview shed light on the lens through which they raised me — from their own impeccable grooming and distaste of blue jean culture to their emphasis on family. People naturally make assumptions about others with what information they have, and in the absence of first hand data, they fill in the blanks with their own preconceptions and projections. I realized that I hadn't kept up

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with and integrated my evolving self. New discoveries had changed my self-perception, priorities, and expectations — or perhaps revealed them. It was my responsibility to update, articulate and make them known. Where to begin? I became deeply curious about culture—its origins, the nomenclature used to describe it, the characteristics that define it, the skills required to navigate it, and the value systems and assumptions that distinguish one culture from another. I went on to get a Master’s degree in organizational development with an emphasis on cross-cultural leadership. I joked with my husband that this was higher education therapy. He understood. His two years in Ireland had marked an important passage in his life, confirming something he felt as essentially “Irish” in his nature, even free of parental influence, and it had put his questions of identity to rest. As I was researching the global mindset as key to effectiveness in cross cultural leadership, I came across a woman writing about her Third Culture life, and the challenge of raising a Third Culture Kid. I googled the term. What I found stopped me dead in my tracks: Third Culture Kids are children who spend a part of their early years outside their passport culture, most often due to a parents’ work. They may build relationships with several cultures, yet claim ownership in none of them. And their sense of belonging to a peer group is with those with whom they share a Third Culture background, regardless of passport culture. I stared at the screen, mouth agape. I had discovered that I was part of a tribe. Technically I didn't fit all the criteria, but I didn’t parse the details. I always fell through some crack on any list of group identifiers. We didn’t go “home” summers to visit family when expatriating to Caracas. I had suddenly become a member of my passport culture not six months before landing there. Technically I share features common to first generation immigrants, and, as well, with domestic nomads, a group with whom I also share membership. Nevertheless, the more I learned about Third Culture Kids, or Global Nomads, the closer they came to defining my sense of my own experience. My closest friends had always been exceptionally well-travelled. Check. I had experienced multiple instances of culture shock. Check. And multiple losses. Check. Feelings of isolation, not fitting in, of being on the margins. Check, check, check. The instant identifier: stopping short to evaluate an appropriate response when asked, where are you from? Check! The list went on: instant recognition and camaraderie with people who had lived abroad, finding rootedness and

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meaning in relationship, highly developed observational and language skills, a nuanced understanding of peoples' perspectives and motivations. And this: TCKs are cultural chameleons with the capacity to take on the surface colorations of the cultures they find themselves in. Did this discovery change my life? The Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, once said that he had never met anyone over 35 for whom a spiritual resolution wasn’t required to resolve their dilemmas. I came to realize that professional identity had always been a stand-in for a personal identity that was rooted in my own history. I had tapped the outer chamber of this interior identity, and could feel it ready to rise.

Budapest I live in Budapest now as Daniel Katalin, though I respond to Catalina, Kathleen, Katerina, Katalin, Kati, Gayatri, and occasionally Kata. I was propelled here by converging impulses, a transition and a transformation that my marriage did not survive. I had nurtured a long-standing concern for my aging parents, a desire to learn the language, to live outside the U.S. again, and partly, no doubt, experienced a midlife compulsion to reconnect with something essential. I used to say that I think in English, I feel in Spanish, but it's me who speaks in Hungarian, and strengthening that small and insecure voice seemed vital. And so I arrived newly single and brimming with cutting edge 21st century knowledge into a country with a rigid hierarchy, an economy in transition, a leadership mired in opaque ways of doing business, and a youth who look wholesale to the global culture to bring them prosperity. Still a cultural chameleon, I am quite deliberate about where I want to blend in and where I don’t. I still belong nowhere in particular though I have experienced homesickness for the first time, a positive, albeit painful, development. My unwieldy universe has coalesced into a set of personal preferences so that I can sorely miss aspects of U.S. culture at its best, like its optimism, transparency and sense of agency, while living in this culture that at its worst tends to melancholy and fatalism about its ability to impact or direct events. I believe I have, as the literature says, attained a degree of cultural balance, and I confess to feeling a certain ease as I write these words. As my language skills allow me to weave in and out of Budapest’s many subcultures, I am seen at times as bicultural, at others as Hungarian and at

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still others as American. I still pause when asked where I am from, but in this diverse city rich and alive with many cultures and with culture in all its forms, it barely registers. Technology keeps me in touch with those I've left behind, and I marvel at TCKs who now regularly video Skype Sunday dinners with grandparents or friends. Indeed, the impulse to health and sanity has always been the saving grace of my life. That I could discern meaning from the familiar sounds of the language of my childhood was initially a comfort beyond reason, though in my increasing integration I no longer note it. In fact I am pleased that my Spanish is returning absent the interference of Hungarian! The simple comfort of belonging itself was also a revelation. I remember meeting with a cousin during an early visit to Budapest and being shocked at the realization that “she looks like me!” Being mirrored by people who look like you has a palpable and powerful resonance. And yet, vast differences in lifestyle and experience over a lifetime have shaped us in very different ways, so that our personal interests, habits and politics diverge in many ways. It's not uncommon for Global Nomads to be unaware of things others take for granted. My own sojourn here has allowed me to meaningfully connect as an adult with at least one sister who lives in Vienna and was 11 when I left for college, as well as with my nieces and an extended family of Swedish in-laws. I had also never intimately experienced people growing old. Being with my parents as they become elderly made me realize that they lived, as the book by Mary Pipher with the eponymous title suggests, in Another Country. Surprisingly, I found myself using intercultural skills to orient myself to their worlds. I observed, listened closely, made no assumptions, and was always alert to cues to help me understand the lens through which they perceived me so that I could channel my responses more effectively. I can't say if it's the Global Nomad piece of me, but I feel most alive when I am learning and on the edge of something new, a creativity that emerges from the edges, from the intersection of cultures, disciplines, technologies and social networks. But creativity also emerges from encountering the unknown. I am keenly interested in the nascent fields of complexity and chaos theory. They describe how even small actions can effect big changes, like the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Brazil setting off a tornado in Texas. They describe a world highly sensitive to initial conditions, and one that requires a different navigational map. It is

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nonlinear; you need to employ the skills of discovery and mindfulness, a finely tuned perception, intuition, and the ability to recognize patterns. I believe that for children raised in Third Cultures these skills become second nature by virtue of their continuous encounters with the uncertainty, ambiguity and apparent chaos of different cultures. According to archetypal psychologist Jean Shinoda Bolen, in ancient Greek myth, if you wanted to be where the action is, you would set out for Athens. On the way you would meet a guardian, Procrustes, whose job it was to fit you to a bed. If a part of you didn't fit, he would cut it off— whack! – it was not going with you to Athens. Likewise if he found that something was lacking, you would be stretched and molded until you fit the bed. So we are processed on the road to Athens. Being processed and reprocessed, stretching to fill family, professional or cultural expectations, repressing the past, or cutting off an unsupported potential is how culture conditions us to play designated roles. It equips us with a roadmap and an identity. But Third Culture Kids find themselves in worlds where the rules they learn don’t always apply and their identities don’t fit. If they are to overcome marginalization and to find a way to contribute, they must construct their own. They learn to become skillful observers and to detect patterns. They become attuned to language and body language, to barely perceptible signs that may signal emergent danger, or camaraderie, or opportunity. If they remain aware of the experiences that shape them, they can successfully construct an identity from the pieces they value most. Chameleon-like, they acquire a resilience that helps them to adapt. In the early days of coal mining, canaries were brought into mines as warning systems to detect noxious gases. As long as the canary continued to sing, the miners knew they were safe. As the world becomes increasingly borderless and interconnected, culture matters more, not less. Third Culture Kids show us that the air is safe, that even in an unfamiliar environment, identity remains with us and can be reshaped by the choices we make, and that sometimes someone may appear on the road to guide our passage into the unknown world that lies ahead.

ARTIST IN TRANSIT: A FUSION OF ART AND IDENTITY CATHLEEN HADLEY

One day on Kuta beach, I am meditating in the sun with my sketchbook in my lap. Young boys from the village of Kuta approach me pulling baskets heavy with coconuts. Seeing I do not have the rupees to buy coconuts, they enthusiastically pantomime the message for me to trade coconuts for sketches. Black felt tip pen portraits, simple renditions of their identical large smiles, pour from my sketchbook. It is so easy. In the light breeze off the ocean, I carefully fold each page to make as neat a tear as possible, releasing the mini portraits from the binding. I do not regret giving away the drawings. I have the memory as a keepsake. Leaving the beach, I return to the hostel hosted by a Balinese family where I share a room with my brother and sit outside its door at one of the tea tables where the family has refreshed a thermos of very sweet tea. A letter from Dad has made its way to the Post Office in Dempasar. He writes that the Hartford Art School wants to know what my plans are for the start of my third year of studies. Dad wants to know if I need more money before I leave Bali. I have lost track of the days and look for a blank page in my journal to answer his letter. The journal feels different now with its missing pages. The binding, wobbly, opens to a page with a self-portrait I sketched in lead pencils before leaving Hartford in May 1974. My facial expression captures the loneliness and sadness I felt at the age of twentyone, at a time when I only understood one or two things in the whole world – that I needed to be alone to paint and that I did not know my native soil. Thinking back on the past eight years of living in and traveling in different countries, I have to decide whether or not to return to the States permanently, now, or continue my plan to travel the island of Java with the little money I have left. Will I continue as a student or be an out-of-work

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artist? I submit once again to standing on the road of my life, looking for a hint of what lies ahead before I decide what to do. But, first, I look back.

Hartford My first impression, at the age of nineteen, of Hartford Art School, was nothing more than the gut reaction of a post-adolescent Foreign Service Kid who had been on her own for about three weeks in the summer of 1972. Other than a brief home leave in 1970, this was my first full year back in my country, after living in South America for five years. I believed travelers, like me, were resourceful and that I would find a way to fit in, that I would be recognized as belonging by birthright. Nevertheless, I knew I had lived a sheltered life and that my expectations of life as an art student might be unrealistic. My view of my fellow students and roommates was that they were sophisticated individuals, people who had no doubt whatsoever about their standing in the world and that of their families. In fact, they knew where they stood with a certitude that bordered on mania. Knew where they were from and where they were going to end up, whereas my story involved a long list of locations and explanations. When asked, “Where are you from?” I was comfortable to work backwards starting from the last place I lived in or better yet, live in the moment. The first day of class, in the conceptual art foundation program, our teachers announced that there was no money in art and that painting was dead. That Conceptual Art was the evident disregard for conventional, modern notions of art or individual artistic expression. This art movement was anti traditional art. I felt I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I would have to find a way to continue to paint, in secret, by night—while being a student of a new movement by day—a double life. One day, two visiting North American conceptual artists arrived with a multiple-choice test to score us individually on our knowledge of art. The test included questions about American television shows representing American pop culture. I spoke up informing them I had been out of country, was not familiar with American shows and that it was a poorly constructed test if limited to the American experience. Their response: that it was my responsibility to know what was happening in my country, that I had a lot of catching up to do if I wanted to be a serious artist and, here, it was always about the tribulations of the serious artist.

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Half-way into my first year, I was becoming aware of and sensitive to differences between art lessons in Buenos Aires, where I had learned traditional drawing and painting and was skilled in both, and the Hartford Art School’s aggressively intellectual, critically thinking, conceptual art. Sometimes I felt inept, because I could not effectively defend why or how these differences should merge, though I did feel that they should. Most of my teachers were encouraging me not to worry about being a skilled artist but to be more of an art critic. I felt immature, a novice in my art education, and these discussions with teachers ended with me being the one who needed to adjust and change—again. On one visit to New York, I viewed a conceptual art piece by Yoko Ono. It was of a clear glass bottle standing on the edge of a white podium. The card identifying it stated that in order to appreciate this bottle it must be broken. I felt an attachment to this piece as it mirrored so well how I felt about my life. I knew that the art world of New York City—where every student hoped for success—was transitional, situational and without promise of acceptance or permanence. I was at a stage where I wanted to be free of confinement, guidelines and structures. My mentors were successful artists and teachers whom I met through Hartford Art School, who had found recognition in New York and internationally. In their infinite wisdom and kindness, they advised finishing the conceptual art foundation program but to move on after that, even if it meant it would be awhile before I would graduate. To try to find my way through more travel while I could—if it was so hard for me to be a student, to try being an artist in the world. I could always come back to school. I was most comfortable with those artists on the fringes of conceptual art. Some were older students working on their M.A. degrees who, with the conceptual art foundation program behind them, were free now to work on fine arts majors such as painting. In their company, I could be as painterly and as artistic as I was in Buenos Aires. They seemed worldly and spontaneous. I chose to spend more time at a rented apartment studio where I shared a single room with turpentine, rags, paints, easels, sleeping on the floor under old torn Northface sleeping bags. Happier with that than to live in the dormitories in suites where messiness and painting was not allowed. I began painting on surfaces other than canvas—5x7 pieces of soft wood I carved half-inch recesses into, leaving the border raised to resemble a picture frame. I would then layer a painting between coatings

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of a clear polymer until I had filled the carved definition of the frame. The final surface gave a 3-D effect, you could see through the rising layers under the resultant image of a landscape, face or butterfly. I moved so often while in Hartford, I even downsized my canvases to portable sizes, adding these to my toolbox definition of portable art. Every choice I made regarding living arrangements put me more and more on the outside of where I needed to be, as I always opted to move farther away from the Art School community or conformity. My explanation: this was all part of being an artist with a nomadic heart. For an artist there were no wasted experiences: poverty, homelessness, and emotionless or unreciprocated relationships went into the art box, bag or basket. I lived the austere life of the starving artist. I was starving for friendships, for belonging, and literally starving because I was not hungry during cafeteria hours, still on an Argentine schedule, missing meals, practically living on 10-cent ice cream bars and 25-cent packs of Marlboros from the basement vending machines. I felt like a refugee in the U.S., as though something essential had been altered by the experience of having been away. In the meantime, meeting artists, going to studios, museums, and art school was living life in a hyper-present state. One cannot have too much excitement about doing something one loves, yet I was uncomfortable with the elitism involved or the challenge to make a living as an artist. It was a chore to keep from standing out as an outsider, someone who could not commit and I wondered: if I cut myself off from the Hartford art scene, what were my chances of finding it again? My relationship to art was changing. The conflict was between distinguishing ambition from talent, between having an art-related career or not. I was someone who enjoyed the stimulation of new countries or places. I was happiest as a Global Nomad, a term that did not exist at that time. I created worlds or places to retreat to, to paint in secret because that was what I wanted most to do. School could not dictate the hours of my inspiration. Artists should be free to create when inspiration moves them and not the other way around. I was not trying to be rebellious. I was realizing a concept: live, breathe, relax into life. Small wonder if people found this difficult to tolerate. Artists were supposed to be different. While I did not mind being considered eccentric, I hoped I had more to

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offer. Such was my confidence at the ages of nineteen and twenty, in my independence as a world traveler, using differences as a shield.

Maryland I was not always an alien in the United States. I was born in Washington, D.C., and my family moved to Maryland when I was three years old. The only address and phone number I remember to this day, are the coordinates my parents gave to my two younger brothers and me when we were children so that we would not get lost, we would find our way back home. Until 1967. Before 1967, life was Harmony Hills Elementary School, and for my brothers and me, holidays with relatives and friends of family, riding bicycles, dodge ball on summer nights. Summers were spent in Providence, Rhode Island, with my grandparents, my father’s home of record. Nights of stargazing from our backyard in lawn chairs eating frozen grapes as Dad informed us about the world outside. The Russians had Sputnik in the skies and the Americans were in the space race. Watching as Sputnik passed over our house, tumbling around and around in its orbit. My brothers and I shared a love of music and played our guitars. I began my lifelong learning in art by copying pop culture artists like Peter Max and rock album covers and making posters with balloon lettering. My mother was always creative, making our clothes, my dolls’ clothes, reupholstering furniture and making her own curtains. The sewing machine, knitting needles, and other implements of homemaking were miraculous tools in her gifted hands. Our yard was a trophy of plantings. The poplar trees where butterflies would come gave us endless leaves to rake in the crisp Maryland fall. There were apple and magnolia trees. Mom planted the azaleas, pansies, and annual flowers, the epitome of intended permanence. Home was where you put down your roots. But Dad started talking about the attractions of living in other countries. “So, when are we going to move, Daddy?” “When the roots of the poplar trees reach the street because I don’t want to have to cut and remove them myself.” We were not to move down the street or closer to another relative. We were entering the society of the diplomatic corps. Anticipation ran high with imagined promises that a move would make changes and improvements in our lives. Moving to Europe would have made sense

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inasmuch as our ancestors had arrived from there, but that was not to be. We were moving to South America. As alien as the moon yet we were naively curious about life in a Latin country. Spanish language cassettes began to appear throughout the house. “¿Dónde está el baño?” would be my first learned phrase in the Spanish language. The roots of the poplar trees reached the street and it was time to say goodbye to the field of black-eyed Susans that I knew would not be there again no matter if or when I returned. My worldview would change in ways I could not begin to imagine. The leaving behind of friends, family, possessions began along with the move into the stories of loss that are the floods and fires of my life. Moving from Maryland to Caracas was only the first of many moves, my parents having sold our house. We had no house to call our own in the United States. My brothers and I chose one of our toys or possessions to leave behind at my grandmother’s home in Virginia for safekeeping. I left my Barbie and Midge dolls and kitchenette set, my symbols of home and childhood.

Caracas In the summer of 1967, I was fourteen years old and my father’s first Foreign Service posting was to Caracas, Venezuela. I continued as a selftaught artist in the sanctity of my bedroom sharing my work only with my closest friends. My mother supported my artistic leanings, finding new tools, so I experimented with watercolors, explored compositions with pen and inks. My brothers and I ventured into more poetry, song and story writing, this music and art pulling us closer. The international American high school we attended lacked art programs but classmates encouraged my artistic works. Classes were small. The students were mostly engaging, generous and culturally sophisticated in a way I could only hope to catch up to. I wanted to be as confident and worldly as they appeared to be. Friendships of a lifetime started here. My girlfriends then are my girlfriends now and I have always measured my life experiences against theirs. One uniting feature was to know more than one language and sharing Spanglish. Learning Spanish in Caracas opened my eyes to the power and magic of international living, and after a time I was able to converse fluently.

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After three years in Caracas, the U.S. government relocated us to Buenos Aires, but first we went back to the States on home leave, excited that we would have new stories to share with family and friends and to reclaim those things we had left behind. I was seventeen and was shocked to discover that my cousins had taken the things left at my grandmother’s house, giving them to their girl children to play with, who in turn had destroyed them. My grandmother told me not to put emphasis on material things, or to think my possessions were my own. I felt it was in retribution for becoming different from my relatives. My mother understood and shared in my dismay but we were the foreigners now. It was as if our education and overseas experience challenged them, made them feel left behind. My mother wanted me to take a diplomatic and mature position that I did not feel. It felt lonely agreeing to this complicity, hiding my true feelings from family. I began wearing a mask, holding back information, or my true stories and feelings. These were the first whispers of many secrets Mom and I would keep. I understood then that there might not be a way to replace lost trust, or a lost item. I had learned a lesson I would learn again and again. When the floods and fires of my life wipe away possessions and family trust, somehow I am left standing.

Buenos Aires The city of “good airs” was a city of prompt and endless convenience, of terrific transportation and many freedoms. In this carnival of a city, I graduated from the international American High School in Buenos Aires and I became a student at la Escuela Panamericana de Arte and immersed myself in the Argentine view of art appreciation. The school was a commercial art/graphic design school, located near the American Embassy. I studied perspective in which the world is a grid and on it anything from any angle is drawn. One way to look at grids is that they turn up in other art mediums. Maps are a good example with their longitude and latitude, points of the compass linked to the world and back to the artist. Perspective is how and where appearances shift depending on where the artist stands, or where the light enters the room or canvas. In Buenos Aires, I felt I had arrived. I was culturally mobile and fluid. I knew who I was and where I fit on the world’s grid through art education and the study of perspective. I was creative with my wardrobe, choosing outfits reflecting my mood in colors, like choosing paints for a canvas. On

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days when I met Dad for lunch at a German restaurant between the Embassy and art school, Mom reminded me to dress normal. Two swift years passed and it was time to uproot again. It would take a lot of effort after this move for my family to stay together, stay in touch, communicating from distances as great as the other side of the world. One brother would go to Jakarta, the other brother would go to Wisconsin, and I would go to Connecticut. For the first time and not the last, I gave away paintings, all of them. It was just another experience in the arithmetic of absence, of lost things vs. acquired things. I was leaving a country I had grown to love for the country of my birth, wondering if this was going to be a happy thing or another one of those lost, left-behind things, like broken toys or broken trusts. I was determined to sustain connections, somehow, to all of my past lives. I would start with this return home in 1972, to the United States, carrying my current self with me—the mix of languages, places and artistic influences that were now part of who I was. I had been accepted to the Hartford Art School and was excited about the possibilities it offered me to become a real-life artist.

And so It Was That I Traveled to Hartford I arrived very late at the Hartford Art School, on Orientation Day, unaccompanied by family or friends and without my portfolio from Buenos Aires, which was stored in Baltimore and not retrievable. Without it, the Dean of the Hartford Art School could not give credit for the art classes in Buenos Aires, as the transcript alone did not meet North American standards. In one day, all the art I had learned in Buenos Aires was dismissed, my portfolio another possession lost to the floods and fires. This became, in retrospect, the first of my portable art lessons. I knew that what I had learned at la Escuela was valuable, and would be useful in future art/life works. The Dean had taken away my South American art credentials but no one could take away my training, or the culture through language I possessed at that time. By the standards of West Hartford, I started my return life to the United States foreign and unassimilated, but I was determined to protect the treasures of my experiences. I enjoyed introductions to artists in New York and remember being absorbed in academics, yet I continued to resist pressures to conform. I felt that Hartford was only an experiment at permanence. Dad wrote to me from Indonesia, “The Javanese are the most artistic people in the world.

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The kids go to Bali and it is far out.” Any time Bali was mentioned, something stirred inside me and I wanted to move on, I wanted to be on the road again. I had the heart of a transient. It was wrenching to live in Hartford, wanting to be away from it. I had fantastic opportunities at a very good school but I was not able to commit to it during those years when I was restless. I felt I did not belong in a place like Hartford and no longer knew where home was. I recognized that rootlessness was becoming a pattern for me but I did not then know its name. My parents understood my love of travel; all they had to do was send me a ticket with itinerary, my suitcase was ready. I had learned from my mother’s family that attachment to possessions or trusting people could be painful, and I found myself detaching from other types of commitment. Well-meaning teachers tried to help me, but I seemed to reject the notion of needing help. I shied away from people who appeared to want to control what I did. I struggled with the affirmation at Hartford Art School that all painting was done for. I wondered if running to Jakarta was running away from committing to school. That I drifted with artists on the fringes of the school where I could not fail because there were no expectations. And, maybe, I needed the stimulation of being outside my country or being on the move to figure out who I was. I was unable at this moment to articulate that travel was not only reflected in my concept of portable art, but also essential to it and there could be a connection—close and coherent.

My First Summer in Bali By the time my adventures took me on my journey to the east, to Jakarta, Indonesia, and the Island of Bali, I had lived in the United States and South America, carried an American passport, but had ownership nowhere. It was June 1973, my first summer vacation from school, my first school year successfully behind me. I was twenty and exhausted from being a North American in the States. I was thrilled to go home to be with my parents and brothers in Jakarta. I missed the culture that was the mix of things my parents, brothers and I shared, preserving stories of memories, binding us in the act of remembrance of who we are and where we have been. This was when I began to feel that impermanence might be an asset, a way to comfort my dysfunction, triumph over needing to belong, a way to hide my outsiderness by becoming a temporary guest, exalted wanderer. I felt that this reinvention would somehow set me free.

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Culturally, Indonesians are calm and lacking in Western excesses and nervousness. It is a trait most North Americans are impatient with, when they arrive in this county. For me the experience made me feel like I was slipping into a warm, frangipani-scented bath, the brain muscles relaxing, the body slowing down, bringing me to a state of serenity that I was happy to find I could still reach. Jakarta was our home base when my brothers and I went to Bali. In Bali, we stayed with the Balinese families whom my brother’s friends had known for many years. I felt a strong connection with my brother’s international high school friends who were global on an even vaster scale than those I had met in South America. Finally, I could relax. Social conformity was not a problem here. I found that the Balinese, like the Javanese, inhabit art in life, merging religion and culture. Beauty lies in the graceful lines of the looking-glass rice fields, confirming this profound artistic sensibility. Here, one is not just a farmer; one is a musician, a dancer, a painter, and sculptor. Not lessons first, art later—but art from birth. It seemed a solution to my dilemma: to be a student or apprentice of art vs. living as an artist. This approach to my life as art is something that fit with my emerging concept of art as piece and identity. That art was the process and the identity. Bali is an island formed by the hands of generations, in harmony with the mysteries of their beliefs. Bali awakened a spiritual connection that, for me, put the fineness of art into the hands of the believer. Art made here was considered a gift to the gods. My brother was with me in Bali during a moonrise. And the island was utterly still. Electricity would not come to this island until the following year. The landscape caught the moonlight, held it like milk in a glass. Our shadows were black, the edges clearly delineated as were all the shadows around us. I thought, “This is what it must be like to walk on the moon.” As we stood in awe he said, “It will never be like this again. Now, this is paradise.” My brother would be putting roots down in Wisconsin and this scared me. I longed for my family to find some way to stay together. That first summer in Indonesia, something began to change in me that informed my quest to merge the making of art with my love of packing up to travel or move. It was here that I first used something from nature to

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imitate painting. I worked with another student, a horticulture major, on an art project using flowers, with rich colors and a spectrum of shapes so varied we could create endless combinations of images in imitation of life or designs to show off the beauty of the flowers. In this spirit of finding materials at hand, in life, to turn into art, I would have the means to create a portable art, and I began to pull together the pieces of a new artistic identity.

