TCA

The phenomenon of Third Culture Kid or, TCK has become an area of sociological study, especially appropriate at International Schools. When children are raised in a country different from where their citizenship lies, they are not really “from” their passport country nor from their host country. They are forced to develop a “Third Culture” of their own invention to live in.

What has not been studied in such detail are the adults who choose to live in foreign cultures. TCK’s have no choice; but what happens when an otherwise healthy adult generates a personal, “third culture”?

Let me describe one aspect of my own “third culture”: cleanliness. American culture is as inflexible as it is omnipresent – if an American develops a third culture, he is in for deep trouble. But if you relax and enjoy yourself overseas, these things develop themselves without you even realizing it. And it’s worse for kids than adults. Really.

I now have strong personal notions about what is clean and what is not; no one shares them with me. The germ theory of disease transmission lies at the heart of my strange notions. This prompts me to wash my hands often, and thoroughly clean my mouth and throat at least daily (brushing, tongue scraping, dental flossing and mouthwash). This accomplished, my whole world is considered clean. If not, another hand washing will always make it so. Good food (whole grains, fresh fruits and veggies, a little light meat) and lots of exercise and viola – expect a 120 year life span.

This concept of clean has worked for me in each of the four cultures I’ve lived in as an adult – though each tried unsuccessfully to impose its own cleanliness standards on me. My dogged individuality has not earned me any respect, but it keeps me out of the sick bed. The last day I remember taking off for illness was in 1980 when they pulled my wisdom teeth. In a submarine under the North Atlantic “clean” meant (for everyone else) having a washed uniform to put on, no matter how much grease was on your old one. Diesel smell was not considered dirty, since everything on board was drenched in it. In six years, never a watch was missed by me for illness. I ran long distance in every port.

In the rainforests of Costa Rica, clean meant mostly being unstained, though not necessarily dry. Each new day found me at my job for another six years.

The Western mind set is incredulous that one might go out in the winter without a thick coat – something that it considers to be the cause of sickness. It affirms that diseases fester in coffee stains. It relies on toilet paper to prevent the spread of fecal infection (though any paper company that claimed it did so would have its corporate buns sued off). It would rather kill germs than wash them off (though our skin was designed for the outer layer to dissolve into soap, not disinfectant). In my third culture, you can be clean without being anti-microbial. Living and working in inner city Philadelphia, you wouldn’t believe the money they paid for my unused sick and personal days.

During three years here in dusty Kabul, the local sense of clean seems to be more ritualistic than practical. Four days were missed to get engaged, but never a meeting skipped for sickness. Let me go wash my hands again. Register me as a pro-microbe yogurt eater.