Category: Third Culture Kids Page 4 of 5

She is a TCK.

By

On July 20, 2019

In Third Culture Kids

Johnny, at the park: MONGOOSE!
Me: Nope, that’s a squirrel. Wrong country, Buddy.

Josiah, staring with interest at the stove: What kind of stove is that?
Me: It’s electric. It runs on electricity.
Josiah: Oh, so if the power goes out, it stops working?
Me: Yep.
Josiah: That doesn’t sound very good. You could be in the middle of cooking and then have to stop.
Me: Yeah, but the power doesn’t go off in America.
Josiah: Not EVER?
Me: Well, sometimes in big storms, but yeah, not really ever.
Josiah (very impressed): Whoa.

Amusing quotes aside, the truth is that my kids are somewhat of an enigma. They don’t fit into any particular category. They are Tanzanian by blood, but their parents are American. They are similar to other internationally adopted kids, except that they aren’t being raised in their adoptive parents’ home country, but their own birth country.

A Tanzanian friend once asked me if my kids identified more with being American or Tanzanian. I told him that I’m not really sure (and I don’t think they are really sure), but that I would guess that they feel more American when they are in Tanzania, and more Tanzanian when they are America. Because they don’t fit in perfectly in either place.

They can greet their elders with Shikamoo without an accent, but they would never yell Wazungu! when they see a white person walking on the road, like other Tanzanian kids their age. They love chips mayai and macaroni and cheese and wali na maharage and Pizza Hut. They have been taught to eat with a knife and fork but know not to use their left hand if there aren’t any utensils available.

This would be true of any missionary kid who had lived in Tanzania, but my kids are different from even them. They know all about hair salon culture, but, of course, they go there with their white mom so they always get odd looks. They can go to the market and not stand out–that is, until someone assumes their Swahili is better than it actually is.

Haven of Peace Academy is a perfect place for my children, and so they’ve stayed insulated from a great deal of this struggle. Josiah has one friend who is ethnically Indian but has a passport and culture from Australia. Another friend is half Tanzanian and half Zimbabwean, but was born in South Africa. Another is half African-American and half Kiwi, but born in America. All are being raised in Tanzania. Josiah, with his complex identity, fits right in.

HOPAC is a middle life, a life in between worlds. Yet the life that HOPAC gives them is not sustainable.

It’s like an airplane: Passengers from all over the world, all walks of life, a hundred different backgrounds–all crammed into a tiny tube hovering over the earth. Not belonging to any one place; suspended, for a short period of time, above all the world’s nations. My kids live there, in that plane, at HOPAC. Yet at some point, that airplane has to land. And the older my kids get, the more I wonder and worry about how that landing will go for them.

I grew up in Liberia, so to some degree, I understand what it’s like to grow up between worlds. But I was not adopted, I was not Liberian, and my parents always had a house in California for us to come back to. Yes, losing Liberia was traumatic for me. But it also was not my country. How do I help my children to navigate an identity that I can never fully understand?

My eldest daughter is a sketcher, and as we have been traveling in California these last three weeks (six cities so far), I’ve caught her sketching in fancy lettering–on Best Western Hotel notepads, in the sketchbook she bought in Istanbul, on any scrap of paper–I am a TCK. I am a Third Culture Kid. She is processing that identity–that life hovering above the nations, that life in between worlds.

I see this, and my eyes mist over. I am so proud to be her mom. It takes courage to be her. There is much she will teach me.

What Have I Done to My Children?

By

On March 1, 2019

In Leaving Tanzania, Liberian Childhood, Third Culture Kids

My family’s front porch in Liberia faced the ocean. A dirt road and a lagoon separated our house from where the sand began and the waves crashed, but it was enough of a beach house that the fridge rusted and my mom had to mop the salt off the floors every day.

Many hours would find me on the hammock on that front porch, one of the few places where my introverted tween awkwardness felt at home. It was a rough rope hammock, and I would sit sideways on it like a swing, my legs pushing against the cement railing on the porch. Liberian sunsets on that ocean, complete with silhouetted coconut palms, were as post-cardish as any honeymooner could ask for, but my clearest memories are of the rain.

Liberian rain was never some mamsy-pamsy sprinkling; it was a waterfall from the sky. The smell of that rain would engulf me, full of sea salt and warmth and growing things. And I would swing on my hammock, dreaming my young-girl dreams, and watch the lightning crack out of a dark sky and strike the expanse of my ocean.

We often miss the beauty of our childhoods while we are in the midst of it, much too focused on interpreting those best-friend-comments and science-project-scores to pay much attention, but the rain and the lightning and the swinging hammock was such a large, enveloping beauty that even in my twelve-year-old self-centeredness, I was able to feel something like awe.

