Enjoy a trip around the world.
memoir
My New Book is Out!
The day has finally come. It feels like I have been working on this book forever.
But now, here it is!
I have set up some pages to go with the book. Lots of pictures and videos. Praise from readers. And info on where to get it. Also info on how to get a review copy. Click on Much More Info below or on Echoes of a Global Life in the menu above.
ECHOES OF A GLOBAL LIFE by Kathleen Gamble
A story of survival from Burma to Moscow and beyond. Memoir. Travel stories. Living in interesting times.
Echoes of a Global Life is part memoir, part travelogue, part history lesson. Kathleen lives in a world of constant change. Moving from city to city she says goodbye to one and starts to explore the next. Never two the same. She is a survivor. She keeps on going. Through trauma, including a plane crash, and other scary times, there is also humor. Kathleen was born in Asia and lived on five continents before she was eighteen. She takes you to Burma, USA, Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria, Switzerland, and Russia. She weaves in parts of each country she carries with her. Her family lives through a coup in Burma, student rioting in Colombia, two coups in Nigeria, and political unrest in Russia. Sometimes things are fabulous. Sometimes they are not. She is a Third Culture Kid, rootless and restless. As an adult she lived in Moscow for nine years during the 1990’s where she witnessed history in the making and a terrifying exit. Life is never boring.
Determination
Last night I watched the film “True Spirit” about Jessica Watson who sailed around the world solo, non-stop, at age 16. I would say that is determination. First of all, who wants to do that? It takes a certain mind-set. It was her dream to do it and she was able to succeed. It almost killed her but imagine how it felt when it was over. A huge high. At 16, I would image you spend the rest of your life trying to live up to it all. But she learned a lot about herself, life, death, and the sea. She will always have that experience. The film was quite moving. It is available on Netflix.
Another film I watched recently was “Lee”. It is about Lee Miller who was a highly sought after Vogue model in the 1920’s. When she left modeling, she picked up a camera and spent time studying with Man Ray in France and photographing her socialite friends. When the war broke out she was an established photographer living in England with her husband, Ronald Penrose. She became a war photojournalist for Vogue and managed to talk her way to the Front. Miller took thousands of photos and was one of the first photographers to enter Dachau. It all had a profound effect on her. The film covers a short period of her life but shows her determination to succeed in a man’s world. Kate Winslet does a good job in the starring role. It is available on Netflix.
For the TCK in you, I came across a couple of new books.
“Blue Feet Monsoon” by Cynthia Green. It takes place in post-colonial Singapore, Anoushka’s seventh country – Peru, Brazil, India, Philippines, Japan, Colombia and Singapore. Anoushka decides she really likes Singapore so she pretends to volunteer at the elderly ward of a hospital in order to find somebody to teach her to speak Hokkien. She thinks it will make her fit in to her new country. This kicks off a series of adventures. The book is fast paced and a fun trip through adolescent ups and downs. I enjoyed this fast paced book about change and movement.
“Between Worlds: An Expat’s Quest for Belonging” by Inga Aksamet. Inga has written several books about hiking, camping and travel. This is her memoir about growing up TCK. She starts out in Pakistan at age four. She crisscrosses the globe always returning to California between postings. She evacuates from Pakistan and Bangladesh because of wars. She searches for her own identity through all the changes and challenges of constantly being uprooted. In the end she finds her calling as an oncology nurse. I enjoyed this story of self discovery. As I traveled through Inga’s world, I could relate to her adventures and traumas having lived in Asia, South America and even Oakland myself. It sounds like it all worked out very well for her in the end. I recommend it.
Friday Photos
My postcard collection is done and I am back here at ExpatAlien.blog. I wrote a memoir about ten years ago and self published it. I recently decided I wanted to do better so I have re-written it and updated it and found a publisher and it will be rolling out pretty soon – Echos of a Global Life. Leading up to the great reveal, I have decided to launch a bit of a teaser. There won’t be tons of photos in the book but I have lots of photos. So I am going to feature random photos each week that pertain to the book with a short description. At least I’m going to give it a try. Friday seems like a good day for it. Friday Photos.
Here we go.
The 1950’s. Pyinmina, Burma.
I was born in Burma to Expat parents who were living on the campus of an Agricultural Institute. Top left is “Tigger”. My father always told people he killed the tiger but he didn’t. Back then it was a lot more common to find tigers in the area. If they were killing livestock or getting close to town, somebody would kill them. They are known as the Indochinese Tiger and are currently critically endangered due to poaching and habitat encroachment. They were originally found throughout Southeast Asia and in 1970 there were thought to be about 40,000 of them but now there are only about 200, mostly in Thailand.
