Growing up in Haiti, my siblings and I had the opportunity to go to a small Christian international school (CLCS), taught in English, where many missionary kids (known as MKs) from different parts of the world also attended. While we were fully inundated in Haitian culture at home and throughout the weekends, during school, we had a taste of something different. At an early age, our exposure to the U.S through both the education system and our summer travel there, led us to cultivate an awareness and appreciation of American culture. While these experiences shape and shake you, it didn’t fully prepare me for the trials and rigors of being an international student in the US.

As I look back at my CLCS experience in Haiti, I cannot help but reminisce on the feelings the experience evoked. I am grateful to my parents, who patriotically decided to have all of my siblings in Haiti, but nevertheless chose for us attend CLCS both for its Christian values and for the American style education it allowed us to pursue. My experience was one of being caught in two worlds, worlds that interacted only when necessary; I was an American at school and a Haitian at home.

 There was an endless tug between my worlds as I went back and forth, and at points, the lines would blur.    At home my siblings and I would dialogue in English, despite still living and breathing our Haitian surroundings.  The MKs would go back to their North American, European, or African value systems after school, while my siblings and I and the other Haitian students would return to our Haitian homes. We lived in a dichotomy. I remember going to school in pants when we had a sports activity, but due to our societal expectations my mother would always making sure that I changed into a skirt before returning home, because after school we  walked by the Christian mission where to wear pants would be unacceptable.

Among our Haitian friends, we didn’t completely fit in enough because we were the kids that attended the “American school.” When we were in the US, among our Haitian-American cousins, we didn’t completely fit in either because we were the cousins from Haiti that spoke English well ,knew enough of the culture, but had a stricter Haitian upbringing, which didn’t always allow us to be “cool.”

I remember being stuck with my elder brothers in the US during the 1994 Haiti embargo and going to school in Florida for a short timeframe and doing relatively well in school but taking time to socially fit in.

For an international student this experience is unique.  Whether working through getting a visa  to financing your U.S education, this is only a fragment of the experience. As an international student born and raised in Haiti, it was while attending school in America,  when I realized that there were differences between how I perceived the world and what others’ perceived of the world.

 Maybe I was just too naive, but somehow I guess I took for granted my acute awareness of many cultures. I thought that it was normal to be aware of cultures and differences. For the first time in my life I had people asking me questions like: Where is Haiti? Is it in Africa? How come you speak English so well? Hmm, you don’t sound Haitian? Aww, you’re from Haiti, I hear it’s very poor there – how was life like for you? It took me a while to realize that my culture and experience, which I had assumed that everyone was aware of, required some major explaining for many.

 I also had to understand what it was like living away from my home in Haiti and integrating with the American culture while simultaneously learning to keep and respect my own nature. I wasn’t just on vacation and couldn’t just dismiss the differences and/or misunderstandings and I wasn’t just reading about U.S. history in a classroom - this was real life , in a real culture where people had different understandings of my culture and theirs and me vice versa.  Did I ever get it 100% right? No, but I think going through the experience of being an international student , as many would attest, is learning a lesson of a lifetime, expanding your view of the world, and reconciling the differences between your beliefs and experiences:

·         From dealing with roommates with different backgrounds,
·          To experiencing snow for the first time, to missing Haitian food and wishing you could be home,
·          Navigating two cultures, describing things in cre-english (mixture of Creole and English) without even realizing it,
·          Becoming too American for your parents but still being too Haitian in many ways,
·         Being in awe of the questions asked of you then somehow finding the “right” or fitting answer, celebrating your culture at international student activities,
·         Sharing your experience with others that genuinely want to learn about your culture, dismissing ignorant comments,
·         Learning about the American culture through the eyes of people from different backgrounds and experiences,
·         Trying new things,  

and finally, just appreciating the experience as a whole.

-Sophia

Just as children subconsciously manipulate spoken words at times, rendering them incomprehensible to the untrained ear, growing up my friends and I fêted Kre-English. What is Kre-english you may ask? It is a hybrid of languages combining words and idioms from French, English, occasionally Spanish if you’re lucky, but especially Kreyol. It uses many English words and expressions. It is informal and can be considered a dialect of sorts-a dialect  which our parents fought with us daily over. Of course, as parents, they aspire for their children to be able to efficiently and correctly express themselves in languages; as parents they are always protectively seeking to correct and better. Unfortunately they missed the point: We had found a way to fuse both of our worlds!  We had created a safe place where we could understand whom we were becoming by constructing our own language, one that fused our disparate realities into a clear whole .

 “Globalization refers to the widening, deepening and speeding up of global interconnection, " an assertion which, begs further elaboration.  Swedish journalist, Thomas Larson states that globalization is “the process of world shrinkage, of distances getting shorter and things moving closer.” It is a movement wherein integration is fostered and development is transparent internationally. On an ever globalizing world, it becomes simpler to analyze ones changes, perceptions, and origins.