Hartford It was 1973, I returned to Hartford for my second year of school, but life here seemed contrived and unyielding after my months in Indonesia, and I was a restless resident only interested in departure. This was my country and my reaction was still culture shock. I was late to classes, or not as prepared as I could be, so it was a bit of a scramble to complete all projects and requirements successfully. When I was not hiding out, painting in my off-campus apartment, I was working on final projects and exams for school. I preferred my solitude; I had no attachments to places or things about the city around me or to relationships. I often asked, “Do you think I’m a jerk?” This question was, in effect, the cornerstone of my Hartford relationships. I always had some reason to think that the answer was yes, but nine times out of ten, people insisted the answer was no, that I was a dreamer and curious and obviously without a traditional ambition. I remember thinking that I will have passed in and out of their lives like a ghost. I was on the cusp of a new definition of art, unique to me. Making art was who I was, the only sure thing that went with me everywhere. I was beginning to understand that I did not need to settle, that I could continue to travel and create art as I moved through the world, using the materials I found along the way. I knew this was going to be a lifelong process. I had begun to organize my possessions in what I called treasure chests. From carved boxes to plain ones, I would store my worldly possessions so each box held its own story. It could be a basket of shells from Kuta Beach, or a leather bag from Mexico carrying art tools. As I approached the convergence in these thoughts, that I was yet unable to describe or characterize exactly, I could feel it coming together.

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Second Summer in Bali My second year in Hartford ended with me planning my return to Indonesia, determined to travel for as long as I could. Once under that canopy of jungle growing dense and alive I effectively cut off the rest of the world. It was like a familiar café one returns to, greeting family and friends, existing somehow outside of geography and beyond time zones. Each day the blankness of canvas turned into the colors and movement around me. I had been trained as a graphic artist, in perspective, color swatches, grids, rulers and measurements, taught how to paint and draw. Hartford Art School taught me how to think differently, how to take art outside of its traditional box. Now, I painted without guilt. Now I painted paintings, the paintings losing lines of invention, smoothing and blending the images so that lines and perspective were implied but not defined. I could paint landscapes without borders, a dreamscape. I worked in oils, self-portraits in poses of prayer or meditation. I wandered along the beach deep in archeological fantasies, collecting seashells instead of painting the beach, making it a tactile memory. I could always hold the shells and remember. It was here that I was finally able to articulate who and what I was, express that melding of artistic process that defined my life, by using any means of materials to be creative, this fusion of art as identity, naming it Portable Art. I know that art is whatever medium is at hand that becomes an expression of beauty or truth. Any whiteness transformed. My peregrination in life mirrors my artistic identity. My art is a lifelong process. There are times in my moves when art becomes my pause in life, to be who I am and know where I fit in the world, in the moment. My portable art is in the art box, bag or basket that holds my education, experiences, and imagination and goes with me everywhere, occasionally carrying only the smallest blank journal, pencils, rulers, and travel ticket. I know that wherever I am I will be able to be creative. As artist, I own my talent and skills, and take them with me when I move from place to place, adding new techniques I learn as I move through cultures. I take permissions with my personal translations and substitutions of materials into each new project or piece. Portable art is as much my identity as is being a person in motion, traveling, embracing art

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and life lessons learned. In the entire history of art, the underlying question is: how does blankness yield art? The world is my blank canvas. I use art to inhabit the worlds I move in. Looking back, through years and years of moving, I see how my definition of portable art continues to evolve, expanding to include location-specific art—from Hartford and the 3x5 journals with a series of pencil sketches of ears, instead of the wall-sized traditional still life or portraits, to locationrelated art, such as batiking in Jakarta. At this moment, I know no end of days for making art, and continue to create using whatever medium is at hand. When a piece or project is complete, I have to decide where it belongs or how it fits into my life of moving around. At times, when overcome by events or a move that was not my choice—what I have called the floods and fires of my life—I have needed to find the finished piece a home or leave it behind. I have places in my heart and memory that protect these mementos like treasures of the soul. I have lost too many portfolios, paintings, toys and art creations and I am, perhaps, a little jealous of Western art museums, which I think of as storage units for art. The conflict between losing art and holding on to art pieces is resolved on the day I am able to see art as a gift that one gives away. That my personal art history can be the fabric of things or the very rare thing or gift, a discovery I made while visiting Indonesia and Bali. In Bali, in the feeling of time out of time and in the calm of life as art, I recognize how strong and resilient I am and will always be and how American that really is. I see that the maps of Bali that I draft in my wobbly journal have no grids. The roads are loosely drawn in freehand. Cheerful symbols mark significant locations and events. Back at the tea table, I write my letter. I will not return to Hartford Art School. The degree is a possession I want, but my current artwork is inspirational, an expression of timelessness, a work in progress. I fold my letter carefully, and put it away. It is time to join the nightly, community migration to watch nature paint its atmospheric values and hues in the sunset over Kuta Beach.

RETURNING TO MY PARENTS’ FOREIGN “HOME” EMILY G. HERVEY

Beginning at the End of the World I stared out the window of the school bus, without focusing on any of the blurry cars going by, and blinking to keep tears from escaping. The giggles behind me and loud comments down the aisle might have been in another language; nothing registered as relevant. What was I doing here? I might look like a Caucasian American, like many of the other high school teenagers on the bus, but I felt like an alien in my parents’ home town of Pasadena. It was the second day of tenth grade, a day designed for most as a fun kick-off to a new semester, but for me a day of feeling overwhelmed and out of place. Everyone around me knew each other; they were busy catching up after a summer apart. Some had gone to the same school since kindergarten, and most were part of the socially appropriate cliques—the sports jocks, the valley girls, the nerds. Just four months earlier my family had arrived in Southern California from Kazakhstan, a country in Central Asia that most classmates had never heard of before. It was not the first of my transitions from one continent to another, across vast differences in language, culture, climate, and time zones. I was born at the windy tip of South America, the southernmost city in Chile. Punta Arenas was known as El Fin del Mundo, the End of the World, and served as a launching point for trips to Antarctica. My parents and older sisters had lived there less than a year before my birth, so I was automatically a U.S. citizen, yet I sang the Chilean national anthem long before reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and enjoyed the empanadas and danced the cueca on Chilean Independence Day rather than eating hamburgers and watching the fireworks of July 4th. At school, my sisters and I were the only gringas, white girls. I was first surrounded by classmates halfway through a school year, when my parents

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discovered I needed to attend kindergarten to be accepted into first grade. Only imagination could tell me what was being whispered by other children as they shot secret stares my way. Gradually I learned where to put my coat, how to play the games, and when we were supposed to brush our teeth. Somewhere along the way I picked up the words and grammar patterns of Spanish. Eventually, the only academic difference was in English class, where roles were switched and I knew correct pronunciations even better than my teacher. I spent most of the hour reading my own books, having already mastered the first McGuffey Readers through my mother’s tutelage. Chile was home, yet I unknowingly adopted not only pieces of the Chilean culture but British traditions, with a sprinkle of Australian influence from other church members. My best friend was British, and her older sister and brother corresponded nicely in age with my two older sisters. We each had a Care Bear and spent hours playing with ponies. At tea-time I might have Marmite on my bread, a flavor unbeknownst to most Americans. My accent varied according to whom I was speaking with, and even certain words differed in meaning—the citizenship of the speaker determined whether “dinner” was at noon or six o’clock.

Crossing Continents When I was eight years old my family of seven moved to Pasadena, a city near Los Angeles, after many goodbyes to my Chilean and British friends, my godparents, my school, my house, my church, even my gigantic stuffed polar bear that was far to heavy for our luggage. My parents were going back to their culture, the very city where they had grown up. I, by contrast, was going to a foreign land. We were to live in California for two years, and despite feeling out of place I had very gracious teachers and managed to pretend I knew what others were talking about when they decided to mimic the new “Power Rangers” TV show. I also discovered some commonly used slang that wasn’t present in family conversations or in the books I had read to learn English. I discovered “cooties” were to be shunned at all costs, primarily through avoiding physical contact with boys. I also learned that saying the same word as someone else could lead to being “jinxed,” not allowed to speak until I heard my name. This practice seemed a sorry replacement for the jovial “Chocale!” and linking of pinkies that accompanied the same event in Chile. Ironically, my own linguistic skills earned me a spot in the third grade “Speech Meet,” and in fourth grade I represented my school for the annual spelling bee.

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Two years after saying goodbye to Chile it was time to leave again, first by car across the entire continental United States, spending many hours with seven people in a cramped station wagon, stopping to visit old friends and make new acquaintances. We flew over the Atlantic, landing for a conference in the Netherlands, joining attendees that came from a variety of countries and ethnicities from across the globe. In the midst of songs, crafts, lessons, and time spent swimming in the river, I heard stories from around the world told by others who lived continents away from their parents’ country. This was the first of many such conferences that came to be highlights in my life, chances to quickly forge close friendships with others who could understand and relate on a deeper level. Our family had one final stop before arriving in Kazakhstan, a country then only four-and-a-half years old. We spent a couple of days in Russia with a family of distant relatives before the final leg of the journey. The kind husband accompanied us to the unfriendly Moscow airport, and proceeded to exchange loud comments and likely some money with the airline representative who said our baggage was overweight. After saying the last goodbyes and passing through security, we came upon a scale for our many carry-on bags, and hand gestures were the primary form of communication. We were motioned to stand aside, as other passengers went through to the gate. After they had all boarded the plane, some agreement was reached and we were allowed to proceed. I sunk into the last empty aisle seat and reached for the seatbelt, and after a few moments of searching between the cushions noticed a detached buckle piece in the pocket of the seat in front of me. Hopefully there wouldn’t be too much turbulence. Although airplanes were usually familiar environments, I was clearly approaching something completely new. Kazakhstan was a young country, struggling to establish itself after the fall of the Soviet Union, and upon arrival very little of the Kazakh culture was visible. We drove through the city of drab concrete apartment buildings, with a scarcity of green grass or decorative flower beds, under the sweltering summer sun. But across the street from our building was a refreshing view of the Caspian Sea, its various shades of green and blue turning into an evening painting of crimson and golden hues. Going down to the rocky shore was always a wonderful respite, as the wind required no translation and the waves made no judgments about cultural differences. The cool water itself seemed a luxury after lugging buckets of water up to the fifth floor in the arid summer. The water in the apartments would often be off for weeks, and once on again would initially look like black coffee

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before fading into a rusty hue, which we then stored in large plastic bins and distilled before drinking. It didn’t take long to get a taste of the foundational cultural value of hospitality, and some members of my family thrived on the opportunities to meet new people and practice speaking Russian and Kazakh, even with the many inevitable mistakes along the way. I struggled to memorize both the new vocabulary and the variety of endings that came with declensions of nouns and adjectives, further complicated by the gender of the word. Perhaps even more difficult was putting aside my self-consciousness to try practicing what I did know with others. I was glad to be home schooled rather than attempting to enter fifth grade without understanding anything being said, and I was very much aware of the many assumptions associated with being American. We were the first American family to live in the city, possibly in the entire western half of the country, but to the surprise of many we were not wealthy and had not met all the Hollywood stars. With the only foreigners close to my age being my sisters, I grew up quickly to relate to the other adults, both Americans and Australians. I felt part of the team, a group of men and women who were there to help the community through our non-profit educational center, and support a growing Kazakh Christian fellowship. Every week we would come together on Friday nights, spending four hours singing old and new worship songs, eating fruit and home-made cookies, and taking turns to teach and lead times of prayer. For some holidays we crafted traditions from our own Australian/American cultures. Though Christmas was not very significant to the locals, we constructed a cardboard fireplace as a place to hang our stockings. Almost yearly the team had a white elephant gift exchange, then a few days later it might be an evening of Carols by Candlelight at the Aussies’ apartment, where space heaters where turned on all day to simulate the Australian summer weather. As a family we opened a piece of the Advent calendar each night, made a variety of Christmas cookies, and always started Christmas morning with cinnamon rolls and hot cocoa. A week after presents and delicious Christmas food, we would join the rest of the city with fireworks, greeting everyone with “ɋ ɇɨɜɵɦ Ƚɨɞɨɦ!” (S Novim Godom!). Our first New Year’s Day there we learned that going to bed just after midnight was certainly not enough celebration; our downstairs Russian neighbors came to our door at midnight, insisting that we join them for an abundance of food and toasts. I felt special to be

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allowed to stay up so late. In March the beginning of spring would bring ɇɚɭɪɵɡ (Nauriz), the Kazakh New Year, celebrated with yurts set up in the middle of the city, sheep slaughtered, and large central platters of ɛɢɲɩɚɪɦɚɤ (bishparmak), a dish of pasta, potatoes, and lamb eaten with fingers only while sitting on the mats laid around the low table. While life in Kazakhstan included memories of joyous celebrations, there were also times that felt as barren as the steppe that stretched across the country. I was the third of five children, and there was a larger age gap between myself and the youngest two; the first three of us were “the sisters” and we took turns with chores and helping care for “the little ones.” When watching my older sisters spend time together, I often felt like the odd one out. My parents encouraged me to make friends, and at times I tried, but my own self-consciousness and difficulty with learning the language created boundaries difficult to cross. Yet, seeing my sisters appear to thrive in building relationships made me feel guilty for not making more of an effort. It was easier and safer to retreat to my room and bury myself in books, but on some dark nights in that same room my pillow absorbed quiet tears of loneliness. After the first three years came another transition, this time a temporary one for a year in my parents’ country. While en route to California we attended a conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s capital city at the time, where I spent part of my stay helping with childcare, but also participated in activities for youth. We were each given a book exploring aspects of identity such as talents and personality traits (based on the Myers-Briggs model). At the same time a conversation with a visiting pastor wandered to the topic of personality differences, and as we sat outside I was amazed at the characteristics described by both him and the book that normalized my tendencies to need time alone and my sensitivity toward others. That summer the pastor mailed me another book on personality, which I read while volunteering as a child care assistant at a family camp. My interest in psychology was piqued, and I simultaneously discovered that many counselors had personalities similar to mine. During the same week another staff member commented that I would make a great counselor. I felt as if God was beginning to show me that there was a place for me, a calling that fit who I was, not who I thought I was supposed to be. As school began in the fall in California, I found myself at a loss when trying to fit in with American teenagers in my 8th grade classes at Pasadena Christian School. For three years I had grown close to the adults

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on our team, and as a result learned to relate to adults and think like an adult. Rather than listening in ignorance to the discussion of fashion, celebrities, and media, which seemed superficial and irrelevant to me, I felt more comfortable conversing with my teachers. I often talked to the receptionist in the school office, a friendship that has lasted to this day. Instead of going to the principal for getting in trouble, I remember having a meaningful conversation with him about my frustration with what I perceived to be a materialistic and superficial society, even within the Christian community. Instead of writing a detention the principal wrote me an encouraging letter reminding me that my exposure to multiple cultures was an advantage, and challenging me to share insight with others. The one classmate I felt accepted me was a girl whose parents were from India; though she had grown up in the U.S., her cross-cultural experience allowed us to relate to each other on a different level. I knew we were only there for a year, making many of my frustrations more palatable. I had no reason for roots, and was ready to return to Kazakhstan with the expectation of another three-year stint.

Unexpected Outcomes My older sisters stayed in California, so, upon return to Kazakhstan, I carried the role of the oldest sibling. I expected to continue high school through correspondence courses, and spent many hours at home, immersed in my massive syllabi and texts rather than listening to a teacher. That January my parents took a ten-day trip to Turkey, and I assumed the role of “substitute mom,” with the help of a young woman who assisted the younger ones with their home schooling and contributed to the cooking and cleaning. I felt particularly mature when hosting two women in town for a few days, making sure our guests felt welcome, but was happy to return the responsibilities to my parents upon their return. Soon after, the Vice Governor of Aktau ordered that a commission be formed to investigate our educational center. Representatives from various departments of the city came by, declaring the tasks necessary to meet requirements we had never heard of previously, so we compliantly made sure to use fireproof paint on the bookcases. Then one Sunday in early February, officials arrived with a video camera at the building where the local believers met weekly for worship, prayer, and a message. They locked the doors to prevent anyone from leaving and once the service was over the officials interrogated the local church leaders as well as several American men, including my father. He was told to go to the director of

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the religious department’s office the next morning where he was further questioned the entire day and part of Tuesday, after which the other men on the team were questioned. On Saturday, an official came to our educational center and demanded a list of all the members from our secretary, though we knew he lacked the authority to make such a request. My father told her to go ahead and give him what he’d asked for to avoid causing problems, but on Monday he confronted the official, saying threats weren’t necessary, that we weren’t trying to make trouble. The documents were quickly returned as had been promised, but the next day the center received a letter giving us one month to be out of the rooms we had used for years to teach English and computer classes, stating the space was needed for a group of higher priority. The head of the kindergarten, who had been letting the space to us, didn’t know we had been asked to leave until we told her, and she was unhappy to lose the rent we paid. The unfolding events seemed fantastical, like reading a novel. After investing our lives in this city, why would we be treated this way? Were officials looking for bribes or was this in response to rumors of an earlier negative statement about foreigners made by the Kazakh president to high government officials? During the month of searching for a new location for the center, we heard nothing more about the investigation and speculated that perhaps our compliance was sufficient. My parents were planning a ten-day trip for a seminar in England, but wanted a clearer picture of our situation before departure. My father approached the head of the commission that had been conducting the investigation. He was told that there were no problems, that the report would be favorable. With that assurance and my previous successful experience of helping care for the family, we agreed that they would go. The day after they departed, a Monday in the middle of March, I received a phone call from the wife of the interim team leader. Her husband had been called into the office of an official involved with the commission and shown a document written in Russian, which stated the results of the investigation, listing laws we had broken and recommending that we be expelled. Some charges seemed preposterous, such as “distributing religious literature,” which referred to giving out Christmas shoeboxes, sent from the U.S., that contained coloring books of Bible stories. I was surprised by the conclusions of the report, and briefly found myself speculating on the possibility of my parents being unable to return to the

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country. I would need to prepare the family for departure. How would I fit all the home schooling material in the limited baggage? How could I explain the circumstances to my younger siblings? The next day all the adults on our team met to clarify what the report had said, noting that it was a recommendation, not a declaration, and considering potential steps to take. At age fourteen I was certainly the youngest at the meeting, but was in many ways grateful to be included. Despite the uncertainty elicited by the discrepancy between the statement to my dad and the official document, we continued with our daily plans, joining in the celebrations of Nauriz, the Kazakh New Year, and holding our usual Friday night worship meeting. A few days later, my parents returned to Aktau, and by 2 p.m. the same day my father was summoned to a meeting with the official. A team meeting was called for that evening, and the potential gravity of the situation sunk in as the team agreed that it might be best to attempt to leave the country rather than await a decision on expulsion. We met again the next day over lunch, where a team member reported that he had been threatened that we would not be allowed to leave. The discussion sounded like a drama as we considered all possible means of escape. It was too early in the year to find a ferry across the Caspian Sea to Baku, Azerbaijan, and a train to the northern border of Russia or south to Uzbekistan would take days, allowing plenty of time for officials to send orders to not allow us to cross. A plane flight was an option, but officials could be waiting at the airport. Discussions with a local lawyer and another meeting with the authorities led to a change of plans, and we considered an attempt to fight the recommendation in court. A week of vacillation and uncertainty followed, where plans swung like a pendulum between staying and escaping. Finally we bought tickets to fly out in the middle of the night, but we were stopped at the cold cement airport, and kept waiting until the dawn of that rainy March morning for the signature that authorized the airport officials to prevent our departure. We returned home exhausted, but soon after I had fallen asleep, the phone’s loud ring woke me up. I answered and heard the loud Russian words of another official on the line, and in my confused state I passed it on to my father. Later, more Kazakh officials came pounding on our door with a court summons written in Russian, the trade language. The trial for the men on the team, including my father, was set for the day after Easter. That Monday morning my father left for the

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courthouse and my mother went to pick up the American consul at the airport. All morning I tried to distract myself with schoolwork. I kept the phone close by, and finally it rang at 1p.m., with my mother calling to tell me the trial was over and they were awaiting the judge’s decision. Another several hours passed, but the outcome seemed inevitable, having heard many stories of corruption in the judicial system. The news finally came that the ruling was against us, charging major fines and giving us ten days to get out of the country. A week later, on my father’s birthday and two days after mine, we were back at the airport. There were no bittersweet farewells reminiscent of leaving Chile; instead it was security officials rummaging through every bag. I looked away as they unwrapped birthday presents, trying to stay calm as I watched my father’s frustration rise until we finally got past security. Then, as the doors of the airplane closed, it was abruptly over. It seemed surreal to be flying over the Caspian Sea, leaving permanently. It was as if that chapter of life was not just closed, but slammed shut.

Searching for Significance When we arrived back in the U.S., well-meaning friends and family welcomed us, stating that we must be so glad to be out of there, to be “home.” But I had just been kicked out of my home. It started becoming painfully real; I was in a completely different context where no one around me could relate to my experience, and our team members were no longer next door. On the one day scheduled for a session of debriefing, the other families in California drove an hour to meet us where we were staying at my grandmother’s house. But I was told that the morning was for adults only. Under the new societal rules I was suddenly not considered an adult. What little time I had to be with these close friends was taken away. I buried most of my emotions in the following weeks, using my final schoolwork as a distraction, but continually felt very alone. My faith was an integral part of my life and identity, yet I questioned God with many whys. That summer all of the team members had a chance to gather again to debrief the experience, and this time I was grateful to be included. In the midst of processing all that had happened, I found myself looking not only at the past painful journey but also toward the future. One passage in the Bible stood out to me:

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Returning to my Parents’ Foreign “Home” “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows” (2nd Corinthians 1:3-5, NIV).

It was as if the ideas planted two years earlier were beginning to sprout with greater clarity. Not only could I be a psychologist, I could be the one leading this kind of debriefing. I realized that what I had experienced provided training no university could offer, instilling a greater degree of empathy for others who went through their own difficulties. The pain of saying goodbyes, the loneliness of lacking others who understood, the questions of my own role and identity—all were experiences others would have, and opportunities to pass on the comfort I was receiving. This greater sense of meaning and goals for the future did not erase the present challenge of adjustment as I entered an American high school that fall. I continued to struggle through feelings of loneliness back in Southern California. I strove to maintain my 4.0 GPA and take all the honors courses, perhaps as an attempt to show some degree of competence. I could skip three years of Spanish, but did not recognize the Backstreet Boys as a popular pop band. I could ace a calculus exam, but was missing references to any TV show other than ER and America’s Funniest Home Videos. I even won “Best of Show” in an art contest, but I was unable to name what sport was associated with the Lakers. Yet when opportunities came to volunteer with children’s programs at international conferences such as the ones I had attended, I felt right at home, able to share what care and understanding I had received or at times felt was lacking. After two years in California, I left for Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, drawn by the high academic standard and strong psychology department. When entering the small but diverse campus I faced challenges common to most TCKs as well as unique difficulties of my own. It was in some ways a comfort to know that even the darkest of seasons included learning relevant to my career and calling. I memorized theories of psychology from the classroom; I grasped empathy through daily struggles. From early on I planned to continue in education through the completion of my doctorate. Along the way my involvement in clinical work and research has remained on a steady path of cross-

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cultural/international psychology, including Third Culture Kids, mobile families, transitions, and acculturation, with an added interest in trauma work. When conducting research on college-aged TCKs, specifically missionary kids (MKs), for my thesis, I discovered that I first had to inform my advisor what “Third Culture Kid” meant. But I was excited to discover, present, and publish my findings on factors that made transitions challenging, on areas of cultural and emotional distress during college, and on the influence of earlier transitions on current cultural adjustment.

Integrating Academia My research1 suggested that the challenges found in the transition process affected how well adjusted an MK was in college. What was interesting was that the transition back to the parents’ culture was more difficult than moving overseas, particularly in the area of cultural adjustment. While the cultural adjustment was not ranked as challenging as goodbyes or finding new friends, the research showed that it had the strongest relationship to the levels of adjustment in college, making the long-term effects noteworthy. There are several possible reasons for the last transition to be more difficult than the previous. Some individuals, such as myself, may have returned to the parents’ country because of adverse factors overseas, whether due to unstable governments, problems within the organization, or family issues. Such difficult situations could have a negative influence on the perception of the event. However, it is likely the majority came back as scheduled, many in order to go to college. The variance may be attributed in part to the latter transition being more recent and permanent. The memories of saying goodbyes may have been relatively fresh, eclipsing the pain from the previous farewells. In addition, when moving overseas there is generally some degree of awareness that it is a temporary location, possibly coupled with expectations to see old friends and relatives upon return. But when leaving the country and culture overseas that for many became home, there is a greater sense of finality, with a lower expectation of ever going back.

1

This research comes from “Cultural Transitions during Childhood and Adjustment to College,” published in the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 2009.

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The difference in the difficulties of changing cultures may seem surprising to some. One might expect settling in a brand new country and culture to be more challenging than returning to the parents’ homeland, a culture they have experienced to some degree through their parents, possible visits during childhood, and interaction with other expatriates. However, one of the key problems may be that very thing: expectations. There is a great awareness that experiencing culture shock in a new country might be challenging, and that fact alone has inspired a greater intentionality in providing needed support and means of adjustment. Reverse-culture shock is more easily overlooked, as parents return to a place they considered home. Parents might forget that their children have had less exposure to many of the current trends in their peer group. Upon arrival they find themselves to be the “hidden immigrants” (Pollock & Van Reken, p. 63), who may appear to be part of the majority, yet come from a different mindset, influenced by multiple cultures. The very experience of being identified as part of the majority could be novel. TCKs have a very distinct cultural identity from their parents, and moving back to the U.S. or Canada does not mean “coming home” for them as it does for the adults. The reality of reverse-culture shock and its lasting effects cannot be ignored.

