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A classic TCK dilemma: Which of my 3 heritages counts for the Olympics?

11 Comments Posted by The Displaced Nation Team on August 8, 2012

We welcome back Third Culture Kid Tiffany Lake-Haeuser to the Displaced Nation. (She last joined us during fashion month.) Born in the United States to German parents, Tiffany returned “home” to Frankfurt when she was six. But then at age 13, she moved with her family to Abu Dhabi, UAE. Now back in Frankfurt, this 16-year-old divides her time between this city and Paris, where her father currently resides. So which team(s) does Tiffany support in the Olympics? That’s the million-euro (or is it dollar?) question.

I was never really very interested in sports. This year, during the Olympics, that changed. You still won’t find me glued to the television to see all the events, but I’m definitely more interested than in the past.

Then of course, there is the somewhat confusing decision of which country to cheer for. Do I support my heritage and the country I now live in, Germany? Or do I support the country I was born in and often associate with, the USA? Well for me it was easy to decide. You see, I am extremely competitive and enjoy cheering for the country that wins, which for the most part leads to me cheering for the USA.

I watched the pre-Olympic trials for the American gymnastics team when I was in the United States visiting childhood friends earlier this summer. I was gobsmacked — not only by the amazing talent of the athletes, but also by the enthusiasm shown by the spectators. I think that’s when I caught the Olympic bug. Suddenly I was eager to see the team compete for gold in London.

German apathy

But when I got back in Germany, there was barely any sign that the Games were fast approaching. Maybe I was just in the wrong environment, but no one was even talking about it. Even when the Games started, it felt like no one cared. The most excitement I observed was a small promotional program by a pharmacy(!). Unless I was on some social networking site, I barely ever exchanged views with anyone about what was happening at the Olympics.

While waiting for the Games to start, I did some research and found out that since the modern Olympic Games began, the USA has always been in the top three countries when it came to the number of medals won.

This history made me even more inclined to support my other “home” country. I love cheering for countries that are doing well. I love being a fan.

Go USA! Hmmm…unless it’s soccer?

As anyone who read my March interview with The Displaced Nation knows, I’m something of a fashionista. I love the idea of showing some pride for the US team by wearing red, white and blue. It may seem petty, but half the fun of watching the Olympics for a non-athlete like me is getting dressed up and painting your face in your team’s colors.

That’s something I picked up from Germany, in fact. Germans get truly pumped up for one thing: soccer. It’s our pride and joy. During the European Cup or the World Cup, Germany is transformed into a black, red and golden country. While in the USA people have flags hanging by their doors all year long, in Germany that happens only during these major soccer events.

One test of which side I was on in the Olympics came when a friend tried to bug me by saying that Germany was being beaten by his country in some sport. To be honest, I didn’t mind that much. All I could think about how well Gabby Douglas was doing in gymnastics.

Does this mean I am not proud of my German heritage? It definitely doesn’t; by the next soccer game you will see me losing my voice for cheering on Germany.

So it really isn’t that straightforward or clear. You never truly stop cheering for a country that means something to you. All you can really hope for is that the two countries’ teams never play against each other…

Go women athletes!

On a different note, I was excited to hear about how every country sent women to the Olympics this year. I wouldn’t call myself a feminist, but I do think gender equality is important, and that a country that is sending its women athletes to compete in the Olympics for the first time is taking a big step. I hope that gender equality in sports can become the new standard. Some day, perhaps, it will be considered so normal it won’t even make the headlines.

Having lived for three years in Abu Dhabi, I was particularly interested in the news about Saudi Arabian women participating in the Games. I know from experience how easy it is for us Westerners to look at Arab women wearing the hijab and think they are less liberated than we are. When I saw the Saudi women walking behind the men during the London opening ceremony, I was not surprised so much as humbled. Not everyone sees equality in the same way as we Westerners do.