I am a product of globalization. It has brought me insight, fluidity, and yet also added perplexity. It keeps me infinitely curious of the world around me, propelling me to new allegiances within broader networks of cultures and identities, connections that would have previously been impossible.  While my principal influences are rooted in Haitian culture which in itself is a “boullion” (a local soup, prepared as a stew which usually includes meat and seasonal vegetables, & thick noodles) of sorts,  a compilation of behaviors, beliefs and dogmas characteristic of a number Europe, Africa, and Native American societies, I am myself now a part of a more global “boullion”, one whose ingredients come from a limitless mix of spaces and places. 

I grew up in a country entrenched in a culture that was only partially my own. And I say this because throughout my life I have always identified with more than one culture. 

While my parent’s roots are predominantly characterized through their Haitian identity, they decided upon my conception that I should inhabit more.   I was born in the United States and grew up in Haiti. They saw opportunity and chose to seize it. As a tiny girl they enrolled me in one of the only American accredited institutions our country had to offer. This scholastic establishment afforded me the opportunity of an education which complimented not only academic expectancies of the country I inhabited but those which of wider world.  We were by definition a third culture kids, children who grow up amongst many different worlds.

In the early 1950’s, American researcher, Ruth Useem coined the term third culture kid or TCK  “ referring to children who accompany their parents into another society.”  I had teachers with both a local and international understandings of issues, an experience which afforded me the occasion to cultivate an attitude of curiosity. My classmates, while some where locals, many more had affinities to cultures and peoples which far differed from my norm. This mélange of truths, realities, and lives lived opened my core to the vast possibilities of human experience.  This opening , was also a loss of innocence as I thought would never find a culture to singularly call my own.

My upbringing became an elaborate tapestry of truths, values and behaviors . As I grew into myself, I started to understand the significance of my peculiarities, learned traits, openness and curiosities. But where do my affinities lie? If you were to ask me who I am, sometimes I can’t help but smile. I am Christina Victoria Jean-Louis.  What does this woman carry with her?  There is really so much to me. I am Haitian. I am American. I am curious. I am creative... the list continues. 

But which of these facets make up my core identity? As I walk through the streets of Port-au-Prince in many circles, I will always be the “blan.” (white/foreigner) while in the state, always labeled as the Haitian-American. Will I ever be Haitian or American enough? For a long time I believed this lie.  For a long time I struggled with developing a sense of belonging, commitment and attachment to any culture. This toyed with my self-esteem and identity.

I recently came to the realization that I have been asking myself the wrong question all along.  It was never about if I was enough, it was always about embracing my multifaceted being. I am cross-culturally competent; a citizen of the world. Those who identify with more than one culture know exactly what I mean.

 Taking the best of each of these cultures, values and truth to better myself and the world around me is what we are walking towards. At least that is what I believe. Limiting myself to the constructs and conceptions of others is crippling.  It keeps me from connecting with others, cultivating my curiosity, and embracing myself.

-Chrivi

I am rooted deep; deep in the depths of a place that is blind to light and deaf to whispers. That is where I am. Rooted in a country stricken with eroding, infertile mountainsides of loose dirt, whose fingers cling for dear life, where my heart’s lungs breathe effortlessly. Sometimes I wonder, how any life has taken root, in an environment such as this? How could it have born fruit and even nourished the world? But this life, my life did begin here. So many lives have been lived here and so many of lives have been able to thrive here.

Miracles were daily; abundant. The little things, which are taken for granted in the metropolis that I now call home, are what people shout about, what people Facebook about. Amazement and wonder at the ability of humans to create and innovate were commonplace because the spirit of creativity, God's spirit to make a way out of no way, breathed life into that earth, invigorating it and sowing up gifts and talents that I had the privilege to witness.

Things like playing: 
         "Rosle", the Haitian equivalent of jacks, using goat bone knee caps instead of packaged ball and plastic x. 
           Poking a hole out of a mango to now create a natural Popsicle that allows you to suck the sweet nectar without                  dirtying your shirt, 
            The bottle and can openers made of machetes, old knives or even jaws clenched and snapping up tops. 

Those are the images of innovation and creativity that till this day never cease to amaze me. Those are the my anchors.

From the outside looking in these roots might seem depleted, making toys out of food scraps, or making a note worthy event out of a walk around the block and calling it “promenade”, but for me these have been a testament to the qualities that I cherish the most about the island that sustained my young life. My root caps pierce deep, the barren top soil forcing them to gravitate further into the earth to find nourishment, where others see death and despair my roots find life. It's the flexibility of these roots to bend and twist with the terrain, to deep further than others, that has made me who I am. A season of drought does not rattle these roots for they know where the last droplet of rain is hidden and where the secret waters reside, they will sustain me until the floodgates open again.

There is water there, deep beneath the surface, between the crevices and cracks of the thirsty earth. There is strength. A secret treasure lies there that only a few find and even less cherish. Once you look past the surface and start to see what these roots have latched on to for life, one notices that that roots enriched by that soil have no other choice but to intertwine and connect with the roots of others; others who are there as well searching for life. It becomes roots on top of roots. One root begins to weave into another, networking and interdependently existing, creating a nest that cradles life.

This is my mother. I am her daughter.
 -Melinda