Applying Experience and Research When returning to the U.S. after expulsion from Kazakhstan, I received a number of well-intentioned comments such as, “I’m sure you’re glad to be home.” They did not realize I had been uprooted from my last home and now was in an unfamiliar setting, very much aware that those around me could neither understand nor relate to my struggles of reentry. During that period of transition I felt out of place and quite alone, a feeling reminiscent of previous transitions but magnified by the intense circumstances and sense of finality. While there is some degree of variance for each individual and every event, some of the trends evident in research suggest common needs that should be taken into account by parents, teachers, and friends. The long-term effects of the transition experience reflect the importance of taking steps to facilitate a smooth process. Parents play a critical role, serving as one of the only constants in their children’s lives. There are other simple ways to create a greater sense of consistency and security. One is ensuring each child has a tangible item that can be taken across all

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borders, such as a toy or other memorable item. For example, my mother knit a blanket for each one of us, and we carried them across continents. Traditions or practices can be maintained to foster a sense of consistency, whether they be stockings on Christmas morning or praying before every meal. Establishing regular family dynamics, such as responsibilities held by each person, also cultivates a sense of security. It is critical to ensure that TCKs feel free to express their feelings and ask questions. Open communication within the family allows children to process their emotions and uncertainties. They need a safe place to express the sense of loss often accompanying the broad changes and multiple goodbyes, whether going overseas or returning to the parents’ country. Normalizing the wide range of reactions facilitates a healthy process of grieving and closure. While living overseas, it is also important to maintain some form of contact with the parents’ culture. My research showed that those who had more long-distance interaction with friends from the parents’ country reported less difficulty adjusting to the parents’ culture and finding new friends upon return to Canada or the U.S. From personal experience, I came back with a lack of awareness about popular media, clothing styles, and similar factors, which contributed to feelings of being an outsider. With today’s technological advances, online social networks and free internet-based phone calls are easily accessible in most locations. These tools can be used to help TCKs maintain relationships with their peers, who may well keep them updated while abroad and provide a greater sense of acceptance upon return. To further facilitate a smooth reentry, it is critical to increase awareness of what a TCK‘s experience is and how it differs from that of the parents. Family friends and relatives may be very welcoming and supportive, but they are likely to make inaccurate assumptions unless they are informed otherwise. A greater understanding of the TCK experience and awareness of the challenge of reentry and reverse culture shock may facilitate a more sensitive form of welcome rather than exacerbating feelings that no one understands. Even practical forms of re-orientation to the Western culture are at times needed or helpful, particularly through peers. Among them one might mention acclimating to shopping in super-stores with an entire aisle of, say, tomato sauces, or gaining insight into the current styles of clothing, or simply providing a listening ear to aid in the adjustment process.

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Finally, TCKs evidently have some challenges that continue past the initial adjustment to a new setting. Many come back to North America in order to attend a college or university, combining multiple areas of transition. In addition to the reverse culture-shock commonly accompanying reentry, they have the usual changes faced by all students, including being away from family, gaining a greater degree of autonomy, and living in a different context, such as a dormitory. There may be a greater degree of sensitivity during this initial period, when drastic changes are clearly evident, than during the latter years in school. Some colleges and universities have taken steps to facilitate TCK interaction, but in many places such resources are lacking. Whether initiated by the TCKs themselves or the school, creating a context encouraging interaction among the growing population of TCKs could provide ongoing support, addressing the areas of distress identified, such as not fitting in, loneliness, and not feeling understood. For some, such as myself at the small Whitman College in rural Walla Walla, Washington, there may be a shortage of TCKs. In such settings it is still critical to be involved in some form of community, whether through commonalities such as faith or involvement in groups such as international students, both of which were significant for me. While this chapter focuses on my own challenges and those experienced by many TCKs, I would like to emphasize that this is not the only component of our lives. When facing these difficulties, TCKs often exhibit impressive forms of resilience, with many continuing to excel in academics and future careers. TCKs are seen across professions: Eric Liddell was raised by British parents in China and became an Olympic gold medalist; the president of Compassion International, Wesley Stafford, lived in Côte d'Ivoire as a child; and one of the world’s key leaders, U.S. President Barack Obama, had a Caucasian mother, a Kenyan father, and spent a significant part of his childhood in Indonesia. I find their successes inspirational, knowing they too experienced the challenges of transitions and adjustment to different cultures. The forms of support suggested are not for the sake of “remedy,” but rather for enhancement, facilitating a greater degree of achievement in multiple facets of life.

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Bibliography Hervey, E. G. (2009). “Cultural Transitions during Childhood and Adjustment to College.” Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 28, 312. Pollock, D. C., & Van Reken, R. E. (2001). Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing up among Worlds. London, UK: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.



CONTINENTAL SHIFTS ANNA MARIA MOORE

Continental Drift Set in Motion: My Beginnings The first rays of light to warm my face were from the Mediterranean sun, but they could have been from anywhere. Even at birth, I was an outsider. Hairless head and open, blue eyes clearly marked me as a foreigner. The nurses in Barcelona were used to babies with thick black hair and eyes closed. In their fascination they cooed as they held me. That was my first intercultural experience, if you don’t count my conception; a merger between a small town Swedish woman and an American man from the Chicago suburbs. Within three weeks, I was on a plane to Sweden for my grandfather’s funeral. My passport photo shows my father’s hand holding up my little head. His thumb runs almost the entire length of my face. I have a collection of those passports, renewed every five years in a different country, filled with stamps blurred by hands thumbing through them in customs offices. That was how it began and how it has been ever since: one flight after another, one house to another, one city to another, one country to another, one continent to another. I’ve lived on five and I can’t guarantee that number won’t increase. I’m not finished experiencing the world, nor has the restlessness left me. The world is my playground. I tried to smother my travel bug a few years back with a two-year trip around the world. But that only silenced it temporarily until it got its breath back. The packing and unpacking wore me out and I longed for my own place and a comfortable bed. But with time my yearning for new shores has returned. Some habits are hard to break. More settled friends listen to my endless travel itinerary and roll their eyes, wondering when I will ever grow up and settle down. There is an expectation that one stable location is the end destination and that all this shuttling around the globe is



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just a phase that I will one day outgrow. But the traveler’s torch can’t be snuffed out.

Mantle Convection: Business Expat Kid I am the only daughter of an international businessman. My father ran various subsidiaries of a Dutch dairy business. They sent him around the world and we followed in his stead, uprooting every four or five years. I considered myself lucky compared to many of my other expat friends who had to move every two years on average. Whenever I tell someone that I grew up all over the world, those who know something about expat life ask “missionary or diplomat?” “Neither,” I reply. “Military?” “No, business.” “What business?” Here I smile, anticipating their reaction, and reply, “My father was a milkman.” They look at me quizzically, thinking that selling dairy products in such places as Thailand, Nigeria, Pakistan and Peru sounds slightly suspect. They are right. There isn’t a regional focus and they were all considered “hardship posts.” They are also centers of terrorism or trafficking: drugs, women, weapons. You name it. But the life we led was protected and privileged. “Are you sure your father wasn’t a spy?” I’ve had some ask. It’s fun to entertain the thought that he was CIA. His passport reads like a double agent’s, though the stamps for some of his destinations are missing; he asked that his arrival in South Africa in the 1980’s not be stamped into proof. Even today he springs surprises on me about places I don’t remember him visiting: New Zealand, Brazil, Haiti, Sudan. The list goes on. His career was exotic, but it wasn’t the stuff of spy novels.

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My father’s position and personality meant that he and his family represented his company. Like the children of missionaries, diplomats and military personnel, I was part of something larger than my own self, like it or not. I was expected to take part in the social fabric of whatever destination my father was assigned to. Although shy, I was frequently asked to attend social gatherings with my parents. Our house was never empty. There was an unceasing parade of cocktails, dinners, and parties through our homes. My mother was the perfect hostess and I the well-behaved daughter. For years I was exposed to global expats with impressive titles and important roles. It was an ideal way to become exposed to people, to learn social etiquette and to master small talk— experience that made transitions easier. I learned how to be an extrovert when necessary, enabling me to make friends wherever I landed.

Tectonic Shifts: I’m Only Along for the Ride I don’t remember anything about the goodbyes, only the hellos. I don’t remember sadness or loss for any place or person until I was a teenager. I only remember packing boxes and moving vans. My father usually went before us to start his new job and find a place for us to live, while I was stuck in school until the summer. My mother was the one closing down shop. She managed the moves and the household while my father managed our finances and our social lives. By the time we were reunited, he had the beginnings of a social network built up for us. I don’t remember either of them complaining. From my childish perspective, life seemed somehow to glide smoothly along its strange trajectory.

South America and North America My first memories are from Lima, Peru. I spent my first five years there. I remember watching the TV slide and the lamps bounce off shelves when an earthquake shook our foundations. I spoke Spanish to my parents who answered in Swedish or English. Our house was called “Casablanca” and was situated in a park in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. It was the only house in the area surrounded by olive trees and cacti rather than gates or high walls, but it still had bars on the windows in an attempt to keep out thieves. Rita, my nanny, took care of me and lived in an upstairs bedroom. Our home was shared with others who took care of our belongings and us, yet



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were not part of the family. One night my parents were out socializing when a man climbed over the roof and into our open courtyard. When Rita confronted him he drew a gun and threatened to kidnap me if she didn’t fork over the goods. He left when she found some cash in a drawer and gave it to him. He wasn’t the first or the last person to breach our private domain. There was a reason others lived behind high walls and gates. During those years I never saw rain, though I had heard about it. Rain, as most people define it, is non-existent in Lima. Many Limeños have never used an umbrella. One day while playing outside, I felt dampness on my face and held out my hand, thinking it must be this mysterious thing called rain. I was bursting with excitement to tell my mother and ran into the house shouting “¡está lloviendo!” (It’s raining!) In a moment my elation was crushed by my mother’s response. “No honey, that’s just fog.” Lima is known for its garúa, a fog that covers the city during the humid winter months of June to August. When I was four we put on a dance performance for our parents at my preschool. The first dance was a minuet, from 18th century France, complete with papier-mâché ball gowns and white wigs to match. The second was a typical Peruvian huayna, and we wore woolen ponchos decorated with llamas and angular geometric shapes. The contrast of powdered wig and poncho illustrates perfectly the dichotomy of my multicultural life.

North America and Europe I spent my sixth birthday in Los Angeles, California, were we lived with my Swedish aunt and cousin for a year. I jumped into first grade at a public school. I understood but didn’t speak much English at first and my first grade teacher clearly believed I was a Mexican immigrant girl due to my tanned skin and dark coloring. As an outsider, I felt at home with other minorities. I befriended an African-American and a Chinese girl, and got into fights in the schoolyard with boys who taunted us. Once when I whispered to my friend during the Pledge of Allegiance, the teacher stuck masking tape over my mouth to make a point that was lost on me. What was I pledging allegiance to? A country I had only been in a few months and would soon leave again? I understood I had to adapt, so I learned English quickly, and conveniently forgot my Spanish.



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Los Angeles lasted one year before we moved north to San Francisco and two of the most wonderful years of my life. I quickly made a niche for myself and my life took on a more American hue. I played with the kids in our cul-de-sac and walked to school with them every day. I had my first crush, played dodgeball and gave in to my first kiss on the monkey bars. Life was easy. I liked being a California girl and having friends with Iranian and Peruvian-Chinese parents who still fit into the American landscape. I felt like I fit in. Just after buying my first pair of roller skates and learning to ski, we were off again. This time my father was transferred to the Netherlands, a country where he had been an exchange student in 1962. In preparation for the move, my mother took lessons in Dutch and her teacher gave me a children’s book so I could start learning the language. I sat in the California sunshine reading a book called Ik kan lezen (I can read) and imagining this faraway place that we would soon call home.

Europe and Asia After my first day of school in Holland, I rode the school bus that would drop me off at the Central Station in Rotterdam where my mother would pick me up. “Another one Bites the Dust” by Queen was playing on the radio as I stepped off the bus and saw no sign of my mother. She never did show up. After several hours sitting on the sidewalk, while punks and drug addicts loitered nearby, a white-bearded flower vendor came toward me. He asked me a question I couldn’t understand. When I answered him “Ik spreek niet nederlands,” he switched to stilted English and asked where my parents were. “My mother is coming,” I told him, and continued to wait. He called the police, who picked me up and took me back to our hotel, where my parents were beside themselves with worry and guilt. That was one of many challenges of moving to a new place. We had no context or references. My mother was as disoriented as I was. She had been waiting on the opposite side of the station, never knowing that there were two entrances. In those days there were no cell phones. My parents will never forget their helplessness the day they nearly lost me. My father will never stop telling that story to anyone who will listen.



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We moved from the hotel in Rotterdam to Waasenaar, near The Hague. I learned to love pannekoeken, poffertjes, spekulaas and cheese. My special treat was to buy a fresh baguette and a kilo of Gouda cheese, tear out the soft yellow middle and eat it with the still-warm bread. Every December 5th on Sinterklaas, I would wake up to a shoe stuffed with gifts and candy. Then I’d run in the streets with the neighborhood kids and hope to catch some pepernoten being thrown by the Zwarte Piet, Dutch men painted in blackface and wearing colorful costumes from the 16th century. They rode on a float resembling a boat with Sinterklaas, the Dutch version of Santa Claus. The legend goes that he came over by boat to Spain from Africa, accompanied by slaves. I was shy and awkward at school, unpopular and teased by the boys whose attention I sought. So as I neared my teenage years, it was a blessing that I had to leave again and follow my parents to Thailand. Departures could be a timely escape. If things were going badly, it was reassuring to know that I would soon leave a place, change my destiny, and make a new life somewhere else. Transience has its advantages. You can reinvent yourself in a new place. I went from nerd to popular new girl in a matter of days.

Asia and North America My first week in Thailand, I sat in the cook’s quarters talking to her daughter whose broken English was mixed with Thai words she was teaching me. We sat on her bed looking at teen magazines as she shared her sticky rice in a bamboo stalk. This was a delicacy like candy and I remember its foreign but delicious sweetness. I wanted to be her friend and she wanted to be mine, despite our four-year age difference. We should have become fast friends, learning each other’s languages, going to the movies and shopping together. Instead, I started 8th grade at the international school and was suddenly spending all my time with foreign friends—the ones who would come and go—while ignoring the girl who lived just behind my bedroom for four of my teenage years. Our worlds were just too far apart for me to bridge at that difficult age. Living in Bangkok meant taking an air-conditioned car driven by a RedBull guzzling Chinese man to school, until I was allowed to take the colorful, 3-wheeled tuk-tuks by myself. These open-air taxis that spewed exhaust and veered in and out of traffic were my ticket to freedom, but they were a parent’s worst nightmare. They discouraged me from taking



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them with stories of horrible accidents caused by tipping over at high speeds. I didn’t care. In them, my friends and I explored the city. We would swallow the pollution from the cars, busses and throngs of motorcycles around us and hold our ears to muffle the loud engines. Being a teenager in Bangkok meant we were exposed to sights and sounds that would horrify most parents. Drugs, alcohol and prostitution were cheap and prolific. Going out in Bangkok meant strip clubs or cheesy discotheques full of foreigners and visiting U.S. marines. Maybe because every vice was prevalent and available, they held no appeal to me. My teenage years were lived in a glass cage where I could see out onto the world but remain unscathed. As graduation from high school neared, all of us seniors feverishly applied to universities back in Europe or the U.S. In the rush to study for exams and prepare for closing ceremonies, we hardly had time to absorb what graduation meant and what lay ahead. We believed that a higher education in the West was the way forward in life. As an American, I was expected to “return” to the U.S., a country I had only lived in three years and which hardly felt like home.

Continental Collision: Loss and Conflict Asia and North America and Africa I was frightened to move to the U.S., a country where I supposedly belonged because of my passport and my father, who had grown up there. All I had were recollections of Christmas and summer vacations spent in various locations with relatives, and memories of three years as a child in California. My friends and I didn’t really want to leave Bangkok; we wanted to stay together. But off we went, scattering around the globe, never to be together again. After graduation, I did what was expected of me. I moved to the U.S. to start college, though I dreaded leaving Thailand and my friends. I was jealous of those few who were staying, though I had no option to stay. My parents were being transferred to Nigeria. Not only did I leave my parents to live alone for the first time, but I also left my beloved Thailand. In a moment I lost my parents, my friends and my home. I wouldn’t be coming back to spend holidays in Bangkok like



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many of my friends would. Instead I would be visiting my parents in some far away country in Africa where I knew no one. I lost my footing as the ground beneath my feet began to shift.

Asia and Africa My first year in college in a small town called Walla Walla, in the southeast wheat fields of Washington state, I told my parents I wanted to go home for Christmas. “Yes, we can get you a ticket to Lagos,” they said. “No,” I replied. “I want to go home. To Bangkok.” I’m sure they were a bit bewildered by my feelings and struggled with the decision, but they also knew how difficult the transition was for me, and how I missed my friends and any stability in my life. That first year, I went “home” to Thailand. Thailand remained my home for many years. But if I told classmates in the U.S. “I’m from Thailand,” they looked at me funny. After all, I couldn’t even speak the language. So how could I be “from” there? In their attempts to sympathize and comprehend, I heard everything from “you don’t look Asian” to “oh, I do see a bit of Asian in you.” Even today I feel at home in Bangkok. Any place in which you spend those turbulent and intense teenage years creates a strong bond. Mine happened to have been spent in Bangkok. After that first Christmas during college, my parents expended quite a bit of time and energy trying to convince me to come visit them in their new “home” in Nigeria. I resisted. Why go to this new place? After all, I was supposed to be settling into America and creating fragile roots there through relatives and my American bloodline to my father. Adding yet another “home” would only make things more confusing and complicated. My second year in university, I went to Nigeria for Christmas. My father lured me with promises of “nice kids here your age who you’ll like. It’ll be fun.” My Dad was right. Those kids were like me, jetting back and forth from their parents in Lagos to their boarding schools and universities in Europe and the U.S. We had fun and I was given as much freedom as you could allow a young woman in Nigeria. After that first trip, I was sold. I



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returned as often as I could, though I knew that this too, would one day end.

Divergent Boundaries: Where is Home? Home is an ephemeral place that changes with the advent of friends, with the location of my family and with the feelings a physical place inspires in me. At times I have several homes. The expression “home is where the heart is” applies, but what if your heart is spread around the globe? My parents grew up knowing where home was whereas my homes were multiple and evolved over the years. Indeed, my sense of home is a plural concept. Often, it makes no sense to those who are rooted or who don’t know my full story. For many years, airplanes were my second home. Lying in the grass at my grandparents’ house in Chicago, I would watch planes pass overhead and wish I were on them. I spent countless hours in flight, and my carry-on held everything I needed to settle in with. I slept on the floor between the seats when I was still small enough. Gracious flight attendants gave me gifts and showered me with attention, especially when I flew alone. My first suitcase was small enough for my child-sized hands and had “Air France” emblazoned across the front. In flight I watched movies I couldn’t see at home, and listened to the music that was popular at my destination. I made my time in the air a transition phase in which to remember what came before and think about what lay ahead. On one flight over the English Channel my breakfast ended up all over my new maroon suit, as we hit a pocket of air and dropped abruptly. In that gut-wrenching moment, my loyalties changed. Planes had betrayed me, and our relationship became strained. I brought my sense of belonging back down on solid ground. Now I dread flying, but I keep doing it because it’s what I do. I travel. I call many places home: the tiny village in the North of Sweden where my mother grew up and we own a cabin, the metropolis in the northeast of Spain where I was born, the tropical warm city where my parents live in the U.S., the northern capital of Norway. These are all places where my family and my heart reside; where I can go at any time and slip in almost unnoticed. Home is where relationships thrive; where parents, family and good friends live. Once they leave that physical space, it no longer holds



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an attraction—except in my memories. And sometimes home is wherever I lay my hat: a hotel room, a friend’s house, a place I lived long ago. I carry all these homes with me like a shell upon my back. The shell expands with every move, growing stronger and spiralling outward as it absorbs all the richness and vitality from my vagabond life. Into my shell I pack my memories, my impressions, my life lessons. I stuff them in there as I move along and in response my shell just stretches outward and grows larger with each new experience. And when that experience is too much, I curl up inside with my memories, reminding myself of who I am and where I’ve been.

North America and Europe At college in the U.S., where I was supposed to fit in by virtue of my passport, I didn’t. I should have gone to college in one of the big cities on the coasts that offer more diversity. But I chose a small college in Walla Walla, Washington, where I wouldn’t feel anonymous. I wanted the safety of a little community in that great big country. I wanted to belong. After two years in the U.S. and unable to fit in, it was time to move on. I chose to go abroad to France and Spain, where I somehow knew I would feel more comfortable. The prospective challenge of a new culture and language made sense, in the same way that living in the wheat fields of northern Washington State didn’t. I went to France first, hoping to finally perfect the language that I’d been studying since age nine. My first month was spent with a French family headed by a lawyer, in an old country house on a hill. I would open my windows in the morning to look out over the surrounding farmyards and orchards. Of course I mastered French just in time to move to Spain. Moving to Oviedo, in northern Spain was a sort of homecoming. While my study abroad peers were struggling with culture shock in Spain, everything felt natural to me. It was almost too easy. I absorbed the language and accent, made friends, and adopted my host family as my own. I learned to love the deep fried food and bean stews that were served at two p.m. and filled us up until dinner at ten p.m. The music was Celtic, the drink of choice was cider, and the countryside was green. It broke my heart to leave when the semester was over. I waved to my friends through a veil of tears as my train pulled out of the station.



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Convergent Boundaries: Family and Friends There are photos of me being held by my Swedish cousins, when we were in Sweden for my grandfather’s funeral. I wouldn’t see them for years after or even remember them, when we finally met again. There are photos of my American grandparents holding me in Spain, the day of my baptism. Family were those people we visited during our home leaves to the U.S. or to Sweden, and who helped keep me linked me to my roots. Whenever I “returned” to visit family in Sweden or the U.S., I absorbed the current culture, fads and jargon of my cousins, pretending they were my own so I’d fit in. In my longing to belong, I stay close to my family, writing and calling and visiting as often as I can. I hear stories of estranged families and scratch my head. I hold my relatives very close to my heart because they belong to me and no matter how far away they are, they will always be my family. I appreciate their anchored permanence. No matter where I may go, my cousins, aunts and uncles remain just that. There are ties that bind us across any distance. The friendships I have made over the years have held almost as much weight in my life as my family has. They make up the map of my experience. But they can disappear; they are not accountable to me. I have spent a good part of my life salvaging and nurturing friendships and relationships that were forged in far away places. They were often fragile blooms when they were torn out by their roots and transported to new soil. I am grateful for friends who have come into my life and I stubbornly refuse to let them go. I write, visit and call. Those friendships are created and maintained through great and worthwhile effort but I wouldn’t have it any other way. My friends are the memory keepers of my history and my identity. I, in turn, hold their memories for them. For thirty years I have written letters. I never needed pen pals. I had cousins in Sweden, grandparents in the US and friends everywhere who received my missives. Writing is my connection to those I want to stay close to when phone calls or visits are too expensive or impractical. Saying goodbye to friends before the advent of the Internet, meant keeping careful track of their addresses and spending hours writing letters that I hoped would one day arrive at their intended destination. I wrote thousands of letters to friends who came into my life, in an effort to keep our bonds intact. Now, my letters have been replaced by email, but I still have boxes full of letters I received from friends, journaling their lives.



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Most vacations I take are not for tourism but to visit friends. Business trips always include a side trip to see someone from my past. People joke that I know someone in every city in the world. That’s not far from the truth. We Global Nomads are literally scattered to the ends of the earth and I travel the world renewing relationships. It could be a full time occupation.

North America and Africa After college, an altruistic streak mixed with my desire for adventure urged me to move to Nigeria to work in the bush for a humanitarian cause. I could have gone anywhere, but my parents were still in Lagos after four years. I went in June during political upheaval, after democratic elections were annulled by the incumbent military regime. After waiting anxiously for days until flights resumed and my father thought it safe enough for me to come, I arrived in Lagos. I wasn’t allowed into the bush because of the civil unrest. I stayed in the big city and worked in the American Embassy with its own breed of transients. We lived behind layers and layers of bars that cut us off from the local world. The only contact I had with Nigerians was at work, where I got just a taste of the diverse cultures, food, and languages of the country. I sunbathed out on a patio that overlooked a local church and mosque next door. The imam chanted his prayers throughout the day as the religion ordains while I lay there in my bikini with a book or headphones piping pop music into my ears. Four months after my arrival, my Dad sat me down to explain that he had decided to leave his company after 15 years. Life in Lagos was becoming too dangerous. He’d had to sleep in the office to avoid breaking the national curfew and had once gotten stuck in the middle of a rioting crowd and had feared for his life. Now he feared for us as well. There were a growing number of robberies and carjackings, some ending fatally for foreigners. It was time to move on.

Subduction Zone: Third Culture Kid It was around this time that someone handed me a book titled Third Culture Kids: Growing up Among Worlds. I soaked it up, every page eliciting a strong emotion and an “aha!” moment. I finally had a word to stitch together my patchwork identity into a whole. I was a TCK. I suddenly understood that not only are there many out there like me, but



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also that we have our own sub-culture. When we meet each other, we feel connected. As a child I led a privileged life. We had money and benefits that we would never have had in my parents’ countries. We were not “rich” by Western standards, but in the countries where we lived, we lived like kings and queens in comparison. I was spoiled by my implicit otherness— by just being an outsider who didn’t always have to play by the rules. I could claim to be ignorant, and I often was. I was lucky, whether I understood that or not. I was exposed to a treasure trove of global experiences, sights, sounds, people and languages. I got a good education, usually at a private school. And I probably took most of it for granted until I was old enough to understand. The emotions and quirks I thought were my own are part of a pattern shared by tens of thousands of others who grow up outside of their parents’ home culture. One of my quirks is hoarding. I am a pack rat. The things I collect, mostly personal, somehow link me back to my past. They are the thread that strings my life together. The places and people may not physically be with me anymore, but the notes, photos, letters, tickets, invitations and books they gave me are. They form part of my identity. I still have shells and rocks found on various beaches. I wrap them up and carry them to the next destination. I have pottery shards from Arizona, fossils from Israel and miniature dolls from Chile. Many tourists pick up souvenirs from the places they visit to remind them of their adventure. I do this to the extreme. My souvenirs reflect the people I’ve met along the way. They contain an ocean of emotions and memories. I keep faded pieces of cloth or papers that have no place on a shelf. So they reside in boxes, in closets, in scrapbooks and in albums that nobody wants to see but me. My collections keep me connected with the places I have lived and the people I have met. I can take them out and put them all up in every new place to remind me of what came before. I may not yet know where I am or where I’m going, but I do know where I’ve been. Anyone who reads about or knows TCKs learns that the question they all dread is “where are you from?” That is the case for me as well. I look away as I contemplate an appropriate response. It seems such a silly thing. How can four small words have such power over us? I feel less uncomfortable if you ask me to explain my opinions on global economic



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trends or evidence of migration patterns of Peruvians to Polynesia. When someone asks where I come from, it would be easier to show them my collection of memories and let it speak for me.

