Takunda Muzondiwa is a cross-cultural kid born in Zimbabwe, who performs spoken word poetry as a way to express her confusion about her cultural identity. In this video she performs a poem as part of her speech at the Race Unity Speech Awards from 2019.
“Yesterday I was African; today I am lost.” ~ Takunda Muzondiwa
Run of the World is an original song written by Hannah Mathews and performed by Hannah and Moriah Mathews. Hannah and Moriah are TCKs, and this song is about the mobility and transition of an international lifestyle, and how it impacts an understanding of “home”.
Lyrics:
Run of the World
Will you hold on to me
When my soul is giving up?
Will you stay by my side
When my mind slides past midnight?
And I know that I am asking
For more than I can give
But I’ve never had enough
To settle down
Cuz I’m on the run from something
But I don’t know what
Like a hound from hell
Baying on my heels
And I never get away
But it never catches up
I keep letting go
And it keeps me moving on
Will you whisper in my ear
That the world is all the same?
Will you hold my love for ransom
If I choose to walk away?
And I know that I’ve been traveling
Far and farther away
But it seems now that I’ve gone
Nowhere at all
Cuz I’m on the run from something
But I don’t know what
Like a hound from hell
Baying on my heels
And I never get away
But it never catches up
I think it’s using satellites to trace me
Maybe you could try that
Maybe it might work
All I ask is if you find me
That you help me find myself
Cuz I’m on the run from something
But I don’t know what
Like a hound from hell
Baying on my heels
And I never get away
But it never catches up
I race for greener grass
But all the earth’s the same garden
I never get away
But it never catches up
Maybe I could call this home
After all
More videos from Hannah and Moriah
“Growing Up Global”, a short documentary made at Mont’Kiara International School.
“This documentary has been made with passion and determination to give all those who struggle with their identities hope. Hope to find themselves. Hope to better understand who they are. No matter how lonely someone feels, it’s important to know that you are not alone and that there are other people feeling what you’re feeling somewhere in the world. It’s been a dream come true working on this project and we are very grateful for those who supported us.” – Ana Hummes Ota
Where do I belong? What is my culture? Where will I end up? Where is home? These are some of the questions that weigh on the minds of our modern day ‘Third Culture Kids’ (TCKs). Students attending international schools around the world have faced the challenge of assimilating into unfamiliar environments, making new friends, and learning local customs.
All of this sounds glamorous, but being a TCK has its challenges. This short documentary film highlights some of these challenges; it also sheds some light on the fact that if you are a TCK, you are not alone. The brainchild of a Mont’Kiara International School student, Ana Hummes Ota, Growing Up Global is a wonderfully balanced documentary that takes into account the lives a handful of students who recognize themselves as TCKs. Produced in collaboration with Mont’Kiara International School and a Portuguese journalist Madalena Augusto, it is a documentary that is bound to open the eyes of many viewers to the lives that these young global citizens lead.
Growing Up Global was premiered on Friday, August 30, 2019 at Mont’Kiara International School.
Music: “Where is Home” by Elliphant feat Twin Shadow.
Special thanks to Lisbon Works and Madalena Augusto
“What are you? I can’t even tell you how many times I had to answer that question in my life. And not once did ‘Vaughn Thompson Jr.’ seem like a good enough answer. Man, sometimes it didn’t even seem like ‘human’ would suffice. So now I just say, ‘I am third culture.'” ~ Vaughn Thompson Jr.
Watch more videos by Vaughn here
See other TCK poetry videos here
It’s barely dusk as we land,
fireworks bursting confetti
beneath us, covering over
the tidy patchwork farms.
He asks if the celebration is
for us – no, it is a holiday you
really ought to know, the
celebration of your country’s
independence. But you know
another date for that. The child
behind us wails, and her mother
shushes her, murmurs soft words
to say we are almost out now.
We trudge like lines of ants from the
village, clutching our dusty things
in tired hands, following whoever
is in front of us, hoping they know
the way. The line splits. We hover,
indecisive. They examine our blue
books and send us left with smiles
like we’ve gotten passing marks on
the maths test; the screaming child and
her mother have green and go right.
