Finding a place to be
known
Negotiating the
identity spectrum has been a feature of my blog, though when I consider the
situation, it has always been a feature of my life. However, having a blog has
helped articulate the issues around how identity is more defined by influences
than by progeny.
I can think of the
many experiences and realisations, the earliest being when I first arrived in
Nigeria, barely a 5-year-old and I noticed there were more people like me than
where we had left. How was a little black English boy to know that Nigeria would
be different?
English, people have
issues with that, I am supposed to be Black British, yet on those atrocious
forms, I would write in Black English. That aspect of being English became
ascendant when I had to tackle the question of where I was from when I lived in
the Netherlands.
The many questions of
where
“Where are you
from?”, they would ask. I answer, “I am from England”. The next question
usually was, “Where are you originally from?”, The answer, “England”. Confusion
or frustration clouds their faces with a further inquiry, “Where are your
parents from?”, The answer, “Nigeria”. Enlightenment, “So, you’re Nigerian”,
“No, I am not, I was born in England.”
The best question in
that vein was, “What is your birth country?”, I answered, “England”, and my
interlocutor asked no further questions. This brings me to the other matter of
my accent, it started as a typical Brummie accent influenced by associations in
Nigeria especially in schools that had a large international pupillage.
Strange
juxtapositions of identification
It's funny that most
of the Caucasian kids were Nigerian-born, and many of the black kids were
foreign-born, with foreign accents, too. However, reading an article by a
friend of mixed-race parentage revealed another interesting thing about
identity. Those of mixed-race parentage were othered from afar. We looked like
everyone else until we began to speak, and then we were put aside, too.
It was like we never
really belonged where we thought we belonged; we had to work out how we wanted
to be identified. For instance, how do you tackle a statement like, “You’ve
always thought like a Westerner?” I was 42 years old, which was what my father
said in a conversation.
The privilege and the
opportunity
In my case, I have
found both privilege and opportunity by the accident of birth that is not of my
making, how it has helped me navigate situations in life and at work cannot be
covered in a blog. Too many examples come to mind.
Maybe, I am more
fortunate that working with my sense of identity and the quality of my
education has taken me to interesting places.
I have little time
for identity politics, but woe betide anyone who attempts to pigeonhole me in
dockets where I neither identify nor wish to place in. Such is the life of a Third Culture Kid.
Some additional context
A Third Culture Kid
(TCK) is a person who spends a significant part of their childhood living in a
country or countries that are different from at least one of their parents'
passport countries:
The child's parents'
culture is the first culture.
The host country's
culture is the second culture.
The child's own
cultural identity is the third culture, which is a fusion of the first two.
The child adopts some
traits from each culture. [If I may add, some kids even live in bubbles
different from the nominal culture too.]