Africa, Europe and North America The whole family was there when the movers came to our house in Lagos and packed up boxes and boxes of objects collected over the years. This move meant the end of an identity: I was no longer the daughter of a business expat, no longer the recipient of benefits such as household help, annual leaves and transcontinental tickets. I would have to create my own independent identity. I wasn’t sure where or how to begin other than to do what I did best: pack my suitcases and get on a plane to the next destination, which turned out to be Spain. I wanted to be in Spain. I returned to the shores where I was born, where I felt I wanted to make my new home. But after two years, even Spain wasn’t enough. I moved to Sweden, thinking that I would once and for all get to know intimately this language and culture that was also mine. Just a few months after moving to Sweden, thinking I’d be there for at least a year, I was packing up again to move back to the U.S. to get my Master’s. I ended up in what could be described as paradise for a TCK like myself. Thunderbird School of Global Management was known for its international focus and had students from over 40 countries. We formed a global community of travelers, TCKs, and “citizens of the world” at a small campus in Glendale, a town outside of Phoenix, Arizona. For my internship I ended up in yet another foreign destination—Belgium, where I spent eight months in Brussels working, practicing Dutch and French and dining on delicacies like frites, gaufres and horsemeat. After I got my Master’s degree I stayed at the school working as long as I could. I didn’t want to leave what was the perfect environment for me: global, ever shifting, and multicultural. But this chapter too, had to end to make room for the next one. I was hired by a multinational company near Washington, D.C. and spent the next seven years working for them in the U.S. and traveling the world.



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Transform Boundaries: Identity When I was ten years old, in Holland, our school choir performed a song entitled “50 Nifty United States.” To liven it up, we were asked to wave the flag of our home state when we sang its name. Therein lay my first identity crisis. I went home that night to confront my parents. “Where am I from?” I asked. They looked baffled. They had never had to ask themselves that question. They knew exactly where they were from. My Dad was a Midwesterner from Illinois and my Mom was Swedish, from a village in the north. They didn’t have an answer, so they asked me in return, “Where do you think you’re from?” I don’t know what I answered, but I was clearly confused. With that confusion came a sort of freedom. I could choose! I wanted to wave a flag, so I had to choose a state. I spent the next week carefully making my flag, cutting out poster paper in a pendant shape, coloring in the letters and gluing it to a ruler. At the concert, I proudly waved my “California” flag. California was the only state I had lived in, and I had loved it there, so it seemed the obvious choice. Somewhere along the way, I forgot the pride I felt during that 5th grade concert. Later, when I had a choice, I didn’t choose to move back to California for university. I chose Washington State instead. TCK is a convenient label for a varied and unique experience and lifestyle. What shaped me was out of my control. The decisions my parents made to move us around the world rather than settling in one place created the blueprint of my peripatetic life. I am a mosaic of all the places I have lived or worked in, of all the people who have come into my life and all the skills that an international life has given me. My identity changes with the wind. My best friend describes me as a wild strawberry plant; setting down roots anywhere I can. Not deep, just deep enough to keep growing, to survive. I reach out gentle tendrils as far as I can, even dropping down in the middle of a potato or a carrot patch, not minding the deeply rooted lives around me. I explore, send out branches to grow and mix and mingle with the



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others. I can live anywhere the climate allows and once I get started, I spread out, creating an environment where I can thrive.

The Next Shift? This is just a way of life for me. Take a jumbo jet, pack a suitcase, say goodbye, fly across the world, and move to another location. By the time I was 14 I had circumnavigated the globe. If you list the places I have experienced, each one is in itself a story, an adventure worth a fireside chat. There are so many, and they are just a reflection of my nomadic life. It was all part of the package and never felt exotic in its nature. Yet when compared to others, I now know it was. I know I’ve been blessed. Growing up globally is a privilege. Along the way I met a Norwegian who became my husband and took me back to his home country. I left the U.S. willingly, once again an expat with a new adventure to live and a new culture and language to conquer. A new country offered new experiences, new perspectives and new relationships. I could add yet another place to my growing list of “homes.” Before moving to Norway we traveled the world for two years. I needed to let my husband get a taste of my life. It helped him to better understand my perspectives. For me, it was a voyage of rediscovery, rewinding back through the scenes and backdrops of my own personal history. In order to settle down in Oslo, I thought I had to get the travel bug out of my system. But after two years here, I have to admit it may not be the “end destination.” There may never be an end destination. And why do I need one? I have understood and accepted that uncertainty and mobility are a lifestyle for me. My parents’ choices influenced my itchy foot syndrome. I may never remain still. I may never “settle down.” Even mentally, the idea is difficult to digest. It is exotic and appealing; something untried. And I am tentative about taking a bite. In the end I am not tied to any one physical place. I am only bound of my own accord. Something or someone might ultimately tie me down, but until then, I take each day as it comes. Even if I reside in Oslo for the rest of my life, I will still travel the world. I will still visit my other “homes” to reconnect. The flexible bands that stretch between me and those places keep pulling me back. This life chose me and now I have chosen it. The joy lies in the novelty, diversity and discovery it encompasses. The traveling never ends; the adventures never cease.



OUTSIDER1 NINA SICHEL

Outside, snow falls. Inside, I am freeze-dried, my skin cracked with lack of moisture and cold. No amount of Vaseline Intensive Care rids me of a newly-reptilian epidermis; it is as though I have baked in the sun on the beach, and am now at that stretched-tight place just before peeling, except that the beach I know is a continent away and I am enduring my first winter in a darkened north. I don’t need to close my eyes to see it—blue-green waters lapping a sugarsand beach, palms shushing the Caribbean breeze, the sensuous curve of coast sheltered by misty mountains. I hear bells tinkling on an ice cream cart, hear a vendor’s feet shuffling sand as he trudges past, hauling two buckets of iced oysters, scenting the air with brine and lime. My mouth waters at the memory. It is 1971 and I’m a college freshman. This morning, as every morning, I awaken early and go to the communal kitchen to boil water. I have ground espresso coffee, which I’ve brought from home, and the cloth sleeve to strain it through. My floor-mates have become accustomed to the ritual; they neither ask what I am doing, nor require a taste. They cannot stomach my café criollo, especially not first thing in the morning. I never get used to their dishwater coffee. These are the years of glass percolators; the years before drip machines; decades before Starbucks. Snow falls outside the window, draping black branches four stories below. Already shards of grass, browned by frost, are slowly being smothered. The air is gauzy with snowflakes and I strain to peer through glass, through flakes, but the window fogs over as I get too close. The flurries 1

This essay is adapted from an earlier version that appeared in the November/ December 2006 issue of International Educator, the bimonthly magazine published by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, and also in Among Worlds magazine (December 2004).

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shield me from a brittle landscape. The trees and bushes are skeletons; dark, bony fingers rise from them, and stretch toward the snow-heavy skies. It is a monochromatic place, and I am starved for color. My coffee is thick, and black. I sink into reverie. I dream of the peachy flesh of mangoes, oozing juice, the tart pink heart of guava. I dream of the dense, sweet milk of green coconuts, of moist orange papayas spilling ebony seeds, of the pure ivory banana hidden inside its dark-streaked skin. I don’t even like most tropical fruits, but even so I miss them, miss their vibrancy, their pungent scent. Their availability. I dream of the fecundity of the tropics where I was raised, the propulsion of blossom through tubular stem, the forcing of all those flowers by nothing more than sun and rain and heat. Such simple things, such constant things, I miss. What I long for is sensual: color, sound, smell. I don’t believe I’m homesick; I just miss some aspects of the place I was raised in. After all, it never really belonged to me. I was brought up as a foreigner to believe the United States was my real home. The international schools I attended had students from all over the world, but the educational programs were based on the U.S. model. My friends have mostly gone off to college, in the U.S., in England, or Scotland, or Argentina, or Switzerland. There are few I know who have remained. Some of us will reunite during vacations home, and some will never return. We are used to this, we cyclically release our friends to the vagaries of life. Friends are a rhythm like a tide, they come, they go. We’ve been raised among wanderers, accustomed to a two-year flow, the children of nomadic diplomats, international businessmen, embassy workers. The few who stay longer form a unique party; foreigners, we band in a group like some strange confederation, like fish in a tank, out of place together. We are the rootless ones. Raised to believe we’re of one culture, plunged into another, we sometimes wonder our whole lives long which home is truly ours. My passport identifies me as a U.S. citizen, my cédula as a resident of Venezuela. I can sing both national anthems, and feel no preference. We feast on turkey for Thanksgiving and hallacas at Christmastime. My friends at college make reference to their childhoods and I don’t know what they’re talking about, even though I’m an American, too: Leave it to Beaver? Twinkies? Diving under desktops for shelter from the bomb? What bomb? I remember a bomb exploding the façade of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, it might have been the time Nixon was visiting, the time he was pelted with tomatoes, but it could just as

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easily have been years later. We didn’t dive under any desk; we just avoided speaking English in the street. I had a few Venezuelan friends; they affectionately called me la gringa, and I accepted their gentle tease, though it didn’t feel right. That’s what I called the others, the Americans from the States, not the ones who lived here. We, somehow, were different. In our family and among our friends we spoke English and Spanish, all mixed together. On a summer trip to the States, my baby sister before dinner announced, “I need to wash-a las manos.” She couldn’t understand my American grandmother’s proud laughter. The grandmother who lived in Caracas and spoke English with us and German with our father took bilingualism as a matter of fact, not as an accomplishment. At the club in Caracas, we swam with our Norwegian friends. The waiters were Italian, the soccer players were Dutch and Swedish, English and German. I always assumed I’d continue to live among international people. It’s what I knew, it’s how I felt at home. My own parents had different nationalities; one was born in Germany, one in New York. I feel strange among my American college acquaintances. They are mostly from Long Island, or from small towns in the Northeast. They don’t understand my points of reference any more than I understand theirs, and it is such work to explain. Snow falls. I pull myself away from my memories, push myself out of the cushioned sofa. I soft-step down the dormitory hall to my room, where I swath myself in layers of cotton and wool, don waterproof boots and parka, reach stiffly for my books. It’s time for class. *** Winter break comes, and I look forward to reunions back home. I’m anxious to compare experiences. I disembark after a day’s travel from the stale, metallic air of the airplane and am hit full in the face with the moist, Caribbean ocean breeze. My pores open to receive it, and anticipate the feel of the sun tomorrow. I am a pale, pasty version of the girl who left some months ago. Everything thrills me, the tiny lights twinkling on the mountainsides, the acrid smell of native grass, the coffee—ah, the coffee—in the mornings, the fresh-squeezed orange juice. But many of my friends are gone for

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good, and even the ones I thought were staying on have mostly relocated. I never got to say goodbye. Not an unusual situation, for us. But still— what will I do with my stories? I want to tell them how it’s been, how it’s nothing like what our parents and teachers said it would be. They told us the States was the land of equal opportunity, but I notice an unofficial segregation, even in these days after the Black Power movement. The blacks and whites in my school don’t much mingle. I grew up in a country of brown people, and though there was plenty of class discrimination, I was not aware of overt racism. At my college, it seems, inter-racial friendships are the exception, not the rule. This makes me sad. I had assumed this kind of thing was over. People are different in other ways as well, more so than I’d expected. Americans in the States have a different concept of personal space and personal liberty. Women friends back away from me when I get too close, not used to the same physical contact I take for granted. Yet sexual trysts are rampant, and unrestrained. Every Friday and Saturday, bed-swapping creates a mass migration. Rightful roommates find themselves booted out in favor of weekend bedmates. Much time is spent in organizing sleeping arrangements, and those of us without a special guest are trotted out to a new room and another roommate. There is a tidal rush toward beer kegs starting Friday afternoon. There is music, and occasionally dancing, but the main purpose of the fraternity parties seems to be to get drunk. The parties last long into the night, and the next day the rooms are rank with spilled beer and sour breath. No one seems embarrassed, even after the most outrageous behavior. I go to some of these parties, but unless you are also drunk, or getting there, there isn’t much to do. The music is too loud to talk over and anyway, no one wants a serious conversation. From time to time there are wine-and-cheese parties—after all, this is the seventies—but they are mostly after poetry readings or for faculty/student minglings. These gatherings are tame, quiet. To me, they seem stilted. All these students acting as though they are on a par with their professors—I feel awkward, like a poseur, inauthentic. There are coffeehouses and folk nights, too, and I volunteer at these, serving up horrible coffee and greasy donuts in exchange for the music.

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The music brings me to a place where I can feel more American; it reminds me of my own groups at home, gathering around a guitar, singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Greensleeves” under the palm trees of Caracas and feeling some kind of soul-like connection. But I’m lonely. Past the initial introductions, the surprised exclamations (Really! From Venezuela! Where, exactly, is that?), the interest of my college acquaintances begins to fade, their attention wanders. Their neartotal lack of understanding of life beyond the U.S. border amazes me. Few have traveled, and most have such stereotyped assumptions about Latin America, as if it were one giant place, and the people all alike. Mine is a tiny college and there are few international students, but at least when I meet with them, we share a geographical understanding. I fall in love with an American boy, one who is neither impressed nor put off by my background, one to whom it doesn’t really matter. We learn from each other, we dive into our relationship, we become our own world, and boundaries and borders don’t count any more. I am lucky. He, too, is a bit of an outsider, more an observer than a joiner, content to make cynical comments from the edge of college life. But he is restless, uncomfortable in this, his hometown, and when he transfers to another university, after two years, I find myself more alone than I’ve ever been. We endure the next two years, punctuating the time with frequent visits, and I try to compensate for my loneliness by plunging deeper into my studies and my work on the college magazine. I form one or two tentative friendships. Over time, they become permanent. Yet I don’t feel like I belong here, not the way others do. I feel no real bond to the college or to the town. I can’t mold my identity to my surroundings. I don’t feel like I belong to any place in particular. Though I miss Venezuela, I know it isn’t mine. I am American; I am supposed to belong here. Maybe I just haven’t been here long enough to call this country home. *** I move seven times in the next nine years, relocating first to New York, then North Carolina, then Michigan, then Florida. It is easy to move; I form little attachment to the places I inhabit and make few friends. I resist settling, and never completely unpack as I move from place to place. Yet I

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want to belong somewhere, to experience the comfort of community others seem to take for granted. I’m not sure where this longing comes from, and I am perplexed by the seeming contradiction. My own background never included establishing roots. My father’s family left Germany when he was only eleven and never looked back; he left Uruguay, where they’d resettled, to go to college and only returned afterwards for vacations; he ended up in Venezuela but never became attached to it. My mother always said she wanted a typical American home – a house with a white picket fence, somewhere near her family in upstate New York – but she was restless enough to be the first to leave home for college, and loved travel. Even knowing she’d remain in Venezuela, she didn’t live permanently in any one place. I remember endless Sunday afternoons cruising new neighborhoods in Caracas, looking for houses to rent. We moved a halfdozen times in my growing-up years, all in the same city. So this longing is a sort of nostalgia for something I’ve never really known, the idea of a home with roots and history. I wonder where it springs from. *** New York City is crowded, noisy, depressed. I work in a small publishing house and go home at night by crowded, smelly subway to a crowded, tiny apartment-–myself, my boyfriend, our friend, crammed into a 1-1/2bedroom fourth-floor walkup. There are strikes by the garbagemen, roaches we can’t get rid of in the apartment, a mouse no one sees but me. And yet, I love New York—love Sundays in the park with the newspaper, the Met, the long, long walks down Broadway or Fifth Avenue, peoplewatching in Greenwich Village. I enjoy the mix of ethnicities, find it exciting – I watch the flow of people wrapped up in their own universes, their stories unfolding in strange tongues. My boyfriend is a graduate student; we try to take advantage of the time we share. We can’t afford much, but we are happy with little. By springtime, the filth of the city is getting to us, the constant push of bodies, the odors, the aggressive, edgy city life. There isn’t enough green. The air smells tinny, even on a nice day. And I’ve grown tired of my job, its lack of advancement. I’ve looked for work elsewhere, but the publishing industry has begun its long consolidation, small houses

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swallowed up by the big ones, big houses swallowed up by corporations. My prospects are nil, and my partner, who has completed his graduate degree, can’t find work. When he gets a job offer in North Carolina, we are thrilled. The country is in a recession, and we are fortunate that one of us will have a decent job. We pack our things into a rented van and drive to a small town near a larger town in the middle of the Bible Belt. All the way there, I sing James Taylor songs. Surely it will be beautiful. We are moving to the sweet sunny South with its rolling hills and its warm hospitality. Perhaps this is the real America I have been told about, the one I am supposed to believe in. Soon after arriving, when I go to the bank of mailboxes that is the common area for the townhouse development we have moved to, I meet Mr. Moss. "You know what a Yankee is?” he drawls. I play dumb, a move which has saved me in the past, but not this time. “No, what?” I reply. “A northerner who moves South,” he cackles, and pauses to let this sink in. “You know what a damn Yankee is?” “No.” “One who stays.” I am stunned speechless. Welcome to North Carolina. I turn on my heel and walk away. I am screaming inside—you idiot, I’m from way further south than you’ve ever heard of! You backwards gringo! It doesn’t get any better. We are living in a dry county and when we go to dinner at a nice restaurant the next county over, we have to bring our own wine in a brown paper bag, as though it is something to be ashamed of rather than something to enhance our meal. The beach at the moccasin-

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ridden sepia lake is segregated. They call it a club; membership is only open to whites. My boyfriend, now a professional journalist, writes a story about a segregated cemetery. I write a story about the fledgling international community in Charlotte, and the editor of the magazine tries to cheat me out of my pay. I am more miserable in North Carolina than I’ve ever been anywhere in my entire life. I can’t wait to leave. I can’t find decent work and end up setting type in the back room of the newspaper my boyfriend is working for. My boss is missing teeth. When a young woman, pale and weak a day after a miscarriage, is given a five-cent raise, and the other workers grumble, I tell them to organize. They are terrified, hold their fingers to their lips, and shush me. I can’t make sense of my life here and want to run away. I don’t know if it’s the difference between the North and the South or the difference between big city and small town or if it’s just me. I’ve been in the States for five years now and still feel like a stranger. *** We move to rural Michigan, to a town of a thousand people, many of whom already know we’re coming well before we arrive. “That’s the couple that’s living together, the new reporter and his girlfriend,” they gossip among themselves. We hear about it much later and find it hilarious. We move into the little apartment the previous reporter has just vacated. We shop for food the next town over, where there is a regular supermarket, not just a convenience store. The day after, with our cupboards comfortably full, we are slammed with a blizzard. Snow is piled six feet deep on the roads, and it takes a week to clear them. Lake Michigan looks like a moonscape. For the first time in years and years, the entire lake has frozen over, and icebergs rise eerily here and there, covered with snow, all the way to the horizon. Ice sculptures form around the piers where windblown lake water freezes against pilings and buoys. It will be interesting to discover the shoreline, appearing under the receding snow in the spring. Western Michigan turns out to be gorgeous. We explore the rolling country in all its seasons, discover cross-country skiing, hike the soft trails through state parks, climb the Sleeping Bear Dunes and race each other down, visit cherry orchards and spit pits out the window all the way home,

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fingers dyed a deep purple. We take weekend trips to Chicago where we cruise the Art Institute and used bookstores. We drive two hours to Grand Rapids to see a first-run movie. In Michigan, I begin my work with migrant farmworkers. Because I am fluent in Spanish, I am useful in the ESL rooms at the schools, and useful during parent conferences. The life of a poor, itinerant Mexican field laborer is something I have nothing in common with, but we share a language and an understanding of class distinctions, and I am impassioned. One family in particular, whose children I work with at the public school, takes us under its wing. We are invited for meals there, we are included in the annual celebration after the asparagus harvest, when the men slowly empty the refrigerator—moved outdoors for easy access—of its stockpiled beers, and the women slap tortillas on the stove and sip Coca Colas. I am deeply honored when, after weeks of making paper flowers for the Asparagus Festival farmworker float, I am asked to join the mariachi band and the costumed child dancers as they inch their way down the main street, though I don’t fool myself. I am accepted as a guest. I am not one of them. But it is isolated. And even here, there is such bigotry. I hear anti-Semitic remarks when I take a short-lived job at a real estate office. The farmworkers are called pepper-bellies by their employers. At school, the migrant kids keep to themselves. I ride the school bus to help deliver the preschool children who are enrolled in the summer programs and the places they live in—broken down trailers, cramped shacks—break my heart. *** It isn’t until we move to Miami three years later that my surroundings begin to feel familiar, and I start to think that this is a place I might call home. It is a city that pulses with light and the colors I love—vibrant purple bougainvillea, fuchsia oleander, chartreuse palms, that blue blue sky. Roots snake down from gumbo limbo trees, and Biscayne Bay sparkles in diamond sunlight. Pelicans swoop and glide and suddenly plummet into the sea, surfacing with full bills, jerking their heads back to choke down their catch. The light is intense. The heat shimmers. The breeze off the ocean is warm and salty.

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Miami contains enclaves of the cultures I am familiar with. I walk down Calle Ocho and breathe in the smell of frying plantains, coffee, that oniongarlic-green pepper-tomato sazón that is the basic combination of so many of the dishes I know. The rapid-fire slurred Cuban Spanish is similar to the Spanish I grew up with, the music blaring from the storefronts is the same. I approach a window in the side of a building and ask for a cortadito and receive expressions of total disbelief when I tell them not to add the sugar. No sugar in your coffee? Sacrilege! In South Miami, there is a Jewish deli where we meet my brother and his wife for lox and bagels on Sunday mornings. Wolfie’s on Miami Beach has the highest-stacked sandwiches I’ve ever seen outside of New York City. Pale old people in curlers and shorts occupy folding plastic chairs on the front porches of the run-down hotels in the section that will later be gentrified and emerge, spectacularly, as the South Beach Art Deco district. We go to the docks to get fish straight from the fishing boats. We buy shrimp from a vendor with a truck parked on the side of the road; he’s driven them up from Key West earlier in the day. I order a batido de mamey from the guy at the fruit stand near Coral Gables. He is surprised when I speak to him in Spanish. I know I am different—I look different, I act different, I think differently —but here I feel more comfortable, that difference is familiar, it’s how I grew up. Days of riot and rage descend on Miami. Liberty City explodes, and our neighborhood of Coconut Grove, far from the immediate conflagration, is put under nighttime curfew. Garbage cans are on fire in the Black Grove, the section originally settled by Bahamians, and there are fears of looting. My boyfriend, working now for the Miami Herald, is sent to cover the emergency room at Jackson Memorial Hospital; he returns after work shaken by what he has witnessed. The National Guard patrols the neighborhood with long guns ready. I am not afraid – I am accustomed in Caracas to the guardia with bayonets or machine guns – but still, we go to spend the nights with my brother in the suburbs, far from the commotion. I work for a year at an all-girl’s Catholic school, then take a job as a counselor in Homestead, an hour south of where we live, working with “settled” farmworker youth, those who are not traveling the migrant stream but whose families toil in the vast agricultural fields of South

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Florida. I visit their homes in the migrant camps, make sure they report to their summer jobs, and, in the fall, set up a tutoring program in the local school. I become close to a couple of the teenagers; when I start wearing Mexican peasant blouses, they think I am pregnant and plan to throw me a surprise baby shower. One of them lets me in on the secret and we fall over laughing, and plan a party of a different sort. When my boyfriend is assigned to the West Palm Beach bureau the next year, I commute an hour through sugar cane fields at dawn to continue to work with migrants in the local high school. Belle Glade is one big ghetto, and the migrants—latino, black—are at the bottom of the heap. No, they are almost at the bottom. Below them are the new arrivals, the Haitian refugees who have risked their lives to come here in overcrowded, leaking boats, crossing an ocean many of the locals have never even seen. Here, racism takes on a new cast. The Haitians are despised even by the American blacks. Maybe especially by the American blacks, who spit "Haitian" at each other as the lowest form of insult. This kind of hatred is beyond my comprehension. I do my best to try to break down these walls. I sit with my students at lunchtime instead of with the teachers. I pair them in the hopes that the strange will become familiar. I tell stories about overcoming barriers, we talk about Martin Luther King. Nothing makes a difference. At the end of each day, I commute back to the coast. It can feel surreal—plowing through invisible borders, navigating among strangers. When we move back to Miami, I begin work with another group of refugees, people who arrived on the Mariel boatlift. I teach them rudimentary English. I show them how to fill out an application form, how to construct a resumé. Again, I am surprised, shocked, confused by hatred —after having been rescued and received with open arms, the established Cubans have turned against many of the Marielitos. There are too many of them, and the Cuban community is overwhelmed. They aren’t the way they were expected to be. Many of them are homeless, and sick. Too many of them spent too many years in prison, for either political reasons or by reason of insanity. Decades of communism have eroded the belief that one can strive to better oneself, and that personal effort will be rewarded, or at least that is what some of my students tell me. The first wave of Cuban immigrants is staunchly Republican and anti-Castro and passionately outspoken and these Marielitos have lived for years—some of them their entire lives—with political repression, suppressed speech, threats and incarceration and death.

