Africa Lives in My Soul: Responses to an African Childhood

By Nancy Henderson-James

How do missionary kids really feel about growing up in Africa? This heartfelt book exposes their raw feelings about their childhoods in Angola and Congo from the 1930s to the 1960s. Variously called third culture kids, global nomads,or MKs, we share an overwhelming love for Africa along with a lifelong sense of not belonging in the countries of our parents.This book is based on a survey of adult "missionary kids" who grew up in Angola and Congo from the 1930s to the 1960s. Ninety people willingly wrote long responses to my questions, pouring out their joys and sorrows. Assimilating our childhood experiences can be a lifelong project. When few Americans understand what we went through, the relief of spilling it out to me, a stranger, was cathartic. As I received the responses, parts of my childhood that I had hidden or repressed came flooding back. I reclaimed Africa and my childhood. These responses gave me the courage to write my memoir, At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Henderson-James
• Release date: Aug 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301698219

Nancy Henderson-James

I grew up from the age of 2 until 16 in Angola, then a Portuguese colony on the west coast of Africa. I was the child of United Church of Christ missionaries. I attended a variety of schools, at home taught by my mother, at a small missionary kids' school on the mission of Dondi, at a British high school in the colony of Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and schools in the United States when the family was there on furlough. I graduated from Carleton College and obtained my Masters in Library Science at Pratt Institute. After a long career as a librarian, I wrote At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa. I conducted a survey of Third Culture Kids, mostly missionary kids from Africa, and compiled the responses into this book. I have published essays and chapters in Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing up Global; Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids; and magazines. I welcome contact with my readers.

Book preview

Africa Lives in My Soul:

Responses to an African Childhood

Nancy Henderson-James

Compiled, Edited and Published by

Nancy Henderson-James at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Nancy Henderson-James

Also available in print from

http://nancyhendersonjames.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Issues of Returning to North America

Chapter 3: Effect on Later Life

Chapter 4: Choice of Profession

Chapter 5: Religion

Chapter 6: Schooling Abroad

Chapter 7: Language Acquisition

Chapter 8: Family Life

Chapter 9: Living Abroad as Adults

Chapter 10: Childhood Friends

Chapter 11: Playtime

Chapter 12: Humorous Stories

Chapter 13: Traumatic Events

Chapter 14: Other Comments

Chapter 15: Missionary Parents’ Responses: Living Overseas with Children

Chapter 16: Missionary Parents’ Responses: Children’s Education

Chapter 17: Missionary Parents’ Responses: Family Life

Chapter 18: Missionary Parents’ Responses: Other Comments

Chapter 19: MK and TCK Survey

Chapter 20: About the Author

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Chapter 1: Introduction

The seeds of the missionary kid survey, conducted in 1993, were planted when I read Mary Edwards Wertsch’s book, Military Brats. Her book sent me on a journey to learn more about my own upbringing as a child of missionaries in Angola. It was her discussion of the idea of mission and how it infuses the family and controls its every decision that especially resonated with me. She also mentioned that military brats have a sense of rootlessness and outsider status; an ability to mimic and adapt; and a yearning to belong. To military brats the nonmilitary world seems narrow-minded; it doesn’t know about the world beyond America. As you read through this document, you will find that the respondents, both missionary kids and Foreign Service brats, bring up precisely the same points.

When I set out on the project, I was not aware of the concept of Third Culture Kids, but I was quickly apprised of it. I read David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken’s Third Culture Kids: the Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds. Their ideas gave my project a well-developed theory on which to hang the survey responses. Pollack and Van Reken define a TCK as a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK builds relationships to all the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background. At last, I understood why we tend to have very similar reactions to growing up overseas.

When the time came to tackle the job of interpreting the survey responses, though, I discovered that I needed to understand better my own life and relationships. The avenue to self was through writing a childhood memoir, At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa. That accomplished, I was ready to look at the surveys, especially after strong encouragement from missionary kids attending the 2005 Angola Reunion in Niagara Falls.