Across that dirt road, in a house that was even closer to the ocean, lived friends. Their kids were around the same ages as my brother and I, and we spent many an afternoon canoeing on the swamp or trying to make a clubhouse in their attic, but it was so hot we could only each spend a few minutes in there at a time before we climbed down, gasping for breath. I practiced piano in their house every day, since they had a piano and we didn’t, and one at a time, we borrowed all of their Asterix and Tin Tin comics. “Bock, Bock!” I would holler at their screen door, because that’s what you said in Liberia when you came to someone’s door. They would always let me in.

We made a teepee out of palm branches and their daughter and me created fantasy lands for our Barbie dolls in the sand and the swamp and the forest around our homes. They were from Arizona, so at Christmas they introduced us to the tradition of paper bag lanterns–luminarias–which filled the humid night air with magic.

My third-culture-kid childhood was filled with so much beauty–both in the land itself, and in so many people who loved me and became like family, because that’s what happens when you find yourself thrust into a land with other foreigners who, like you, have no idea what they are doing.

I always wanted my own children to have a childhood like that.

Remarkably, they have. They already have more stamps in their passports than most people get in a lifetime. They’ve stood in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro and visited the Apartheid Museum in South Africa. They’ve fed giraffes in Kenya and watched baby sea turtles hatch and spent hundreds of hours in warm tropical oceans. And they have been deeply loved by Zimbabweans and Brits and Americans and Tanzanians who have enriched their lives with accents and cultures and family-bonds.

But as I dreamed that life for my kids, I failed to remember the grief.

It is easy to remember all the great stuff but naively think I would be able to protect my kids from all the hard stuff. Changing schools and relationships and countries and cultures several times in the course of a childhood–as extraordinary as it all sounds–is also excruciating.

Grace came home with a large drawing board in a plastic artist’s folder last week.

“It’s from my art teacher,” she said proudly. “He’s starting me on advanced art. He says that he’s going to give me a head’s start for IGCSE Art in 9th grade. I mean, if I’m here in 9th grade.”

If I’m here. Because we don’t know.

We had lunch with friends the other day, the ones who have felt like family for ten years. But they are leaving Tanzania this summer, and their daughter and Grace are an unbeatable duo–truly a sight to behold–on their basketball team. “You’ve got to come move near us and go to my school, and we can play basketball together!” she pleaded with Grace. Because it’s unthinkable to imagine living apart.

That same day we got more news: Another family we know and love will be leaving even sooner. I told the kids in the car; I didn’t want to look them in the eyes. Everyone was silent.

They are getting used to this.

And I wonder, What have I done to my children?

I remember how I wept when I found out that we wouldn’t be able to return to Liberia; wept for the loss of my home, wept for the country that was being destroyed by war. That family who lived on the other side of the road–after two years of water balloon fights and piano practices and luminarias and sharing every part of life–we separated into different worlds and we never saw them again.

I look into my children’s stony faces, steeling themselves against another loss; I hear the if I’m here in their voices and I remember my own childhood–the part I don’t like to remember. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” I’ll say without a moment’s hesitation. But is it fair to impose on them the pain that goes with it? Do I have the right to say to them, “This is going to hurt a whole lot, but it will be worth it?”

I guess that’s the thing about parenting–we make all these choices for these small people under our care, and they don’t get any say in it. We choose where they will live, how they will be educated, how many siblings they will have, who they will be friends with. None of this seems like a big deal when they are little and an extension of us, but then they get bigger and smarter and they start to realize that some of the choices we made for them have difficult repercussions. Our enthusiastic, It will be worth it! starts to sound more hollow, to them and to us, because the truth is, we really don’t know if it will be.

I’m realizing that as much as I want (and try) to write my kids’ stories for them, I really only get to make the basic outline. I can create the setting and even write in a bunch of the characters, but they control the perspective, which is really what makes or breaks a story. And ultimately, I must trust that there’s an Author who’s a whole lot bigger than I am, and who loves them a whole lot more than I do, who is doing most of the writing behind the scenes.

 

Those Kids…Are They American or Not?

By

On February 26, 2017

In Third Culture Kids

Last night we had a dinner-time discussion on what a Peep is.  I have no idea how this came up.  My kids don’t remember what they are, so I gave them a description because I am feeling the urgency of what they don’t know about America.

Granted, I don’t even like Peeps.  And I am not looking forward to my children consuming them this Easter.  Or, for that matter, any of the various forms of garbage that are disguised as food in America.  But they should at least be able to recognize those marshmallow American Easter icons.

We get on a plane exactly five weeks from today, and we’ll be in California for four months.