I lived in Burma the first three years of my life and I enjoyed it.
Books Books Books
Lives and the Courage to Live Them: Thoughts of a Third Culture Kid Therapist by Dr Rachel Cason
Dr Cason is a British therapist who is also a Third Culture Kid (TCK) and caters to TCKs. In this book she touches on all the things TCKs celebrate and struggle with. Trauma, change, moving the furniture, resilience, loss, boarding school, language, relationship, balance. It is a very real and helpful book that is easy to read without a lot of professional mumbo jumbo. I highly recommend it to anybody with a nomadic childhood.
Africa in my Soul, Memoir of a Childhood Interrupted by Cheryl King Duvall, PhD
Cheryl moves to Nigeria with her family when she is eight. Her parents joined a Christian Mission and are sent to Lagos. Soon she is sent off to boarding school at the missionary school in Miango northeast of Lagos. The school is very strict and confining with no privacy and even her letters are censored. She has a difficult time adjusting. But when not at school, she takes every opportunity to soak up the sights and culture of this African country. She falls in love with it. She also lives through the start of the Biafran war and sees people gunned down in the streets. She struggles to come to terms with her family’s decision to move there, her difficult time at boarding school, and her return to the US. Even through all the heartache, I came away with a positive feeling.
The Black Attaché, Vignettes from a Life by JK Cheema
JK Cheema was born in northern India when India and Pakistan were still one country. She shares her loving memories of visiting her grandparents in a small village when she was a child. And the confusion when her mother managed to get them on the last train out before the border was closed on the newly formed Pakistan. As an adult she is accepted into a PhD program at the University of Michigan in International Development. From there she joins USAID and works in Burkina Faso, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Eritrea. She shares memories of each country along with visits to her own India. This book is a lovely stroll through JK’s life.
An English Woman in India
An Englishwoman in India, The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler 1828-1858
Edited by Anthony Sattin
Harriet wrote her memoirs when she was in her late 70’s. She was a Victorian woman and represented her class and period well.
Her grandfather and uncle were prisoner’s of war in France under Napoleon. Her grandmother and mother lived nearby for 15 years so the family could be together. After the battle of Waterloo, they were released and returned to England. That is where her mother met her father while he was on furlough from India.
Harriet was born in 1828 to a British military family in India. At 11 years old, as was common practice at the time, she was shipped off to England with two younger siblings to continue her education. When they landing in England, their clothes were so outdated everybody laughed at them. Her brother was immediately sent on to boarding school where two older brothers were waiting for him. She and her sister lived with a family they had never met before for about a year, until her aunt came to collect them. Her aunt was strict and cruel and Harriet hated every minute of her time there.
At seventeen she started her journey back to India to be reunited with her parents who she had not seen for 6 years. She traveled by steamer and by land until she reached Aden just off the Red Sea. The group traveling with her were friendly and she had a happy time. At Aden she received a letter from her brother-in-law in India and feared her sister was sick. It was worse, her father was dead. When she finally reached Calcutta, there was nobody to meet her. She saw her mother two weeks later only to discover that she was on her way back to England with the younger children. Harriet was to stay with another aunt and uncle who was serving the in Punjab Campaign.
At 19, she met and married Robert Tytler, a Captain in the British Army who was also a widower with two children.
This woman did not have an easy life.
On May 11, 1857, she was living in Delhi, eight months pregnant with two small children at home. That was the day of the Great Sepoy Mutiny. The “Sepoy” was the Indian soldier serving in the British Army.
Harriet writes:
“It is wonderful to think how unanimous they were, Hindus and Mohammedans, in the one object of exterminating the hateful Christian in India. On this occasion the Mohammedans and Hindus were one, their bitter antagonism to each other, which had always been our safeguard so far, was for the time overcome. The gullible Hindus, two to one in each regiment, firmly believed Prithee Rai’s raj would return and then they would be masters of India. The wily Mohammedans, who were using these poor deluded men as a cat’s paw, encouraged the belief, knowing all along that they would soon find their mistake, for the Mohammedan meant to reign by the edge of his sword, which would also be used to proselytize the poor idol worshippers.”
However Philip Mason notes in the Introduction: “Harriet, of course, like everyone else, has heard of the cartridges (smeared with pork and beef fat) but does not seem to have known that the original offensive cartridges were withdrawn (therefore confirming that the rumor was true). Like every other young wife in India at the time, she thinks that the Mutiny was a deep-laid plot, instigated by the sons of the king and spread by wicked Muslims who played on the fears of the simple gullible Hindus.”
