Here are two pre-Christmas posts that I found thought-provoking.
What is it about Christmas that makes loneliness deeper and harder to cope with? Sindhu has written about a big city Christmas, away from home:
http://sindhujamanohar.blogspot.com/
2008/12/turning-around-not-so-merry-christmas.html
At The Link Between, Jody has written an excellent post on consumerism, apt at this time of year. One of the quotes she uses is, ‘do rich Christians really know the poor?’
http://thelinkbetween.wordpress.com/
2008/11/23/consumerism-and-middle-ground/
Tags: Christmas
I have been re-reading the TCK book. Tonight, this bit of the TCK definition from Interaction International’s ‘The TCK Profile’ struck me afresh:
‘The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any.’
‘Nuff said.
For those who didn’t know, the TCK book is ‘Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds‘ by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken, published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Mine is the second revised edition, bought from Amazon.com.
Tags: TCK book
Check out this article on Barack Obama by Ruth Van Reken, at The Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/
blogs-and-stories/2008-11-26/obamas-third-culture-team/
(Note the line-wrap in the URL above)
Tags: Barack Obama, community, Ruth Van Reken
Edit 2010-jul-03: I have just stumbled upon the fact that there really is a documented Sleeping Beauty Syndrome (also called Kleine-Levin Syndrome). My article, of course, has nothing to do with this known medical phenomenon, and everything to do with the fairy-tale – of sorts.
Did you ever wonder how that young lady with the damaged finger dealt with waking from her hundred-year sleep? Did she wander out of her castle’s demesne and feel there was a lot of catching up to do?
If she did, apart from her being a beauty, I can relate to her. I felt like I was asleep in my years in Nigeria. I spun my own reality as a child. My awaking upon returning to my birth-country was both pleasant and unpleasant. I feel like I know many cultures, yet none intimately.
This was brought home recently when my creative writing lecturer noted that the premises of some of my submissions were flawed. He added, ‘…anyone who has lived in Australia for the last twenty years, would know that…’ etc. I have lived here for over fifteen, but that is not the point. I don’t know the culture intimately. Will I ever?
‘Write about what you know.’ Sometimes I think the only culture I know is the culture of being transitory.
Of course, my Sleeping Beauty analogy is not fool-proof. She didn’t move across cultures. She moved across time. Culture does change with time – but in whatever hazy long-ago time she lived, how much did it really change? Also she and her family were not alone. All beings in the castle had been asleep – from her parents, past the scullery maid, to the kitchen cat. There was a whole tribe of them feeling out of – er – time.
But… but… the balance of power and the landscape must have changed. A kingdom with a ruler asleep on the job (pardon the pun), would have been taken over by neighbours. New roads, farms, and houses would have appeared. Which raises interesting questions like: how did her parents deal with finding their roles usurped? Perhaps the usurper was the new son-in-law – a win-win situation, let us say. But that is a whole different kettle of fish that I don’t propose to fry.
At the very least, Sleeping Beauty must have struggled to relate to her beloved. Some perspectives must have changed, no matter how ancient the century.
Fairy-tales: clichéd, illogical, but still full of charm.
Back to my lecturer. Amazingly, while I was writing this, he called me. In the course of the conversation, it dawned on me that despite the unimpressive grades, he is genuinely impressed with my persistence this semester – and equally impressed with the language skills of this obviously non-native speaker of it! Perhaps there is something to be said, after all, for being an out-of-touch Sri-Lankan-Nigerian-Australian ATCK!
It’s just nice to feel validated. 
Tags: Creative writing, fairy tales, transition
Norma McCaig, founder of Global Nomads International, passed away at her home in Virginia, USA, on Monday, 10 November 2008.
She was one of the visionaries and tireless workers behind today’s global nomad and third culture kid movements. She coined many terms and phrases, including the term ‘global nomad’.
For more information, see the following post at www.tckid.com.
With condolences to all her family, friends, and those impacted by her life.
Tags: community, global nomad, Global Nomads International (GNI), Norma McCaig, tckid.com
I just had an experience where I probably annoyed someone. You see, I behaved in a possibly culturally inappropriate way. What I did, in a Sri Lankan setting, would have been friendly. In Australia however, it could have been interpreted as being pushy.
If what I did was culturally inappropriate, the victim of my faux pas would probably have forgiven me if I was obviously someone from another culture. However, I have spent the last fifteen years painstakingly learning to blend into the Australian scene. And so my cultural standing is rather ambiguous, and chances are, I was viewed as a local during the above-mentioned incident.
I didn’t realize that I’d possibly put my foot in my mouth, until a few minutes afterwards, when I tried to strike up a conversation, and said person walked away from me with the group ‘they’ were with. Now it’s highly likely that the person was simply distracted by the group. There is also a tiny chance that the person was, in a culturally appropriate way, intimating that I’d been annoying/hurtful before.
Because the person isn’t a close friend, I am not sure how, in a culturally appropriate way, to communicate to that person that I am sorry, if I had acted in a culturally inappropriate way before.