It’s been almost three years since we were in America.  My kids were 8, 6, and 5 the last time we were there.  Now they are 11, 9, and 8.  And then there’s Johnny, who at age 5 has no conception of this mystical land we keep talking about.

As the oldest, Grace has the most memories about the States.  She also has an uncanny knack for remembering people and names.  (I think she remembers more people than her Dad does.)  But an 11-year-old is entirely different than an 8-year-old.  This time, she will be experiencing America in an entirely different way.  All of them will.

We have thrust these dual identities on these children, whether they like it or not.  I think I see it more acutely because our children have Tanzanian blood, are being raised in Tanzania, but by American parents.  They’ve learned to say “Good morning” to white people and “Shikamoo” to brown people.  They eat rice and beans multiple times every week, but wouldn’t recognize a box of macaroni and cheese if it hit them in the face.  We insist they use a knife and fork, but the children on the side of the fence eat with their hands.

They saw The Force Awakens and Rogue One on opening day–both times–but they have no idea how amazing it is that they didn’t have to wait in line.  They know Pizza Hut is a special treat, but they think it’s normal to rip up the box to make plates, since the restaurant here doesn’t provide them.  They are used to trying on used Nike sneakers at the local open air market instead of going to Payless.  Oh, and they think sneakers are called trainers.

They watched the last 30 minutes of the World Series and the Super Bowl–delayed, of course.  But Josiah is insanely obsessed with (British) Premier League Soccer, which he insists can only be called Football.  They came home from school asking if Trump is kicking all the black people out of America, because that’s what their friends said.

Lily loves her American Girl doll, but straps her to her back with a kanga, Tanzanian style.  Josiah learned how to dab from….somewhere.  He also learned that flipping bottles is fun.  (Seriously? Of all the ideas America had to export?)  But he doesn’t know what a Peep is.

I am incredibly grateful that my kids have Haven of Peace Academy, because there they have their own culture.  It’s a mixed-up, semi-western, very international melting pot of ideas and cultures and trends.  Most of the children there are confused about their ethnicity and identity, so my children fit right in.  I’m thankful.  But I also worry, because I’ve given these children American passports.  And chances are good that at some point in their lives, they will be living there for a lot longer than just a few months.

The great thing about kids is that they just go with it.  My children have no idea that it’s crazy that they have two passports, that they have already criss-crossed the world a number of times, that international travel is normal for them.  Or even more, they haven’t realized that it’s unusual to grow up as Tanzanian children of American missionaries.

I worry because this time around, they may start to feel that tension.  They are kind of American, but kind of not.  Kind of Tanzanian, but kind of not.  The Third-Culture Kid paradox is even more acute because my children are adopted.  Who are they?  Who will they identify with?  Where will they feel at home?  That struggle looms large before them.  They don’t see it yet, but I do.

I gave them this struggle.  It is my fault.  I have to trust that it was the right decision, that giving them a family will be worth the struggle in the long run.  I chose this life for them, and all I can do is hope and pray that they continue to love it.  That they become bridge-builders, reconcilers, peace-makers.  That they ultimately find their identity as children of God and citizens of Heaven.

Raising Kids With Forbidden Roots

By

On September 9, 2016

In Third Culture Kids

If my roots are forbidden, then what happens to my kids?

My kids are indeed TCKs (third-culture kids), but not in the usual sense.  They are Tanzanian by birth, being raised in Tanzania by Americans.  They have two passports, are spending their childhood in their birth country but will most likely one day live in their parents’ country.  If that sounds confusing, trying explaining it to your kids.

My children have never been allowed to live one life.  There is always a whole other universe lurking behind everything we do.  When they were little and were able to just go along with everywhere we yanked them, it wasn’t really a big deal.  But they are older now, growing into lives of their own, and I’m finding myself trying to help them figure out their two worlds.  I don’t usually feel very successful.

Have you ever thought about when would be a “good” time to just leave everything behind from your life and go visit another country for four months?  Your job, your house, your church, your car, your everything.  That’s what it’s like for missionaries to go on home assignment.  And now that our kids are getting older?  Even more complicated.

We need to go on a home assignment this year.  We would have loved to do it this past summer, but Johnny’s adoption was not yet finalized.   So that means it will happen sometime this school year, depending on when we can get Johnny’s passport.  I had to sit down with Grace recently and talk to her about this.  Of course, she loves visiting the States.  But I had to tell her that this year, that will mean she will miss out on some important events in fifth grade.  She might miss the week-long rainforest trip, or she might miss her elementary school graduation.  She might miss the end of soccer season or the entirety of track season.  I could see her face fall as we talked about this.  As much as she wants to see her grandparents, it’s hard for her to accept the loss of something significant in exchange.  But this is the reality of the life we have given our children.  That other universe will be constantly interrupting her life.