Likewise, I didn’t think it was fair for the International Olympic Committee to consider banning the judo wrestler Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani from dressing according to the traditions by which she was raised. (In the end, they compromised on a cap for her to wear instead of the hijab.) To some degree, I admire Saudi Arabia for insisting upon preserving its cultural identity and traditions in face of the influence of Westernization.

By the time the Games end on Sunday, I think my favorite part will not be about having supported a particular country. The best part, in my opinion, has been seeing the people who rise to the occasion and do phenomenally well. It sounds cheesy, but you can see in their eyes the joy and relief that all their hard work and training has finally paid off — in the moment that counted, they were able to be the best they could be.

* * *

Readers, any thoughts on or reactions to Tiffany Lake-Haeuser’s dilemma? Please put them in the comments. You can also follow what she is up to on her blog, Girl on the Run.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s episode in the life of our fictional expat heroine, Libby. (What, not keeping up with Libby? Read the first three episodes of her expat adventures.)

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of weekly posts from The Displaced Nation, with seasonal recipes, book giveaways and other extras. Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Pot Luck Abu Dhabi, Europe, Germany, London, Middle East, Olympian feats, Pot Luck, Saudi Arabia, Third Culture Kid, USA, What a Displaced World

BOOK REVIEW: “Expat Life Slice By Slice” by Apple Gidley

6 Comments Posted by Kate Allison on August 7, 2012

TITLE: Expat Life Slice by Slice
AUTHOR: Apple Gidley
AUTHOR’S CYBER COORDINATES:
Website: www.expatapple.com
Blog: my.telegraph.co.uk/applegidley
Twitter: @ExpatApple
PUBLICATION DATE: March 2012 (Summertime Publishers)
FORMAT: Ebook (Kindle) and Paperback, available from Amazon
GENRE: Memoir
SOURCE: Review copy from author

Author Bio:

Apple Gidley became an expat at the tender age of one month old, in Kano, Nigeria. Since her early initiation into global wandering, she has relocated 26 times through 12 countries, acquiring a husband and two children en route.

Apple is known to thousands as ExpatApple, through her popular blog at the Daily Telegraph.

Summary:

“From marauding monkeys to strange men in her bedroom, from Africa to Australasia to America, with stops in Melanesia, the Caribbean and Europe along the way, Apple Gidley vividly sketches her itinerant global life. The challenges of expatriation, whether finding a home, a job, or a school are faced mostly with equanimity. Touched with humour and pathos, places come alive with stories of people met and cultures learned, with a few foreign faux pas added to the mix.”

(Source: Amazon.com book description)

Review:

If anyone is qualified to issue advice on expat life, Apple Gidley is that person. Born to an English father and Australian mother, she takes the label “Serial Expat” to new heights. She was a TCK before the term was invented (instead classed unflatteringly as an “expat brat”) and continued the global wandering throughout her adult life, with 26 relocations through 12 countries to date.

Her memoir provides fascinating reading, about places and lifestyles that most of us will never experience, and at times is almost anachronistic: reading her reminiscences about servants, voluntary work, and charity committees, there’s a time warp sensation of stepping into a Somerset Maugham short story.

Although the book is a record of Apple’s patchwork life, most expats will relate to the emotional experiences she describes, no matter where in the world they are or how many countries they’ve lived in. For example, we worry that leaving our family and friends behind will increase the emotional distance as well as the physical. After a while, we realise that this is mostly not the case, and that those who allow physical distance to become an obstacle weren’t so emotionally close in the first place. In Chapter 8, “Eighth Slice: Staying Connected”, she says:

As we age we draw closer still. We believe in family but do not see each other for years at a time, and yet we are all aware of where each of us is in the world, still scattered and testaments to a global upbringing.

In “Ninth Slice: Death at a Distance”, Apple deals with the elephant-in-the-room topic: the illness or death of a family member while we are thousands of miles away. During such times, it’s easy to beat ourselves up for choosing a nomadic lifestyle; if our associated guilt trips were eligible for air miles, we could afford to fly back and forth to be with our loved ones as often as we wanted. In describing her own experiences of bereavement, Apple’s practical, matter-of-fact approach, plus her insights gleaned from other cultures’ attitudes to old age and death, reminds us that the old cliché of “life goes on” holds true, even after “death at a distance”.

