“Where are you from?” This is both the most telling and the most difficult question for me to answer. My practiced response comes in one long breath: “My father is from Scotland and my mother is from Finland. I was born in London, but I grew up in Sierra Leone and Papua New Guinea.” This, my simplest and quickest response, usually evokes a series of blank stares and confused mutterings from listeners who had anticipated a simple and brief exchange of polite small talk. A more complete and far more complicated answer to this question reveals that I am at once from everywhere and from nowhere. Though I am able to make a home in most any country or community, I rarely find myself completely at home anywhere. Instead, my identity lies somewhere in the meeting of cultures and peoples. I am one of a strange and growing breed of TCKs or Third Culture Kids, raised between cultures.
Home, for me, cannot be defined with easy geographic boundaries. Instead, I discover it in the swirl of images and smells and feelings and sounds that make up my memory. It is in the white caked-on clay covering an Asaro mudman’s skin. It is in the smell of burnt wood that clings to an Ethiopian cross. It is in the sweet, wet coolness that encircles the green of a rice paddy after monsoon rain. It is in the beat and rhythm of foreign tongues singing foreign songs late into the night out of open storefronts.
Two summers ago, in the middle of a city I had never before visited, I came home in the most powerful way. I had come to work with Sudanese refugees in Egypt’s bustling capital, Cairo, and was invited to a wedding by my fellow teachers. Standing outside a Christian church in a Muslim country, my pale Scandinavian arms stood in stark contrast to the elaborate henna designs that decorated them. I wore the freshly tie-dyed African outfit for which I had been fitted days earlier. As I walked through the doors, Dinka, Nuer and Azande friends met me with handshakes and embraces. They smiled with their broad grins and remarked together, “Now you are a proper African!” Laughing with them, I moved slowly inside and found my place about halfway down one aisle. The beat of a drum began and I raised my voice with those around me to sing in a language I could not understand. Just as the chorus reached its peak, a woman two rows behind me released her high-pitched, joyful and triumphant Azande ululation. The tears began to fall down my cheeks, as suddenly I recognized this place. I looked at a friend and said, “I’m home”.
Today, I realize that I am saying goodbye to one home while moving forward toward another. In the postings that will follow, I invite you to join me in this exploration of home, culture, faith and life. I have named the blog, "Wokabaut Bilong Mi", Pidgin English meaning "My Journey" precisely because the title's language nods to my past in Papua New Guinea and its message looks forward expectantly to all that the future holds. Perhaps as you walk with me, you too will discover a world of new homes. Welcome to the journey!