The gate-keeper stares bored,
wants to know if we have been on
any farms recently. We laugh. He
sprays us disinfected, showers away
the disease of our arrival, sends us
onward into the July night with stars
too different to recognise. I pull up
my trousers, re-buckle the belt we bought
a week ago in the dripping heat of
market, with the brightly sweating mother
yelling at her toddlers while we tried
to barter. The doors open like voodoo in
front of us, and the wall says welcome home
with the same confetti colours.
Seven years seems like seventy
Each crisp breeze was glowing
Singing everything from birds in trees
To lions guarding young cubs on plains in breezes
Beating to a rhythm of a tribal drum
I danced underneath a crying sky
As we chanted our glowing style in feet
Dripping in moonlighting
Under intimacy of tribes wearing
Little other than swinging skirts
Made up of plants beads
As beady blowing glow lit lamps
All went down as the sun goes low
We rattled our cups
A malty red wine brewed as stewy smells of aromatic scents expelled
Alongside an African rice hot spicy spread
Along came the moon god
As we all stamped out our other life woes
Africa breathes deeply inside my soul
its diversity greater than the oceans
thoughts of its soil stir up my emotions
as my memories take over control.
South Africa’s vast beauty
feelings of forever on duty
whether in the Drakensberg mountains
hiking or enjoying fountains.
My heart overflows with wishful notions
of a holiday to a game reserve
peacefully the animals we observe
’til we see some exciting commotions.
Recalling the fish eagle’s distinct cry
and giggling Malwaiian children waving goodbye
burning our feet on the sand at the great Lake
the mighty Boababs our dreams awake.
To hear a lion’s loud roar
or an elephant’s rumble
God’s creation makes you humble
experiences one will forever store.
Dearest Africa runs through my veins
on my lips she always remains,
the place i run to behind closed eyes
she is the world’s most neglected prize.
To Africa i’ll always be devoted
little melanin, yet still her daughter
daydreams of her, my soul water
her essence adored and noted.
See more of Michelle Campbell’s poetry
Dry season has come to Nkor at last,
the smiles on our faces
says it all.
Early, before the sun wakes up and yawns,
and wonder what day it is.
We drag our dusty feet,
deeply smeared by oil from last nights meal,
through the wet waiting dew,
into grandma Beri’s cornfield.
everybody is present,
everybody is singing,
the birds are whispering,
the children are dancing,
Their cane baskets waiting to lift
the days harvest.
A sight of joy and singing.
Our women wrap their fingers round the maize plants
Snatching and Ripping,
Our men fill their basket,
lifting and carrying,
running like warriors home and back.
Before you know it its twilight,
its time for feasting,
the harvesters grind the goat meat
between their Molars,
Flushing it down with kegs of palm wine.
Grey-blue air sweeps the porch clean
with the force of a continent behind it;
Africa’s breath, green and wild and wet
and I am small standing here, cold
in my soaked skin, embracing the weight
of this whole world against my heart.
My days here are numbered, just a small
handful left to drip out of my fists and
then I will be gone; gone like the dust
of the harmattan in July or the mangoes
in January, and the rain will wash away
every footprint I left as if it never was.
Clean bird-song rings out to welcome
the sunshine, whistles of hopes that
never died, and I huddle into my hoodie
with every moment burned onto my skin
so that I will never forget the taste of the
wind, the power of the water, anything.
Three weeks later when I touch
down to vivid grass and cold white air,
the droplets on the window pane will
resound lost echoes as loud as thunder,
and I will trace my own handprint
searching for the map of what I’ve lost.
Kuma calls across the rain-drop dust
overlayed on tarmac predictions, and
Pafode answers sharp lightning bolt facts; I
speak this language quiet in my whole
breath as loyal as a continent, but we all know
that in the end no village could ever be mine.
In Maforay tonight
it is raining
pounding splatters on a tin roof
and the dark is warm wet barrels
full of hopeful promises
that we will plant in the garden
tomorrow
In Reading tonight
it is quiet
cracked sidewalks lining houses
and the dark is yellow paned glass
full of cautious doors
that don’t ever open for
strangers
My soul sleeps soaked
in Maforay rainy season
My body breathes blasphemous
in Reading summer heat
and i am nowhere much
{I’m disintegrated tonight, divided between places where I don’t belong.}
The tree today is supple and heavy
laden with the weight of too much rain
but where you are the sun is an
Egyptian god, relentless in his dominion
If I can carry this sunburn
across the Sahara skies
could I bring back my hands
cupped full of water?
