The author of this post is Alexandra, and this post participates to the May Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism.
I am Homeless. It is true, as strange as it may sound, but why? I do have a home. Why is it not a home really? is it because I do not know what home should be? or is it because my expectations, or my imagination of what home should be are incorrect? Why don’t I feel at home in the place that should be home?
I was 10 months when mom took me to Sudan. I do not remember anything from that period. Nevertheless, I think that this experience remained somewhere deep in me. Anything and everything I know about that time is from things I’ve heard from my mom. Anyway, I was born in Poland, the home of my mother. Sudan is my father‘s home. When I started to talk, I spoke two languages. But even then, I knew I was different. In Sudan I said I was Polish, and in Poland I said I was Sudanese, or so I have heard. I was 4 when we went back to Poland. I went to a Polish school, but even that was not permanent, when I was 9, we joined dad in the United Arab Emirates. There, in the desert, I grew up, finished school and returned to Poland, “fully grown up“.
Usually no one believed I was Sudanese, if I chose to say I was, but neither would anyone believe I was Polish if that was my reply. Too white for one, and too dark for the other, I was torn between the two. That is not to mention that I am truly a foreigner anywhere I happen to be, and I never possessed full ownership of any one culture.
Most Third Culture Kids (as I later learned) change their place every 2 years or so. Which could account for their high mobility, but in my case living in the UAE for 10 years, should have allowed me to make friends, to make a connection and grow some roots in the country and it’s culture. But not me, deep inside I knew that this is temporary. I even saved the nicest things I had for my future life! I had this box where I hid my secret treasures, and they waited hidden for better days. I made no friends, partly because there was nothing that would connect me in anyway to girls in my school. I felt as different as I could, but also because they considered me an outsider. The only friends I could make were with kids of families like ours. But there weren’t many such families in this little town of ours. For a while there were a few, but it was not easy to make friends, they went to a British school and had friends of their own. They were a pack to which I did not belong. So I only had loose acquaintances, mostly with kids of my parents friends half my age, or less. After that, one by one they all left. There was one girl I and my sister befriended, we lived close enough to just go to her house whenever we wanted. But it did not take long before she was gone too.
We finally came back to Poland and suddenly I found myself in a strange world I did not understand. Unfortunately, when I went to university a lot of students were racists. I was bluntly rejected. I dropped out and went to work. At work it turned out there is this huge distance between me and my colleagues. The fact is that I was still a child. I had no chance to mature, I was 20 and never had friends of my age. Needless to say, I never kept a job for long, everything was temporary. I needed to have the freedom to quit when things were not the way I wanted. When I bought my apartment I even said that it is temporary, and did not furnish it properly. When I realized that I was not making enough money to buy a bigger apartment that would be my future “Home”. I finally wanted to make home there, in the only place I had. I decided to renovate, and do everything right this time, but it could never become home. I could not tell what was missing, but something obviously was simply not there. Soon after that I split with my husband, and that made matters ever worse. The flat was haunted by memories. It was never a home, I never felt “safe” there, I didn’t even sleep well, but now it was a little cell, and I had to run away from it. And that was exactly what I did, I went to Italy.
Somehow I stumbled upon Letizia and Bilingue per Gioco, one day I met Letizia and she recommended I read this book “Third Culture Kids – The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds” by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken (and here on amazon.co.uk). This was it, all of a sudden everything started to make sense. Why I have no home, why I could not grow roots.
Just like that, I opened my eyes and saw that not everything was so wrong in my life, and the most important, I found out that there are people who would understand me. People I have never met, but who also are Third Culture Kids would know me better then my own family. Amazing and comforting at the same time. All the pain of not belonging, the uncertainty of who I am, the many losses that are part of a nomads life. I thought that I only lost home when I moved from the United Arab Emirates back to Poland, and that was not a big loss, I was glad to be back and the United Arab Emirates was not home to me. But the fact is, that even if my memory does not reach the earlier times, I have moved more times then just this once. Each of these times I lost more then I cared to admit, amongst others I lost relationships with family and friends.
Now, people will say that you should not look to the past, you should close that book and throw it away. Especially if it is painful. I do not believe nor agree with that. Your past is what makes you the way you are. When you reject your past, how can you understand who you are, how can you truly be yourself, how can you establish your own identity. Or how can you change, and move on. For us Third Culture Kids it is more difficult still, because we are rubbed of so much already. Having no roots and not belonging to any place makes it difficult to be part of a group or a culture. It is part of ones identity to belong to a group, or a clan so to speak. To have proper relationships with family, friends and later with your partner and kids. Now I understand why it was so easy to leave Poland, not to worry that I was going to be in a strange place, on my own with no family or friends. Going back to the past and seeing it in a new light helped me understand that I AM in fact different, that nothing was wrong with me. It’s just that people did not understand me, and now I know why.
To be honest I did not understand myself, well, now I do. Now I know why home was not home, why I actually made sure that I am not tied to something permanent, and what was missing. The roots. I will probably never root myself anywhere. But now I know why, and it is all right, I am a nomad after all.
Alexandra
I don’t know how to thank Alexandra for sharing her story, such a deep and personal story. The only thing I want to add is a strong encouragement for every parent who is raising a Third Culture Kid to read this book. In case this isn’t yet clear a Third Culture Kid is a person who grows up away from his/her parents’ homeland. They are called Third Culture Kids because they don’t belong to neither culture, but they have been observed to have lots of element in common among themselves, as if they belonged to a third culture altogether. It might be really difficult for the parents of a Third Culture Kid to understand which kind of challenges their child is facing or will face, their experiences being so different from the parents’. Reading this book might help parents understand and better support their children.