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I am given the task of teaching a class in acculturation, a concept I take to mean, get them used to the American way, the American ideal. I try. But what exactly is the American way? Is it the land of the free, home of the brave, equal opportunity individualistic ideal I had been raised to believe was the norm here? Is it the Protestant ethic? Is it that moving concept of brotherhood, of equality, that I believed was so essential to the Civil Rights movement and whose fire has not yet died in me? Or was that all just American propaganda, like the anti-imperialist Latin American leftists had claimed? Miami has sprouted bumper stickers: Will the last American to leave Miami please turn off the lights? White flight, they call it, meaning Anglo-American, ignoring the fact that so-called minorities made Miami what it is. There is so much that I still just don’t get, so much that doesn’t make sense at all to me. Some students invite me to their apartment after work one day for a party, and they pour glass after glass of some sort of aguardiente. It is rotgut liquor, and we all suffer the next day, but that night we are joined in laughter. I see new ties developing among my students, new friendships forming, common ground. I see this as if from a distance, though I am surrounded by them, by their laughter and their music and their warmth. Tonight I am in their company, but I am not one of them. And that is fine. It dawns on me that I may always be an outsider. Though I am American, I am like an immigrant, one who will always carry another culture within, no matter how long I reside in a particular place, no matter how many times I move, and no matter my outward appearance. My cultural identity is difficult to articulate; it is a blend of my own American-German-secular Jewish family background, the international community in which I was raised, the Latin American Catholic country where I grew up, and the influence of travel and reading and friends from other cultures that also shaped me. I have no name for this yet, but I am learning to accept this difference in me, to recognize that it is okay to live in a place and not have to be a part of it, to observe and enjoy and not have to belong. To be able to stand outside, looking in, and feel comfortable there. In Miami, in the early 1980s, I am in a place that is struggling to define itself, a place whose identity shifts and resettles with each new wave of immigrants, yet it is that very complexity of identity that I find most familiar and that I enjoy. It is a place where class and culture and tradition and language jostle against each other all day long, and sometimes it

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works and sometimes it doesn’t, but it is a place that feels alive with possibility. And maybe it’s not only the place; maybe all that motion and commotion is internal, too, and I am just beginning to embrace it. Whatever the case, what I am coming to understand is that I am most comfortable among many cultures and many points of view, in a place of diversity. I like to be where I can find people outside the mainstream, born in one place, raised in another, not particularly interested in permanence or able to sink roots. People in transit, people who are looking for home. People like me.

PART 3: EXPLORATIONS

LEMONADE FOR THE GRINGA: ADVICE FOR AND FROM TEENAGED GLOBAL NOMADS PATRICIA LINDERMAN

The teen years may be the most challenging stage of all for an international move, as young people who are just starting to forge their own independent identities must suddenly adjust—typically against their will—to a new peer group, academic setting and cultural environment. Although I have worked with expat families for many years, my interest in Global Nomad teens became even sharper as I supported my own sons, aged 13 and 16, through a sometimes rocky adjustment after a 2008 move from the United States to Guayaquil, Ecuador. To learn more about what families and teens themselves can do to ease this difficult transition, I began interviewing a range of Global Nomad teens as well as adults who work with them. Most of the interviews were conducted by phone, with teens who responded to a posting in Tales from a Small Planet, the online expat literary magazine that I edit. I also interviewed several in person. From these conversations, six broad topics emerged again and again as key concerns. These are: the arrival phase, schooling, making friends, outside activities, trips back home, and the teens’ futures. Below, I will discuss each of these topics in turn and present the ideas shared with me in each area, in the hope that they may be helpful to other teens and their families who are just setting out on an international adventure.

The Arrival Phase: Networking and Family Bonding Experts counsel teens to research their new environment before any move (including a move back to the teen’s passport country). According to Tina Quick, author of The Global Nomad’s Guide to University Transition: “This should include pop culture, fashion, music, customs, social taboos,

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geography, and history. Find out what kinds of things there are to do and visit in your country, city, and neighborhood.” If teens arrive with weeks to go before school starts, some of this research and exploration can be done “on the ground,” perhaps with the involvement of parents and siblings. The teens I spoke to agree on describing the weeks after arrival as a time of closeness and solidarity with their families, which can have lasting effects. “I stuck by my parents and explored the island with my mom,” reports Elsie, 15, who had moved from the U.S. to the Cayman Islands a year earlier and describes herself as “shy.” Stefanie, 19, a native of Brazil with a British accent who has also lived in Mexico and Germany, says that when she moved to Houston, Texas, several years ago, she “mostly worked on the move” during the summer she arrived, helping her parents set up their new home. “I think moving together gives you a more solid base as a family,” she told me. “It’s your only continuity; you leave the rest of your life behind, but you still have your family.” In the experience of the teens I interviewed, the best way to gain entry into the new social environment before school starts is to find an expat family with a student of the same age who can start introducing the newcomer around. If the teen arrives during school vacation, networking online can help him or her find out who is in town, since many expat families travel during school breaks. However, according to 18-year-old Morgan, a top student and veteran of multiple moves as a teen (to El Salvador, Venezuela and Egypt) who is now a freshman at Columbia University, it’s important to realize that online networking does not always result in solid friendships, because “people are different online” compared to their faceto-face personalities. There is no shortcut in the essential task of forming truly close friendships in a new place, as discussed further below. Elsie and Morgan both found themselves drawn to the computer during their first weeks and months, keeping up with friends from their previous home. They both caution against staying in this “comfort zone” too long. “Don’t stay in such close contact with previous friends that you forego opportunities to meet people where you are,” advises Morgan. “It’s hard to imagine that you’ll be that close to anyone in the new place, but eventually, you will.” Elsie agrees. “Take the risk and make new friends,” she urges.

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Robin Pascoe, author of Raising Global Nomads, counsels young people to “cut both themselves and their parents some slack, especially in the early days after the move.” In an e-mail exchange with me, she added: “Kids can be hard on themselves and also want immediate acceptance by their peer group (to make them feel better about themselves). That's not going to happen right away. I would remind a teenager who has moved before of previous successes in making new friends. If they are worried about whether they will make new ones, it's good for them to remember they worried about that the last time and ended up with a boatload of friends. As for their parents, I would remind teens that parents are doing their best, are also under the strain of a move, and whatever they are doing, it is always with love and the best of intentions.” Henrique, age 18, a Brazilian veterinary student who has moved internationally five times since he was 12 (to Colombia, Angola, Venezuela, Ecuador, and back to Brazil), reports that through his many moves, he has learned that there is no point in postponing the inevitable plunge into the local social environment. “Be open; don’t be resistant to new stuff,” he says. “You have to do it anyway, so do it from the beginning. Let people know who you are. If nobody shares your tastes, be a chameleon and shift.” From her equally wide foreign experience, Morgan has drawn a slightly different lesson. She advises hanging back a little at first to observe what others are doing. “Recognize social cues,” she advises. “Test the waters; figure out how things work.” All of the teens I spoke to agree that the advice to “be a chameleon” applies only to the surface: chameleons change color, but remain fundamentally the same. The teens encourage fellow Global Nomads to remain true to their own values (such as not drinking, or not obsessing over designer clothing) and to pursue interests they truly enjoy. “If you constantly bend to fit in,” notes Morgan, “you won’t find the right people.”

Schooling: Opportunities and Frustrations Most of the teens I spoke to attended schools aimed at international students. For most of them, these schools were small, ranging from 13 to 20 students at each grade level. This can limit social opportunities for teens, who tend to set higher standards for friendships than younger children do. The small size of a school can also limit course offerings; for

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instance, my older son Alex, now 18, took U.S. history and computer courses online since they were not available at school. Cities hosting large numbers of expats generally have more than one international school. According to Becky Grappo, an educational consultant specializing in Global Nomad teens, it is essential to look at an institution’s social environment as well as its academic offerings. She gives the example of a Middle Eastern city where she found one school to be “diverse and great” while in another, “partying, shopping and pettiness” were the norm. After struggling at a school in Bogota, Colombia, Henrique transferred to a smaller one “where they treat you as a person, not as a number” and was much happier and more successful. Instead of attending a U.S. public school in Houston, Stefanie decided to enroll in a British school and earn an International Baccalaureate (IB) degree, with the aim of attending university in the U.K. She is satisfied with her decision, but she notes a few drawbacks that have been somewhat frustrating. She spent three hours getting to school and back each day, which hindered her from meeting up with friends during evenings and weekends. She also realizes now that all of her friends are international — from places like Colombia, Angola and Oman — and she hasn’t really gotten to know American teenagers outside of school, a fact that she regrets now that she will be leaving the country again. If the educational and cultural environment in the foreign location simply don’t work for a particular teen (for instance, if there is an unhealthy atmosphere at school or insufficient support for learning differences), families should take stock of their options, which include home schooling and boarding school. Thanks to the Internet, home schooling opportunities have grown exponentially. Students can even participate in class discussions online with peers from around the world, and parents need not worry if they lack the time or ability to teach calculus or AP World History at home. At the same time, Becky Grappo encourages families to take a clear-eyed look at the benefits of boarding school, which is sometimes viewed as a “last resort.” Good boarding schools offer a community of high achievers, effective discipline, and a positive environment that can turn life around for a struggling teen, she notes. Unlike public schools in many expats’ home countries, international schools are private institutions and have no obligation to accept students with behavioral or learning difficulties, even if the problems are relatively

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mild. Sometimes, the international schools are completely full, with waiting lists, as a friend of mine found when moving with her two teenaged sons from Ecuador to Panama. She was unable to obtain places for her sons at a school where they could continue their international education in English, and she ended up bringing them back to Ecuador to finish the school year. Henrique faced a situation often dreaded by families with teens: moving to a new country for his final year of high school. He was pleased to find that it was not as bad as he had feared, and in fact, easier socially than some of his previous moves. He discovered what he calls “senior power” as a key asset: as a high school senior, he easily gained the respect of other students. In addition, he was older, more experienced, and more confident, so he found it “easier to adapt.” He did face academic challenges as an entering senior: he was required to take two English classes (one after the other, with the same teacher!) and was placed with much younger students in some of his courses. He held up bravely, however, and is now enjoying his first year at university in Brazil.

Making Friends: “Branch out” and Keep up the Effort Stefanie shakes her dark hair and laughs when she admits entering 10th grade in Houston with a misguided attitude. “My first thought,” she says, “was that I had only two years before going off to college, so I didn’t need to make long-lasting friendships.” She recognizes now that this was unrealistic, but she also thinks it may have had some benefits. Since she “wasn’t desperate for friends,” she wasn’t nervous or over-eager when school started, and she found friends easily within her class of 20 students. In Venezuela, Morgan’s school counselor asked her what classes she would like to be in. She peeked at the student lists and chose the ones with “American-sounding names.” She gravitated toward Americans in general during the early part of her time in Venezuela, but she now admits that this strategy might have hindered her adjustment, because they “weren’t necessarily the kind of people I would have chosen to hang out with.” In the end, her most lasting friendships from that period were with students from Norway, Peru and Ecuador. My son Zack, now 15, emphasizes the advice to branch out and look beyond one’s own age group and nationality. “It’s most important to find people who share your interests,” he counsels. His best friend during his

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first year in Ecuador was not a classmate but an Ecuadorian two years older than himself, whom he happened to meet “just hanging around the neighborhood.” In the Cayman Islands, Elsie was surprised and pleased to feel an instant kinship with expat kids from Argentina, Scotland and Canada, “because they went through the same experiences and hardships I did.” Henrique sees these friendships from a different but still positive angle: he enjoyed having what he called “opposite friends,” from China, El Salvador, Mexico and the United States, because they showed him “different ways of thinking.” Over multiple moves, Morgan has noticed a pattern in the development of new friendships. After six months, she says, she has typically found a “pretty good group.” After one year, she has at least one friend with whom she is truly close. And after a year and seven months, she notes with precision, she has “really good” friends and “never wants to leave.” She cautions, however, that this process takes effort. It can be tempting to stay with “good-enough” friends and stop reaching out. “Don’t cling too much to the group from the first six months,” she advises, “because you may wake up one day and realize that you don’t really like your friends.”

Outside Activities: “Involved and Happy” Activities outside of school, whether with organized groups or just with friends, may be the most important factor in teens’ adjustment abroad. “This is what gets you involved and makes you happy,” notes Morgan. Outside activities have been among the highlights of life abroad for the teens I interviewed. My older son Alex played baseball on an adult semipro team and also joined his school’s varsity basketball team despite a lack of experience, since the school was so small that nearly all interested players could participate. In Houston, Stefanie took adult classes in the community, including dancing and oil painting. In spite of their age differences, many of her adult classmates became good friends. On Grand Cayman, Elsie took scuba classes and earned certification together with her mom. Not finding many young people who shared his passion for skateboarding in Ecuador, Zack taught three friends to skate and now has enthusiastic companions. Despite the obvious complications, one family I know was determined to support their daughter’s interest in horseback riding, even to the extent of

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looking for work assignments in horse-friendly countries, and moving a horse from The Netherlands to Portugal. They believe that their investment has paid off, however. The mother says: “Her solid connection with horses has enabled her to really connect to the locals, and it was probably the tipping factor that got her accepted to veterinary college in Scotland at age 17. I encourage everyone to help your children become 'involved like a native' in something that they are passionate about. It may give back more than you expect.” In many cases, however, the “activities” available locally are not as healthy as these inspiring examples. Alcohol and drug abuse and sexual experimentation take place everywhere, notes Becky Grappo, who has worked with many troubled teens abroad—even in societies with strict laws and customs. She has seen mobile teens turn to risky behaviors “as a band-aid for something else: loss, adjustment, a lack of friends or selfesteem.” Meanwhile, she says, the hard truth is that “some parents are in denial,” focusing only on the potential benefits of a stay abroad for their teens. Becky cautions parents to “unite,” “communicate,” and “know what the kids are doing,” including when being chauffeured by local drivers, who may give a false sense of security to both parents and teens. Also, family members should “watch for warning signs” such as “a loss of interest in school, withdrawal, and oppositional behavior.” Some of these may be a temporary reaction to a difficult move, but if they last more than a few months, families should seek counseling. Even if Global Nomad teens have a sensible attitude about alcohol, drugs and sex, both they and their parents may find it tricky to adjust to the local attitudes, especially in a “party culture,” where it’s considered normal for 15-year-olds to drink and teen gatherings to start at 11 p.m. “It’s hard for parents to draw the line” and know what to allow, says Becky. Fortunately, the teens I talked to all seem to have found ways to reconcile their own values with different local customs. Newly arrived in El Salvador as a young teen, Morgan was invited to a mall by new acquaintances. To her surprise, the group ended up drinking in a bar. However, Morgan was relieved to discover that nobody minded an order of “lemonade for the gringa.” In evaluating their teens’ behavior and level of adjustment, says Robin Pascoe, it’s important for parents not to blame the move for every problem. “Being a teenager in general is not easy, and being a relocated teenager just magnifies-– and muddles-–the first. By that I mean that some

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of the challenges they may come up against after they move their teens may have come up regardless of a move. Teenagers are testing their parents all the time with their behavior. It's part of the separation process. But too often, expat parents confuse a behavioral challenge (for example, the monosyllabic teenage boy) as being related to the move when really, it's about being a monosyllabic teenage boy!” It’s especially important, Robin notes, to avoid spoiling kids because of guilt over the move. “Parents are not obliged to deliver non-stop happiness to their children, of any age, just because they have been moved. Kids learn by setbacks and challenges,” she asserts.

A Trip back Home: Reality Check For several of the young people I spoke to, a trip back to their previous home served as a turning point in their adjustment. Elsie reports that three months after arrival, she was “very homesick” and convinced her parents to let her visit her hometown in the U.S. During the trip, she says that she “felt like she wanted to stay there,” but it also helped her face the reality of her life on Grand Cayman. She “returned with more resolve” to make things work on Grand Cayman. My son Zack spent his first summer vacation back in the U.S. with his friends, which helped him feel that he was maintaining his friendships in both of his “homes.” During the second summer, he again traveled to the States to see his friends, but he no longer felt the need to stay as long as possible, and he even rescheduled his flight and returned to Ecuador early. Stefanie returned to Germany for a visit one year after moving to the States. “My friends were happy to see me,” she reports, “but I realized people had moved on.” She enjoyed the trip, but she says that it helped her realize that “I don’t live there anymore.”

Looking toward the Future Both the teens and adults I talked to are honest about the difficulties of the first six months to a year abroad. “Don’t expect to be happy” during this period, Morgan bluntly advises. Yet when I asked the older teens whether their international experiences have been worthwhile, their responses were consistently positive. “Egypt was a fantastic place to live,” asserts Morgan. Alex believes that spending his last two high school years in

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Ecuador gave him an edge in college applications over his suburban U.S. peers. Stefanie is “grateful for the opportunity to meet different people and learn about different cultures.” She has attended international schools all her life, and she says that the experience has shaped her, making her “more open” than she would otherwise have been. Elsie thinks she has become “more worldly” since her move to the Cayman Islands, and she has learned that “wherever you go, people are people.” Henrique mentions the benefits of learning two languages besides his native one, and comments in his fluent but quirky English: “It’s only a few kids who can go out and explore the world.” Morgan admits that after many years as a Global Nomad, she still feels the pain of lost friendships from previous locations. She keeps up with old friends on Facebook and through e-mails and instant messaging, but she hasn’t had the chance to visit them. “I hold on to the idea of a global community,” she says. “If I end up living in a place like New York or London, maybe some of them will be there too.” As these teens look ahead to the future, most of them want to continue taking advantage of their cross-cultural experiences. “I can’t imagine staying in one place,” says Stefanie. Zack wants to invite friends from Ecuador to spend summers with our family after we return to the United States. Elsie plans to attend college in the U.S., but she is grateful for the opportunity to get to know people from all over the world at her international school in the Cayman Islands, and she hopes to visit them in their home countries. According to Tina Quick, Global Nomad teens tend to be “smart, mature, and able to see the world through a wide and spacious lens. They welcome diversity and truly care about this planet and its people, fulfilling the true definition of a global citizen.” Although they are far from a scientific sample, the teens I interviewed all clearly fit that description. “It’s natural for me to deal with people from other cultures,” says Stefanie, who is now perfecting her Spanish during a gap year in Cartagena, Colombia. “The world is getting smaller,” she notes. “It’s necessary.”

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Bibliography Pascoe, Robin. Raising Global Nomads: Parenting Abroad in an OnDemand World. Vancouver: Expatriate Press, 2006. Quick, Tina L. The Global Nomad’s Guide to University Transition. London: Summertime Press, 2010.

VIGNETTES FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE: WHEN CULTURAL HIERARCHIES MATTER AT AN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL1 DANAU TANU

“This is my country, so the bules2 shouldn’t mess in our country,” said Dae Sik, an international school student, while perched precariously on the back of a bench. Dae Sik was talking about Indonesia, the place where he grew up. Yet, Dae Sik was technically South Korean: his passport said so; his name said so; and ethnically speaking he was. I decided to press him on this point: “But, aren’t you Korean?” I asked. “Of course,” he responded, “it’s in the blood.” As far as Dae Sik was concerned, there was nothing inconsistent about seeing Indonesia as his country, while at the same time identifying himself as Korean. As this example illustrates, identity runs deeper than surface appearances and transcends legal and ethnic boundaries. In the following pages, I explore the complex ways in which the international school system influences identity formation and perceptions of social status among students, focusing on the personal experience of several students and alumni. Dae Sik’s high school is a multicultural bubble for expatriate youths and Indonesians alike. Inside the security gates lies a well-maintained, oasislike campus that belies the bustle and smog of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. As students flood out of the classrooms at recess, you can hear a Russian teenager speaking fluent colloquial Indonesian to a classmate; Indian teenagers speaking English with an American accent, then 1

Some portions contained in this essay first appeared in an article published in the October-December 2010 issue of the online magazine Inside Indonesia, and in a paper published in the proceedings for the 18th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in Adelaide, 5-8 July 2010 (Tanu, 2010a, 2010b). 2 “Bule” is Indonesian slang for “White person.”

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switching to an Indian accent and back again within a matter of seconds, depending on who they are talking to; a Taiwanese teenager speaking English, Mandarin, and Indonesian in one sentence. All the while no one bats an eyelid because it is just another day at an international school. This diverse environment provides fertile ground on which students play the “identity game.” This game comes as second nature to these students. The main tools of this game are pronouns (“we” or “they”)—to signify “in-” and “out-” groups—economic standing, and social assets. These social assets include: language fluency, speaking with the “right” accent, and dressing and behaving in certain ways. Their primary goal at the school is education, but their goals in the identity game-–to gain status and fit in-– are no less important. International schools often claim to promote a “global outlook” and “intercultural understanding.” They take pride in the number of nationalities represented in their student body and teaching staff as their mark of diversity, and celebrate it with a parade of colorful flags on United Nations Day. In Indonesia, international schools offer one of the most expensive forms of education available and are often associated with a “Westernized” education, using English as the medium of instruction. These schools have been the target of both admiration and criticism by locals. They are praised for the high quality of education they offer, and are criticized at the same time for their exclusiveness. Although these criticisms oversimplify the situation, they highlight the delicate balance that must be struck between cultivating a worldly outlook and dismantling the effects of cultural hierarchies for students who grow up “among worlds.” Their commitment to a constructive and peaceful management of difference can be highly instructive for culturally diverse countries. Ironically, however, international school students also learn to internalize cultural hierarchies born of global and local conditions. In what follows, I examine the experiences of several students and alumni from international schools and reflect on these. First, however, I want to offer some background to my research.

“Going Native” at an International School In 2009, I conducted a year-long ethnographic study at an international school in Indonesia. It included two semesters of participant-observation of high school students (grades 9 to 12). I spent a considerable amount of

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time sitting in on classes, joining the discussions when the teachers encouraged me to, hanging out and chatting with students during recess, staying back to watch students participate in after-school activities, and occasionally joining students when they went out with their friends in the evenings or weekends. In other words, my research method required me to “go native” at the international school. In all, I conducted over 100 indepth interviews with students, alumni, parents, staff and others. This chapter reflects upon some of that research. It is intended only as a collection of fieldwork vignettes and a little of my own experience written in language that is free of academic jargon.

The School: Some Background Let me set the scene. Located in an upscale neighbourhood, the school at which I undertook most of my research is sometimes criticised for its exclusiveness as are many other privately funded international schools in Indonesia. At the same time, it is also known for its diversity inasmuch as the school boasts of having over forty nationalities represented in its student body, with the majority of them being from South Korea, Indonesia, the United States, Australia and Canada.3 The teaching staff are of various nationalities as well, though most are from English speaking Western countries. In the past, Indonesian citizens were restricted from attending international schools, which catered mainly to the expatriate communities. This restriction was relaxed in the years following the 1998 socio-political unrest that resulted in the end of former president Suharto’s 32-year rule. International education, particularly in schools using English as a language of instruction, has since become popular amongst the financially privileged. Approximately twenty percent of the students at the international school where I conducted my research were Indonesian. It is the education of choice for those who want to give their children a competitive edge in the globalized market economy. The pursuit of a competitive edge is not a laughing matter in a city where students of international schools, in one ride, can see, through the dark-tinted glass windows of their air-conditioned cars, limbless beggars on the streets and a line-up of posh high-rise office buildings.

3

Only approximate figures have been used throughout this essay to ensure anonymity of the school.

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It is fair to say that my background influenced my research, as it does that of all researchers regardless of whether or not we are aware of it. Born in Canada to a Chinese-Indonesian father and a Japanese mother, I grew up in several countries and attended international schools for most of that time. I was well into my adulthood when I heard the term “Third Culture Kid” through a friend. I then stumbled across the website “TCKid.com” that was started by Brice Royer, as well as Ruth Van Reken’s writings on Third Culture Kids (including the book she co-authored with David Pollock)4. It was a life-changing experience. For some who live the inbetween and struggle with identity, coming to the realization that it is okay to be culturally mixed, as simple as that may seem, is profoundly healing. As someone with an Asian background, however, I noticed that there were aspects of my transnational experience that had hardly been discussed in the broader literature on Third Culture Kids. The literature gravitates towards a focus on cultural dissonance experienced upon repatriation—or life after the expatriate microcosm. In contrast, my experience of adjustment began at an international school (in Indonesia) where Third Culture Kids abounded, so to speak, but the dominant school culture was a highly Westernised one. For me, it was “Western” culture by day and “Asian” culture by night. I experienced a sense of cultural dissonance which in many ways was similar, though not identical, to that of second generation immigrants growing up in Western countries. Further, in arguing that one can be at home everywhere, many speak as though one can stand above matters such as “race,”5 ethnicity, nationality and culture without realizing how these factors influence the Third Culture Kid experience in subtle, but significant ways. Much of the existing research has been conducted by Western researchers on Western study participants. This provides an important, but limited perspective, particularly on the international school microcosm. As Schaetti states, there is a lack of research that “addresses issues of power and cultural dominance in international microcultures” and “the impact of such on the global nomad experience” (2000, p. 74). The research often overlooks how 4 Brice Royer and Ruth Van Reken’s labors have touched me directly in a deep way. I am exceedingly grateful for their work and the source of their compassion for those who struggle with a sense of belonging. 5

I have used quotation marks whenever I use the word “race” to indicate that it is a socially constructed concept and, in the case of the people I studied, its meaning shifts depending on the issue and perspective at hand.

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factors such as “race,” ethnicity, culture, finances and even the name of the country stamped on our passport(s) impact upon our access to global mobility, ability to feel at home in different places, and the way others relate to us. It is important to understand that there are many layers to the transnational experience of Third Culture Kids. In the following vignettes, I hope to touch upon a few of those layers. In the first vignette, I explore the ways in which cultural hierarchies are internalized in relation to language.

