I have been a third culture kid for a good portion of my life. Quite frankly, I had never heard of the term until recently. 'Third Culture Kid' or 'Global Nomad' is the term given to people who have spent a significant part of their developmental years in other countries. I did not know that such a group of people existed and got together on the internet. I decided to make my contribution by reflecting on some of the aspects of my reintegration into the American society.

My parents are from Zambia, Central Africa. My family started traveling even before I was born. Initially they traveled because of their love of travel. From family photos, I have discovered that my older brother and sisters lived in Trinidad and a number of other places before I was born. When I was around eight years old, my father who was a lawyer began to work for the United Nations in Vienna, Austria as a diplomat. This meant that he and my older brother were living in Vienna while I was living with my mother and other family members in the suburbs of New York. To me this was normal. To my family, other countries were like other states. It was normal to go on vacation to places like Vienna, Italy, or London while everyone else in our neighborhood had to "make do" with American destinations.

When I was ten, my father decided to return to Africa. He also decided this time to take everyone with him. This is when I really became a Third Culture Kid. My parents may have been from Africa but we had never been there. Despite all our travel experience, this was a real shock because it was meant to be a long-term stay. We did not even move to other African countries when we were there. We moved from an industrialized country to a developing one, from a temperate climate to a sub-tropical one. We moved from a monolingual neighborhood to a country that had seventy-three local languages. We moved from an imperial system of weights and measures to a metric one. We moved from a system of American grammar, spelling, and punctuation to a British one. Zambia is, after all, a former British colony.

There was yet a more serious challenge that we all had to face in our new home. We were American and British with American accents. Even if we dressed like everyone else and attended the same local schools, we certainly stood out. People could tell where we were from. It was thus all too easy for us to casually do something that was considered showy or ostentatious. When we spoke English in a sea of local languages, wore shorts because we were not used to the oppressive heat, or did not eat some of the local foods, this often invited scorn and open criticism from the people there.

I would not dismiss my experience there entirely for it could have been worse. After all, Zambia was one of the most peaceful countries in Africa and also the first Anglophone country in Africa to be swept by the wind of democratic change that blew across Africa after the demise of the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe. However, because of the aforementioned culture shocks, I would say it was more of a negative experience than a positive one. I lived there from the age of ten to the age of twenty-one. It was only recently when I stumbled across the term 'Third Culture Kid' that I realized what British influence there was on my life as a result of living in a former British colony. I still have to have four o'clock tea and I prefer British comedy to American. I am also just as likely to get news from the BBC as I am to get it from CNN. The more serious sounding British accents of the newscasters appeal to me.

I decided to move back to the United States at the age of twenty-one to attend college. This was something I decided to do on my own. The enormity of the task did not really strike me. After all, we were a family of global nomads. My brother had already left the country for his native England. Not only was I returning to my native America where I had not spent a single day of my teenage years, but I was also about to face the challenges of college life.

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Mark Anderson strongly recommends the following books for global nomads who have returned 'home':

Third Culture Kids

Hidden Immigrants: Legacies of Growing up Abroad

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Mark Anderson has a site documenting his European travels and also points other global nomads to Transition Dynamics, a site committed to serving the children, women, and men for whom international mobility and cultural transitions are a part of daily life.

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