By Chinwe Egbuta
2004
I peered out of my hotel room window – my home for the next two weeks – overlooking the city I had recently moved to. For miles as far as my eyes could see, a blanket of recently fallen snow gave the city a white, pristine, clean look. A mixture of excitement and fear enveloped me. A new country, new home, new school, new language all seemed like a lot for me to swallow at the time. I just wanted to be home in Nigeria where at least the sun was constant. I wanted to be home where things looked and felt familiar.
Third-culture kid
Becoming a third-culture kid in the latter part of my teen years made me different from my new peers who started living as third culture kids in their younger formative years. The process for me came with its steep learning curve, but eventually, I learned to adapt.
I became familiar with moving from one location to another as the earlier change was the first of others that followed. I grew adept at appreciating diversity and learning racial tolerance in countries where at many times I could have been prejudiced. I went through the motions of trying new food and feeding my adventurous side with daring delicacies such as salt tea during Ramadan.
Years of living out of my suitcase made me alert and ready to move at any time. Sadly, I also meant I had to abandon friends and relationships I had managed to build. I grew into the habit of not getting too fixated with new locations, routines and rituals when I discovered all good things must come to an end. I grew familiar with understanding the loss of connections and friendships due to different time zones.
I told my mother once that I was going to take up a steady job like my dad and she cried because she believed I would be unable to settle down.
Eleven years and seven months later…
I found myself putting my things in a suitcase again. Leaving London and returning home to Lagos. I considered what was waiting for me back home in Nigeria. It seemed life was about to become more constant and less flexible. An illness and love of a father had me bringing my trip forward to a much earlier date than planned. It was fair to say playtime was over.
I came home to find more of a regime. Wake up. Travel across what I call country border lines (from Ajah to Ikoyi) for work. Try to maintain a 15-30-minute yoga schedule, fail at it – try again. Schedule “me time” and “friend time”. Having my easy to be assumed and summarized identity misunderstood because I tried looking at everything from a different perspective. Embrace the practicability of not having the way of life be as easily fluid-like as it was in the past.
I had come to accept the possibility of being a third-culture adult (if that idea existed). Being accustomed to a country, that I had left only for a while, that was ever changing. But I observed that there were many like me. Itching to leave yet still staying behind. Nonetheless, I welcomed the feeling of being home again. Home. The feel of it. Sometimes impracticable yet soothing.
Glossary:
(“Third Culture Kids (or TCKs), a term coined by US sociologist Ruth Hill Useem in the 1950s, for children who spend their formative years in places that are not their parents’ homeland” BBC, 2016).