In the end, obsessing over whether I was culturally inappropriate, and if so how badly, is going to take a lot of energy. It just isn’t worth it. I will have to chalk up this incident as a possible ‘thing’ to be aware of in the future, and get on with life.
What a confusing post with a lot of ambiguity. If you have read through it to this point, I congratulate you! Of course, the confusion is intentional, to illustrate some of the cultural confusion I – and I suspect a lot of other cross-cultural people – grapple with.
Does any of this matter? Knowing how trivial the incident was, I think probably not. Ultimately it illustrates my tendency to try to be Ms Perfect, with never a social misstep – yet another TCK/CCK legacy.
Tags: perspectives, uncertainty
If you haven’t already, check out the discussions at tckid.com. It’s a lively community.
Some posts to get you started:
If you are a ‘newly-discovered’ TCK, and are wondering how to introduce the topic to your nearest and dearest, check these out:
So head on over, sign up, and engage!
Last Monday I was special
fine hair
fair skin
I wished they wouldn’t touch, stare
my mother made beautiful clothes
with patterns from overseas.
That wasn’t home.
Today I am not special
plain hair
mottled skin
now I wish they’d look in my eyes
my mother makes outmoded clothes
with patterns ten years old.
Where is home?
© 2008 S D Haydon
This poem is about cultural transition, re-entry, reverse culture shock… all TCKs have experienced it, and know what it’s like. I went from being special in Africa, to very, very, ordinary (even downright unattractive) in my birth country.
I’ve also shared this at the My.TCKID Writers’ group, under Sharing Space.
Tags: clothes, perspectives, Poetry, transition
While we are on the subject of plane travel, I asked my friend Julia, who is an experienced globe-trotter and calls herself a ’sort of third culture kid’, whether she had any interesting plane stories. She responded:
My favourite story is flying home from Quetta to Islamabad in a Fokker Friendship (Quetta is the Wild West capital of Baluchistan Province) and we mostly flew over rocky desert that was all contorted like God had put his fingertips in wet mud, and then dragged his hand in twists and loops. We dropped in at a place called Zhob, a mud brick town out in the middle of all this desert, which apparently survives (and thrives) on the sole industry of smuggling truck tyres from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Well, we landed and taxied towards the one small airport building, and they put the steps down (they were attached to the aircraft), and this cat comes running towards the plane from the building, and a hostess goes down the steps in her high heels and puts down a saucer of milk at the foot of the steps for the cat!
Thank you Julia, I loved that story!
Alitalia. KLM. Air Lanka. Nigerian Airways. British Airways. Singapore Airlines. Qantas. Ansett Australia. South African Airways. Virgin Blue. And those are just the ones I remember.
But in spite of all this experience, I can’t retain what kinds of planes they were. Was that one a Boeing 747, or a 707? A DC-something, or an Airbus? I admired how my dad knew.
My first plane memory is of walking on the tarmac, holding my mother’s saree, closer and closer to the loud, screaming thing under the plane’s wing. The cotton-buds in my ears were not doing their job. I can’t recall whether I was carried, or I climbed, up those sharp, slippery steps. And then the screen goes blank.
There are other memories. The distinctive interior smell. White rectangles covering head-rests. Air hostesses handing out exciting activity packs. Wonderfully western things to eat. Sucking lollies to ward off blocked ears. My parents frantically filling out disembarkation forms.
Then, there are vivid memories of catching planes in Nigeria. Flights were regularly over-booked – I cannot recall whether this was just domestic flights or not. When a flight was called, all passengers joined in a huge rush from the terminal, across the tarmac, to the plane. May the nimblest win!
I remember sitting in relief in a plane, and a tall Nigerian coming and claiming our seats. There was a moment of panic before other seats were found for us!
Once, during the mad dash at Kano Airport, I cut my leg on my hand-luggage. The wound was still bleeding when we landed in Maiduguri, and since it was a weekend (i.e. no clinics open), my uncle stitched me up at his dental surgery. My very first stitches. The scar remains, a source of intense embarrassment when unblemished legs were important.
Now we often indulge in a spot of plane-watching. And last Saturday, it was the Superjumbo!
The Qantas A380 made its brief Adelaide debut. Cars and people lined the streets around the airport.
We missed its arrival, but found a vacant spot opposite our usual viewing area – just in time to see it taxi to the end of the runway, and take off.
As we were crossing the road back to the car, a passing motorist yelled, ‘Was it worth it?’
It left me pondering. Was it? Perhaps it wasn’t for some of the hundreds who turned out that day.
Planes have a special place in my life. They signify adventure, transition, hello, goodbye…
Yes, we need to actively grapple with the impact they have on our race, our environment, our world. But they are amazing feats of technology, testament to that self-same race’s creative abilities. And, depending on what your religion is (or isn’t), that is a tiny reflection of the creative abilities of an amazing God.
Yes, it’s been worth it. All of it.
