How reliable are memories?
Africa
empty sky
dun earth
plain dwellings
few chairs
broken cars
hot sun
dusty cities
picked pocketsAfrica
timeless space
rolling plains
shining faces
cheerful voices
jewel clothes
open arms
fragrant stew
fading memories
© 2008 S D Haydon
Acknowledgment is made of the assistance received as an Adelaide Centre for the Arts TAFE SA student in developing this poem.
In reading up on the TCK phenomenon, I keep coming across the term ‘Cross-Cultural Kids’.
Ruth Van Reken and Paulette Bethel found people who said: ‘I feel like a third culture kid, but I don’t fit the model!’.
These people, who were not traditional TCKs, felt similar issues of loss and grief. Bethel and Van Reken called them ‘Cross-Cultural Kids’, because, as children, these people had lived across cultures (or sub-cultures):
- Traditional TCKs —Children who move into another culture with parents due to a parent’s career choice,
- Bi/multi-cultural and bi/multi-racial children —Children born to parents from at least two cultures or races,
- Children of immigrants —Children whose parents have made a permanent move to a new country where they were not originally citizens,
- Children of refugees —Children whose parents are living outside their original country or place due to un-chosen circumstances such as war, violence, famine, or other natural disasters,
- 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,
- International adoptees —Children adopted by parents from another country other than the one of that child’s birth,
- “Domestic” TCKs —Children whose parents have moved in or among various subcultures within that child’s home country,
Bethel and Van Reken note that these children are often in more than one of these circles at the same time. For example, a traditional TCK may be also from a minority group, and a child of immigrants may have parents from two different cultures.
I find it interesting that many of my close friends fall into one of the categories above.
References
Paulette M. Bethel & Ruth E. Van Reken: Third Culture Kids: Prototypes for Understanding Other Cross-Cultural Kids, http://www.crossculturalkid.org/cck.htm (web-site under renovation as of 29 Dec 2008)
Tags: cross-cultural kids (CCK), Paulette Bethel, Ruth Van Reken
Edit: This article has been re-titled ‘Crochet by any other name’ and published in Passionate Hookers, by Brascoe Publishing.
Moving half-way across the world can be daunting. People look different. They act differently. And they use words in unfamiliar ways.
It was time for our domestic science class. ‘We are going to knit,’ said the teacher, in her African-accented English.
She pointed at me. ‘Do you know how to knit?’
I shook my head. ‘But I can crochet.’
She looked blank. The other girls giggled. They had already established that I didn’t wear head-scarves, didn’t clean my teeth with freshly cut sticks from the bush, and couldn’t balance loads on my head like African girls. And they appeared uninterested in my books and games.
‘I will show you how to knit,’ said the teacher.
She handed round bright balls of wool from her bag. Then she took out the needles. They were shiny, thin, and … hooked at the end.
I sat dumb.
She showed me how to hold one. I made my hand stiff so she wouldn’t suspect the truth.
She helped me make a starting knot, and then loop, pick-up, loop, pick-up – a chain stitch.
‘Do I hold it like this, or like this?’
‘Like this. Now you take this loop back here.’
She showed me how to do a double-crochet row, then a treble-crochet row. All the while I asked questions that I thought a beginner would ask, and she answered in her halting English.
‘See! You can knit!’
Next week, for domestic science class, we were ‘knitting’ again. The girls were amazed at my sudden proficiency. I had decided to confess.
‘You learn quickly,’ said Laraba.
I tried to explain. ‘We call this ‘crochet’. Knitting, for us, is with two needles. So at first, I didn’t know what the teacher meant. Then, I didn’t know what to say.’
Laraba looked at me strangely. Perhaps she couldn’t understand what had driven me to tell my little lie. Perhaps she didn’t get how knitting could be crochet.
It didn’t matter. I was ‘knitting’ along with the rest of them, and it was pure pleasure.
Don’t know what on earth this post is about? The page “What is the difference between knit and crochet” from WiseGeek may help clear things up.
Self-doubt hit me after writing this blog’s first post.
How much of my life has really been impacted by being a third culture kid? How would my limited view-point be relevant to other TCKs out there? How can I write about the experiences of returning to one’s birth-culture, when I only spent four years back there, before jetting off to the Wonderful Land of Oz? And in Oz, whatever cultural dissonance I face is surely more akin to a migrant’s experience, rather than a third culture kid’s?
And the big one: am I really a third culture kid? Aren’t TCKs meant to closely identify with their ’second’, formative culture? I don’t.
The preceding paragraphs illustrate one of the costs of being a TCK. I am often not sure of… well, many things. Like a leaf, I am tossed from one way of thinking to another.
Ruth E. Van Reken is an adult third culture kid herself, who has researched and written widely on the Third Culture Kids and Cross-Cultural Kids phenomena. I have read articles on her web-site (site under renovation as of 29 Dec 2008), and her book ‘Letters Never Sent’. Reading the latter requires a box of tissues on the side. Non-TCKs may think it unhealthily introspective.
She says in her article ‘The Paradox of Pain and Faith’ (found by scrolling down a couple of pages at http://www.crossculturalkid.org/blog/excerpts/:
The first reality TCKs share is that they have been reared among and in more than one culture.
I am a third culture kid.
Recommended Reading:
Have a browse through Ruth Van Reken’s articles at http://www.crossculturalkid.org
‘Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds‘ by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken is a highly recommended book on this topic. I’ve ordered it from Amazon.com. It is also available at Borders.com. In Australia, Word Bookstore lists this as out-of-stock, but available on special order.
Tags: David Pollock, Letters Never Sent, Ruth Van Reken, TCK book
My life changed forever when I was five.
Memories of that time are patchy. Being told we were going to live in Africa for a while. Being scared of planes – everyone said they would be noisy. Being worried that I wouldn’t know enough English to get by.
That was the beginning of my transformation into a TCK. Yet another three-letter acronym?
Wikipedia says, ‘Third Culture Kids (abbreviated TCKs or 3CKs) (aka. Global Nomad) “refers to someone who [as a child] has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture”… Sponsors are generally broken down into five categories: Missionary (17%), Business (16%), Government (23%), Military (30%), and “Other” (14%).’
When these children return to their passport (or birth) culture they often experience reverse culture shock, because their frames of reference are different from that of their non-TCK peers.
TCKs are adaptable. One eats with one’s hands in Pakistan, with chop-sticks in China. And it’s still food. One doesn’t have to decorate and fit-out a baby’s room when expecting one’s first child. While they do in Australia, they don’t in the Sudan.
TCKs often have soft hearts for the nations. They have the potential to understand international affairs better than non-TCKs, simply because they have lived in other countries.
They will often love and relate to people regardless of skin-colour. They know that people have the same needs and feelings all around the world.
TCKs dig deep. They often cannot be defined by what they own or who they hang out with. These things are constantly stripped from them as they move from one culture to another. They have to dig deep to find out who they really are.
My mother speaks fondly of the place of her childhood. To her it is beautiful: full of laughter, friends, and family. Ultimately home is about the people we identify it with. But its very stones can reflect those personalities, leaving us longing for that one special place, wherever we go.
I do not have such a place.
TCKs learn quickly that home is not a physical place. It is, literally, where the heart is.
Being a TCK has been the most significant formative experience of my life. I will post here about my experiences as a third culture kid, and also review some relevant sites and resources.
My opinions and experiences are not universal to third culture kids. I would love to hear of other TCK experiences. So, if you are one, or know of someone who is, please comment on the articles here.
Thank you!
(Read more about the TCK phenomenon and Dr Ruth Hill Useem who first coined the term at Wikipedia)