Who was surveyed? I compiled a list of 600 people from the database of TASOK (The American School of Kinshasa) and from contacts my mother, Muriel Ki Henderson, maintained. Some surveys came back undeliverable, but eventually I received 89 responses, a return rate of 15%. A return of 15% is a fantastic feat considering the open-ended nature of my questions. The rule of thumb is an 8% return on unsolicited surveys received through the mail. I think the high return also indicates a hunger to reflect on our common childhood experiences. One person noted that the survey helped him in his on-going effort to sort through his past and figure out how it affects his present life. Another said that to answer all questions completely would have required years of psychoanalysis! Several thanked me for raising the issues and undertaking the project.

The demographics of the group are revealing.

Of the 89 respondents, 53 (60%) are female and 36 (40%) are male.

Ages at time of survey in 1993 range from 23 to 68.

Seventy-five (84%) entered North America between the ages of 13 and 19, most having completed high school abroad. Considering the turbulent nature of adolescence and its task of working out identity, it is not surprising to find that the majority (66%) found entry to be difficult; of the rest, 16% found it easy, 4.5% thought parts were easy and other parts difficult, and 13.5% did not address the issue.

We are mostly from the United States (75%) with 18% from Canada. We have lived in 52 other countries of the world over the course of our lives. In 1993, 13 (15%) of us lived abroad.

Missionary kids account for 87% of the respondents, 8% were State Department junior ambassadors, 4% had parents who were businessmen, and 1 was in the U.S. Army.

Late in the process, I wrote to a few missionary parents and received 17 replies. They are included at the end of the MK responses.

As you read through the response excerpts, you will find remarkable similarities in the reactions to our childhoods abroad. I was struck by the fact that whether the respondents grew up in Africa in the 1930’s or the 1980’s, their feelings about life abroad were the same. This confirmed for me the reliability of the survey and its alignment with the Third Culture Kid theory.

Like the majority of respondents, my transition at 16 into American society was difficult. In the words of others, I felt like an alien. It was like being sent into exile. I did not want to be here. Now I realize that what I went through was largely a result of my own internal changes and reactions, but as a teenager I felt that being from Africa was too weird and strange for my schoolmates to comprehend. I read their lack of interest as a devaluation of my life. I became embarrassed to admit it and hid my African self. I worked at becoming a good American, ironically through the protest movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s: Civil Rights, the women’s movement, and the anti-war movement. I married an American man who had never traveled abroad, but was broadminded and knowledgeable about the world. We had two American sons. I rarely talked to them about my childhood. Perhaps I didn’t hide my African influences as well as I thought, however, because my adult sons have chosen careers that commit them, in almost missionary fashion, to bettering our world!

It was not until I started receiving the survey responses in 1993 that the African elephant in my house started stomping around, upending hidden feelings and churning up memories. I could no longer ignore it. I am indebted to the 89 respondents who opened up their hearts and souls to a stranger, told their truths about difficult issues, and gave Africa back to me. As one person put it, My childhood was a gift, a wondrous gift that nothing can equal, having a piece of Africa bloom in my soul, that will stay alive forever.

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Book Organization

This first publication of my survey results, produced for the 2007 Angola Reunion in Minnesota for United Church of Christ, United Church of Canada, and United Methodist Church missionaries, will consist of verbatim excerpts from the responses, with little commentary. I am very interested in your comments on this document. Please email me at [e-mail] or contact me through http://nancyhendersonjames.com.

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Chapter 2: Issues of Returning to North America

Was your return to North America difficult, easy? Did/do you look upon yourself as different? In what ways? How did you cope with the problems you encountered? Did other kids accept you?

The majority of respondents (66%) found entry to be difficult; of the rest, 16% found it easy, 4.5% thought parts were easy and other parts difficult, and 13.5% did not address the issue.

What does it mean to return? What is my identity?

As soon as the responses to my 1993 questionnaire started rolling in, I realized the wording of my first question was wrong. Most of us were not returning to North America. We were leaving Africa, being forced to leave our homes to go to the homes of our parents. Where would we belong? Who were we?

Missionaries would say things such as, 'Next year we're going home for eight months'. Or, 'next year we go home because we are retiring'. Who is 'we'? I wasn't going home. I was born in Angola; my friends were all Umbundu. The 'Missionary Syndrome' blinds those it afflicts from seeing the full implications of the facts of their children's place of birth, their de facto mother tongue, versus that which they sort of share with their parents. The kids are simply expected to fit into the missionary's grand design.

