“Where are you from?”
“Here,” I say, laughing to hide the slight discomfort I feel being asked that question.
“But you weren’t born and brought up here, right?”
“Yes, I wasn’t born here.”
“And you weren’t brought up here?”
“Actually, I was.”
Here we have just one of the several tedious conversations of the same vein I have in my home country, Nigeria. I open my mouth and my accent gives me away, marking me as foreign, different. People evaluate me as “not one of them” immediately, and respond as such.
I was born in Houston, Texas, but I’ve spent a little more than half of my life in Nigeria, where my parents are from. Yet, I am still labelled as a foreigner in my own country, “too Americanized”. People assume I can’t relate to the life of the average Nigerian, and heap their own expectations on me.
I’m instantly viewed through a barrier of the privilege I am conscious I have. I am rendered an outsider, someone to either be criticized, for not being “Nigerian enough”, or to be struck by, for being the idolized thing that a Westernized person is in Nigeria.
However, the moment I step foot in the United States, the land of my birth, I am often viewed as “un-American”. Once again, my accent gives me away, and people ask, “Where are you from?” - and they don’t mean state. They’re wondering what foreign country I’m from, because there’s no way I was born in the US, or spent my formative years there.
Instantly, I am othered in my own birth country, and my citizenship is erased from the perspective of others.
According to Ruth Van Reken, “A Third Culture Kid is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside their parent’s culture.” This was an identity I didn’t even realize I had until my freshman year Orientation last year, when there was a special discussion for TCKs. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who knew what it felt like to not belong anywhere, to have others question who you were and have your identity invalidated.
A TCK knows what it feels like to have to adapt to different cultures and not feel completely at home in any. To have friends and roots in different parts of the world. To have parts of you at war with each other.
Being a TCK means that you’re constantly straddling two worlds, without ever quite fitting in either. My friends I went to international schools which are from all over the globe. I borrow elements from different cultures and mash them together. I code switch depending on where I am and who I’m around.
Being a Third Culture Kid can be isolating sometimes. But I’ve grown to love having family and friends in different parts of the word, and pieces of myself from more than one culture. I’ve realized that I am not lacking in anything by being from two worlds; but rather, gaining the best of both.