Vignette 1. “When I Spoke English I Felt Smart!” We sat at Elsie’s new kitchen counter as I interviewed her over breakfast. The morning sun, or at least the parts that made it through the thin weekend smog, shone through the glass windows of the Jakarta condominium. The air-conditioning was on, and her husband was still asleep in the next room. Ten minutes into the interview I asked her what it had been like to learn English as a second language when she first started going to an international school in Indonesia as a kindergartener. “When I spoke English I felt smart!” Elsie responded animatedly, true to her attractive, charismatic nature. As she said this, she straightened her back on her kitchen stool, held her head up and pointed her nose into the air-–all to illustrate, in a playful manner, the haughty attitude she used to have with regard to her English speaking ability. Elsie speaks English with what sounds to most people like an American accent, but her passport says she’s Singaporean. Her father is Singaporean and her mother is Indonesian. She confessed that when she was young, her ability to speak English made her feel “so much more clever” than her Indonesian mother who spoke English well, but did not have as natural a command of the language as she did. The ability to speak English is a mark of privilege in many parts of the world, including Indonesia. For those living in developing countries, speaking English is often associated with being educated and having access to the wealth and opportunities found in the international market and in developed economies. In Indonesia, this marker of privilege is sometimes desired at the expense of the national language, Indonesian6. 6

Foreigners often refer to the Indonesian national language as “Bahasa Indonesia” or simply “Bahasa.” The latter results in grammatically incorrect usages such as “I

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Some Indonesian parents even take pride in their children’s inability to speak fluent Indonesian despite being raised in Indonesia. One couple I spoke to explained that their eldest primary school-aged grandchild sometimes gets the word order wrong when speaking Indonesian. “When she speaks Indonesian, she has a bule accent,” added the husband with a chuckle. Far from being concerned by this, he seemed to delight in it. Language ability (or lack thereof) is often used as a tool to strategically position oneself as being “above” others. Elsie’s experience is not unusual. Afra, an Algerian national who went to international schools in several different countries (though not in Indonesia), revealed a similar understanding of English as a language which accords status to its speakers. Afra speaks eight languages and says of English: “I wanted to keep up, you know, maintain my English ‘cause wherever you go in non-English speaking countries, speaking in English is, like, a big plus, you know.” Later in the interview, Afra elaborated on this point saying: “I think English, especially American English, is the language of the privileged.” His conclusion is based on experiences which had made him feel that others perceived him in a better light when he was able to demonstrate that he was fluent in English. I can relate to Afra and Elsie’s stories. While growing up I experienced similar feelings of superiority about speaking English. For example, I remember an argument I had with my mother while I was in my teens. In mid-argument, I switched from Japanese to English. I spoke fast, using English expressions that were beyond my mother’s comprehension. My Japanese mother could not understand and asked me to speak in Japanese. I talked back, telling her something to the effect that English was my first language and she was just going to have to deal with it. My outburst was a combination of genuine frustration at not being able to express myself in Japanese as well as I could in English, and arrogance at being able to speak English better than her. In response to this, my mother threatened to withdraw me from the international school. She said, furiously, “I would rather have an uneducated child who has a good heart than an educated child who lets their education rot them on the inside!” She told me to bring my textbooks downstairs so she could throw them away. Reluctantly, I brought my thick, heavy American textbooks to her. She tied them together and was ready to dump them in the bin outdoors. Luckily, I speak Bahasa” which means “I speak language.” In this essay I will use “Indonesian” to refer to the national language as the preferred translation of the Indonesian term “bahasa Indonesia.”

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apologized before she did. It was one of the best lessons my mother ever taught me, and for which I am deeply grateful. She invested all the emotional energy that she had in order to strike at the root of arrogance while it was still young. However, as my own experience reveals, there is a constant temptation towards such arrogance. Elsie’s story reveals a similar dynamic. I asked how her mother had responded when she started talking back and feeling “more clever” than her mother. As an adult, Elsie described her relationship with her mother with a deeper understanding of where her mother was coming from. She said: At the time, I wasn’t aware of [my mother’s] reaction, or how she may feel. But later on in life, after my dad passed away and I settled in Indonesia, I realized that it was a challenge for her because she really wanted to teach me the values her parents [had] taught her. She wanted me to grow up Indonesian.

Her father, who had been educated in English during the British colonial rule of Singapore, wanted to take advantage of his company’s policy of paying for his children’s high international school tuition fees. Elsie explains: He wanted to take every advantage of that for his children, and I think he won that education battle with my mom. So, I think during those days, it was repressed for her. She didn’t have much influence in our lives in terms of education or culture.

As an adult, Elsie may have a reflective understanding of the dynamics at work when a parent’s (or both parents’) desire for high quality education for their children creates a cultural gap between parents and their offspring. However, this understanding does little, if anything, to change Elsie’s cultural upbringing: the way she gestures with her hands, the facial expressions she uses, the way she carries herself, the way she thinks and perceives the world—all betray the influences of her Westernized educational background. Elsie’s story reveals the often invisible benefits and costs that come with an international school education. Mastery of the English language and the educational opportunities offered by international schools are important factors that influence parental choice of schools for those who can afford it. They carry with them the promise of better opportunities in the market

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place. Yet, they can come with the invisible cost of cultural gaps within familial relationships. As a young child, Elsie quickly absorbed the existing cultural hierarchy that accorded English, and the cultural cues associated with it, a higher status than her mother’s native tongue, Indonesian. Her socialization into the dominant culture at school and the sense of superiority that came with it placed her at odds with her mother’s cultural values and position in their relationship. In the background we also see her parents who desire the best for her in what appears to be two conflicting ways. Elsie speaks Indonesian fluently, especially since she started to use it at work as an adult. The sense of superiority she once held has passed, but there remains a certain degree of cultural gap to be reckoned with. On the one hand, as a young child, she chose to draw from the higher status that English language ability offered her. On the other hand, she was socialized into a Westernized school culture—a process in which she had little choice. International moves may have featured in her childhood only in an indirect way, in so far as she was the “stayer” who watched her friends come and go. But the experience of being educated at an international school still meant that she had to straddle multiple cultural worlds—home culture and school culture in particular—while growing up. These experiences are not that uncommon. For many who find themselves having to assimilate into the more dominant culture at school, internalizing cultural hierarchies or racism often comes as a package with “the experience of growing up among worlds” (Pollock & Van Reken, 2001).

Vignette 2. “Race” and Popularity Not only do cultural hierarchies affect individual identities and familial relationships, but they also influence the social dynamics on the international school campus. Establishing status is the stuff of high school, and it is no different at an international school. Popularity is commonly thought of as a matter of personality. But factors such as class, culture, nationality and “race” all contribute to status building. Despite the ideology of “global citizenship” of the school, student perception of popularity is sometimes influenced by “race.” This is brought out in the following vignette. “So, who are the popular kids?” I asked a couple of seniors as we sat in the main outdoor hangout area that had just enough shade for our comfort. It was a sunny, tropical day on the well-landscaped campus whose lawns

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were covered with broadleaf carpet grass, fairly typical of the limited green spaces in Jakarta. “Well, popularity isn’t such a big deal here, but I suppose the White kids that like to sit over there are considered popular,” Melinda answered as she pointed at the benches near the high school office. “The ‘White kids’?” I repeated suspiciously, as I was sure they were not all “White” in the Oxford English Dictionary sense of the term. “Yeah, the White kids,” said Melinda. I later took a closer look at the group she was referring to. Indeed, many of them were, or at least appeared to be, White, but there were also those who appeared to be Black, Asian, or of mixed descent. All were highly Westernized in their mannerisms. “White kids,” then, did not refer to physical appearance, but rather cultural orientation. Another time, I watched a couple of students from the group that had been referred to as the “White kids” help the Korean students set up a tent during a senior sleepover event held at school. As they were doing this, one of their friends came over and said, “Hey, the White kids are helping the Korean kids!” There was a pause in the air as we all tried to digest that statement. One of the “White kids” broke the silence, “Dude, I’m Pakistani.” The other “White kid” added, as he held on to the tent he was working on, “Yeah, and I’m Asian. My mom is Chinese…and you’re half Japanese.” Upon hearing this, the first student chuckled and walked away as his friends busied themselves again with the tent. Meanwhile, I mulled over the incident. “Race” is not always about physical appearance. Student cliques which are perceived as popular often do have more White students than other groups though not all members are White. But the non-White members are usually native speakers of English, and highly Westernized in their mannerisms. The way they sit, walk, talk, move, dress, wear makeup all betray the Western influences in their lives. These characteristics mean that members of this group are often perceived as “White” even when they are not. Popularity is thus racialized as “White.” Being White is not always about skin color; in this case, it is about looking and sounding as though they have been raised in a predominantly Western society.

Vignette 3. Challenging the Status Quo The dominant position occupied by the “White” popular group does not go unchallenged by Indonesian students, who are generally from privileged backgrounds and are not shy about using their financial resources to

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compete for the top place in the school social hierarchy. For the most part, the Indonesian students get along well with the foreign students (White or otherwise) but some choose to describe their relationship, particularly with the “White” or bule students, with nationalistic overtones. One student, Andrew, claims: “Sometimes they’re arrogant. They walk around like they own the place. So we put them in their place. It’s my country. This is my home. So visitors must have respect. [But] some of them don’t.” This was Andrew’s perception. The irony is that though Andrew’s mother is Indonesian, his father is Caucasian British. When I pointed this out, he explained that he considers himself more Indonesian than British: “Here in Indonesia, I can make conversation with anyone I see. From Bali to wherever I go, upper class to lower class, even pedicab drivers and the beggars,” he gestured with his hand as he spoke, “but then when I go to England, it’s a different story. I don’t really know what to talk about.” Speaking of the “White” students, he says, “When I hang out with them, I just don’t feel that connection. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel comfortable.” “And what does the school social hierarchy look like? Who’s at the top and who’s at the bottom?” I asked. “Indo, bule and then Korean, and Japanese,” he answered with confidence. Social hierarchies in schools are more often than not about class rather than personalities. At the international school, the contest for the top spot plays out as a competition between the “White” students’ familiarity with Western ways and the wealth of students from the local elite. Those who are socialized in Western ways have the advantage of being familiar with the culture of the school management; that is, most of the teachers and school administrators are from countries that are predominantly White and English speaking. Indonesian students counter this by making a show of their wealth. For example, to host a party, Indonesian students might club together, each student chipping in to hire out a posh Jakarta club (and some bodyguards). The school administration inadvertently affirms students who are socialized into the dominant culture through a myriad of subtle avenues. This can range from discussions of cultural practices covered in novels read in literature classes, Anglicization of student names, the types of sports on offer as extracurricular activities, to student-teacher rapport. The shared culture makes it easier for students from Western countries to build relationships with the teachers and administrators, both inside and

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outside of class. Japanese students are generally as quiet as a rock in the regular classes taught by teachers from Anglophone countries, but they become vocal and participative once they are in a class with a Japanese teacher who speaks their language and understands their culture. Similarly, an Indonesian teacher commented about her Indonesian students as follows: “They relax in this class. Even though English is their language, it’s still tiring for them. At least that’s how I see it.” Having a shared culture promotes student-teacher rapport even when this shared culture is not always physically obvious. Many English-speaking students of Asian descent who were fond of a particular teacher would often go and hang out in her classroom during recess. “We feel comfortable with her because she understands us and know what it’s like to be a teenager,” commented one student. Little did these students know that the White American teacher concerned, who had been raised in Hong Kong, felt most at home among Chinese people and much less comfortable when surrounded by Americans. Though she is White and the students are Asian, it is their shared culture, invisible to the eye, that contributes to rapport building.

Some Conclusions: Colorblind Internationalism? Just as native English speakers who are highly Westernized in their mannerisms are perceived as White, regardless of how they look, the Indonesian-speaking students are perceived as homogeneously Indonesian. Teachers and administrators, as well as other students, like to point out that the “Indonesians” (a group that includes Indonesian nationals of different ethnic backgrounds, including Chinese and Indians, and students of mixed heritage, as well as Koreans, Taiwanese, Filipinos and a Palestinian, among others) like to self-segregate. This has a bearing on their standing in the eyes of the school administrators. For them, the ideal student is the “global citizen.” Those who are perceived as only hanging out with people from their own countries, like the Indonesians, have yet to make the grade. They add to the school’s overall sense of visible diversity by their presence, but fall short on being “international.” Meanwhile, the English-speaking groups are often considered most international because of the mix of nationalities and physical differences represented within those groups. They may be referred to as “White” by the students when speaking of status, but the fact that they share a sense of familiarity with Western culture becomes invisible when internationalism is the focus. Whether student groups are labeled, for example, as “White,” “Indonesian”

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or “international” depends on what is at stake and who is calling the shots. Sometimes the ones calling the shots choose to be colorblind (as when the shared culture is rendered invisible), and sometimes they choose to see “color” (as when diversity is interpreted as visible difference). Money and cultural hierarchies influence perceptions and interactions that take place on campus. Racial and other identity labels are sometimes used to signify status and cultural difference, but their meanings constantly shift and at times bear no semblance to actual physical appearance. Various forms of social assets, such as language, accents, mannerisms, and money, are used to mark and vie for status. Thus, being “international” is not a straightforward matter. International schools may be a multicultural bubble, but it is a bubble that is not immune to the dynamics at work in the world outside the school gates. Most would agree that “growing up among worlds” is a great privilege. It is an experience that brings with it an enriched understanding of the world. Yet, more can be done to improve the experience, particularly at international schools, in countering the dynamics of cultural hierarchies and its internalization by students. Expanding the discussion to include more diverse perspectives and naming our own invisible prejudices is a start.

Bibliography Pollock, D. C., & Van Reken, R. E. (2001). Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing up among Worlds. Boston & London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Schaetti, B. F. (2000). Global Nomad Identity: Hypothesizing a Developmental Model. Unpublished PhD dissertation, The Union Institute, Ohio. Tanu, D. (2010a). “Educating Global Citizens?” Inside Indonesia, 102, Oct-Dec. Retrieved from http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-102/ educating-global-citizens-04101355 —. (2010b). Negotiating the Global in a Local Setting: Exploring Cultural Hierarchies in International Schools in Indonesia. Paper presented at the 18th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia Adelaide.

THE RELIGIOUS LIVES OF ADULT MISSIONARY KIDS NANCY HENDERSON-JAMES

In a 1993 questionnaire, sent out to Third Culture Kids who had lived and gone to school in Angola and Congo, one question I asked was, “Are you a religious person? Since living abroad, has religion played a large part in your life?” Eighty-four percent of the respondents were missionary kids, and I expected that most of them would profess to be Christians in their adult lives. I had fallen away from faith in God as an adult, a fact that was uncomfortable to admit to other missionary kids. My lack of belief made me feel a bit of an outsider in a group where I should have felt at home. I was most surprised when the responses showed that only 53% of the missionary kids said, in the words of one person, “I believe in God, the creator of all things... He's there in time of need, uncertainty, triumph and thanks.” As we will see below, even those 53% are not unequivocally devout. When a child’s country of residence, forms of schooling, moral foundations, and relationships with people of other cultures are intimately tied to the fact that his parents are missionaries, naturally the place of religion in his life looms large. The likely questions he struggles with as he matures are, “How will I deal with this fact as an adolescent and as an adult? Will I follow my parents’ model or will I find my developing sense of self propelling me in a different direction?” The responses to the question revealed a much wider range of beliefs than I was prepared for. While half said they were believers, 23% said religion played no part in their lives. Seven percent were ambivalent and 18% did not answer the question. One man wrote, “Neither I nor my siblings are religious. My sister professes an unconventional (non-institutional) faith, but my brothers and I are largely uninterested in the church; one brother calls himself an atheist. All the same, I think we would agree that our parents' commitment and values have profound and occasionally uncomfortable influence on us. I have told those who criticize my apostasy that I do not

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consider myself a Christian because I know something of what it takes to be a good one.” For some it was an awkward question. “On the subject of religion (which is kind of a delicate subject considering the vocation of my parents), I am not a member of any organized religious body. I think growing up with church and prayer meetings and vespers and sunrise services and all that, day after day, year upon year, made me feel I'd done my quota of church things by the time I'd turned 20.” That sentiment may help explain the 20% who did not answer this question. Polls taken in recent years have gauged the role religion plays in American life. A Gallup Poll released in November 2003 found that 60% of Americans considered religion to be “very important” in their lives. Much was made after the Presidential election in 2004 about the proportion of conservative Christian voters who supported George W. Bush because he was thought to be superior, both morally and religiously, to the other candidates. While my survey was not scientific and sampled a small population, I am struck by the discrepancy between the views of the American public and the views of my respondents who are from a strongly religious community. What leads missionary kids to a less religious stance than other Americans? This is a question I hope to examine in this essay. Many respondents gave eloquent statements of faith. (After each quote, I have indicated the parents’ church affiliation.) At age 12 I had made a commitment giving my life to Christ, so I never felt “lonesome” though I was often alone through the years. My sense of belonging to Him was (and still is) very sustaining and motivating. I have always happily attended church and taken part in activities—choir, teaching S.S., library etc. Even when my husband was courting me, we went to church together, and have continued ever since. I changed over to the Anglican Church, not so much because he was raised an Anglican but because I had, on my own, come to appreciate the richness and healing of the Eucharist, the liturgy, and the sense of history. I would say I am a person of faith, not “religious,” that is, my faith undergirds all my attitudes, but isn't “showy” or mechanical. I know God cares for and about me, and my desire is to please Him (not to earn salvation but to receive it gladly). (United Church of Canada) My relationship to God is not religion. My God is my friend. This great creator and keeper of the universe, this giver of all that is good, loves and accepts me. I used to fear such a relationship because I had seen the “Jesus

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The Religious Lives of Adult Missionary Kids freaks” and did not want that. But, I have come to realize that this Jesus values me and accepts me as I am with all of my wonderfulness and my awfulness. He wraps me in His arms, holds me closely and tells me that I am accepted as I am. Not if I will change but as I am. I now feel free to change as I look into His face and want to. It is because of His grace, freely given, that I feel the freedom to return to Him when I err, and hear Him whisper in my ear, “I love you. You are mine, a part of me." (Mennonite) My understanding of a religious person is someone who is seeking to please God through his own works. I have seen the futility of this. God has reached down to me and others to reveal himself through His Creation, His Word, and His Son, Jesus Christ. I have a relationship with the Risen Savior and His Father and He has placed His Holy Spirit in me. God lives in me as I yield myself to Him. I did not become a Christian until I was 8 years old in the USA. Since that time there has been no other more significant relationship no matter where in the world I have lived. (Baptist) I don't know how my religion and my faith have been influenced by being in Angola. The influence may be evident in how my faith gets worked out. Faith and the Church have to do with caring for God's people rather than with personal salvation. More than “bringing people to Christ” in Angola, I sense that the missionaries taught the people about God's love for them as a people; they taught that love by teaching the people to be the people of God. I am not an evangelist in my faith... I do not even talk freely about my faith except in sermons on Sunday mornings, but my faith informs everything I do and say, the way I live and my hopes and dreams. My impression is that that was the way of the missionaries in Angola who were part of my early years. (United Church of Christ)

The respondents quoted above have no doubts about their religious life. The following excerpts, even from those who say they are religious, give clues to my question “What leads missionary kids to a less religious stance than other Americans?” Yes, you could say I'm a “religious person.” I'm committed to my Christian walk with God, although it's quite feeble most of the time. However, I don't see the world of other religions in such narrow terms as my folks and other missionaries did that I grew up with. In fact, since being with MCC [Mennonites], and especially since living in Cambodia, a mainly Buddhist country, I have come to the place where I find it difficult to accept that only those who call themselves Christians will be blessed in the “afterlife.” So you could say that my belief system has changed quite a bit from those “evangelical days.” And I'm a lot more open to accepting the possibility that God doesn't judge the world in the way that my parents and other missionaries I grew up with say He does. To come to this conclusion is

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pretty radical for my parents, but I don't bother to expound on my new beliefs to them. Still, I have a strong personal need for faith in God, and for myself find meaning in that faith as it's defined in Christ. (Mennonite)

Though she is committed to her Christian walk with God, her exposure to other cultures and religions has opened her to less rigid beliefs as an adult than the missionary community held when she was a child. She illustrates how TCKs learn, through their international lives, to be adaptable and accepting of differences. They are not strictly tied to their parents’ culture and are able to build relations with the surrounding cultures. The person above, though professing to be religious, has a nuanced approach to her beliefs. Another person, who became a missionary as an adult, makes a distinction between her personal beliefs and how she feels about the church as a denominational institution. She credits the “wider view” that she grew up with. Religious person? Yes, definitely. But as the years have gone on and we have returned to Stateside life our participation in church life has been more generalized, more generic if you will. Perhaps that is because we are not confined to a single denominational effort. Our own missionary experience in Africa was with American Leprosy Missions, which is a Christian organization, mostly Protestant but not denominational. We maintain many contacts with missions and individual missionaries and actively support many Christian organizations and individuals in the Lord's work. My husband is in medical research now and we often have opportunity to work with people from many nations not just Africa, so in a sense where our work was first only in Africa now it has a worldwide scope. Our religious life is a personal one; our work is both with organizations and with individuals. I am finding church work within a single local church or denomination somehow stifling, perhaps too provincial, having grown up with a wider view. I think of myself much more a world citizen than just of one country. This is directly related to having grown up overseas, I am sure. (Africa Inland Mission)

The common practice of TCKs separating from their parents to attend school at times can affect attitudes toward religion, as this person says. I would call myself a religious person but I'm quiet about it. My values are grounded in religion and I believe in God. I think it's more important to help people practically than religiously, i.e. I think it's more important to offer food, clothing, medical care, and education and save the “converting the heathens” until later. I'm not sure that I like God even though I

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The Religious Lives of Adult Missionary Kids maintain belief in God. Everything my parents did during my growing up was based on God's calling, I understood the importance of what they were doing but felt neglected as a result of their work. They were usually thousands of miles away. I sometimes resented the fact that God was more important to my parents than I was. So I recognize that God's will sometimes means pulling people I love away from me and I'm not sure I like that. I attend church every Sunday. That has always been a rule, either of my parents or of the hostel where I lived in Zaire. It's so engrained that I've never considered skipping church, no matter what my feelings towards God. (Methodist)

This woman has not broken from the church community, despite her anger and resentment with God for pulling her parents from her. She juggles a belief in God with a dislike of Him. Going away to school allowed the following person the space to elaborate her own opinions, and in her case, to step away from a religious, but not a spiritual, life. She credits that separation with freeing her to develop her own philosophy. No, I am not a religious person. But I try to be a person who is spiritually aware. Growing up surrounded by worldviews that were much different from my parents’, I became interested in exploring other views. So, exploring spiritual possibilities has been a big interest to me, but formal religion of any kind is completely out of the question.... I consider separation from my parents when I went to school to have been very instrumental in making me who I am now. If I had continued to live with them I would have been much more influenced by their religious views and the religious views of those who they “converted.” The separation gave me some personal space for developing my own opinions. In the city I met Zairians who were not proselytized. So, although I respect my parents’ views, I am glad I grew beyond that one world view and was able to experience and incorporate others into my own philosophy. (Mennonite)

My own experience with religion took a detour through a high school philosophy course when I was a senior. Although I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, the course brought me to the culmination of a spiritual search that began when I was 14 years old. My parents had wanted my sister and me to attend high school in English. The closest place for that at the time was Salisbury, Rhodesia, a couple of thousand miles from our home in Angola. I lived in a hostel run by a British couple, the Gleggs, who supported missions by taking in missionary kids. My parents were liberal Protestants, working with the Congregational Church, which later became the United Church of Christ. I am not sure what denomination the Gleggs

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were, but the environment around the hostel was considerably more evangelical and fundamentalist than I was used to. It was the first time I had had contact with that strain of Christianity. Soon after I arrived in Salisbury at 14, Billy Graham brought his crusade to the city for ten days. The Gleggs loaded up the minivan and took a bunch of us to the crusade and I eagerly attended six nights. I fell in love with the language of the crusade, so much more ardent and passionate than the language of my parents’ church. Instead of singing about the Rock of Ages, we sang about salvation and redemption from sin. “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.” I’d never before uttered the words “washed in His blood!” I was far from home. I missed my parents, found the Gleggs wanting as parents, and I was too young to be on my own. Billy Graham’s message of God’s love went straight to my heart. By the last night of the crusade, I had decided to accept the invitation to walk up front and be saved, stirred by the example of Billy Graham himself who had answered the call of his assistant preacher the first night of the crusade. I walked slowly down the grassy aisle with the crowd; I tilted my head back slightly to create an open coffer of my chest, ready to be filled with God's love and forgiveness. We spread out in front of the stage where Billy Graham stood praying for us and encouraging us to invite God into our hearts. Bowing my head, I acknowledged I was a cipher, empty but eager for redemption. God's love descended as a drenching rain, soaking my soul and filling my heart with kindness. Love gushed from me, flowing onto those around me. I floated through the rest of the week, suffused in light. I radiated a soft glow into the bedroom from my corner bed. Faithfully each night I read my Bible and the pamphlets I’d been given. Then the light began to fade. The glow of warmth and love that had permeated me during the ten-day crusade dimmed and life returned to its usual shades of greens and browns. Without the crusade to stir me, God was a nebulous concept, too abstract to keep me charged with the electricity of love. I'd been attracted to the passion and intensity of the crusade but in real life, God remained remote. He failed to live up to my fantasies of spontaneous connection. Perhaps, too, that spontaneity had scared me, and I feared losing control of my reason. In any case, I didn't know how to maintain the passion I'd so recently felt. As I came out on the other side, I walked in spiritual limbo, emotionally empty.

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The Congregational Church near the Gleggs’ hostel that I had been attending since arriving in Rhodesia now seemed pallid. I wanted to attend the Baptist Church along with most of my dorm friends. I imagined it to be full of life and energy. Mrs. Glegg didn't think I should switch without consulting my parents, but she said I could go to the Baptist Youth Group on Friday nights. The youth group was lively and the Baptists knew how to sing. Their hymns had catchy tunes and lusty lyrics, in which blood flowed and sinners were redeemed. They satisfied part of my craving for passion and belonging. Ultimately, though, the Friday night programs of speakers and films took on the monotony I had felt at the Congregational Church. I still yearned to be grabbed and shaken to my bones. A year later the Angolan war for independence broke out. It was the beginning of the most difficult time in my life. In the uncertain climate, my father stayed in Angola; my mother brought her four children to America on a week’s notice. I felt as though I had been ripped unceremoniously and without warning from my African home. Once settled into the Congregational Church in Tacoma, Washington, I had the first inkling that my spiritual life in Africa had been closely tied to the soaring music of the African church. Perhaps the passionate hymns at Billy Graham’s crusade explained my attraction to his brand of evangelism. In the American church, services droned on with boring recitation of verse and creed. Where were the emotion and the meaning, I wondered? The choir and the congregation’s voices were wavery and thin, as if they were embarrassed to sing out with passion. I realized how naturally I had always connected music, spirit, and faith. The stirrings of joy and reverence for God I had felt in African churches might have been related more to harmonic singing and emotional ambiance than to religious belief. A year after bringing us to the United States, my mother returned to Angola with my younger brothers. My sister went off to college and I had one more year of high school. Left on my own (though living with a family I knew from church), I went through the motions of a religious life. I was spiritually ravenous, but I think now it was not a religious hunger as much as loneliness for family and home. I missed Africa. I hated the high school culture I’d been thrown into, where I felt estranged from everyone else. I was uncertain about the future, the decisions I’d have to make about college. The idea of drawing strength from God in my distress seemed inauthentic. He was, to me, impersonal and powerless, a tenuous idea at best. I seemed incapable of faith or belief in Him.