Whether you’re a veteran expat, a re-pat, or are just about to embark upon your first move to another country, “Expat Life Slice By Slice” should be on your reading list.

Words of wisdom:

On TCKs:

For those children brought up as TCKs…a nonjudgmental and accepting attitude to different customs, colours and cultures is the norm. As this demographic grows, let’s hope for an even greater understanding of cultural differences for all our children.

On voluntary work:

Volunteering is work, sometimes harder than a paid position because it is the cause keeping you there and not the salary.

On making new connections:

Picking up people around the world to share your life with is one of the greatest pleasures in life, and sometimes you know straight away they will continue to stay in it.

On “Home”

Home is with me wherever I go…It is not a single building or a single country, but many of them.

“Expat Life Slice By Slice” can be purchased here.

STAY TUNED for Wednesday’s post.

Image: Book cover – “Expat Life Slice By Slice”

For former expat Matt Krause, a second act as a heathen pilgrim

7 Comments Posted by ML Awanohara on July 16, 2012

For some of us, starting a new life overseas is challenge enough. But for others, it represents an opportunity to take things to the next level. It’s fair to say that Matt Krause falls into the latter category. Returning to California after following a Turkish woman back to her native land, he used the material for his first book. And now he’s preparing to set out on a 1,300-mile solo walk across Turkey — a country he still regards as his second home. I caught up with Matt recently to ask about this latest, much more athletic challenge.

Hi again, Matt. Welcome back to The Displaced Nation. It seems like only yesterday that we were reviewing your expat memoir, A Tight Wide-open Space, and now we find you preparing for an epic travel adventure. Can you say a little more about it?
On Saturday, September 1, 2012, I will start an eight-month solo walk across Turkey, from the Aegean to Iran — 1,305 miles (2,100 km) in all. I will carry a backpack, a tent, and a sleeping bag.

Why are you doing this?
To put my life where my mouth is.

In 2003 I met a girl on an airplane to Hong Kong. We ended up going out, then moving together to her hometown of Istanbul and getting married there. We lived in Turkey for six years, but in 2009 things unraveled and I came back home to the US.

When I came back to the US, people kept asking me about the differences I had seen in Turkey. Political differences, religious differences, cultural differences, gender differences, just about every kind of difference you could think of.

But I really wanted to tell them about how people are so much the same. Living in Turkey had reminded me that most of what we are as human beings, and how we act in any given situation, is pretty much the same. Human nature being what it is, though, we can’t take our eyes off our differences, and I think that this focus makes us more afraid of each other than we need to be.

I don’t want to talk about this in theory. If these similarities are so profound, I should be able to walk, alone and unprotected, across the country I still think of as my second home.

Going to the dogs

What have you done to prepare for this odyssey?
I walked 1,200 miles (almost 2,000 km), 700 of them with a fully loaded backpack. That’s four hours a day, five days a week, for five months.

I walked the same four 12-mile routes about 25 times each — those were 1,200 very repetitive and boring miles.

However, I love dogs, and the dogs added some flavor to the walks. The first few times I walked those routes, the dogs all acted ferocious, but week by week they warmed up to me. The Labs were the first, of course — I only had to walk past them once or twice before they’d run out to me wagging their behinds like I was an old friend.

The last to go was one particular Doberman Pinscher. He spent about four months acting like he was going to rip my head off each time I passed by, and then one day when I walked by he was busy talking to another dog. He looked over at me like, “Are you serious, are you going to make me interrupt this perfectly good conversation in order to come chase you?” He broke down quickly after that, and now when I walk past his house he just playfully runs alongside me, glancing back at the house every few seconds to make sure nobody’s watching. He’s got a reputation to think about, after all.