My return to North America was difficult and was against my will. I felt that Zaire was home and that I was being uprooted from it. People in the US seemed to think I was 'coming home' to live in California and I resented that notion. I loved Zaire and still feel that it is home and I'm merely residing in California. I have a difficult time answering the innocent question 'Where are you from?' because I don't feel like I can claim any particular town here but I don't want to alert people to my strangeness by saying I'm from Zaire.

"My return to the US as an underage college freshman was both difficult and lonely. I returned alone, to spend a summer with relatives I did not know well, who were dutifully expected to take me in. My one ‘achievement’ that summer was the secret pleasure of reading books that had been forbidden: The Grapes of Wrath and Lady Chatterley’s Lover."

The search for home is not just a search for Angola and for my parents but a search for something that has never been and cannot be—the experience of being unselfconsciously embedded in a culture—to be part of a people. From my birth I have been an outsider. I can never know in myself the experience of rootedness and nourishment that comes from being part of this land or this tribe or this nation. After many years of trying to find a place where I could fit in I realized there is no such place. This problem has affected my professional development and intimate relationships. Professionally I have resolved the problem by starting by own organization since I could not integrate myself into an established institution. In intimate relationships people spend most of their lives responding half-consciously to each other with inherited cultural signals and symbols. Being deeply acultural the lack of this domestic lubricant leads to misunderstanding, hurt and, too often, engine seizure. I find living in London more congenial than the US because it is a global city. There is always someone from Africa at parties or meetings, so I don't feel quite so alien. The dominant culture is also more introverted, which suits my temperament. Nonetheless I am acutely aware that I am not English.

Safe to say that the extraordinary transition from Africa (family and roots) to the US (single and uprooted) pushed me into facing parts of myself that otherwise might not have been discovered. Out of this comes a paradox, that my re-entry to America caused me such anguish and introspection, while my eventual return to Zaire ten years later resulted in 6 years of being in the center of the public's eye, known throughout the town of Kimpese and the surrounding countryside for my work at the community development center and as the best source of onion seeds, tools, and new ideas!

I really had this feeling of not knowing who I was. I didn't know myself at all; it was as if switching environments left me out of touch with myself. Out of the context and culture of my youth I felt at a loss. I existed in this limbo state for over a year, I knew nothing about myself; it even extended to my sense of morality. I had very little sense of right and wrong, everything was relative.

My trip home to Ghana four years ago pretty much took care of the ambivalence. I am now secure in my claim on Ghana as the country of origin, the place of the experiences that most influenced the shape and color of my life. This was deeply comforting to discover. Of course, it does little to give direction to my future. Though I am from Ghana, I am not a Ghanaian; I'm not even an African, really. Not a native, not an immigrant, not a visitor. I am the child of missionaries, who were at their posts for a necessarily limited time. I am still unrooted, without a community that I know how to (or care to) function in. I continue to find my past of little interest to most other people, and yet I seem determined to talk about it—and to make it the material of my art.

Feeling Different

Several respondents perfectly articulate the concept of hidden immigrant, which Pollack and Van Reken discuss in their book. Hidden immigrants look the same and sound the same as their peers, but their experiences make them feel like foreigners. The expectations of their peers don’t hold true; what they presume is not what they get and they can be unforgiving of unexpected behavior or ignorance. Meanwhile, the respondents also are unforgiving of their peers.

I am responsible for my actions in this world and I made my own way difficult at first by deliberately not fitting in and exaggerating my differences to my disadvantage. An example of this would be that I chose to wear my Congolese bubu shirts, call myself ‘Congo Joe’ and speak Lingala or French to most people that I encountered. All of this in West Helena, Arkansas, population 12,000 some odd. I might mention also that I was the bass player in a short-lived blues/rock band named ‘E Marijuana Unum.’ We were kicked out of more bars in West Mississippi, East Arkansas and North Louisiana that probably any band in history. That is not the fault of where I was brought up…that’s just plain stupid!

