Here’s one for the kids – nothing to do with being a TCK, but just ‘cos it’s fun and I feel like posting it!

Monster-Man
Last night, when I went to bed,
I really did try
to tell my Dad the awful truth –
I hoped he wouldn’t cry.
‘Dad,’ I said, ‘A monster lives
underneath my bed!’
‘Oh!’ he said, and flicked the switch,
‘It’s all inside your head!’

I waited for what seemed like hours;
finally, he came –
that hairy, scary, horrible beast –
I still don’t know his name.
His hungry mouth and yellow teeth
glinted in the dark.
‘Hey, Monster-man!’ I said to him,
‘Let’s snack before we start!’

He gibble-gobbled down a treat
and turned the music on.
We jumped and rapped and boogie-woogied
almost until dawn.
Now, how do I explain to Dad
that TWO pairs of his shoes
are squeezed inside a monster’s tum –
can you give me some clues?

© 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.

Third Culture Kids are resourceful, fully able to deal with anything that a cross-cultural experience can throw at them.

This was my delusion, until I encountered the horses of Taal Volcano.

It all began when we decided to visit a friend in the Philippines. The Philippines are not that far from Australia, so this was going to be our easily accessible cross-cultural fix.

My husband, bless him, enjoyed the visit completely. Chilling out playing basketball and helping in the fields where our friend was building a radio tower were all right up his alley.

But I, though having marginally more cross-cultural experience than he, was overwhelmed. The Philippines nation is beautiful, the people are lovely, warm-hearted and creative, and they cook delicious food. What I remember though is over-crowded, smog-filled, humid Manila. I must have painted myself a romantic picture of the city from BBC broadcasts about Ferdinand Marcos, his many-shoed First Lady and Corazon Aquino. Perhaps I was expecting it to be like the capital of my birth-country, a far less densely populated place. Expectations powerfully affect experiences. I discovered instead that humidity and built-up areas are not my thing, and ate way too much of the food to compensate.

When someone suggested a day trip to the famous Taal Volcano, I was delighted. We were finally going rural.

The drive to Lake Taal was beautiful. The deep green seemed to drip off the vegetation outside. And it was dripping with rain too, just enough to wash away the memory of city smog, faintly cooling the skin. Wide open spaces were few and far between – this was in the tropics, and lush, thick vegetation took over when humans didn’t. I worked out then that open spaces, where the eye can see the horizon, give me a sense of security. After all, I grew up in the rural African Savanna, and I live in South Australia. The Philippines were becoming a journey in self-discovery.

We got out of the car at Lake Taal, and there, in the middle of the huge spread of water, was the volcanic mountain. The place is spectacular. Taal Volcano and Lake Taal both sit in a massive crater, and at the top of the volcano is a smaller crater filled with a sulphurous lake. Like concentric circles. Check out http://asias-world.com/index.cfm?p=695 for a great photo.

We got on a boat. I had been pre-warned, but was a little nervous. I should explain that this was my first ever ride on anything water-borne, and I can’t swim, float, or doggy-paddle. Blame the African Savanna for that. Once on the lake though, I found my wide open spaces, stretching away in every direction. Breathtaking! We chugged across to the volcanic island and disembarked. I eased the remaining tension from my muscles. Now we just had to get up the mountain, and enjoy taking some great photos. From the bottom, though, it looked like a near-vertical climb to the top.

The people on the island were  little, brown, and simply dressed, with bright, wide smiles, and friendly gestures. There were some hens, goats, and tiny ponies. And then the bombshell was dropped.

‘Here are the horses to take us up,’ someone said.

I looked, eyes popping, at the ponies. Their hair was rough and slightly matted, and some flies hovered, yet they still managed to look cute. But was I going to ride up the mountain on one of them? I’d never ridden anything alive before. Besides, I really couldn’t see how the horse could stay upright on that steep gradient. I, and it, would fall down, all the way into Lake Taal below. Did I mention I couldn’t swim?

My companions looked as if they did this every day. Of course, silly me, riding ponies is a piece of cake! Unless you’ve never ever got within harrumphing distance of one. The only animals I have had close encounters with are cats, dogs, chickens, and a cow that once tried to butt me. Oh, and a baby cobra practicing its vicious dance. Once. But my dad killed it before it touched me. I was beginning to realize what a sheltered life I’d led.

‘Can I walk up?’ I was dressed in good, stout, walking gear.

I got long responses, but the bottom line was I could, but it was very, very steep, and a very long hike, and I would do a lot better to get on that horse that was being nudged toward me.

I had a meltdown, right there in public. My companions averted their eyes and shuffled off on their ponies while my husband and the owner of my pony, a little woman, tried to convince me to mount. I was eventually encouraged, by degrees, to sit on the animal. My husband happily mounted his own steed, and the keeper of mine mounted behind me, took a firm hold of my waist, and drove the horse, in fits and starts, up the mountain.

It was quite easy, and I didn’t fall. And the view at the end was spectacular. I wish I could have video-taped the experience, as sulphur bubbled up through the lake at the top. Surrounding us below and stretching out was Lake Taal. Everywhere was a lush green. At the end of a very pleasant visit to the top of Taal Volcano, we mounted our ponies for the easy journey down. Easy? It was actually more frightening than coming up. I felt I was being propelled forward, right into the lake. It’s amazing how those ponies keep their footing. Heart pounding, skin drenched with sweat, I eventually reached flat terra-firma.

The boat trip back was a cinch. Amazingly, it took me several weeks to realize I had experienced culture-shock – yet again!

Here is another tourist’s more recent visit to Lake Taal and Taal Volcano: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pascalp/se_asia_-_2005/1127493000/tpod.html. The ponies are still going strong!

Memories, you say? Well, I have plenty. But they are mixed up and out of focus.

