The following post was a piece that I wrote and submitted to Labyrinth Literary Journal, published each year by the Women's Center at Western Washington University. The theme for this years journal is "Communities (Un)bound, and exploration of privilege and oppression when accessing, being denied, and moving through circles of communities." A very close friend of mine is in charge of editing the journal this year, and asked me personally if I would write a piece about my experience travelling and living abroad for the journal, and I just couldn't turn him down. I have posted the piece here exactly as it was submitted to the journal, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed the experience of writing it.
There’s a term known around the community of travelers,
professional nomads, and wanderlust addicts known as a Third Culture Kid. These
are kids who have spent their childhood bouncing from culture to culture,
travelling with their parents, or just raised outside of their parents’
culture. They can adopt various cultures with relative ease, but do not have
one specific culture they claim as their own. They are a blend of years of
travelling and interactions between different cultures, and often feel a sense
of equal comfort and discomfort all at once in any country they find themselves
in.
I am not a Third Culture Kid.
But shit, how I
wish I was. And believe me, if and when I ever have my own children (don’t tell
my mother the “if” part of that sentence) then they will undoubtedly be Third
Culture Kid’s. Many of my best friends are TCK’s, and I like to think I at
least was one in a past life.
I grew up travelling all over the United States, and have
always found airports to be one of the most magical places in the world. Yes, even
more so than Disneyland. There’s a certain feeling in the air that you can only
find when waking up at 3am, arriving at Sea-Tac in the dark, and taking off to
a far off destination just as the sun rises over Mount Rainer. But it wasn’t
until I turned 20, got my first passport, and spent a summer abroad in rural
Kenya along Lake Victoria that my lifelong desire to be anywhere but where I
currently was really took hold of me and held on for dear life.
Since that time, I’ve dedicated my life to the finding and
experiencing the beauty and fluidity of different cultures. My passport is
exceptionally unimpressive compared to many seasoned international vagrants,
but it’s a work in progress. I’m on a mission to fill my passport before it
expires, eat as many strange foods as possible (such as the kabob of sheep lung
wrapped in stomach lining that I ate for l-Eid Kbir in Morocco), and find
genuine human connections with the people I meet along the way. What I’ve found
during this quest though has surprised me.
It’s no secret to anyone that has ever known me that I
really am not America’s biggest fan. It bothers me when I meet people abroad
who immediately associate me with the decisions of my government (I know very
little about what’s going on in Israel and Palestine, and an angry taxi driver
telling me I’m the cause of that conflict is not a valid statement), and I try
to experience each culture I encounter with an open mind and an open heart. But
the most important thing I’ve learned over the course of my travels is that the
longer I’m away from the great Pacific Northwest, the more I fall head over
heels in love with it. The more flights I take, street food I eat, and homes I
am welcomed into, the more I see how deeply rooted my American culture is
engrained in me. And I’ve learned that that’s okay.
I am an American. I was raised in a suburb of Seattle,
Washington. I grew up travelling to Florida for Christmas, and driving to
Portland for reason’s I don’t entirely remember. Up until I was 21 and spent 3
months of intensive study learning Darija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic,
English was the only language I spoke. My parents spent almost every Saturday
of my childhood cheering me on in youth soccer leagues, driving me to fastpitch
tournaments, or supporting me in the brief stint during middle school where I
dawdled in fencing lessons (turns out, stabbing people with a sword is fun! Who
knew?!). I’ve gone to school in American public schools my whole life, and
until high school, had reasonably strong, though admittedly not always
consistent, relationship with United Methodist Christianity. I’ve bought my
groceries at large chain-stores, where my food came in boxes and bags. I
recycle like my life depends on it, and can’t bring myself to show up to
someone’s house unannounced expecting to hang out. Without leaving the United
States and living full time in another country, I would never have even taken
the time to think about the fact that this, as well as so many more things I
may never even realize, is American culture manifesting in me, and will, for
the rest of my life, follow me wherever I go.
American culture is how I talk. It is how I walk. It is how
I interact with people around me. It is the social norms that I follow, and unconsciously
expect other’s to follow. It is the biased lens that I will forever see life
through, and, no matter what, that cannot change. It is the common assumptions
and ways of thinking that are so deeply engrained within me that I don’t even know
they’re a thing. And until I left America, I never really realized how much a
part of me they were. Some of the things I really like, some not so much. But
no matter what, I always am striving to put aside this culture of mine even
just a little, so as to make room for new experiences everywhere I go.
I’ll never be a Third Culture Kid. That time has come and
gone, and my culture is very clearly defined in who I am and how I have grown
up. But culture is also never set in stone. It is forever evolving, ebbing and
flowing around my experiences and beliefs like a river. Parts of American
culture will always be in me, but I also by now have pieces of Kenyan beliefs,
Moroccan customs, and quite possibly a dab of Canadian… something all sharing
space in my mannerisms, conversations, and ideals. All sharing space in the
ever evolving definition of who I am. The ideal that I strive for is the
ability to always enter a new culture with an open mind, ready to learn
something new, make a connection with someone, and find a way to integrate some
piece of that experience into who I am.