The point is that I WAS different. I had lived in a different culture and been exposed to numerous other cultures and I was more accepting of people’s differences that most of the people that I lived around. I had a girl friend once back in Arkansas who replied when I asked her why she chose to be with me out of everyone living in the house (6), ‘Well, you were the only one who would stop and think before answering when asked a question.’ I found that I was by far more mature than my contemporaries. I found that I had far far more life experience than most people my age. I found that I related more readily with older people, than my peers in North America. I still do look upon myself as different from many of the people that I encounter. I find that my differences are strengths rather than weaknesses. I think that I have made them so. When you are born, where you are born, are all accidents over which you have no control. What you do with your life is up to you, however!

Going into a large school, in the seventh grade, after the school year had started was difficult. I wanted so much just to be like everyone else and to blend in. I didn’t want the other kids to know I was from Africa or that my parents were missionaries. That was not to be, however, as they had heard ahead of time that I was coming and where I had come from. My clothes were from the mission barrel, and were not in style, I didn’t know any of the popular singers, actors, songs, etc. The other kids wanted to know what it was like in Africa. Did I ever see a lion? How do you explain to anyone what you life has been like up to this point, when it is so different from anything they know?

When I graduated from high school I wasn't excited because I knew I wouldn't be returning [to Zaire]. It was hard, it was sad. My parents were there for registration at college and I am glad they were. It was large and scary. I asked if I could attend the foreign student orientation because I felt like I was a foreigner. The most difficult thing was that I felt like a foreigner and I acted like a foreigner but I spoke perfect English. People expected me to know what was going on. I felt dumb. I have been here 6 years now and I have only met one person who was born somewhere else; I didn't find people I could relate to. Sophomore year was the worst one. Recently I met a Polish man and just married him and it doesn't surprise me that I married someone that was foreign. I can relate to him much better than I could an American.

I've always felt different from other Americans, but in general my differentness is good. I may not know much about Leave it to Beaver but I know a lot more about other cultures and countries. I encounter many non-Americans in my work, and I can usually understand them better than others. We returned to the U.S. when I was 15. I had fewer problems than usual for that age. School was too easy after TASOK, so I could focus on social things.

Returning to the States (and New Jersey, of all places) for 11th grade after two glorious years at TASOK was a bit stickier. It was harder to find friends, though I did make a few close ones. Fair Lawn Senior High School was like a large prison with its elaborate control of absences and tardies. Not only was I coming from a school of conscientious MKs, but also this was the year of Woodstock, man, and long hair and rebellion were rampant. After hearing that I was coming from Africa, the administration put me in a Government class for football players and other marginals. I ate lunch with the 'brains' and 'hippies'. At homeroom the fat 'greaser' punched me for not saying the pledge of allegiance. I was the one sent to the office for creating a disturbance. I was sent to the office another time for having spent the day at the public library to write a paper. The assistant principal told my father that this behavior could result in chaos if everyone did it. When college time arrived I looked west (well, mid-West). I think New Jersey had tainted my view of the East Coast possibilities. I found my soul mates at Beloit College in Wisconsin. Curiously, a large number of them came from the New York-New Jersey area.

I was very uncomfortable at college that first year. The people seemed so immature to me, so unaware of anyone or any life or country besides their own. Being raised in another country was as foreign as being raised on another planet to them. And I knew very little about who they were, and how their minds worked. I felt like an alien creature. I didn't understand their ways of socializing. I didn't want to be just like them, but I didn't want to feel so 'out of it', either.

When I came back here people thought I was weird because of having lived in Africa. After numerous taunts and rejections I learned to keep quiet about my origins. I didn't see myself as especially different but everyone else seemed to.

Returning to live in North America has never been easy. Every one of the four times I have returned to the US after living abroad for years has been traumatic; each time I think that I know what is awaiting me and that it won't be so bad this time, but instead it has been worse each time. It is not so much a matter of perceiving myself as different from everyone else; instead it is that I seem to view the world, life, God, schools, and reality in totally different ways from Americans-who-stay-in-America.

At school I recall a kid asking me where I was from and when I said Zaire, he thought a minute then asked, What state is that in? After that, I was embarrassed to tell anyone that my parents were missionaries and that I had grown up in Africa.

"Yes, I have felt different and will always. My thinking is different due to my background. I miss the close fellowship we had amongst the missionaries. I am proud of my background and am willing