Besides, they aren’t all for public viewing. Like the one of the verandah bordered by leafy trees where the teachers used to gossip. This was the scene of a childhood misdemeanor, and one of the few times my father punished me in public. Nothing traumatic, you understand, but quite embarrassing. I, of course, still hold to the view that I didn’t deserve it!

Memories are necessary. I have learned from mine. There’s the memory of the man who found I was home alone when my school broke up earlier than my parents’. He came twice and I gave him a cool drink each time. I told my parents about him, and they told me not to let him in. So I crouched and flattened myself under a window when he next came knocking, and prayed my limbs wouldn’t show if he peeked in. He went away and never came again when I was by myself. Did he see me hiding, and realise the game was up?

Ah, memories…

Perhaps we could begin with paper boats. Now there’s a memory that won’t jerk a tear or cause a litigation. It all began with an expatriate teacher who knew the art of origami. She gave me an instruction book with a little pack of papers. I wish I still had it. It showed one how to make a purse, a boat, a box, and several other things that I now can’t recall – all wonderful. My mother suggested that I not waste the precious coloured papers supplied, but use ordinary writing paper from my desk. You must understand that my favourite past-times were already to draw, write… and imagine.

The origami boat was the open kind, like a rowing boat. It was fun to make, but I preferred the paper sailing-ship that my mother taught me to fold, a child’s trick, the kind that could also be modified into a hat. I used to make both types of boats. When the rains came, fitfully but finally in the dry sub-Saharan climate, it caused the sandy lane in front of our house to run with hundreds of tiny streams. When the rainbow appeared, signalling the end of a down-pour, I would run outside and sail my boats.

I had read Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Paper Boats‘, and it fired my imagination. He was from India, which was close enough to home for me. The poem appeared in a book of literature from around the globe, suitable for children. It was meant to be used for an English syllabus somewhere – but for me, it was a book of stories to find pleasure in. In the poem, Tagore captures dreams, especially the kind that a wannabe writer has, in his evocative description of paper boats, filled with flowers, floating far away.

My boats never went far, which disappointed me. If they were sound enough to float, there was the inevitable sand-bank, or if they encountered no obstacle, they would themselves soak up the tiny medium that carried them, and sink. But perhaps Tagore had a real stream filled with currents to float his imaginations in.

I recently encountered paper boats again. Adelaide’s River Torrens is home to a visual arts display called ‘Talking Our Way Home’ by Shaun Kirby. Several glass forms have been erected along the river, representing paper boats made of letters written by South Australian migrants.

The sense of using paper – so fragile and yet versatile – to send a part of oneself floating along somewhere, anywhere, seeking something, perhaps never to land – well, something of that resonates with me. Memories and imagination, floating together somewhere forever.

Note: The ‘paper boat’ in this website’s header is from ‘Talking Our Way Home’ above.

Warning: I am mounting my little soap-box. If you have strong views on Christmas, you may find this post objectionable!

My childhood Christmases below the Sahara were low-key. Four people singing carols around a tiny Casio keyboard. A small prayer-time. Eating my mother’s ‘paal-choru’ (milk rice). Exchanging visits with expatriate neighbours, mostly non-Christian. Hardly any Christmas decorations. Inexpensive gifts exchanged between families – perhaps a box of chocolates for some Christmas cake. It is possible my memory is playing tricks on me, but I am fairly certain that if I was given a gift, it was for my birthday – not Christmas. I remember reading books about Christmases overseas, longing for that opulent glow.

I now live in a city where that opulence is easy to create. How incongruous that here many find Christmas difficult. Budgets, already strained, crack under the weight of Christmas trappings. We try to capture something we once had, or longed to have. For those who have lost loved ones, grief is keener at Christmas. The pain of a broken family is more intense, as children miss out on Christmas with one, or both, parents. We feel disconnected from society in some way – lonely.

As I chat with people, loneliness is named most often as the reason why people find Christmas difficult.

It’s easy to say lonely people have the wrong perspective. Let’s look deeper. Our letter-boxes contain sales catalogues with jewellery that lovers can exchange for Christmas, spa packages for couples, and menus for the family roast. We walk into shopping centres filled with people rushing, pushing, bumping, focused on making their Christmas perfect. Around the corner are pictures of starry-eyed children singing Christmas carols. The television airs movies about love, and families. Everything seems geared up to tell those feeling they have not, how much they are missing out on.

If we are using this time to celebrate Christ’s birth: let’s get with it! Christmas is not about the ‘haves’, it’s a celebration for the ‘have-nots’. If we could transport ourselves to Jesus’ birth, what would we find? A poor family. A conservative society. The shame of an unwanted pregnancy. The prospect of being stoned to death. Whispers of illegitimacy that would haunt the child for life. A heavily pregnant girl enduring a long, bumpy journey on a donkey. Ending in that incredibly painful exercise called ‘giving birth’ – not at home, not even in hired lodgings, but in an uncomfortable cattle-shelter, in a strange town. So poor, so lonely, there was no bed to lay the tiny newborn – just a cattle-trough. Then suddenly turning into refugees fleeing a ruthless leader. Culminating, some thirty years later, in a torturous, humiliating death.

All for what?

In my humble opinion, so God could come for the have-nots.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the presents, food, and starry-eyed children – but they are so fleeting, and don’t make people immune to pain. We all nod wisely and agree that it’s not about the gifts. At the risk of sounding blasphemous, Christmas is not even about family! Neither is it about getting together with like-minded folks. If God had decided to hang out only with agreeable heavenly beings, where would we all be?

What do we really need to celebrate Christmas?

‘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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

How reliable are memories?

Africa
empty sky
dun earth
plain dwellings
few chairs
broken cars
hot sun
dusty cities
picked pockets

Africa
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.