Culture shock kids. I read this with my breskfast on the BBC News page and it touched me so I thought I would share. It’s comic strip presentation will appeal to kids and would be a really useful teaching aid, showing how hard it can be to take your family back ‘home’, when home is so different from home.
So, tell me, who do you empathise with? Are Amiir’s children spoilt? I wouldn’t have taken them home early, would you ?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24869363
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Wünsche dir einen schönen Mittwoch liebe Grüße von mir und Freundschaft Gislinde
You know how they say you can never leave your hometown behind? I believe you take it with you and hold it close but in this instance, Norway is now home.
It’s the eternal conundrum of immigrants – refugee or willing … I can’t tell you the number of Sri Lankan families I know who have the same dilemma. It’s so sad.
Really enjoyed this. Thanks for leading me to it.
Thanks for sharing. This is great!
This was a great post. Been a long time since I read a cartoon! When he said “I can’t GO in that toilet”, it reminds me when I was 13 and visited the Philippines with my father to meet my stepmother’s family. The toilet horrified me! Also, ants crawling through the rice horrified me. And it horrified me the family sat back as we ate – dad, me and the father of the household – until we were done. It is ESSENTIAL for kids to see the other side and yes, they are way indulged.
This was great!
So glad this had a happy ending, Gilly. It must have been hard for those children to adapt to a very different lifestyle and culture, even for a short while, but they should have shown more respect.
Sounds like a classic second-generation problem – the parents are Somalis living in Norway, but the kids, really, are Norwegians visiting Somalia. (Does that make them spoiled? Well, probably almost all of us who grew up in rich countries are kind of spoiled by Somali standards.) It also doesn’t surprise me that the oldest child is the one who decided to finish out the visit; judging by the drawings, she was probably old enough when they left Somalia to kind of remember life there, and would be interested in learning more so she could fit her hazy small-child memories with her almost-adult understanding.
I don’t think the kids are spoiled. There may not be a right age or time to go visit our family’s roots. I believe what’s important is that we all take the time to explain, to increase understanding of the differences in culture, history, generations. Their plight is common to most immigrant families.