My Third Culture Thoughts

Kids of missionaries have been called MKs (missionary kids) for a long time. MKs have now been renamed. Perhaps it's because we as a society thrive on renaming things, or because MK was taken by some other acronym, perhaps for no reason at all, but there’s a new term for them. TCK—Third Culture Kid—and it refers to the situation arising from people who are raised in a culture other than their own. It has nothing to do with being in a third world country, but refers to the third culture that begins when a family or person travels from their “home” culture to another culture. An American moving overseas will never be fully American again, but they will never fully embody the culture that they’re living in either. A third culture results from the situation leaving that person or family in a fairly narrow category field.
Jason and I realized today that we will not be entirely American. We will not be entirely African, Guinean, Fula, Balanta, or any other culture. There will be no point at which we blend in...ever. We will be a third culture family. Like something from another planet; or a poorly-written Science-Fiction novel. The people we’ll relate to the best will be expatriates, other missionaries and military people who've been deployed. We're in the process of adopting a culture of our very own.
Here at MTI, they talk to us a lot about paradox. As an English Major, paradox excites me. It’s ideas like beauty in sadness, joy in pain, etc. It’s very real. My life is no longer straight-forward. I haven’t known what word to apply to it, but have felt that in a very real way for a while. It means that I won't just think in a single language, but a menagerie of languages. I will think half a sentence in English and the other half in Kriol. Jokes that are funny in one language aren't funny in another. People who relate to one half of me will likely be confused by the other.
As we go to Guinea-Bissau, it is not our intention to determine "right" and "wrong" as we view in their culture, but to examine "different." Guineans are very light-hearted people, and some of the things they joke about will not seem appropriate to our American sense of humor. Just because they offend our feelings does not mean that what they've done is wrong. Maybe we need to lighten up. Maybe it is funny that we're so white. And maybe it is funny to reply back in the same way! Of course, there are still distinctions of right and wrong, but maybe a lot of things are just different and we can enjoy them. We're being taught to suspend judgement, to wait to decide what we're seeing until we can understand it. Maybe we can become students of the culture of Guinea-Bissau and maybe we can understand it well enough to function well within it. We'll never function seamlessly. When we walk down the street, we'll always be called "White things with no color" and when we go to the market, we'll always be charged the unofficial "white tax," the goal is not to blend in, but to function genuinely and well. With God's grace, we can do that!