Harriet ran for her life that day. She, pregnant, with her two children, 2 and 4 years old, eventually loaded themselves onto an already overloaded carriage and rode hard out of town. Her husband riding back and forth checking on other people. The carriage broke to pieces. They found another one, it also broke down. They ended up walking to the next outpost where luckily there was no uprising.
Eventually the British took back Delhi. Harriet bore 10 children, 8 of whom lived, and spent the rest of her life and expat in India.
What a great story!
Books off the Shelf
I read a couple of books this week and enjoyed them.
Girl Uprooted By Lena Lee
Girl Uprooted is a memoir about a woman who grew up internationally mobile. Her father was a Korean diplomat and they moved every three years. She lived in Korea, Malaysia, USA, France, Norway and went to University in UK. Not only did she have to deal with the constant moves with new schools, new culture, new friends, but she was also dealing with trying to uphold and relate to her parents’ culture and all things Korean. A true Third Culture Kid. It is hard enough to cope with all the changes but when your passport culture is constantly creating contradictions, it becomes hard to know who you are or what to do.
Lena Lee tried to be a good Korean girl and live up to her father’s expectations but she was not a product of his environment. She didn’t understand what made him tick. The culture he grew up in was very strict and almost oppressive. She was used to running around New Jersey doing the teenage girl stuff Westerners indulge in. When she goes back to Korea, she feels like she is in prison, constantly studying and controlled.
For me the best part of the book was her “aha” moment when she googled frequent moves during childhood and depression. I had a similar “aha” moment when I realized I was not crazy and not the only person in the world who had difficulty relating to my passport country. Moving is hard enough, but moving countries, cultures, schools, and languages can really confuse a child. Plus in some of her countries he also had the racism card to deal with. People have different coping mechanisms. Some are alcohol and drug abuse, some are god, some are sports, some are withdrawal.
As we get older and start to understand who we are and what it means to be a Third Culture Kid, it does start to get easier. Lena Lee eventually found her center and as she states in her book, writing her book helped her a lot. When I wrote my book I found it very cathartic.
This book is well written, easy to read and relatable.
Pick up a copy!
Another book I read recently was
Black Cake By Charmaine Wilkerson
This one was fiction about a girl who grew up on the “Islands”, somewhere in the Caribbean. It is really a mystery. The girl’s mother disappears when she is young and she is left with her father who is constantly racking up gambling debts. When she is forced to marry a rich man in order to save her father, the man drops dead at the wedding reception. She flees the scene and everybody assumes she killed him. From then on she is on the run looking over her shoulder. There are lots of twists and turns, some good, some bad. Some unbelievable.
It is easy to read and moves along quickly. I read it in one sitting. It starts out in the mid 1950’s and goes to present day. The girl’s father was ethnic Chinese and her mother was African. Apparently there were a lot of Chinese who settled in Jamaica and other islands. The Chinese arrived as indentured servants around the mid 1800s. In the 1960’s the Chinese owned land and shops but endured racial tensions.
The Black Cake is a traditional fruit cake made for special occasions. The recipe is included at the back of the book.
Trailing: A Memoir
There has been much discussion lately about the term “trailing spouse” and whether it is appropriate or even polite. It projects a sense of “other” rather than something that makes up a whole. I usually conger up a vision of a dog’s tail. Other terms being used are “accompanying partner”, “expat wife”, “support partner”. Expat Lingo says she had been called a ‘stakeholder at home’. I have used the term ‘world juggler’ before.
But in the end, whatever you call it, the trailing spouse is usually the support system, the glue that holds it all together. Sometimes the glue falls apart and life can be rough.
In Trailing: A Memoir by Kristin Louise Duncombe, things fall apart. Kristin grew up all over the world so when she met her Argentine husband, the thought of moving overseas didn’t seem so strange. Although she did have her reservations about putting her career on hold, she didn’t have a passion about what she did and had not clearly defined what she wanted to do. Her husband, a doctor with Doctors Without Borders was passionate about what he did and had no questions about what he was going to do. She was in love. She married him and went to Kenya.
Being a TCK (Third Culture Kid) myself, I also thought following my husband overseas would be no problem. Even though you have lived in many places around the world, the child TCK and the Adult TCK have different experiences and challenges. I had no support system behind me as we just up and moved. Kristin had a small “family” of doctors but it did not help much since most of them were single and always on the road. Her husband was gone much of the time.