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The philosophy class I took during my senior year suddenly opened up a new way to think about the world. My brain fairly sizzled to find that Socrates, Aristotle, and Kant were asking exactly the questions I’d had about myself. What was my life worth? How was it valued? Who valued it? What would sustain it? How was I related to America, Africa, and the wider world? Through those questions, I realized that Christianity was one of many paths to a good and moral life. I could actually choose my own path. Coming from a liberal religious family that believed in individual growth and intellectual development, I didn’t have to take a huge detour. My way could be a simple shift to a parallel lane. But it felt like a revelation. I began to question not just God’s divinity, but also the entire focus of Christianity in my life. Religion had provided me a home and reason for living in Africa. In the mission community, church was central. The church was the community. Coming to the United States, I found no such community. Church was simply one aspect of life, something to do once a week. Once I’d left Angola, family, and mission community, once philosophy roused me to sort out my beliefs, I was set free to seek my home and my essential self elsewhere. That is perhaps the long way to say that exposure to multiple cultures, the separation of children from parents, and the shock of leaving Africa for an unfamiliar “home” in America may all contribute to TCKs being less religious than other Americans. Those who say they are not religious nonetheless often continue to believe in the social gospel of their parents. In the words of one man, Unlike my parents, my belief in social justice is not combined with a deep religious commitment. As I reached adulthood I gradually came to identify myself as an atheist. During my childhood [in Canada], our family was always quite a bit more involved in religious activities than any of my friends—another important source of friction when it came to “fitting in.” My parents gave up on insisting that we go to church by the time I was 11 or 12. I suspect the fuss we made every Sunday morning made it far more pleasant for them to attend services alone. Ironically, if I were to poll my friends from those years, I am sure I would find that none of them think of themselves consciously as an atheist. Although I see myself as an atheist, with no belief in a God, I have no trouble at all with the fact that my values, morals, and sense of social justice stem directly from my parents' Christian beliefs and the teachings of the church that I was exposed to in an early life. (United Church of Canada)

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The Religious Lives of Adult Missionary Kids No. I don't attend church often, nor do I care for traditional, organized church services. The values that were instilled in me as a child, however, have remained with me and I follow many religious guidelines, I suppose, without attending formal church services. There is a certain comfort in knowing that my extended “church family” i.e. my parents' friends and my childhood friends will always be reliable and rally around to support me if I need them. When my father-in-law was diagnosed with leukemia, the prayer groups that sprang up around the world to support him astounded me. The sense of community that the church provides has been comforting, and has initiated a deeper curiosity in me to explore world religions. (Disciples of Christ)

I would define religion as belief or faith in God, with associated attitudes and practices. Its corollaries are the values, ideals, morals, ethics, and principles we live by. Our missionary parents lived not simply religious lives; they also transmitted strong messages to love and care for our fellow beings, practice humility, be truthful, and work for peace. These ideals are eloquently stated in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-11). Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

The Beatitudes are potent guides to life, whether or not they lead to belief in God. For the majority of missionary kids the values stuck, even if the religion didn’t. For some, the constant immersion in religion as they grew up has made them wary of being smothered by Christianity as an adult. This person wants to be less judgmental than her parents were and more open to many beliefs. Religion was a given in my childhood, and you just went and did those things. It was the social convention, like peer pressure, and if you dissented you were in need of salvation because Satan was obviously at work in you.

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It wasn't necessarily that we were under some overtly harsh authoritarian system, but it was a closed system. The message of exclusion of other ways of belief was underscored by our very presence in Africa. My parents were there to teach Christianity, in a caring, humanitarian way, but also in a monolithic, “believe or perish” way. So, I am personally leery of participation in any form of organized religion because of the herd mentality, and because of the adversarial or exclusionary stance that it implies towards other systems of belief. I try to stay open to learning about any system of belief and try not to place value judgments on them. (Baptist)

The following quote is from a woman who became a missionary as an adult, despite not feeling a special calling. Eventually she and her husband left the mission. As for my religious experience, I find myself becoming more and more skeptical of traditional religious beliefs. It seems to me that my nature is far more rational than spiritual, and that I don't really have the ability to perceive the spiritual realm. Since I am no longer dependent on the church for my economic sustenance, I don't have to feel guilty on that account! But since I still maintain ties, some of them quite close, with former missionary colleagues, there is some discomfort in knowing that I am not what they think I am, or should be. Ironically, my husband's siblings and the cousins on my father's side have all become zealous evangelical or fundamentalist Christians, so there is little we share in common when the subject moves to religion. (Methodist)

I can sympathize with her discomfort. As a child of missionaries, now well past my middle years, I still squirm when I am asked what church I attend. I feel some shame when I say that I don’t attend, especially to those who know my background or knew my parents. Though many have said they are not religious, they do seek spiritual knowledge. No, I am not a religious person at all, despite the extremely religious background I had. I am very spiritual inside, but belong to no religious group, nor believe in any defined religion. I began thinking very differently about religion when in Zaire amongst so many missionaries. I do not believe that any one race or religion is “right.” The Great Spirit, which some call God, is far too immense for that. (Baptist) Attending a Baptist church with altar calls, etc. satisfied the Sunday ritual but did not fill the spiritual void I felt developing very quickly after leaving Zaire and home. I turned inwards, taking long walks at all hours and in all

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The Religious Lives of Adult Missionary Kids weather both on campus and in the nearby state forests, where I would walk and sit for hours thinking and writing about nature and my own feelings toward the human world around me. Many journals were thus filled, and many religious/spiritual books and experiences helped to chart the way. (United Church of Canada)

Half of my respondents are religious; 23% are nonbelievers, and a further 7% are ambivalent, having left, rejoined, and sometimes left the church again. I am not a particularly religious person. I, however, consider myself a highly moral person. I perceive the difference being in my distaste for much of “organized religion’s” reliance on ceremony and historical interpretation. I have had my ups and downs with church going. Since I have had children I have once again become a “church attendee” in order to expose them to a religion and to demonstrate to them a unity of family in that religion. This last year I have served on the Commission of 12 for the International Protestant Church of Kinshasa and have enjoyed having some minor influence in the workings of our church. It has been interesting for me and a profound shock for some people, who have known me for a long time, to have served in that capacity. (Disciples of Christ) Most people would probably say that I am not a religious person, since I am no longer a member of an organized religious group and do not attend services. However, my own interpretation is that I am more religious than most. I find the American church scene utterly depressing, based as it is largely on social considerations and mired in ignorance. Since living in the Midwest, I have attended Methodist, Catholic, and Unitarian churches for varying lengths of time but have been driven away eventually from all, not so much because of any doctrines of the churches but because of the general view of church as a place to make social contacts. (Methodist) Am I a religious person? I guess the question I would ask is do I practice the same religion as my parents? For a long time, through college anyway, I could say that I practiced the same religion as my parents. The last few years have led me down many paths in a journey to figure out what I do believe in. I used to believe what my parents believed because I was brought up with it. Going to church every week, prayer before every meal, bedtime prayers, etc. Part of my search is an attempt to break away from my parents’ influences over my life. I'm not saying that what they believe and practice is wrong. I guess right now I'm a little disillusioned with big organized religion. But I still haven't found anything to replace it with. So I'm kind of in limbo right now. (Methodist) I am sort of a religious person, having drifted in and out of the church over time. When I have visited Angola [as an adult], I have acted religious, I

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think mostly because that is the expectation of the people, as the daughter of my parents. I no longer belong to the church I was raised in, but rather a broader minded one. I am not currently an actively religious person, in the sense of regularly attending church. The role of religion has been an up and down experience. After having been raised in a tee-totaling environment, with an otherwise liberal doctrinal approach, my high school experience was in the Baptist church. I was “sucked in” by the influential Billy Graham Crusade and ended up having some bitter arguments with the pastor of the Baptist church: I wanted to be baptized by immersion, but he refused since I was a minor and my parents were Methodist. During my young adult years I kept active in the church, even preaching several sermons! However, after being rejected by the Methodist Church Board of Missions, when I married an ex-Catholic, I began to do a lot more questioning. After starting a family, my husband and I made a conscious decision to affiliate with the United Church of Christ; until it started to feel like we were doing to our children what had been done to us. Church attendance became increasingly unsatisfying for the kids as they got older, and less fulfilling for my husband and me. Only the old hymns of my youth continue to have a haunting effect on me. My current spirituality is less formal, but more global. Finding a meaningful community to worship with has become more important. (Methodist)

Another way to look at the current religious practices of missionary kids is through their parents’ denominations. Among the more fundamentalist or conservative denominations, such as the Baptists and Mennonites, the percentage of those who said they were religious is much higher. Eighty percent of those from Mennonite missions and 78% from Baptist missions said they are religious. In contrast, the children from more liberal denominations such as the Methodists, Presbyterians, and United Church of Christ were much less apt to say they are religious. Forty percent of Methodists, 38% of UCC, and 33% of Presbyterians say they attend church and practice their faith. Disciples, now aligned with UCC, fall between the two groups, with 50% stating they are religious. When the liberal and conservative groups are looked at separately, the lack of belief is striking. Only 37% of the liberal denominations profess belief, while 77% of the conservatives are religious. My father, whose four children are nonbelievers, once wrote to me, “I feel that I failed miserably to transmit the Christian faith. Yet I also recognize that I should not take too much credit or blame for your lives.” If he were

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still alive, I would reassure him that he and my mother passed along a foundation of religious, moral, and ethical precepts. It was up to us to assess them and decide how to work them into our lives. In a sense, missionary kids may be more like a segment of Americans than I had realized. The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) found that although the United States is the “most profusely religious nation on earth,” and “among the most diverse and the most changing,” we also have a large and growing population of those without faith, a fact that has often been lost in other surveys. ARIS was first conducted in 1990, with follow-ups in 2001 and 2008. The major changes between the surveys are: a.

the proportion of the population that can be classified as Christian has declined from 86% in 1990 to 76% in 2008;

b.

although the number of adults who classify themselves in non-Christian religious groups has increased from about 5.8 million to about 8.8 million, the proportion of non-Christians has increased only by a very small amount—from 3.3% to about 4%;

c.

the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 34.1 million in 2008; their proportion has grown from just 8% of the total in 1990 to 15% in 2008.

My survey, completed in 1993, with a few additions in 2005, found 23% were nonbelievers. My small non-scientific sample of 90 responses contrasts to the ARIS sample of 50,000, thus they are not exactly comparable. Nonetheless, I believe ARIS sheds light on my results in that the percentage of those with no faith is a significant and growing portion of the American public, and evidently also of the missionary kid population. Given my small sample I don’t know how reliable the 23% is. The question of why missionary kids are less likely than Americans in general to be religious is ultimately hard to know. The factors I find most persuasive are our parents’ liberal or conservative denominations; our exposure to many cultures and ways of life, which showed us alternate

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paths to beliefs; our long separations from parents, leading to anger with God in some cases or to a sense of independence and self-reliance in others; and our loss of Africa, stability, and home, which led to questioning our faith.

ECHOES OF LOSS: LONG-TERM GRIEF AND ADAPTATION AMONG THIRD CULTURE KIDS KATHLEEN R. GILBERT AND REBECCA J. GILBERT

Much of the literature on TCKs emphasizes positive aspects of growing up between and among cultures. The many opportunities related to being exposed to a diversity of cultures and the ways in which TCKs learn to adapt to change can result in definite strengths. At the same time, the life of a TCK may be characterized by high mobility, uncertainty, and loss. In this essay, we will discuss the current literature on TCKs, particularly as it relates to coping with loss, and will then report on a study of long-term adaptation to loss among adult TCKs.

Grief among TCKs Grief is defined here as an external expression of an internal process of redefining what “normal” means after one has experienced a loss or losses (Gilbert, 1996). Grief is multifaceted and includes emotional, cognitive, behavioral, somatic, social and/or spiritual elements. Unresolved grief is commonly reported as a lingering concern among adult TCKs, that is, adults who were TCKs as children (Barringer, 2000; Cockburn, 2002; Pollock & Van Reken, 1999; Schaetti, 2002). Many of the attributes that particularly characterize TCKs—prolonged adolescence, feelings of rootlessness, alienation, and inability to make commitments (Barringer, 2000)—can be tied to unresolved grief issues (Schaetti). This study is built on an earlier report (Gilbert, 2008) that emphasized more immediate impacts of loss and grief. Here, we address the impact of loss on adult TCKs who had experienced repeated losses through childhood. As we did regarding more immediate experience of grief in the earlier report, we searched the literature for information about grief,

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emphasizing long-term impacts of the losses experienced during the childhoods of TCKs. Consistent with other studies, their losses were identified as persons, places, pets, and possessions. Participants also spoke of the symbolic and existential meaning of many of the losses, in addition to their pragmatic aspects. Thus, the existential losses the participants experienced included the loss of a safe and trustworthy world, the loss of their identity (i.e. the sense of knowing who they were), and the loss of a place they could think of and call “home.” These losses and the resulting grief may continue to influence the lives of TCKs into adulthood. Additionally, Pollock & Van Reken (1999) identified several characteristics of the TCK experience that contribute to potential unresolved grief in adulthood. Losses often are hidden, and not acknowledged; they experience a lack of permission to grieve and a lack of time to process the loss. A lack of comfort is offered to the children as they attempt to deal with their losses. Children may feel a sense of responsibility toward their parents and may hide their feelings from adults (Pollock & Van Reken). They may deny and/or suppress emotions related to loss, potentially leading to later complications (Oltjenbruns, 2007). Ambiguous losses, which characterize many of the losses experienced by TCKs, lack clarity and can lead to sharply different assessments of exactly who or what has been lost (Boss, 2004). There may even be some question as to whether or not a loss has occurred, or if it is one that should generate deep emotional response. In addition, the grief experienced by TCKs clearly has characteristics of disenfranchised grief (Doka, 2002; Schaetti, 2002). With disenfranchisement, grief is not socially recognized or may be minimized—in traditional bereavement research, this might occur with the loss of a pet, a miscarriage or abortion, or grief at the death of an abusive spouse. The grief does not make sense to people in the social network, and they may feel uncomfortable with or resistant to showing support. As you can see, disenfranchised losses are socially ambiguous losses—they cannot be openly mourned or socially supported. In the case of TCKs, grief can result from losses that are so specific to individual children that parents, and other family members, may not even recognize the loss as real. The TCKs interviewed by the first author for Gilbert (2008) described how difficult it was to lose possessions and to have their grief minimized or ignored. Disenfranchised grief is restricted by “grieving rules” ascribed by the culture and society. The TCK may not publicly grieve because, somehow,

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some aspect of the loss prevents a public recognition. In addition, TCKs may self-disenfranchise, uncertain about the appropriateness of their grief. They may also want to protect their parents and siblings and hide their emotions (Crenshaw, 2002). According to Doka (2002), disenfranchised grief most commonly occurs when the relationship between the griever and that which has been lost is not socially recognized; the loss itself is not socially recognized or is hidden from others; the griever is not socially recognized; circumstances of the loss contribute to stigma and negative judgment by others; and/or the ways individuals grieve are not considered socially acceptable. For example, TCKs may find that the relationship they have with a muchloved pet is not seen as anything more than transient, the pet easily replaceable; TCKs may be encouraged to see the transfer of a friend’s family as an exciting opportunity rather than a loss to them, and may be discouraged from showing sadness; and very young children often are seen as incapable of grieving, and their acting out may be seen as misbehavior rather than an expression of emotional distress. Yet, these types of losses are very real and the grief experienced is often quite intense (Gilbert, 2008). Losses that are not successfully resolved in childhood have an increased likelihood of recurring in adulthood. Thus, how losses and the resulting grief are dealt with continue to influence the lives of TCKs into adulthood.

Positive Attributes among TCKs: Strength-based Coping with Loss As noted above, the literature on TCKs has placed an emphasis on strengths and has identified common resiliency factors: increased selfreliance, adaptability, broader perspective, increased flexibility and responsiveness to new situations, and an eagerness to seek out new challenges. These positive outcomes are often attributed to the unique characteristics of living between cultures. Because of the frequent moves, changes in location and the breaking and forming of relationships associated with the moves, TCKs may develop a strong sense of independence and self-reliance (Pollock, 1994). At the same time, TCKs tend to have a closer relationship with their family members, perhaps due to the family being a center of stability amidst the changes demanded by moving within cultures (McCaig, 1994; Peterson &

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Plamondon, 2009). The family is a cushion—in the absence of an external geographical or cultural home, the family becomes an internal home (McCaig). A corollary of this is that TCKs tend to report more difficulty maintaining stable, long-term relationships and more feelings of loneliness and isolation (Gillies, 1998; Pollock). The value placed on independence, which helps the person cope with few non-familial relationships in childhood, may also make it more difficult to form friendships and intimate relationships in adulthood. In moving between cultures, TCKs must adjust to different demands and expectations. Because they have to adapt to being between multiple cultures, they may feel better suited to adapting to new situations successfully (Gillies, 1998). Placed in a situation in which they must adapt continuously in order to succeed, both within their host and home cultures, they are more likely to feel confident in approaching new situations than a person who has not had experiences outside of their home country (Stultz, 2003). Accompanying the TCK’s adaptability to change is often a broader perspective of life events (Pollock, 1994). McCaig (1996) has referred to the phenomenon of the “cultural chameleon” in relation to TCKs. Because they have a wider range of experiences, they are better able to put a situation into perspective, which may be difficult for someone who has not had to adapt so extensively in their lives. TCKs, depending on their reason for being overseas, may be exposed to situations such as famine, extreme poverty, inequality, war, disease and injustice (Pollock, 1994). This early exposure may buffer the effects of some stressors—for instance, a person who was exposed to extreme poverty may be less likely to experience a temporary loss of income as a crisis. Along with exposure to distressing situations that demand a broader perspective, TCKs are exposed to different cultures; in some cases, they may live in a community, taking part in cultural activities and conforming to local expectations. These may be significantly different than what they experience in their home culture. They may carry into adulthood a higher tolerance of diversity because of their extensive exposure to multiple cultures (Gillies, 1998). TCKs tend to be well-suited for international settings, with skills in speaking multiple languages, intercultural communication, mediation and diplomacy. Many may be more comfortable in lifestyles in which there is

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frequent travel and international moves than one in which they are in one stable setting (McCaig, 1994). Some TCKs live in a liminal state, that of not truly being rooted in any one setting, and may not be comfortable being tied to one place, continuing their role of “global nomad” into adulthood (Stultz, 2003). This may be beneficial. In an international economy, there is an increased emphasis on the ability to function easily in more than one cultural framework. Early exposure to multiple cultures allows individuals to move more readily between cultures, adapting to meet the needs of both a “home” culture and a “host” culture (Selmer & Lam, 2004). So, TCKs are an amalgam of skills and abilities, attitudes and beliefs that come from the ongoing and normative experience of ongoing loss and grief. Here, we will discuss a study in which we explored the idea that the strengths listed above developed as a response to adversity or as a way of dealing with loss. Bringing together our information about grief and coping among TCKs, we designed this study to address the following question: Are there unresolved concerns, associated with loss, that continue into adulthood? And, are there positive outcomes from loss?

Research Approach This study was a qualitative, naturalistic inquiry (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The methods used in this study are described in greater detail in an earlier report (Gilbert, 2008). As the study progresses, its context and focus become more focused and delineated. The goal of a naturalistic study is the creation of a descriptive model, and the assumption is that the model will emerge from the data. Our study was initially guided by a broad question: “What is the nature of loss and grief among Third Culture Kids?” The present report focuses on long-term adaptations as well as any unresolved grief concerns. Data were collected either via in-depth interview or by e-mail. The goal was not to gather the same information from each participant, but to look for emergent patterns of themes. In the interviews, broadly stated guide questions were used, but additional or tangential thoughts were encouraged. Interview questions were openended, addressing a variety of topics. Because of the constraints of email,

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email respondents were given the choice of answering a set of questions or providing a narrative that addressed the key questions of the study. All chose to respond to the questions, although they all responded to followup questions, if asked. An important philosophical perspective is that the voice and perspective of the person interviewed was to be respected (Patton, 2002). To the extent it was possible, these have been reflected in the material quoted in this reports. The larger study, from which this report is drawn, recruited participants who were adult TCKs over the age of 18 who had spent at least one continuous year as a minor dependent of a parent or guardian who was employed outside their passport country’s borders. For this report, we looked only at the data from individuals who were 30 years old or older, in order to look at long-term effects of having been a TCK. We believed that, if we were to look at long-term effects of having spent a significant period or periods of time outside the “home” country, we should look only at individuals who had been legal adults for at least a decade. Hence, the decision to limit the sample to those over age 30. Much like the larger sample, the majority of this sub-sample had spent a substantial number of their childhood years outside their home country, most in multiple countries. This report looks at 29 participants, 21 women and eight men. The minimum age was 30 and the maximum age was 61. Mean age of participants was 43. Citizenship was as follows: 23 held U.S. citizenship, one Canadian; one Indian; one South African, and three held joint citizenship (U.S./Brazil, UK/Canadian, UK/Chile). Data analysis was open-ended and inductive (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Patton, 2002), using abstract categorization and discussion of the meaning of the data (Erlandson, 1993). In order to ensure trustworthiness of the findings, the following methods were used: prolonged engagement, triangulation of data sources, peer debriefing, negative case analysis, and member checking (Erlandson, 1993; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Analysis was ongoing through data collection and into formal analysis. The study focus was progressively narrowed and questions were concentrated on emergent themes.

Study Findings Using the same data set from the Gilbert (2008) study, we looked at only the responses of participants who were 30 years of age or older. Some of

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the ways in which participants described their experiences as well as their efforts to cope with the lingering effects of having lived “between cultures” as children, differed from the general sample, and we will point out where these difference lay. In addition, we explored the ways in which these age 30+ individuals addressed, and in some cases normalized, their unique Third Culture state. An important finding reported in Gilbert (2008) was the extent to which the existential aspect of loss was found. To reiterate, participants spoke of the symbolic and existential meaning of many of the losses, in addition to their pragmatic aspects. In this context, there is a sense of having lost the feeling that the world they thought of as reliable and predictable was, in fact, not so (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). For many TCKs, the primary constancy in their lives is a lack of constancy (Gilbert, 2008; Schaetti, 2002), requiring the development of adaptive skills. Following a loss, meaning must be attributed in such a way as to allow the individual to regain a sense of order, control and purpose in life (Gilbert, 1996). For TCKs, questions about who they are, what they are, where they are from, what and who they can trust are examples of existential losses with which they must cope. And the way in which they process these losses will change, or may even wait until long after their childhood. As noted by one participant, who at age 45 said, “One of the things that comes out, is how often people are like 30, 35, 40, before they start processing a lot of these things. And, I mean that’s certainly true for me.”

Addressing and Adapting to Existential Losses in the Long-term As noted above, adult TCKs identify three general categories of existential losses: the loss of a safe and trustworthy world, the loss of a sense of who they were (i.e., identity), and the loss of a place they could call home (Gilbert, 2008). To some degree, these were accepted as a part of one’s life, a given fact that was carried through the years.

Safe and Trustworthy World Well into adulthood, adult TCKs continued to cope with the challenges of making and keeping friends in social settings and with a sense of belonging in a particular social setting. As one participant indicated, “I feel like, I can never find anybody that I can really be a friend with. So, I

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feel a loss in the sense that I don’t really know how to make friends, or I don’t trust, or (pause) I don’t really know what it is.” Along with this caution, it was clear that participants sought answers to explain why it was such a challenge to trust their relationships with others. I’m scared of getting really comfortable with certain things, particularly in relationships I think. Especially in relationships with men. I always feel like they’re going to leave me. That is probably the biggest thing. Like, things are going to be really great, like totally fall for this guy and he’s going to leave me for whatever reason, and the room’s going to collapse underneath me, and I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to handle that. I see everything around me, but I see it as I don’t get that depth of emotion from it. It doesn’t like move me like it should. It should move me more. That bothers me a lot. That really, really bugs me. Because I always feel like it’s somewhere else. You know, I feel like somewhere that feeling should be recoverable. But it never seems to be recoverable. And then of course I always think that this whole thing is an illusion, maybe it’s some way of dealing with a loss, of dealing with that—somewhere I can recover that feeling again. But, I just can’t seem to do it. And then I think maybe if I was in one place for long enough I would get the feeling again, because I’d be in that place long enough to really be able to connect.

Other participants were able to establish relationships with others, but saw themselves as slow to fully engage in a relationship. Once engaged, though, they saw themselves as a curious mixture of being dedicated to maintaining their friendships, but, if they moved, they abandoned these friendships and began again. One participant summed it up in this way: I take a while to warm up and become a close friend, and I’m a loyal friend to those I become friends with. Even as an adult, some moving and some, like changing of churches, and so forth, there’s kind of been that starting over experience, and kind of putting old friendships behind and not staying connected to old friendships.

Through all of this, there are efforts to explain their behavior. After describing the conflict between her efforts to be loyal, and her tendency to leave friendships behind with change, the TCK above summed her thought up by saying, “Sometimes I write it off as that’s kind of my personality.” Another TCK explained her difficulty in easily making friends thus: I’ve always felt that it’s because….people don’t see me as all that interesting or whatever. Maybe, unknowingly I don’t open up to other

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Echoes of Loss people because I think that I seem to have this approach of, I don’t tell people about myself because I don’t want to bore them with my stuff.

Identity: Who am I? Identity formation is often discussed in relation to normal adolescent development. Erikson (1963) identified learning identity vs. identity diffusion as the key task of adolescence, with the successful resolution of the question, “Who am I?” as an ultimate goal. For adult TCKs in this study, the challenge of identity continued long past childhood. I just get to the fear. I don’t get, I just, I just get to the feeling that I would look in the mirror and it would be someone else looking at me. That’s what I get, it’s like whether or not I did feel rooted, but suddenly I would lose it, I can’t even connect with that, I can’t even get to the point of feeling really weird. It’s just doesn’t seem possible.

Schaetti (2002) as well as Useem and Cottrell (1996) described adult TCKs as experiencing delayed adolescence in which they deal with identity issues long into adulthood, and this ongoing struggle was seen among these individuals. I used to play the game that you know my uniqueness was so positive, and it was, gave me an edge in life that other people didn’t have. I always just felt….I’m never ever completely the one that fits in. Ever! There is always a part of my life that somebody doesn’t understand. And, that I don’t totally identify with whatever is going on here, or wherever I am.