Life never works the way I
want it to
and neither do you
oh Africa, with your back turned to me
Once I was yours
now I am a lost memory
swinging slowly in these trees
that are not the same at all
{and its a constant reminder that my world is small – small in the millions of miles}
“it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you”
I once had a friend
just black enough to be called
n****r by strangers in Alabama
but too white to be mistaken
for Senegalese
She left Cape Town years ago
but she’s still tasting the
warm salt of Africa’s ocean
in her dreams
and she told me
even though winters in Minnesota
are bitter cold
they never numb her longing
My brother, black as the dirt
his mother farmed her whole life,
black as the silence about his
missing father, wrote me a letter
from the psychiatric
hospital where they put him, telling me
that he feels like he is losing
his whole self in a war against himself
and he doesn’t know who he is anymore
I replied that California
is where people go to get lost
not to find themselves
Go home, my brother
you are a prince in your own land
though the doctors here have
named you psychotic
To the lost boys of Sudan
I too have watched my workplace
throw out food, and I too have done
the math of how many people
that could’ve fed, and I too have wept
for the stories I cannot tell,
the people who do not know how
to care or even understand
Two years ago I watched
a little white girl
pack up all of her things
and get on a plane to Sierra Leone
but she was too young to know
what she had gained
and what she would lose
or how mirrors never tell
enough of the story
I have never met a land
so alluring as Africa
I have never known a people
so full of yearning
as the lost souls of Africa
Today it is a cool and grey afternoon
in south-east Pennsylvania
and I am gathered with a crowd
of black boys, laughing at each other
in Swahili, wearing skinny jeans and
Nike sneakers while they pore intently
over their English homework
They are too new to know yet
how much they’ve lost
and I will not be the one to tell them
{Opening quote is from “Africa” by Toto}
Why would you go back
she asks
Isn’t life better here
i smile
Depends what kind of better
Financially
she nods
i shrug
I guess so
but some stuff matters more
her eyes are intent
above the rim of her mask
but i can’t think of how
to explain
the warm freedom of Africa
grey-green rain
i remember
heavy mountain humidity
mango juice sticky
palm trees bent wind
smoky night on red gravel
dust and dust and dust
ashes on the breeze
hunger boiling in pots
whispered songs
starch stiff in the schoolyard
stars enough to bathe in
hot breath sweaty
bus tilted in red mud
roosters’ indignation
choking silt water
bare feet on firm dirt
baoba fuzzy sugar
glass soda straws
ice cream wet plastic
wrinkled skin rough
hope enough to taste
she is waiting
my tongue is wet
full of colour and memories
but no words
red dirt soles
naked in afternoon sunshine
the asbestos dust
hooked to my left lung like a birth mark
knee deep in this man made lake
awkwardly wrestling a foreign first tongue
sugarloaf mountain peaks
outside our window, I will
climb her tomorrow I promise
go into town in a good shirt
you wear the new dress your
mom sent when she asked —
are you happy with her, yet?
I could have sworn you would
leave then, curse me, call old
friends, smoke two packs of
cigarettes, take the car to the
river edge where we met in
the muddy bed once.
I never said you should come
back, I folded your things in a
suit case at the door with a
note I wrote I am less than
enough to satisfy wanderlust.
you said those are my father’s
words, my mother’s curse, the
sound a door makes as it closes
is physics not proof everyone
leaves you.
I leave this city
with her angry barricades to you
I do not want
these humid summers
her dull sunrise doused in grey
you keep the drunken streetside arguments
for your 2 a.m. lullaby
I leave the east coast
with her tired history to you
I do not want
these hurried movements
her densely packed den of strangers
you keep the frigid winter coastlines
like a still life portrait pinned to your wall
Third Culture Conversations is a talk show about third culture kids: people who are raised in a culture that is different than the one their parents grew up in. We will explore identity, rejecting and embracing parts of our culture, and the struggle to fit in when you don’t feel like you belong. Hosted by Esteban Gast, Leslie Ambriz, and Manolo Lopez, on the SoulPancake channel.
