the door of the plane closes.

As I was lazing on the bed this morning, eugene throws me the today's paper and tells me to read it. And on the front page of the middle section is about the kids who don't belong... Here's the whole article..

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Who am I?
By CHAN LI-JIN


Having a foot in different countries gives children a wider world view. But they could end up feeling they don’t belong anywhere.

SO tell me, are you born and bred here?”

Barely seated comfortably yet, I was taken aback by Ruth Van Reken’s question as we settled down for an exclusive interview in Petaling Jaya recently.


Ruth Van Reken: ‘No one talks of the loss that comes with the closing of an airplane door.’
Even as I replied “Yes”, I knew it was a simplified answer. How could I explain to this foreigner that I was born in Johor Baru but had spent the last two decades of my life in Kuala Lumpur, yet my father was from Penang? And why would these details matter anyway?

As the interview progressed, however, I found myself telling Van Reken more and more of myself and the Malaysian context of our discussion. It was easy to sense that this 64-year-old author of two books, Letters Never Sent and Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, was as interested in knowing me as I was to know her.

This is hardly surprising, as Van Reken has been listening to others’ stories for the last two decades since Letters was published in 1987. Written as a journal and initially titled Letters I Never Wrote, the book was written in the form of letters to her parents, beginning with her first night at boarding school, when Ruth was six. It continues through the years when her parents stayed on in Nigeria after sending her back to the United States (her mother’s birthplace) at the age of 13.

When she completed the book, no publisher thought the story was worth any money, Van Reken recalled. So she published it herself. And when it hit the stores, she started receiving tons of letters from readers who said they could relate to her pain and grief of being a third culture kid (TCK).

So what exactly is a TCK?

Simplistically, it refers to the children of people who live and work abroad, away from their passport country. Research shows that these children who lead highly migratory lives tend to battle issues of rootlessness, restlessness, fractured relationships, cultural imbalance and lack of belonging, even though they were also developing a large world view, multi-lingual abilities and friendships with people from different cultural backgrounds.

In Third Culture Kids, Van Reken and sociologist co-author Prof David Pollock profile the practical, emotional and psychological benefits and challenges in the reality of what they refer to as “growing up among worlds”. The major challenges of this nomadic lifestyle are related to dealing with the often hidden losses and the perpetual search for identity.

The first edition of Third Culture Kids, published in 1999, became an international bestseller very quickly. Readers sent her heart-wrenching, humorous, sometimes thought-provoking stories describing their migratory lives. They ranged from military families to those in the foreign service, children of missionaries, and even children of multiracial families, immigrants and minority groups.

“That’s when David (Pollock) and I realised that the topic covered a much wider scope than we imagined,” Van Reken said. The revised version ofthe book, released in 2009, continues to draw global attention from people who feel they have finally found the reason behind their lifetime search for answers.

The revised version expanded on the TCK term, and included definitions for adult third culture kids (ATCK), cross cultural kids (CCK), and even people moving within their own country who feel ostracised by the differing cultures, social practices and unspoken community rules in each different state.

Their different experiences notwithstanding, they all share the same dilemma: Who exactly am I?

Van Reken explained: “TCKs always feel out of place and abnormal, especially when teachers ask, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ They face problems filling forms where they need to mark ‘race’ and ‘nationality’. Having to explain what they fill poses another problem!”

She speaks from experience. Growing up as a white person in Africa, she always knew she didn’t “belong” among the dark-skinned children. “Kids on the streets used to call out ‘white girl, white girl’ and tug at my clothes on the streets,” she reminisced.

Her parents were teachers and ran a small school for African children, so even as a little girl she knew she was among the privileged back in those colonial days. But she also knew she would leave one day, as her mother kept a small table at the end of the classroom where she was taught American culture to prepare young Ruth for the inevitable repatriation.

“But there’s only so much you can learn from books. When I first arrived in the United States as a young teenager, the first question my classmates asked was, ‘Where are you from?’ Having lived in Africa all my childhood, I replied ‘Nigeria’.

When her friends exclaimed with disbelief, “You don’t look African”, she realised it was the wrong answer.

“But Nigeria was my home for the first 13 years of my life – all my friends, my nanny and my world were there. What was I supposed to say?” Van Reken said, smiling at the recollection.

Although she now looked just like everyone in her predominantly white, mono-culture school in the United States, once again she felt that she didn’t belong.

“I never learnt to swim like everyone else, yet I could bargain really well in a wet market. My first attempt to get a hamburger was a huge embarrassment. I didn’t know there were extra tax charges so I only brought exact change.”

Identity crises tore at Ruth. By the time she turned 14, she no longer told anyone about her African childhood. She studied nursing, married a paediatrician at 22 and went on to have three children.