Letizia
Thank you Letizia, you helped me get to know myself, and that is a great step in a Third Culture Kid’s life 🙂
Dear Aleksandra,
thank you for sharing your experience, it made me remember when I was younger and confused as you were…
I think that it is very important for parents growing up children far from their home land to acknowledge these feelings, and I sure your letter will be of great help.
Best
Cristina
Thank you for a wonderful read
Even though I am not a third culture child, or a multilingual child (although I do speak many languages, I do not come from a multilingual family, in the true sense of the word), or even a mixed race child… I grew up with two Belgian parents, speaking the same language, but was born when they lived abroad, and moved again when I was about a year.
They came back when I started kindergarten, but went to live in a region not their own. Belgian is a very regional kind of country.
We did not speak the same dialect as the people where we lied, but I as the only one of my family, learned it. Yet we always remained ‘foreigners’.
I never had a sense of belonging and spend my entire youth restless, looking forward to move, which I did when I met my husband. And boy, have we moved. We got married 5 years ago and have lived in 5 different countries since. I claim to be looking for a place where I can settle, but I haven’t fond it yet, and I do not know if such a place exist, if I am the settling kind.
And now we have a child, soon we’ll have two. I wonder if I am enriching my daughter’s life or depriving her of something. She’s already a very culture-less child. An African kid in a white kid’s body…
Mamapoekie,
I find your story of an African child in a white body absolutely fascinating! But is she culture-less really? Or does she have two cultures? I think the glass is half full, or at least you can try to make it half full…
As for whether moving around so much is good for a child, I think this is a fair question, an essential question, many people just assume this is good, if you question it you can find ways to make the most of any situations you and your families might be living. As a parent, whatever you do you’re wrong, so the best you can do is try to make responsible errors… 😉
I’ll keep reading your story!
L.
No, of coyurse she is not culture less, I don’t think anyone can be culture-less. But I do think she has no home culture. We should represent her home culture, but we’re not so very culture infused. We’re not typically Belgian, and being atheists, we have very few traditions. (We do easter pagan way and christmas) She has always lived in Africa, but in three different countries, so she’s mostly infused by that, the general lines of it, like it’s ideal of beauty etc… SHe has been raised more like an african child than a european one.
Aside from that, we’re unschoolers, and so on, so she differs in almost any way from the standard European child…
I am 100per cent convinced that she has a better childhood than the children I now in Belgium, but she’ll never feel home anywhere. Is that the price she has to pay for freedom? Will she be ok with that and call the world her Oyster? Or will she find herself homeless?
We won’t know until she grows up…
Alexandra
thank you for sharing your story and your feelings so openly – I am a third culture kid myself and have some similar feeling at times. The sense of not being from this/that/other country happens to weigh on me often, we just moved to Switzerland and I am homesick but where exactly is home I cannot quite say. Now I am raising 3 children in this new culture and we are all just learning the language together but making a big effort to keep connections to my children’s birth country and to our other cultures as well.
Letizia
I’ve enjoyed reading your site – I’ve been learning Italian for the past few months and reading your site has been great 🙂 I’m just across the border 40 minutes from Milan. You have a great site!
Grazie Ariadne!
Thank you all for such warm words. I am happy that you liked the article, I would like to add that sometimes you are a third culture kid even if you lived in your home county. There are circumstances that influence the local culture and even if there are no physical boundries you can feel a difference of the cultures from region to region, not to mention the subcultures created by for instance the military living on a military base.
I do encourage you all to read the book, it is written to help you, and if you have kids it is vital that you know what will help to make it the most inspiring and enriching experience for them while avoiding most of the pitfalls that could potentially hurt them in the future.
I wish you all the best.
OH!! I Have just posted some of what you said at the blogs of some other bilinguals. today is blog-hop day for me, and I have entered into a world that is both a joy and makes me uncomfortable at the same time. I have been shunned by my own “people”. I grew up in a Spanish environment, but did not fit the usual Puerto Rican image, nor follow the same habits. So, the result is being an adult insecure with a language that I love. I have taken on Italian as substitute because I now live in Italy and am married to an Italian, but I miss that part of my heritage. My kids are actually the ones encouraging me to get past my insecurities. They do pretty well in English and Italian, but they, especially my oldest, LOVE to learn whatever they can in Spanish. It is allowing me to refresh my memory and just share, knowing that they have no judgements, no preconceived ideas, and they are open little, hungry books. Thank you, so much for this post. It is nice to know that being multi-cultured DOES have a place. Multicultured people are SO interesting, and have so much to share on things they have learned along the way, experiences they have had, places they have visited, etc… I love that I grew up on the East Coast of the States as I have a love for the big melting pot of cultures. I grew up with so many different people, and we managed to get along, make memories, and share with each other. I think, more than art classes, karate classes, dance classes, etc… all of these GOOD things, I value most the life class of multi-language living. That is where one can be well- rounded and learn so much. ON SO MANY SUBJECTS. I hope that makes sense.
Dear Celita,
I understand you perfectly, I remember what a difficult read the book (Third Culture Kids) was for me. It took me a long time to digest before the information I dug form it set in me, and then I read it again, without sobbing this time, and with deeper understanding. The read made me relive and revisit some things that were buried inside, it was a tough experience, but I think that it was important. It made me stronger, and more aware of the things that blocked me, and kept me back, and on many occasions made me feel lesser.
You are absolutely right, we are interesting and people realize that, but sometimes we ourself don’t see that, as I did not.
I wish you the best of luck.