Key markers of identity that come with being reared in a single place or having a single national identity are absent in TCK lives. It was extremely common to hear internal conflict, especially with regards to national identity: “I am an American, but in my heart I am a Japanese. My heart home is Japan.” “There is a piece of Brazil in my heart that will be there till the day I die. I will always be American, and also Brazilian, still.” “We’re not ‘man without a country’, we’re ‘man torn between two countries’. And, you can’t totally separate the two. It’s like, you’re forever both.” Some participants had broadened their self-perception beyond national boundaries to see themselves as a global citizen: “I don’t feel American. I don’t feel like, I mean, if someone said are you an American, I’d go, ‘No. I’m a citizen of the world.’ I imagine the globe. The whole world.”

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Some, especially Missionary Kids (MKs), found direction in their quest for identity in their faith and in prayer. I’m really trying to find what my niche is in terms of identity, I think I’m still trying to find it, and I think part of what’s been helping me with that is a lot of prayer, you know, sort of, really just kind of prayer right now is what’s been helping me.

Managing Issues of “Home” Related to identity concerns, was the issue of what home was. Because identity seemed so tied to a hometown or home country, participants often intertwined discussions of who they were and to where they were tied. Methods of coping with the sense of rootlessness were varied. Some participants described marrying another TCK because of a shared history. In some cases, they learned that, just because you have both lived mobile childhoods, it does not mean you have a shared experience. Others married non-TCKs and then struggled to balance their own history with that of their spouse and in-laws. Despite the fact that I am so thankful for the fact that I grew up in another culture, I, at times, long for that sense of having grown up in one house. My husband grew up in a small town in [state], and lived in the same house all his growing up years, and sometimes I just long for that.

Some sought out a geographically stable life, “I had lived in the same town for eight years. Some people wouldn’t have that idea [how amazing this is], couldn’t understand that concept.” For some, the memories of their childhood moves triggered anxiety with each new move. “I’ve noticed in the years since, I would go into a depression. And even in my adult years here. I can hardly handle, hardly handle packing or anything.” Still others found a geographically stable life suffocating. “I feel like if I connect with this place that I will die. That’s how I feel. That it would be a death, that it would be ‘Bye, bye [his name].’” Certain participants gave up the concept of home as a place. In some instances, this was because the country they saw as their home country no longer existed, as was the case with then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. In other cases, they had returned as adults to the country of their childhood to find that it, in a very meaningful way, no longer existed as the place they’d

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known. “I wanted to go home, and yet I know it’s not really ‘home’ there. Home is a place in my head.” One means of dealing with this was to create a “safe space” in their home, using artifacts from the country or countries in which they’d lived as TCKs. One woman laughed as she described a visit with her childhood Ecuadorian friends. They had eaten Ecuadorian food that she had cooked, listened to music from her Ecuadorian music collection, and admired her collection of Ecuadorian art. Her friends then declared her to be “more Ecuadorian than we are!” Many kept and reviewed photographs of their childhood home. Another way of dealing with the issue of home was to focus on an emotional home, their “heart home.” In many instances, this heart home was the country in which they had spent their childhood. As one participant, who had grown up in the tropics said, “I can really identify with that term ‘heart home.’ I, when I move somewhere, the first thing I want to do is have plants and something on the walls, because to me that makes my, where I physically am, that makes it feel like home to me.” Another participant had a film canister containing soil from her heart home. “It’s a film roll canister, with earth scooped up from in front of my house in the village. Yeah, that was very important to me.” Others saw their church or other faith-based gathering place as their personal heart home. “The only time I really feel rooted is when I’m in church taking Holy Communion, that’s the only time when I really feel one with the universe.”

Liminality, a Lingering Concern As can be seen above, TCKs live in a perpetual luminal state in which they sit, perched on a threshold of “in-between-ness.” They are between cultures, between worlds, between identities. As one participant in the study reported here said, “I’m neither fish nor fowl, and I’m neither and not fish nor not fowl. I’m something altogether different.” As one might guess, liminality contains an element of uncertainty. It has typically been associated with the transition from one culturally defined state to another (Turner, 1969), and the uncertainty creates stress. Living in a world of uncertainty is uncomfortable, at best, and we tend to try to

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find means of removing or reducing stress (Gilbert, 1996), through such things as a search for meaning and/or efforts to create a predictable world. TCKs may redefine themselves and embrace their liminality. As seen above, their sense of belonging usually is in relationship to others of similar background, not to a particular culture or country (Pollock & Van Reken, 1999; Storti, 1997). As Schaetti (2002) noted, “the primary source of continuity for the [TCK] is discontinuity” (p. 109). Yet, the struggle to cope with their liminal state has facilitated the development of many of the strengths seen among adult TCKs, strengths they continue to build through their adult years. Perhaps not surprisingly, a large proportion of the participants in this study identified their faith and their relationship with God, whoever they understood God to be, as a source of stability and comfort in their lives. Another way of dealing with the unique liminality of having been a TCK was to maintain connections with other TCKs, and with individuals from their childhoods, and many spoke of hosting childhood friends who came to visit over the years. Another way in which they maintained connections was through websites, chat groups, social media, and email listservs. Finally, several participants spoke of being grounded in their families, staying in touch, gathering pictures and other artifacts of family life, and attending family reunions. Consistent with those in their 20s, who, when asked where their home was, often said, “wherever my family is,” these individuals continued to see the importance of the anchor of their families.

Adaptations in Adulthood As noted earlier in this chapter, adult TCKs demonstrate many resilient attributes. Before shifting to a discussion of this very positive aspect, it is important to note that participants described ongoing efforts to cope with the after-effects of negative experiences as TCKs.

Ongoing Struggles There were experiences in their childhoods that were challenging, some of them extremely so. In particular, some of the MK participants spoke of struggling to break out of a box of expectations that may have been unique to the children of missionaries. One MK talked about suppressing her feelings because to question her parents was to question God.

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Others spoke of a pattern, established in childhood, they felt unable to break, even when their spouse or others tried to get them to be more open with their emotions. I looked at that as kind of a pattern, I think a beginning pattern of stuffing down my emotions, not wanting to appear sad or unhappy or not under control, I guess, but wanting to appear like everything is under control. To this day, I kind of have this tendency of hiding my feelings, sort of, I mean, not totally, but I really don’t cry easily outwardly. I just, for some reason, I don’t like to show my emotions.

Others carried memories of abuse and neglect from their childhood days. In one case, an MK described how she had been sexually abused by the child of a leader of her missionary compound and had not been believed at the time. Another spoke of his life in boarding school, from age 6 as one in which he was “emotionally, physically, sexually abused, sometimes, in the boarding school.” Yet, even struggling with the lingering after-effects of crises in their childhoods, participants demonstrated a number of personal strengths that grew from their lives as TCKs.

Personal Strengths in Adulthood Two characteristics we found common among the participants were that of thoughtful self-analysis and the tendency to positively frame or reframe situations. In most cases, even when describing something that was highly stressful, the participant would qualify it with some kind of positive statement, about themselves or the other person or persons involved. Research in recent years has demonstrated that maintaining a positive perspective is associated with longevity, with better physical and mental health (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). So, being able to view oneself in a positive light a healthy attribute. Being able to use the skills that you develop as a TCK, which is being able, becoming adaptable, being able to see from different perspectives, and just being able to, I don’t know relate to different people backgrounds. Find a way to use your strengths that you actually feel like your experience gave

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you something very, very valuable.

Participants described many benefits from their lives as TCKs: The ability to think globally, being hospitable, the capacity to be sensitive to and accepting of others who were different from them. One participant listed: A great tolerance, and patience with people from other countries, and even people from this country who do not have the same advantages that a lot of us do. I think that all came from being exposed to other cultures. Because I know how tough it is. I know how tough moving is, so whenever anybody moves, I like to say, can I help you?

This sort of reaching out to others was common. In one instance, the TCK returned to the country where he had lived as a child, to help with famine relief, at first, and then to provide care to the people of the village permanently. Others engaged in a variety of supportive activities. One TCK described how, after considering becoming a missionary herself, she decided to dedicate herself to teaching English as a Second Language. Another spoke of how her life as a TCK inspired her to focus on others and to be sensitive to their needs. Many participants referred to one or more email listserv groups for adult TCKs to which they subscribed and talked about how they helped other TCKs (and were helped by other TCKs) in coping with stresses they experienced. Even those characteristics that might be viewed by others as a negative (for example, maintaining an emotional distance and “packing away” losses) may be viewed by the TCK as a positive, because it allowed him or her to deal with many moves and the related losses more easily and with less pain. Two participants, both male, said the following: I know that I always recover, I always know that things are going to be okay, that things are going to get better. With every loss there is a gain, so, in some ways I’m also not afraid to experience loss because I know there’s always something just as good. I tend to regard loss as, you look at it, and I’m always trying to be practical about it, and it’s a natural fact. And maybe that’s how I’ve managed to deal with things throughout my life. I say, well, almost fatalistic. “That’s it, and that’s done now.” And, you feel sad for it, but you try to get over it as soon as possible, because the longer you dwell on it the longer you, you prolong the pain.

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Conclusion The intent of this essay was to explore the echoes of loss among adult Third Culture Kids—the long-term effects of having experienced losses associated with being raised as TCKs. Our findings support earlier literature on TCK strengths, especially the adaptations TCKs exhibit in adulthood, but we found a more complex picture of the adaptations seen in adult TCKs. Throughout the interviews conducted for this study, there was a sense that, although the lifestyle had much to offer, coping with loss became a constant in their lives. We found evidence of prolonged adolescence (Schaetti, 2002), that making commitments could be challenging (Barringer, 2000), and/or a perpetual state of liminality (Schaetti & Ramsey, 1999). Although there are challenges associated with having been raised between cultures, these TCKs also exhibited strengths. They were highly adaptable and generally maintained a positive outlook. In addition, adult TCKs tend to seek out others who have had similar life experiences (Pollock & Van Reken, 1999; Storti, 1997), and that was the case here. Family also was a key resource in their lives (McCaig, 1994; Peterson & Plamondon, 2009). Their internal and external resources served them well as they dealt with the echoes of loss.

Bibliography Barringer, C. F. (2001). “Counseling Third Culture Kids.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Counseling Association, San Antonio, TX). Available at http://www.eric.ed.gov ERIC #: ED451459. Retrieved November 5, 2007. Boss, P. (2004). “Ambiguous Loss.” In F. Wash & M. McGoldrick (Eds.), Living beyond Loss: Death in the Family (2nd ed.) (pp. 237-246), New York: Norton. Crenshaw, D. A. (2002). “The Disenfranchised Grief of Children.” In K.J. Doka (Ed.) Disenfranchised Grief: New Directions, Challenges, and Strategies for Practice (pp. 293-306). Champaign, IL: Research Press. Doka, K. J. (2002). “Introduction.” In K.J. Doka (Ed.) Disenfranchised Grief: New Directions, Challenges, and Strategies for Practice (pp. 522). Champaign, IL: Research Press. Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and Society (2nd ed.). New York: W. W. Norton.

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Erlandson, D. A. (1993). Doing Naturalistic Inquiry: A Guide to Method. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Gilbert, K. R. (1996). “'We've had the same loss, why don't we have the same grief?' Loss and Differential Grief in Families.” Death Studies, 20, 269-283. —. (2008). “Loss and Grief between and among Cultures: The Experience of Third Culture Kids.” Illness, Crisis and Loss, 16, 93-109. Gillies, W. D. (1998). “Children on the Move: Third Culture Kids.” Childhood Education, 77, 36-8. Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma. New York: Free Press. Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985) Naturalistic Inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Pub. McCaig, N. M. (1994). “Growing up with a World View: Nomad Children Develop Multicultural Skills.” Foreign Service Journal, September, 32-41. —. (1996). “Understanding Global Nomads.” In C. D. Smith (Ed.) Strangers at Home (pp. 99-120). Bayside, NY: Aletheia Pub. Oltjenbruns, K. A. (2007). “Life Span Issues and Loss, Grief, and Mourning Part 1: The Importance of a Developmental Context: Childhood and Adolescence as an example.” In D. Balk, C. Wogrin, G. Thornton, & D. Megher (Eds.) Handbook of Thanatology: The Essential Body of Knowledge for the Study of Death, Dying, and Bereavement (pp. 143-150). Northbrook, IL: The Association for Death Education and Counseling, The Thanatology Association. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Pub. Peterson, B. E., & Plamondon, L. T. (2009). “Third Culture Kids and the Consequences of International Sojourns on Authoritarianism, Acculturative Balance, and Positive Affect.” Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 755-763. Pollock, D. C. (1998). “Being a Third-Culture Kid: A Profile.” In J. M Bowers (Ed.). Resilient MKs: Resources for Caregivers, Parents, and Teachers (pp. 45-53). Colorado Springs, CO: Association of Christian Schools International. Pollock, D.C., & Van Reken, R. (1999). Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing up among Worlds. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. Schaetti, B. F. (2002). “Attachment Theory: A View into the Global Nomad experience.” In M. G. Ender (Ed.), Military Brats and Other Global Nomads Growing up in Organization Families (pp. 103-119). :

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Praeger Publishers. Schaetti, B. F., & Ramsey, S. J. (1999). “The Global Nomad Experience: Living in liminality.” Available http://transition-dynamics.com/liminality. Retrieved October, 26, 2007. Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). “Positive Psychology: An Introduction.” American Psychologist, 55, 5-14. Selmer, J. & Lam, H. (2004). “‘Third Culture Kids:’ Future Business Expatriates?” Personnel Review, 33, 430.445. Storti, C. (1997). The Art of Coming Home. Boston, MA: Intercultural Press. Stultz, W. (2003). “Global and Domestic Nomads or Third Culture Kids: Who Are They and What the University Needs to Know.”Available: http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/SAHE/JOURNAL2/2003/Stultz.htm (Retrieved 10/1/10). Turner, V. W. (1969). The Ritual Process. New York, NY: Penguin. Useem, R. H., & Cottrell, A. B. (1996). “Adult Third Culture Kids.” In C. D. Smith (Ed.) Strangers at Home (pp. 22-35). Bayside, NY: Aletheia Pub.

FOUR THIRD CULTURE KIDS: ONE PORTRAIT LAILA PLAMONDON

(With special thanks to Professor Bill Peterson, for his encouragement and support.) Four close friends attended an American international high school in Bangladesh: Lara, Kelly, Susan, and Britney.1 The group of four includes two Americans, a German, and a half-Bangladeshi, half-American. They have lived in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Bolivia, the Philippines, Thailand, Kenya and Bangladesh, following expatriate fathers working in the fields of foreign service, development, education and missions. Between them, they speak five languages fluently, and can “hello” in many more. They are all different, yet they are the same. In high school, they bonded over sports: volleyball, basketball and soccer. Now they have even more in common. All four have repatriated, completed college and are pursuing advanced degrees. Despite living in their home countries, they have global lives: studying international issues, working in global organizations and dating men with foreign backgrounds. They are all different, yet they are the same. They are Third Culture Kids.

Third Culture Kids (TCKs) may have extremely different backgrounds. For example, a biracial American girl born in Colombia and raised in three countries, a Turkish woman raised in Germany and France, and an Indian boy raised in South East Asia, may all consider themselves TCKs. Yet anthropological, sociological and other qualitative research suggests Third Culture Kids (TCKs) form a cohesive group, with unique characteristics and developmental patterns. Their shared experiences define them.

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Lara, Kelly, Susan and Britney are pseudonyms.

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Social scientists Ruth Hill Useem and John Useem (e.g. R. Useem, 1973) coined the term Third Culture Kid in the 1950s to describe American children living in India, and the three cultures they inhabit. The “first culture” refers to the country of origin (parental culture) where TCKs vacation (p. 20). The “second” culture is the host culture (India), within which exists the “Third Culture” (which has no relation to the Third World). The Third Culture consists of a transient community of expatriates, often including families from around the world, who avail themselves of American or British international schools, recreational clubs, commissaries and other amenities. As expanded by Pollock and Van Reken (1999), this term now includes all individuals, from any country, who have spent many of their formative years in second and Third Cultures other than their parents’ first culture; they are often children of missionaries, military personnel, diplomats or in business. Social scientists have broadened the definition to be allinclusive, creating the emergence of subcategories, which have important implications for personality development. For instance, some younger immigrants consider themselves to be TCKs, even though an immigrant experiences a different assimilation process from TCKs, who typically still hold passports from their home countries, and fully expect to return. A non-immigrant TCK rarely tries to become a citizen of the second culture, as an immigrant might. TCKs are also not sojourners themselves, but the children of sojourners. While a sojourner makes a conscious decision to go abroad, TCKs must follow their parents, whether or not they want to. While TCKs can be very different from one another, they may be very similar in a few crucial ways. According to Pollock and Van Reken (1999), TCKs experience early maturity in some areas of their development, while battling delayed maturity in other areas. For instance, TCKs may acquire a broad knowledge base about the larger world. TCKs learn to be adaptable and become experienced in relating to adults, since the “Third Culture” communities are often communal in nature, giving the children ample opportunity to interact with TCKs and their parents. However, these signs of adulthood can be counteracted by delayed maturity. For instance, TCKs may experience greater levels of identity confusion, needing to reestablish a sense of identity after repatriation, often realizing that they do not belong to the dominant home culture in the way they thought they would.

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TCKs often suffer from unique stresses, including frequent relocation, environmental disasters, political unrest and emergency evacuations; however, one stress factor, “reverse culture shock” or re-acculturation upon repatriation, can significantly affect identity development. American children, who often represent the United States when abroad, return to find a different culture from what they thought they embodied. By attending U.S. international schools, non-American TCKs may feel they relate more to American culture than to their own home culture. The different worldviews and values that they experience while abroad may make TCKs think very differently than their home country peers, even though they may look the same physically. This dilemma has caused some to view a TCK as a “hidden immigrant” (Pollock and Van Reken, 1999, p. 53). While a true immigrant’s physical appearance and accent may signal their identity, many TCKs have no such physical markers when they return home and are expected to think and act like their first-culture peers, and when they do not, problems ensue. While we have good impressionistic ideas about the issues facing TCKs, quantitative research on the psychology of Third Culture Kids is in its beginning stages. In an Honors Thesis I wrote for my psychology major at Smith College, I addressed this lack of information by providing a quantitative portrait of the TCK. I would like now to summarize some of my findings by exploring factors that predict psychological well-being in young adult TCKs after repatriation. Like all populations, some TCKs thrive, becoming model citizens in a rapidly globalizing world, while other TCKs struggle to develop a sense of belonging. What causes these differences? How can we encourage psychological health and happiness in TCKs?

The Psychology of Re-acculturation and Adult Identity I used Facebook to advertise an electronic survey to American TCKs between the ages of 18 and 25, who had already repatriated to the United States. I focused on “emerging adulthood,” a term developed by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett (2000), a developmental psychologist at Clark University who specializes in the time-period between adolescence and young adulthood. During this time, individuals have gained autonomy, yet do not have to conform to social roles and normative expectations of working adults. The stage is characterized by exploration of love, work, and worldviews, often physically demonstrated by frequent residential change. Questions of identity become the most pertinent social and personality

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issues. Using Arnett’s criterion of emerging adulthood, I limited the ages of my sample to 18-25 year olds. Here’s a brief description of the 170 participants who completed the survey: male participants comprised 25% of the sample and female participants consisted of 75% of the sample, with an average age of 20.63 years (SD 2.20). While this may seem unbalanced in terms of gender, such response rates are relatively common in survey research. I elaborate on potential reasons for this difference in the conclusion. The majority of the participants described themselves as White (75%); Asian Americans comprised the next largest group (13%) with smaller samples of Latino/as (7%), Arab Americans (2%), African Americans (1%), Native Americans (1%) and multiracial individuals (2%). About 71% of the population described themselves as Christian, though 19% claimed no religious background. In terms of assignments, participants had spent an average of 11.17 years abroad and an average of 9.75 years in the United States (though these may not be consecutive years abroad or in the U.S.), they had accompanied their parents on an average of 3.12 foreign assignments, sometimes consecutively, sometimes with a repatriation between foreign assignments, and participants had repatriated back to the U.S. an average of 1.69 times. During their time abroad, 64% of the sample spent time living in Europe, 62% lived in Asia, 22% in Latin America, 18% in Africa, 13% in the Middle East, 4% in Australia and 2% in Canada. Respondents also described their parents’ nationality. The majority of mothers and fathers grew up as Americans (70% and 72%, respectively), although there was a representation of parents who had grown up in Asia (12% mothers and 11% fathers), and Europe (7% mothers and 8% fathers). A large portion of our sample came from the missionary sector (36%), followed by business, (21%), education (13%), military (11%) and State Department (8%). In addition to demographic background, my survey also asked respondents to respond to four measures: • •

The Affectometer 2 assessed psychological health (Kammann & Flett, 1983). The Identity Capital Model measured level of community integration and self-recognition of adulthood (Cote, 1997).

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The re-acculturation scale was based on Rachel E. Timmon’s (2006) rubric, which functions as a roadmap for TCKs or sojourners to gauge their own progress in re-acculturating. The scale assessed the participant’s positive and negative feelings about their time abroad and return to the United States. For parent-child relationships, participants were asked to rate how close they felt to their mothers and fathers.

In this essay I want to explore the relationships between identity and wellbeing, and the life of a TCK (e.g., number of second culture assignments, years spent abroad, and the number of repatriations). In order to introduce each set of analyses, I will take a closer look at Lara, Kelly, Susan and Britney. Each girl’s story illustrates one of the key findings from the study.

Psychological Health and the Affectometer 2 Lara represents an average participant. She is almost 21 years old, White and Christian. Due to her father’s work in the business sector, she has accompanied her parents on three assignments to the United Arab Emirates, London and Bangladesh. In total, she’s spent over eleven years abroad, repatriating twice (once in between moves and then again for college), for a total of ten years in the United States. During high school with the other girls, she was outgoing and well liked. Since repatriating, Lara seems to lead a pretty normal life, one that would be hard to distinguish from her American peers even though her childhood differs drastically. She is relatively content with her life as a college student, with an active social life and a passion for music. While Lara can’t say that she’s had a “stable” childhood in the traditional sense of the word, she’s achieved a sense of stability in her young adult life, despite or maybe due to her childhood relocations. How does Lara achieve this sense of security? What affects this happiness?

To measure overall psychological health, I used a validated and reliable 40-item scale, the Affectometer 2. Kammann and Flett (1983) created the Affectometer 2 to measure happiness and well-being; “the balance of positive and negative feelings in recent experiences.” The scale can be divided into 10 qualities of happiness, including: optimism, self-esteem, social support, freedom, and cheerfulness. Specifically, participants rated 20 statements, such as “My life is on the right track” and “I wish I could change some part of my life” (reverse scored), and the 20 adjectives “satisfied” and “discontented” (reverse scored).

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I used this scale as the main measure of the study, exploring the factors that correlate with and predict this measure of overall psychological health. Participants scored an item mean of 3.73 (standard deviation of .57) on a 5-point Likert scale. This probably does not mean much to those outside of the world of academic psychology, but these scores confirm that TCKs are a generally psychologically healthy population, as one would expect. More interestingly, the Affectometer 2, or psychological health, does not correlate with the number of years spent abroad or the number of assignments they went on. This means, all else being equal, the number of years a TCK spends abroad does not directly affect a TCK’s overall psychological health; neither does the number of moves to second cultures, although as we will see, there may be other, more complicated relationships between the TCK’s transient life and psychological health.

Identity: Identity Stage Resolution Index Kelly is American, as American as can be in some ways. In high school, the blond-haired and blue-eyed girl was a basketball star, dressed in Abercrombie and Fitch and listened to the American Top 40 on her iPod. As American as can be—except for the bindi2 she sometimes sticks on her forehead and her choice of words (she says “football” instead of “soccer”). By the time Kelly joined the group in Bangladesh, she had lived in Egypt and Venezuela with her parents, who worked as educators in the international school system. When she first arrived from Venezuela, Kelly would say, “I’m American, but I really feel more Venezuelan.” Later she took to saying, “I’m American, but Bangladesh feels like home.” Since she repatriated, ask Kelly where she is from, and she will say, “from the world” or sometimes, when she’s feeling humorous, “I’m nationally challenged… Americans seem to like the word ‘challenged.’” Despite alluding to some sort of impairment, Kelly seems comfortable, even proud, of her explanation. “I’m confused and you have to deal with that. I’m okay with being confused, so you should be okay with ME being confused. My life will always be a collection of different experiences from different countries with different identities, and putting them together into something coherent isn’t something that I’ll ever be able to do.”

Besides psychological health, my study focused on issues of identity development. Erik Erikson (1950) established a stage model of personality development, focusing on certain childhood and adolescent expressions of 2

A forehead decoration worn in South Asia

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developmental issues, such as autonomy and industry, as important precursors to adult identity development. Erikson expressed the stage model in terms of encounters between two opposing psychosocial issues: trust and mistrust in infancy, autonomy and shame in toddlerhood, initiative and guilt in the pre-school years, industry and inferiority in the elementary school years, identity and confusion in adolescence, intimacy and isolation in young adulthood, generativity and stagnation in midlife, and integrity and despair in old age. Most importantly for this study, Erikson focused on identity versus confusion as the task for adolescents and emerging adults. Individuals concentrate on developing a sense of self and this tumultuous stage often resembles a clash between opposing needs. For instance, adolescents may become rebellious emphasizing independence, yet cliques also become important to them, highlighting the need to belong. Adolescent relationships function as a way to explore the self and often consist of long conversations with peers; writing diaries can also become important. In today’s world, this stage is often prolonged by attending college, a time associated with exploration of oneself and career opportunities. In order to measure the resolution of Erikson’s identity development stage, Canadian psychologist, James E. Côté (1970), created the scale called the Identity Stage Resolution Index (or the Identity Capital Model). The index measures two specific aspects of identity: self-recognition of functioning as an adult (or personal identity) and the level of community integration (or communal identity). Participants rated seven statements regarding: whether or not they felt they had settled on a life-style and community that they were satisfied with for the rest of their lives; considered themselves to be a fully matured adult; and felt respected by others as an adult. Participants scored 3.58 (SD .82) on a 5-point scale on the personal identity portion of the index and 2.76 (SD .79) on the communal identity aspect. As expected, both the personal and communal identity correlate significantly with the Affectometer 2 (.33 and .55, respectively, at the p