How will you finance the trip?
I have savings, which I’ve supplemented by working in the peach and plum orchards near my hometown of Reedley, California. I was grafting, which is basically cutting off the top of an old tree and sticking a new kind of wood into it. The new wood takes over, and within a couple years the tree is producing a new variety of fruit.

I will also be raising some money on Kickstarter in a few weeks.

Will you be grafting any electronic devices onto yourself while you walk?
I’ll have a pocket camera and a cell phone connection so that I can post daily updates (people photos, landscape photos, short written updates, etc) on my Web site, Heathen Pilgrim. Most of the time, of course, I’ll be out in the middle of nowhere. It’s not like I’ll be able to run into the nearest Starbucks and connect over wifi, so I had to figure some things out. I’ve been doing a lot of equipment testing.

An oxymoronic concept?

“Heathen Pilgrim” — that’s a curious name for a project.
I picked that name for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that a heathen is a person who does not share one’s religion. Christians see non-believers as pagan; Muslims see them as infidels; and as far as Jews are concerned, gentiles can never be members of God’s chosen people.

One thing we all have in common is that someone, somewhere considers us heathen. And if you want to travel outside of your own circle, you must be willing to be considered a heathen by someone else. If the people around you are not considering you heathen yet, you have not traveled far enough from home.

I also have a tongue-in-cheek reason. A secondary definition of “heathen” is “a rude or uncivilized person.” I’m a fairly polite and well-mannered person. So calling myself a heathen pilgrim is a bit of an attempt at self-deprecating humor.

Well, particularly when you juxtapose it with a word like “pilgrim,” since pilgrims are supposed to be on a journey to a holy place. Your itinerary is pretty ambitious. Do you identify at all with the athletes who are now preparing for the Olympics?
No, not at all. Those guys train all their lives. I’m just a guy who likes to eat donuts and walk — although I did have to turn a lot of things upside down in my life in order to do this.

On the subject of ways of looking at this project, there’s a relevant saying I like, that we are not entitled to the fruits of our labors, only to the labors themselves.

In this case, I have no control over the meanings people might assign to my walk. I only have a say in whether or not I do it.

A few last-minute jitters

What’s left by way of preparation for this unholy journey of yours?
Not much. At some point you’ve just got to take the leap of faith (no pun intended!), and that time has arrived for me. Right now I’m preparing for the Kickstarter campaign in a few weeks, and there are still a few things I still need to get, like a sleeping pad and a small whiteboard. But I’m as prepared as I’ll ever be without actually doing it. It’s time to go.

But what about psychological preparation? Are you nervous? Despite your affection for Turkey, do you worry about feeling out of your element, displaced in ways you’ve never been before?
You bet I’m nervous. I’ve never walked across a country before. I’ll be displaced and out of my element 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the entire trip.

What makes me most nervous is that I don’t know where I’ll be sleeping at night. I don’t want to stay in hotels, because then I’d just be doing the tourist thing. So I’ll be taking people up on their offers to pitch my tent in their front yard, or let me sleep on their living room floors, or even sleep on their roofs (many of the roofs in that part of the world are flat, and people use them like a front porch).

For a while, I was really worried about approaching all these strangers and asking for help. In fact, until a few months ago I would wake up in the middle of the night worrying about how that was going to pan out. But then I talked to a young woman who had backpacked through that part of the world many times. She said don’t worry about them, they’ll be fine with it. The worry is in you. Get over it quickly by knocking on a stranger’s door the very first night.

How to follow Matt’s progress

If people want to follow your progress, what should they do?
I’ve put out an open invitation to anyone who wants to come walk part of the route with me. So if you can, get yourself a backpack and a sleeping bag, and join me on the road somewhere.

However, if you can’t join me in person, follow the trip vicariously. There’s the aforementioned Heathen Pilgrim site, a weekly email newsletter, a Facebook page, and my Twitter account (@mattkrause). Use whichever of those you prefer — they’ll be showing pretty much the same content.