In her mid-20s, she returned to visit her parents in Africa when her husband was posted to Liberia. All at once, she was hit by the familiarity of the warm earthy tones, the pungent smells of cooking, the animated sounds of the Hausa language among the locals.

But it was no longer the same. Her parents had moved to a different place. She also had two siblings whom she hardly knew.

“My old house was gone, together with all I knew and loved. It hurt me deeply to know I’d lost them forever. I never even said goodbye.”

Van Reken stayed in Liberia with her young family for a few years until political unrest forced them to return to the United States. At every point, she always took everything in her stride, going with the flow until she turned 39 and went into a deep depression.

“Suddenly I was questioning everything that had happened in my life and why I felt this void deep inside. I didn’t understand why I felt such deep sadness when I had had such a happy and loving childhood surrounded by parents, grandparents, relatives and friends.

Van Reken’s books triggered a flood of response from readers who could relate to the pain of being TCKs.

“That was when I started Letters Never Sent, as part of my grief therapy. They were mostly letters to my parents, talking about everyday events and wishing they were there, as a six- or 13-year-old who had just been sent off to a faraway school. By looking back at my experiences, I discovered what I needed was a closure to my beautiful childhood days, which I’d tried to suppress since moving back to US,” she said.

“Whenever people mention loss, what always comes to mind is the loss of a parent through death or divorce, a loved one, a pet, a best friend. No one talks of the loss that comes with the closing of an airplane door, when one leaves a place.

“A part of me died the day I first flew out of Africa. And I needed to mourn the loss in order to overcome the grief.”

Since then, Van Reken has been travelling around the world to counsel and talk about the impact of high mobility on TCKs to teachers, parents and policy makers. She was in Malaysia recently to conduct similar programmes for some international schools in Petaling Jaya.

Her mission now is to help TCKs and their families deal with the challenges so that they can use the many gifts in their childhood as well.

“With their international exposure, travelling opportunities and cross-cultural upbringing, most TCKs have excellent social and adaptive skills. They are also more likely to see people beyond colour, race and nationality and have a broader world view.”

She points out that these benefits can be harvested to benefit the child’s wholesome development instead of being allowed to fester into a life-long sense of searching for a place to belong.

So does Van Reken feel “at home” in Indianapolis, where she lives now?

“Yes and no, because I’ve got little bits of me all over the world. I’ve learnt to make myself at home anywhere in the world. All that matters is making the best of things right here, right now. I don’t try to fit in any more, now that I know where I stand as a TCK.”

As we parted ways, I thought of what Van Reken said about not knowing what to cross under “Race” in official forms. My children are of Chinese and Malay parentage, and I often wonder what they should fill in this section. Then again, I thought about us Chinese “bananas”, second- or third-generation Chinese Malaysians. Most of us cannot read or speak Chinese any more; we attend Malay national schools, yet think, read and write in English.

Then there are the people from Terengganu, Kelantan or Sabah who have settled in Kuala Lumpur or other parts of the country. Their children will very likely never speak the dialect distinct only to their state, and many will never know the culture and lifestyle of their parents and ancestors.

Are these children TCKs too?

Definitely. In today’s highly mobile and complex environment, perhaps there will come a time when every Malaysian is a TCK in one way or other. Except here, we have a different term for it – 1Malaysia.

■ ‘Third Culture Kids’ can be obtained through Navigate Together Sdn Bhd (navtogether.com). For enquiries, e-mail admin@navtogether.com or call Mike Cannon at 017-200 3685.

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I have to say. Its been a long time since I read a really good article from our local newspaper. Well.. I liked it anyways. I know I have only been away for a very short period of time. But by the third year I was away, I began to feel alienated from my own country, some of my friends and even sometimes, my own family. I feel like I'm now beginning to learn to ropes of my own birth country again.

I have no clue about what have been going in the last 5 years and I'm slowly (but surely) learning about it. I have friends who are sick and tired of the Malaysian night life while I'm slowly beginning to enjoy it again. It's like my growing up process in Malaysia took a back seat while I explored life in Australisia.

I miss being away from home. There are times when I wish I was going back to New Zealand and enjoying a cuppa and a cig with Jess and Janice in Governors or visiting Elaine and Darren in Wellington or going fishing with the boys or just bumming doing absolutely nothing on a super boring monday night with CC and Eugene. Come to think of it, maybe its not so much the place but the lifestyle in general.

Maybe I'm still getting used to the working life while missing the student life of being away.

Now one thing is for sure, I'm moving out. Just the matter of when and stabilizing my finances then I'm outta there.

ps. Melvin turned 21. Tristan turned 2. I'm going to Langkawi. I still have a job. Amen.