On the other hand, I think she showed remarkable resilience. She found herself some work at a Nairobi hospital helping teens and eventually found a position with USAID at the US Embassy. Unfortunately the Embassy was bombed and she lost her job but by that time her husband had taken a position in Uganda. After having a baby, she finds a job in a small village outside Kampala. She never sees her husband and the marriage starts to unravel.
I found myself identifying with this book on several levels. I had a difficult adjustment when I moved to Russia. My husband was a freelancer. There were no benefits or perks. As soon as I landed I was expected to find a job and help with financial support. If found jobs mainly doing clerical administrative work but I also fell into a writing position for the American Women’s Club and was able to improve my writing skills and help other expat women at the same time. I edited and produced a newsletter that helped to build a community.
Everybody has a different experience when they live overseas. I knew couples who were both professionals in their own right. I knew women who moved around the globe on their own and met their husband along the way. One woman was a very successful diplomat and her husband did his own thing in another country but was able to work remotely. Some people take the time to write books. There is always something to do. I found my way and started writing and wrote a memoir.
The current challenge for international organizations is to find the balance and provide options for accompanying partners. With today’s technology, there are much more possibilities available.
Kristin’s happy ending was her husband accepted a position in Paris and she managed to set up a successful counseling practice working with expat families who are trying to cope with life overseas. After having gone through the worst of it, she now had all the tools necessary to help others in similar situations.Trailing: A Memoir is well written and engaging. It makes me want to know more about her. It is available on Amazon.com.
My Day at the FIGT Conference
Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland
Yesterday I went to the FIGT (Families in Global Transition) Conference. I had been looking forward to it for a while. It is a support group for expat families and third culture kids and they have a conference every year where people come together to share their work and ideas and provide information on resources available.
Anyway, I woke up very early because I had about a 45 minute drive and it started at 8 am. I felt awful. I had a scratchy throat, I was achy, I was spaced out. How could this be? A cold? I hadn’t been sick in years. Great! Well, that wasn’t going to stop me. I dragged myself out of bed, dosed myself up with pain killers and hit the road.
The conference was non stop, session to session, from 8 am to 5:30 pm. By the time I got out of there I was exhausted. I left right after the last session and while trying to maneuver downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, I must have take a wrong turn or not taken a turn or something because I was totally lost. I don’t have a GPS in my car but I do have an iPhone. I pulled over and tried to figure out where I was. For some reason I couldn’t get it to find my location. I must have been in a bad area because the maps were loading really slowly and I was not getting results.
So in a panic I called my son. Help! Luckily he was home and guided me to a place I recognized and I made it home an hour later. Needless to say, I went to bed early.
In spike of my set backs and panic attacks, I did have a great day. I met interesting people, attended sessions where I learned new things, and had that warm fuzzy feeling I always get when I’m around my fellow TCK’s.
Here are a few highlights.
The first session I attended was called:
Living Whilst Surviving – an Anatomy of Hope and of What Kept Them Going
Presented by Eva Laszlo-Herbert
This was a story of a family who faced great adversity during war in Europe, were separated, deported, jailed, sent to camps, and yet they had great resilience and managed to keep going during all of it, finding small things to make them happy. “They did not forget, they forgave. They did not say ‘Why me?’, they said ‘What can I do’?” They found ways to make things better.
She transitioned this to her current life as an expat in the Netherlands. The take away I got from this session was about the children. She commented on the expat children in The Hague. They are privileged, with nannies, good schools, all kinds of gadgets – iPods, iPhones, they have drivers, and travel the world. Yet, many of them feel isolated and unhappy. In some cases their mother is unhappy with her situation, living abroad, feeling isolated. This transfers to the children. Often her coping mechanism is to keep the children busy and away from her.
There should be more of a support group for both the wives and the children but nobody wants to talk about it. They feel guilty because they know they are privileged and don’t really have anything to complain about.
A friend of mine refers to these problems as “first world problems”. And she is right.
One thing Eva emphasized more than once was how damaging it is to over book a child. They are constantly busy with dance lessons, soccer practice, piano lessons, French lessons. They don’t have time to themselves. Time to think. Time to dream. Time to imagine. Time to just be.
I wanted to tell her about my son. Many years ago he took a pen that didn’t work and it became his weapon, his gun, his rocket launcher, his airplane, his truck. And all these years, he has spent hours with that pen. It is a joke now because if he loses his pen, we all have to panic and look for it. But it really doesn’t matter, because we can always find another pen that doesn’t work. He has had several.
Let them just be.
