Third Culture Kids...

i am deviating somewhat from the usual theme and using the opportunity to 'diarise' ( still not sure it is a word) thoughts that are emerging as part of this project.

A few years ago i was loaned a book by a dear friend (who as part of 'womens business', instead of her husband, invited me to be her support person for the labouring which produced her beautiful son and to whom i will always be so very grateful and honoured) entitled 'Third Culture Kids: the experience of growing up among worlds' by David C Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken ( 2001).

Third culture kids are those who have spent some of their growing up years in a foreign country and experience a sense of not belonging to their passport country when they return to it. In adapting to life in a 'foreign' country, they have also missed learning ways of their homeland and feel most at home in the 'third-culture' which they have created.

The term Third Culture Kids or Trans-Culture Kids, sometimes called Global Nomads, refers to someone who as a child has spent a significant period of time in one or more cultures other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture.

i was born in Rabaul, PNG in 1965 where my father was working as a medical officer. My sister was also born in Goroka in 1968.

On Sohano, a preacher-boi usually took the service in the little church and would pray for Dokta, Missus and the picannini bilong en, the service, including hymns conducted in place - tok. The church had a bell - a huge oxygen cylinder strung up on a tree and beaten with an iron bar.

With my dad requently off 'on patrol', my mother (at the tender age of 20) was left to manage as best she was able, along with many other young mums in similar situations, whose husbands were away on duty. Her right hand man /house-boi was Lewis - our protector! He chased snakes out of my bedroom and carried me in his arms or high on his shoulders - while pushing my pram!

So much is laid down in the child by the age of 3. I dont remember my time in PNG - i have seen many photos but my earliest memories begin very soon after our return to Australia around the age the time i was accidentally in a storage area locked under the house with my cousin, probably around the age of 4.

I do remember at the age of 10, soon after returning to Australia again after 3 years in England, waking up distressed in the middle of the night and my dad coming in to talk to me. I could not put my finger on the cause of my grief, apart from a sense of overwhelming sadness. I felt homesick, but it wasn't for England, nor was it for Australia. I still remember asking him if it was possible to be homesick for a place i couldn't remember and he told me it was not.

Years on, I often think about this, particularly in light of the book. On my pin up board in the study I have had an article now for many years - the management of sick young infants at primary health centres in a rural developing country. it was a multi site 12 month observational study of consecutive presentations of infants less then 2 months old and investigation of neonates who died in one district without accessing health care - in the highlands of PNG. It is next to a photo of myself as a baby and a tiny PNG baby - the daughter of our house-boi.

i have spoken to Virginia on a number of occasions about my theory - that deep down, imprinted in my soul and inaccessible memory, are kind, supportive black hands that protected me and my family for those years, before the age of 3 and are now embedded in my sense of wellbeing and comfort. many of my dearest friends are black as black. I wonder if that is where my security is found. With them I can laugh and be myself. And feel at home.