“Most TCKs go through more grief experiences by the time they
are twenty than monocultural individuals do in a lifetime.”  (David Pollock)

I grew up that way.  I flip-flopped between a typical suburban childhood on a cul-de-sac in California with a manicured lawn and a BMX bike, to a life on a tropical beach in Liberia, West Africa, where I walked through the forest to school and rode a canoe in the lagoon.  I knew two lives, two universes with different sets of routines and rules and cultures that I learned to navigate.  Two places where I put down roots that kept being yanked up.

Maybe that’s why it scares me to find myself unconsciously putting down roots again.  Maybe that’s why it’s even harder to know that I am deliberately doing the same thing to my own children.  Will they figure out how to live in these two worlds?  Will they know who they are?  Will the joy out-weigh the grief?

It worked for me.  Which is why I was happy to choose this two-world life for my children.  I just never realized how difficult it would be to walk with them through it.

“We know goodbyes in a way we wish we didn’t, and we struggle
to articulate grief and loss.  Yet in the
next breath we speak of how we wouldn’t give up the lives we’ve had for
anything.” (Marilyn Gardner)

Dear Mom and Dad, If I Suffered, It Was Worth It

By

On December 28, 2015

In Liberian Childhood, Third Culture Kids

ELWA Mission Station in Liberia, source unknown

Dear Mom and Dad,

Last week I read an article called “Should the Children Suffer?”  It’s about a missionary father’s struggle to trust God with the suffering his children are experiencing on the mission field.

In 1982, you took my younger brother and me to west Africa.  In the months preceding that move, I remember listening to you and my Gram–your mother–weeping loudly as you tried to get her to understand that decision.  Gram was not only devastated, she was angry.  And she even threatened to hire a lawyer to try to get custody of Paul and me.  Another grandparent fretted out loud over our deprived childhoods.

Some people would probably say that Paul and I suffered.

Paul got Hepatitis in Liberia. I got amoebic dysentery in Kenya.  Once we found a green mamba in our garage.  Twice, we lost almost all of our possessions due to war and evacuation.  In Ethiopia in 1991, there wasn’t much to eat.  We never went hungry, but we all got skinnier.  I went to boarding school at age 13.   Before college, I attended six different schools in four different countries.  I made friends and lost them more times than I could count.  I grew up never really knowing my cousins.  When we finally moved back to the States, Paul was bullied.  I was weird.  We were completely oblivious to styles and trends and TV shows.  I struggled deeply to figure out where I belonged.

Rift Valley Academy in Kenya, 9th grade, Swala Dorm

Was it a mistake to take us to Africa?

But then I think of those times in Liberia, Dad, when you would put me barefoot on the back of your motorcycle, and the ocean breeze would whip my hair as the sun set over the Atlantic.  We would pick up the mail and then stop by our favorite beach spot and collect shells.

I think of the times my friends and I would take the canoe out into the swamp, the fear of leeches and crocodiles keeping us out of the water, but we would prance across the spidery roots of the mangrove trees.  There are the memories of that time that the millions of baby crabs hatched, or the bright blue jellyfish that would wash ashore every July, or sitting in the hammock on our front porch and watching the lightning hit the ocean.

The swamp.  Our house in Liberia was directly to the right of this picture.

 Photo credit:  Robin Shea McGee

Denmark, Australia, and Lebanon became real to me because my school friends came from those places. Leprosy and malaria were real, because I saw them too.  I witnessed the devastation of war.  I played with a little boy whose family ate frogs from the swamp when they ran out of food.  I encountered a little girl with a huge abscessed eye, begging outside of the supermarket.  I may have been sheltered from Michael Jackson, but I was not sheltered from the reality of life.

The path we walked to school.  Photo credit:  Robin Shea McGee

By nature, I was cautious, timid, and not at all adventurous.  But this life you chose forced me to become brave.  Airplanes, head scarves, foreign accents, large bugs….all lost their strangeness and scariness.  International travel became routine.  The world would no longer intimidate me.

Scores of missionaries and Africans poured their love and their lives into mine.  I experienced the joy that comes from sacrifice.  Together our family learned what it meant to trust God.  I tasted and saw that Jesus was not just for America.

So yes, Mom and Dad.  There was stress, and there was fear, and there was so much loss.  You could call that suffering.  But the formation of my heart, the richness of that life, and the indestructible joy….make the suffering feel small.   

I know you didn’t make the choice to move to Africa because of Paul and me.  In fact, you made it despite us.  Like the author of that article, you chose to trust our safety and well-being to a Father who knows all about sacrificing his Son.  But in the end, it was the very best choice you could have made for your children.  I’m so glad you did.

Love,

Your Amy

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