How about this life?

Today, I reminisced about different experiences of living overseas. But as many of us who have lived this expatriate lifestyle know, some of these experiences are not easy to explain to local friends and acquaintances. Often, telling our strories just causes their eyes to glaze over. What is even more likely is that this line of conversation just does not interest them. It is just not part of their daily existence. When we do find people who are genuinely interested in hearing our story, then we are allowed a few moments of being just who we are -- folks who have had a variety of interesting experiences in different parts of the world.

Affectionately, I thought about living in China and not looking like most of the people I encountered (Pollack & Van Reken Foreigner Box). I recalled being amused, as I watched a little old lady observing my very blonde-haired coworker, as we rode bicycles through the market. This old lady sat down on a curb and laughed uproariously while slapping her thigh at the sheer thought of my friend’s physical appearance. If I could have read her mind, I would bet that her thoughts went something like this: “In all of my life, I never thought that I would see with my own eyes, some one who looks like her!”

My thoughts moved on to my memories of living in a Muslim country and wearing outfits that were conservative, yet did not look like any of the clothing worn by most of the women around me. What’s more memorable was encountering some of these women in the course of doing my job and pleasantly having that “inner knowing” that they were optimistic and encouraged!

My career choices brought me to places on the opposite side of the world and provided me experiences that I could never imagined when I was a child growing up in New Orleans. Although I grew up around a lot of local diversity, my overseas sojourns introduced to new people from very different backgrounds. From them, I learned all kinds of new things. I visited places that most people in the US read about in books, and most important of all, I learned things about myself every step of the way. My TCK children were lucky enough experienced all of these things along with us, but I suspect that imagining these things as children was not quite the same as my childhood imagining, because, after all, they” lived” them as children!

There’s no denying the power of these experience and the impact that these, and many others, have had on my life. My question for my readers: What kind of effects did living an international lifestyle have on you?

Comments

[Dera Williams]

Oh, I forgot to add. Another book to add to your Books on International Transition is
A Wealth of Family by Thomas Brooks. His story of becoming a TKC adult is very inspiring. See my review on Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Family-International-Heritage-Enrichment/dp/0977462935/ref=cm_cr-mr-title/102-7426039-3612157

[Dera Williams]

Paulette,
I have not lived internationally but I would like to make a few points in regards to what I have seen of children who have lived abroad.

A family from my church moved to Japan due to employment through the Naval Base. The four daughters were in elementary and middle school. They are now back in the States and these young ladies are either entering college, in college or have graduated. One is taking her junior year in China. These young black women are poised, ambitious and obviously have a wide range of views about the world and their place in it. They are truly citizens of the world as they easily move among their African American cousins their age, and equally so among international students on their campuses and those from different parts of the U.S. from a number of backgrounds. Undoubtedly, their living abroad and visiting a number of other countries have given them a global view.

It is my wish that African American parents make travel a priority in their children's lives and expose them as broadly as possible. I have traveled to Canada and Mexico with my parents as well as other states in the U.S. in the 1960s. However, I know for a fact that there are children in Oakland who have never been out of the Bay Area and as a result their world is narrow, provincial. I have a friend who was an army brat. They spent time in Europe and Japan. When he got back to the states, he and his sister were teased, not praised because they spoke other languages. They were told they were trying to be something they were not and worse that they were acting "white." Unfortunately, this is an ongoing problem in the African American community. Other blacks from the African Diaspora, be it Africa, the Caribbean, South America or Europe who come to the States have a global view of the world. People can learn so much from the different people of the universe.