I assume you’ll also be getting some books out of this?
I’ll also be writing four books at the end of the trip: two books tentatively titled “Turkey on 12 Miles a Day” and “Walking Turkey”; and two photo essays, tentatively titled “Walk Turkey: The Landscape” and “Walk Turkey: The People.”

Those books will be available later on Amazon, but you can sign up for them early, and get some other trip-related goodies, by backing the trip on Kickstarter. The Kickstarter campaign isn’t live yet, but if you keep an eye on my cyber-coordinates, in early August you’ll hear about it when it starts.

Thanks, Matt. You may not think of yourself as an Olympic athlete, but I’m impressed by your determination and all the meticulous preparations. Readers, make sure you follow Matt’s journey in one of the ways he suggests and spread the word about his Kickstarter campaign. You can also support him by downloading his memoir on his expat life in Turkey — as Kate Allison said in her review, “For all that this is a love story, Matt pulls no punches in the telling of it.” He’s honest, as well as humble. Two great qualities for a pilgrim, even if he is a bit of a heathen! 🙂

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s Displaced Q on the Olympic Games and the sometimes awkward issues they raise for us displaced types about national loyalties, by Tony James Slater.

Asia, California, Europe, Memoir | Travel | Food Writers, Olympian feats, Turkey, USA, What a Displaced World, Writers we love

5 reasons why American aviatrix Amelia Earhart could be an expat heroine

Leave a comment Posted by ML Awanohara on July 3, 2012

The American aviatrix Amelia Earhart has been propelling her way into the news headlines this week. Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of her Lockheed Electra disappearing over the Pacific Ocean.

And today marked the beginning of an expedition, led by an American nonprofit group, to locate the wreckage from her plane. The group plans to scan the depths of the Pacific Ocean near a remote island where they believe Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, died as castaways.

With America’s most famous aviatrix back on our horizons, it seems a timely moment to nominate her for our Displaced Hall of Fame, where we put all of our expat heroes and heroines.

What, was she an expat, too? I can hear you asking. In fact, she was an expat briefly — during World War I, when she went to visit her sister in Toronto and ended up staying on as a nurse’s aide in a military hospital.

But I’ll admit that Earhart seems more of a domestic heroine — as American as apple pie, you might say. Born in Atchison, Kansas, in America’s heartland, Amelia grew up tall and willowy like the corn in the fields. As the Reigning Queen of the Air, she became the nation’s sweetheart and to this day retains a special place in the hearts of young American women.

What’s more, recruiting her to serve as a heroine for global nomads, many of whom have hybrid nationalities, might not fly with my fellow Americans. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has endorsed the expedition to hunt for Earhart’s plane, saying that Earhart embodies the “spirit of America coming of age and increasingly confident, ready to lead in a quite uncertain and dangerous world…”

But in reviewing the main facts of Earhart’s life, I have found plenty of aspects that show how “displaced” she actually was — “displaced” in the sense of being “removed from the usual or proper place” (see definition on our About page) — and hence belongs in our orbit. Here are five of my top reasons:

1) She was born with wings.

Veteran expats and long-term travelers cannot afford to have fear, or dislike of, flying. Should we incline at all in this direction, it may help to lie back in your airplane seat (or pretend you have a seat where it’s possible to lie back) and think of Earhart, who took to the skies without hesitation, as though the airplane wings were her own. Legend has it that she first caught the aviation bug while an expat in Canada. She went to see an exhibition of stunt flying at a fair in Toronto and later wrote about the sensation she’d felt as a pilot began diving at her and her friend:

I remember the mingled fear and pleasure which surged over me as I watched that small plane at the top of its earthward swoop. I did not understand it at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.

From then on, it was all she could do to keep her feet on the earth. Of her first airplane flight she said: “As soon as we left the ground, I knew I had to fly.” In 1921 she took her first flying lesson, and soon saved enough money to buy a second-hand plane.

