Category: Hidden immigrant

Where are you from?

How often in conversation, especially with those we have recently met, do we hear the question: ‘Where are you from?‘ Whilst travelling in India, especially on the trains, I would often be asked ‘Where is your native place?‘ Then the question might be, ‘What is your good name?‘ and even, ‘What is your salary?’

As a TCK (Third Culture Kid), I find this question difficult to answer. I will often pause momentarily to try and gauge the questioner’s actual interest in my answer – and then respond accordingly. I might mention where I am living currently (Redditch, UK) or simply say that I’m British. If I’m being a little mischievous I may say I am Scottish (and note the reaction). If pressed on the latter statement I will be forced to say that I have a Scottish father (and English mother) but went to school in Scotland and worked there for twelve years – where my three children were born. Usually by this point in an initial conversation the topic will move on – the questioner was probably not that interested in my origins and was simply being polite.

And yet for me, the question of where I’m from resonates deeply. I was born in Nigeria, lived in Ghana for 15 years and (as already indicated) attended boarding school in Scotland. I married at university and then worked in Bedford, England, for three years before moving to near Perth (Scotland – not Australia) for twelve and then crossed the Wall again to live in Cheltenham for five years. Thereafter, we all moved as a family to India for nine years before returning for a further nine years to the south coast of England and, more recently, to the English Midlands. That’s over 15 different houses in my married life of over forty years. So, which one is home?

As with most TCKs, it’s not what it says in my passport that identifies where home is for me. I don’t look typically Nigerian (nor Ghanaian) – nor do I appear to be from Asia – and yet there is something very homelike when I go to West Africa, even to India. It has something to do with the colours, the smells, the childhood memories and, especially, the warmth of the people. Each time I have moved on to a new location, there has been a wrench but the transition has become easier simply because I have done it several times before. It is less to do with place and more to do with people. Less to do with roots and more to do with rhythm in my life.

I have just finished reading Jo Swinney’s book, ‘Home: the quest to belong‘, and this has helped a great deal in making mores sense of the question, ‘Where are you from?’ Jo is also a TCK (she spent much of her early life in Portugal) and, interestingly, attended Dean Close in Cheltenham as a boarder at much the same time I was there in the late 1990s. As a Christian, Jo Swinney weaves her faith into the book but she is also very down to earth, frank and realistic. Like me, she is still on a journey to our eventual home – heaven (listen to Jesus’ words to His disciples about His Father’s house having many rooms) – but in the meantime concludes as follows, and this is good enough for me, too, for the present: ‘Home is the place where we live (now)…is among the people who love us…is our culture, the language we speak, the food we eat, the books we read and the jokes we find funny. Home is our country, the landscapes and weather systems and the architecture. Home is within ourselves. Home is where we belong, the place we come back to. Home is the end of our quest‘.

‘The past is for reference and not for residence’

I have just returned from an exhausting but exhilarating week with nineteen teenagers as part of a Rekonnect Camp run by a Christian organisation called  Global Connections. I first started helping three years ago and have found it to be as much a help for myself as it is for youngsters today.

TCKs

Kriss Akabusi, the Olympic athlete, made the statement above and this resonates with me. I was born in Nigeria, brought up in Ghana and educated in Scotland at boarding school. In recent years I have come to call myself a TCK – a Third Culture Kid – and this has helped to add further meaning to my early years. As an historian I can also relate to Akabusi’s statement: we need to understand the past, even enjoy its study, and to learn from it where applicable – but we mustn’t live in the past.

Hidden immigrants

At my first official ‘date’ in 1976 with the lovely lady who became my wife, I wore a long, flowing, Nigerian robe. It says a great deal for my wife that she wasn’t immediately put off. It could so easily have been our first and last ‘date’! Without being able to express or articulate it then, here I was aged 19 years trying to ‘say’ that I have a past that was significant and worthy which helped to define who I was. To be more technical, I was (in the words of the Pol Van identity model) a ‘hidden immigrant’: I looked like I was white Caucasian British (apart from when I was wearing my Nigerian robes!) but inside I thought differently.

Many of the teenagers with whom I have lived alongside this past week are also ‘hidden immigrants’. To look at they seem wholly British: they have a British passport and speak perfect English. However, look more closely and you see the African and Asian bangles; listen more acutely and you can identify traces of the Hindi / Swahili / Mandarin / Thai / Japanese which they grew up speaking; ponder on their stories and you start to realise that they are actually global citizens – complex but genuine, needy and yet so able to give and to serve wholeheartedly.

Listening

Let’s not be so quick to judge from the outside – to see someone’s skin tone, hear their intonation and observe their ‘strange’ habits. Take time to listen and to learn, to understand and so to appreciate. Our society too readily rushes to separate and divide. The life experience of the TCK should help us to embrace and celebrate differences, not to dwell in the past but to acknowledge its impact and so to draw the best from it for the future.