I am a cross cultural

I am a Multi-racial, adopted Alaskan, raised in Africa, South American siblings, English/German American parents person who calls home, wherever I hang my hat! If you try and tell me I'm not from wherever my hat is hanging... I'll just point back at my hat and say, "Yes I am!"!!!

This is the status update of a friend on FB. I haven't seen him since I graduated from Rift Valley Academy in 1993. I lost track of him for a number of years, but then - viola - FB introduced us again!

Although we are as different as night and day, his status update captures the essence of a certain species of people on this earth - a race to which I belong too. We are the cross cultural, third cultural mutts of this ever decreasing globe. 

We all react differently to being cross culturals. There are days where I find it is a strength, but alas, also many days where I feel it is a weakness - a spanner in the works, one might put it. I've never been as patriotic as when I lived outside my home country, but now that I am here, the patriotism has somewhat cooled. I am not ashamed of my nationality, but if beer and soccer or handball symbolizes being a Dane, I have to opt out. I can't see how that defines being a nationality. Anyone can drink beer and participate in sports!

I grew up in Tanzania. Born in the bush, the first white baby in a Catholic missions hospital, my siblings were disappointed that I was white. My sister has later confessed she thought I was ugly and looked like a pig. She insists now that I have grown out of it.

My childhood memories includes lions and elephants, snakes, geckos and monitor lizards. Rats the size of regular house cats. I recall swimming in the Indian Ocean and seeing striped water snakes, crabs, shrimp and octopus. One time a mini shark of some sort soared past. 

I drank real chai (not the fancy latte kind they serve in fashionable coffeehouses and cafes here in DK), ate ugali na kuku with my fingers and thought that roasted corn was the tops. Samosas bought from street vendors were a delicacy. 

I went to school with children from Madagascar, Holland, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Finland, India, Belgium, Denmark, Canada, the US and different African countries. For five years, the great Rift Valley with Mount Longonot was the view I saw every day from my school. 

I lived most of my childhood years in the middle of a coffee farm at the foot of Mount Meru, and at 15, I climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro. 

All of these wonderful things have added joys and pleasurable memories to my life that I would hate to not have with me. But the downside is that I have said goodbye more than I care to count. I have bonded with and lost numerable friends. To spare myself a little bit, I have learned to engage with people on a more superficial level, constantly expecting them to say goodbye and move on. I have built shutters for my heart, allowing only a little light in and out at a time, wanting sometimes desperately to know and be known, but at the same time afraid to break off one more piece of my heart. 

Do I wish for my life to be different? Sometimes yes. But not because I am a cross cultural. 

Should you feel sorry for me? No, not at all. But if you do run across other cross culturals and find them, perhaps odd, be gentle with them. Some are more lost than others.