Of course it helped that in the early days, flying was a romantic sport for the lucky few, not a form of transport where everyone from pilot to passenger feels as though they’re herding or being treated like cattle. Earhart named her first plane “Canary” because of its bright yellow color. Perhaps she felt like a canary when setting her first women’s record: rising to an altitude of 14,000 feet.

By the time she became the first female pilot to cross the Atlantic solo (Charles Lindbergh was first to do so), she had her own little red airplane — a cherry-colored Lockheed Vega, reputed to be the world’s fastest aircraft and therefore favored by pioneering aviators. Hmmm… Did it make her feel like a cardinal?

2) Always restless with the status quo, she let it drive her adventures.

What’s the litmus test for being a travel or expat type? A person who is always upping the ante. We’re a gang of permanent malcontents!

No sooner had Earhart become the first woman to cross the Atlantic (as a passenger) — a flight that made headlines because three women had died within the same year in trying to achieve it — but she sought to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (1932) and the first person to fly solo across the Pacific, from Honolulu to Oakland (1935), among other achievements.

At that point, there was nothing for it but to make a bid to become the first person to fly around the world (1937).

One wonders what Earhart might have done next, had she not gone down in her plane on the very last leg of the journey. Perhaps she would she have concluded that she’d peaked out too early? (No doubt many of you serial expats and repats can relate…)

3) She had no qualms whatsoever about the risks involved in an adventuresome life.

In the lore surrounding Earhart, great emphasis is placed on her early feminism. Much of it is said to be due to her mother, who had very little interest in bringing up Amelia and her younger sister as “nice little girls” — she even allowed them to wear bloomers!

Clad in this comfortable attire (Amelia would later design a clothing line for women who wanted comfort), the Earhart sisters climbed trees, hunted rats with a rifle, and “belly-slammed” their sleds downhill.

The young Amelia also kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in predominantly male fields, including film direction and production, law, advertising, management, and mechanical engineering.

Although she did marry eventually — to the publisher George Putnam — she always referred to the marriage as a “partnership” with “dual control,” and did not change her last name.

When she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, Earhart said it proved that men and women were equal in “jobs requiring intelligence, coordination, speed, coolness and willpower.”

(No doubt she would be knocked out to learn that women’s boxing will be included in the London 2012 Olympics for the very first time.)

But to me, what’s even more impressive about Earhart’s life is that she knew about the risks involved in her chosen occupation — but decided not to let them hold her back. That same kind of risk-taking is at the heart of the overseas travel enterprise, which goes against the grain of most people’s common sense. (“You want to go THERE? And FOR HOW LONG?” Expats and global nomads know the drill of fielding constant questions and doubts from the people back home.)

When Earhart set out on her second attempt to circumnavigate the world (the first had ended in a crash when a tire blew out on take-off), she wrote to her husband: “Please know I am quite aware of the hazards.” And then she went ahead and packed a jar of freckle cream. (I say that because a jar of freckle cream was found on the Pacific Island that’s now being searched.)

4) She was never more in her element than when out of her element (quite literally).

There is something that draws all of us to the displaced life. Since it’s a life of challenges, I have to assume that for most of us, it’s that feeling of being a pioneer, of going the way no one else in our circles has gone before…

In Earhart’s case, the displacement was quite literal: she loved being in the empty sky and facing the unknown. In that sense she was like a character out of Greek myth — a female Icarus. As she once said of an early flight:

The stars seemed near enough to touch and never before have I seen so many. I always believed the lure of flying is the lure of beauty…

Jane Mendelsohn was inspired to write her first novel, I Was Amelia Earhart, after reading that a piece of what may have been Earhart’s plane had been recovered on an atoll in the Pacific. Imagining the life that Earhart and Noonan might have led as castaways, Mendelsohn shows Earhart coming into her own in the desert-island setting, and finding peace of mind.

Random House editor Kristin Fritz commends Mendelsohn for creating a whole new iteration of Earhart as

a woman who had perhaps “taken this journey in order to escape the madness of the world,” a woman who “didn’t give a damn if she was alone” and finally a woman who would “live the rest of her long and brilliant life on this wild and desolate island.”

