(Third-Culture) Kids Will Be Kids

Laura and I chaperoned this year's high school trip: a busload of kids freed for a weekend from the thumb of their parents and the anonymity of their school uniforms.

There were many fun activities planned, like game viewing in Kruger Park, horseback riding, mountain biking, and cave exploring. The kids seemed to enjoy most sitting on the bus and chatting with their friends.

One boy complained that the leopard that we stopped for (a less-than-guaranteed spotting) was too far away. "They should put these things in cages so we can see them better," he suggested. Sure. And maybe taxidermied, too, so they wouldn't move so much.

Most interesting for me was hanging around the so-called "third culture kids": children who have a passport and citizenship in one country, but have spent the formative years of childhood living in another. Most often, these children feel like strangers in both cultures, and have more in common with one another than members of either their natural or adopted cultures.

Domingos, though ethnically Shangaan and born in Mozambique, grew up in inner-city America. He has been back in Mozambique for less than half a year, and clearly struggles to find his identity.

He is the only Mozambican I've seen to be flashing a grill and other assorted bling more commonly found hanging off of America's inner-city youth. He didn't want to blend in amongst his ethnic brothers and sisters. He wanted to be unique.

I suspect, in fact, that he adopted a stronger sense of this American-based urban hip-hop culture after leaving the United States than when he was living there. This is the life of a third culture kid: while building elements of various cultures into their stories, they often have difficulty developing a sense of ownership or belonging in any of these cultures.

The struggle to establish identity is a significant enough challenge for most teenagers, even when they have a clear sense of home.

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The trip had plenty of adventure and misadventure both.

Each night, boys woke up to find themselves covered in toothpaste. Zach even kept his toothpaste-soiled clothes on for the remainder of the day as a badge of honour. Laura, by contrast, reports that the girls quietly braided each other's hair and then went to sleep.

Oko, a gangling teenaged acrobat, shattered a pane of glass and bloodied his knee trying to climb out of a window. He wanted to use the window because everybody else was doing it.

Another boy, Orlando, inexperienced at mountain biking but wanting to fit in with his faster peers, fell over the handlebars of his bicycle and careened across a gravel road. A dozen stitches and a lot of pain later, he was an unenvied class hero.

First culture or third, kids are still kids.