The second session I went to was:
In Search of Identity: Awakening your Authentic Self
Presented by John Grant Hill
This was about communication and specifically Neuro Linguistic Programming. Something I had never heard of. What I got out of it was that most of the things we do, we do out of habit. But we can choose to do things differently. So if we look at two different types of people who are trying to communicate with each other, oftentimes there is conflict because they are not communicating on an equal level.
For example, one person is “introverted” and one is “extroverted”. The introvert takes his cues internally. He is very sure of himself and knows what he likes and wants and doesn’t need a lot of external input – i.e. advice, terms of endearment, hugs. While the extrovert takes his cues from the outside and needs a lot of input in order to make a decision or feel good about himself.
If people understand these differences, they can learn to communicate with each other in different ways that reduce conflict.
A very interesting topic but it would take a while to fully understand it (in my opinion).
The third session was:
Unpacking Our Global Baggage for Creative Expression: Writing your TCK Memoir, Solo Show, or Essay
Presented by Elizabeth Liang
Elizabeth is an actress and writer. She performed a segment of her one-woman multi-character show about growing up as a dual citizen of mixed heritage in Central America, North Africa, the Middle East, and New England. If you live in the LA area, I suggest you go see her (see link). I could identify with most of what she said.
So that gives you an idea of my day.
Maybe more will come to me later…..
An Englishwoman in India
An Englishwoman in India
The Memoirs of Harriet Tytler
1828-1858
Edited by Anthony Sattin
Harriet wrote her memoirs when she was in her late 70’s. She was a Victorian woman and represented her class and period well.
Her grandfather and uncle were prisoner’s of war in France under Napoleon. Her grandmother and mother lived nearby for 15 years so the family could be together. After the battle of Waterloo, they were released and returned to England. That is where her mother met her father while he was on furlough from India.
Harriet was born in 1828 to a British military family in India. At 11 years old, as was common practice at the time, she was shipped off to England with two younger siblings to continue her education. When they landing in England their clothes were so outdated everybody laughed at them. Her brother was immediately sent on to boarding school where two older brothers were waiting for him. She and her sister lived with a family they had never met before for about a year, until her aunt came to collect them. Her aunt was strict and cruel and Harriet hated every minute of her time there.
At seventeen she started her journey back to India to be reunited with her parents who she had not seen for 6 years. She traveled by steamer and by land until she reached Aden just off the Red Sea. The group traveling with her were friendly and she had a happy time. At Aden she received a letter from her brother-in-law in India and feared her sister was sick. It was worse, her father was dead. When she finally reached Calcutta, there was nobody to meet her. She saw her mother two weeks later only to discover that she was on her way back to England with the younger children. Harriet was to stay with another aunt and uncle who was serving the in Punjab Campaign.
At 19, she met and married Robert Tytler, a Captain in the British Army who was also a widower with two children.
This woman did not have an easy life.
On May 11, 1857, she was living in Delhi, eight months pregnant with two small children at home. That was the day of the Great Sepoy Mutiny. The “Sepoy” was the Indian soldier serving in the British Army.
Harriet writes:
“It is wonderful to think how unanimous they were, Hindus and Mohammedans, in the one object of exterminating the hateful Christian in India. On this occasion the Mohammedans and Hindus were one, their bitter antagonism to each other, which had always been our safeguard so far, was for the time overcome. The gullible Hindus, two to one in each regiment, firmly believed Prithee Rai’s raj would return and then they would be masters of India. The wily Mohammedans, who were using these poor deluded men as a cat’s paw, encouraged the belief, knowing all along that they would soon find their mistake, for the Mohammedan meant to reign by the edge of his sword, which would also be used to proselytize the poor idol worshippers.”
However Philip Mason notes in the Introduction: “Harriet, of course, like everyone else, has heard of the cartridges (smeared with pork and beef fat) but does not seem to have known that the original offensive cartridges were withdrawn (therefore confirming that the rumor was true). Like every other young wife in India at the time, she thinks that the Mutiny was a deep-laid plot, instigated by the sons of the king and spread by wicked Muslims who played on the fears of the simple gullible Hindus.”
Harriet ran for her life that day. She, pregnant, with her two children, 2 and 4 years old, eventually loaded themselves onto an already overloaded carriage and rode hard out of town. Her husband riding back and forth checking on other people. The carriage broke to pieces. They found another one, it also broke down. They ended up walking to the next outpost where luckily there was no uprising.
Eventually the British took back Delhi. Harriet bore 10 children, 8 of whom lived, and spent the rest of her life an expat in India. She died in 1907 at the age of 79.
Photo credit: Richard Collier