Now that’s displaced! And if Fritz is right and Medelsohn captured the essence of Earhart in her novel, then we should not feel too bad that she perished on an island out in the middle of nowhere. That’s how she would have wanted it…

5) Last but not least, she appears to have known the value of chocolate.

Here we come to the true test of an expat or international traveler: do they like chocolate? Are they addicted to that sudden charge of energy, the little lift, one gets from the sugar and the caffeine? Most seasoned expats and international travelers know that we could never have prevailed during the inevitable moments of loneliness and displacement the life entails without a chocolate supply of some sort.

When Earhart embarked on her 2,408-mile solo flight across the Pacific in 1935, she packed a thermos of hot chocolate in case she felt chilled. As she later observed:

Indeed, that was the most interesting cup of chocolate I have ever had sitting up eight thousand feet over the middle of the Pacific Ocean, quite alone.

* * *

Now that we’re touching down, I feel the need to quote from Mendelsohn’s recent op-ed for the New York Times:

We still wonder what happened to Amelia Earhart — perhaps soon we may even find out — but do we know what to do with her? Do we know how to make not just her mysterious disappearance but also her miraculous life relevant and inspiring to our global society? And could she matter across the globe, that ball around which she tried to fly that feels so much smaller today but is in fact exactly the same size as it was then?

For me there’s an easy answer to all three of Mendelsohn’s questions: YESSSSSSS!!! It’s time Amelia Earhart went global, and not just literally…don’t you agree?

STAY TUNED for Wednesday’s post, another in our Expat Moments series by Anthony Windram — and yes, it does have to do with the 4th of July!

Pot Luck Asia, Canada, Displaced Hall of Fame, Europe, Gothic tales, Moveable feasts, North America, Olympian feats, Pot Luck, Repatriation, USA, Writers we love

RANDOM NOMAD: Lynne Murphy, American Expat in UK & Champion Linguist

7 Comments Posted by ML Awanohara on June 13, 2012

Place of birth: Western New York State, USA
Passports: USA + UK
Overseas history: South Africa (Johannesburg): 1993-97; Texas, USA (Waco): 1997-99 — definitely a different country!; England, UK (Brighton): 2000 – present.
Occupation: Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Sussex
Cyberspace coordinates: Separated by a Common Language — observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK (blog); @LynneGuist (Twitter handle).

What made you leave your homeland in the first place?
What made me move were jobs. I am a theoretical lexicologist. Not many places want a theoretical lexicologist, so I applied far and wide and have been rewarded with some very interesting jobs and living experiences.

Is anyone else in your immediate family “displaced”?
I was the first person in my immediate family-of-birth to own a passport.

Can you describe the moment when you felt the most displaced?
The night after the American student Amy Biehl was killed in South Africa, in August 1993. At that point, I lived in a granny flat — an outbuilding behind a house in a Johannesburg suburb. I came home to find my neighbours in the main house packing up and leaving for a safe place to stay, as they’d been robbed during the day. As they left, they told me the thieves had taken the spare keys to my flat — and had already come back to steal the bicycles from the garage. At that point, I had no car, no telephone (setting one up there took FOREVER), nowhere to go and no way to get there. I stayed up all night with the lights on and with a newspaper with the story of Biehl’s murder on the front page, feeling very alone and very scared.

Is there any particular moment that stands out as your “least displaced”?
Sometimes it’s funny to reflect on the fact that my own child speaks with an English accent, and I feel most absolutely at home with her. But I also often feel really divorced from the US when I read the news. When the hullabaloo about “Obamacare” was going on, I just couldn’t believe that I came from a place where many people seem not to see good medical care as a basic right for all. And it especially galled when I saw some Americans spreading lies about how British healthcare works and others willing to believe those lies. The National Health Service isn’t perfect, but it has saved my life, and I have more confidence in its care for me than I had in the insurance-industry-driven care I had in the US.

