International children: catalysts for change

UN Chronicle, Sept-Nov, 2006 by Dorothy Davis

DOUNIA DORANI MOVED WITH her parents to Saudi Arabia at the age of 1, when her father was assigned as Charge d'affaires at the Djibouti Mission. Born in Djibouti, she was too little to know anything about her country of origin before being immersed into the Saudi Arabian culture. Her father's job had propelled her into becoming an international child--the embodiment of the vision of his work, as well as of other international civil servants.

"We came to the United States with two suitcases. I was only two", recalled 21-year-old Dounia. One of her earliest impressions of the United States was seeing people of different skin colours. "In our country we had seen dark-skin and black people, but we had never seen Asians or whites. It was a culture shock", she said. "We came from a small country where everyone knew each other. Here there are so many people--some would approach us with a humble tone; others would approach us with a very nasty tone. We weren't used to that."

Dounia's younger brother, Seif, was born in Djibouti as well, and the youngest, Anas, in New York City. Typical of international children, they always have an unconventional answer to the basic question, "Where were you born?", and to the next natural question, "Why were you born there?" However, the fundamental and sometimes lifelong question they often ask themselves is, "Outside of my immediate family and those families like mine, where do I fit?"

I know the internal tension that these questions posed on children of international civil servants like me. I am of the first generation of globally mobile children who came into being as a result of the creation of the United Nations and the successes of the independence movements worldwide and the civil rights movement in the United States. I was born in a maternity centre in Monrovia, Liberia, to American parents, who worked with the United States foreign service. Unlike other women who returned to their country for the birth of their children, my mother trusted the Liberians, even when the delivery became complicated.

Although my United States citizenship was guaranteed at birth, my identity was always the sum of experiences I have had, without any overriding American cultural screens to decipher the tangible and intangible information I was receiving. On the other hand, my parents had the opportunity to become fully informed adults in one culture before choosing to embark in the foreign service lifestyle. In this regard, my upbringing was very similar to Dounia's, although we are a generation apart and have different countries of origin.

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Since Liberia is my point of entry into this world, it became the initial unconscious measuring stick to the four years of layering of cultures and perspectives of our subsequent posts to just-independent Tunisia, the early to mid-sixties United States and an intertwining combination of summers and vacations in Nigeria, Liberia and the United States, while attending an international school in Switzerland. I experienced all these before settling more permanently at 17 years old in my country of citizenship--the United States--at a time when the socio-cultural revolution of the seventies was in full swing.

How does an international child transition cultures? For one thing, most of us in such circumstances develop subconscious multi-sensory ways of receiving, interpreting and responding to the ongoing cultural data and signals surrounding us. It is, therefore, our primary and inherent survival technique as international children in our country of residence--with or without our families during our formative years, that is from childhood through late adolescent years--which is very familiar and very foreign to us, including in our country of citizenship. "Djibouti is my country. America is my home", Dounia said. "I never had a full childhood where I'm from. To remember, you have to start with your childhood, and so my childhood was here", she stressed. We build on what we know and become interpreters of what we learn.

"I learned not to judge a person right away when I see them", explained 15-year-old Anas. "There was a new boy who wanted to join our football team. He was half-Nigerian and half-Chinese. My friends thought he could not play. I told them to give him a chance and let him be a part of our team. He turned out to be a better player than my friends, so they can't say anything against him any more." Anas had a very difficult experience after September 11 (2001). "My friends on Roosevelt Island knew I was Muslim. After 9/11, they were sure that every Muslim was a terrorist. On the soccer field, they would go against me and my brother for being a Muslim. They would foul us for no reason. We got through it. Our friends eventually came back."

Anas also remembered how difficult it was for his older brother, Seif, to assimilate. "Every time he went outside to play, the other children would pick on him. He would get into fights. The next day, he would come outside again and act like nothing had happened, but the same thing would happen. When he was eight, he started taking karate. It taught him discipline, respect and tolerance", Anas said. "My brother is now a second-degree black belt. I followed in his footsteps and have become a first-degree junior black belt. Through sports, we have learned to command respect."