You may bring one curiosity you’ve collected from your adopted country into The Displaced Nation. What’s in your suitcase?
From South Africa: It’s the art that’s lasted! Two pieces by Ezekiel Madiba, a print and one of his printing blocks — which is nice because it’s sturdy enough to put in a suitcase and to hug every once in a while.
From Texas: My doctor’s instructions on what to do the next time I’m stung by a fire ant (to try to avoid being bed-ridden for a week, like the first time).
From England: My wedding ring. It’s a one-off, made by a Brighton goldsmith, and it’s a curiosity, because I hadn’t thought I was the marrying type.

You are invited to prepare one meal based on your travels for other members of The Displaced Nation. What’s on your menu? 
Starter/Appetizer: South African biltong. A nice peppery one—but I don’t mind if it’s beef or game. Maybe a selection.
Main course: For this, I’ll bring together the British and the American — not fancy but delicious. I haven’t given it a name, but here’s the recipe: Toast crumpets. cover with cheddar cheese and put under the broiler/grill. Slather on A1 Steak Sauce. Eat with knife and fork.
Dessert: Eton mess with raspberries instead of strawberries.
Drinks: South African wine (I never had a South African wine I didn’t like while I was in South Africa– the exported stuff is of more variable quality, in my experience); Castle Lager (a South African beer); and Schweppes Bitter Lemon (a popular soft drink in South Africa, no longer being produced in this part of the world as far as I know).

And now you may add a word or expression from each of the countries where you’ve lived to The Displaced Nation argot. What will you loan us?
From South Africa: Putting hey? on the ends of sentences. It was so easy to start doing, since I’d grown up using the “Canadian” eh? (Though I hadn’t realized I said it till I moved from upstate New York to Massachusetts, where they don’t say it.) It’s been a while since I lived in South Africa, but I still find myself doing it.
From the UK: There are so many great expressions, but the thing that’s invaded my language most is lovely. When I write emails, I have to go back at the end and take out half of the lovelies because I say it so terrifically much.

This month we have been doing some posts on Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. How did you spend the Bank Holiday weekend? Did you celebrate?
We’re not much into the monarchy in my house, so we just enjoyed the extra time off. But we did go to a friend’s house and eat red-white-and-blue cupcakes — which we should probably have called “fairy cakes” if we wanted to take the whole Rule Britannia thing seriously.

A couple of us on The Displaced Nation team thinks that the Queen deserves an Olympic medal for being on the throne for so long. Do you agree?
I respect the queen for handling many awkward situations with grace, but all she has done to be on the throne so long is not die yet. She got a national holiday for the occasion—I think that’s sufficient!

Readers — yay or nay for letting Lynne Murphy into The Displaced Nation? Tell us your reasons. (Note: It’s fine to vote “nay” as long as you couch your reasoning in terms we all — including Lynne — find amusing!)

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s episode in Libby’s Life, our fictional expat series set in small town New England. (What, not keeping up with Libby? Read the first three episodes of her expat adventures and/or check out “Who’s Who in Libby’s Life.”)

img: Lynne Murphy looking rather other-worldly — or “out of this displaced world,” as we like to say — in a Brighton pub.

Pot Luck Acquired tastes, Africa, Europe, Moveable feasts, North America, Pot Luck, Random Nomads, South Africa, UK, USA

BOOK REVIEW: “The Chalk Circle,” by Tara L. Masih, Ed.

4 Comments Posted by Kate Allison on May 23, 2012

TITLE: The Chalk Circle
AUTHOR: Tara L. Masih (Editor)
LITERARY AWARDS: 2012 Skipping Stones Honor Award
AUTHOR’S CYBER COORDINATES:
Website: www.taramasih.com
PUBLICATION DATE: May 2012 (Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing)
FORMAT: Ebook (Kindle) and Paperback
GENRE: Anthology/Autobiography
SOURCE: Review copy from author