Being an expat child: not
always so easy!
I’ve been an expatriate for nearly five years now, and I’ve worked in international schools for near as long. In Cambodia, I taught young, local children while here in India, I’ve had the privilege to teach children and teenagers from all kinds of nationalities.
I’m a language teacher and when you teach languages, there’s one thing you do with your students: you speak. You speak about all sorts of things and not just lessons-related topics: it often gets personal and the more it does the better for their language skills. Obviously, their experience as expat children is a topic that comes back often. Surprisingly, they often address it in the form of... complaints!
Did I say “surprisingly”? Well maybe it isn’t so surprising when you come to think of it. I mean, I have chosen to move to Asia. At first I just travelled every now and then, until I realized I enjoyed being this side of the world so much that I didn’t feel like going back home. Oh, there are lots of things I love in France, but I guess there comes a time in life when you need a little change. So I made a choice, one that I’ve never gotten to regret so far. But those kids, in the end, they didn’t make any choice at all. Their parents did. Whether for the sake of their career or because they, too, fell in love with Asia and needed a little change, their parents decided to move to Chennai. The kids just followed and had little choice in the matter.
Am I saying it’s a bad thing for these children? Of course not: it’s a wonderful opportunity for them to expand their horizons, open their minds and discover things and people they didn’t even know existed. The only thing is... they’re not necessarily aware of it! I mean just go back to your younger years and try to remember how you felt every time a choice was forced on you. At this age, you don’t ask yourself what’s in it for you. You just groan and moan and reluctantly accept your fate regardless of all the reasoning provided by the adults around you.
This is not something I’ve theorized, this is the result of many conversations I’ve had with my students. They keep telling me how much they miss home, their clean, comfy home from a developed country, and all their old friends, and their beloved grand-parents. They keep telling me how dirty and hot India is, how they don’t get why there are power cuts and so much traffic and why people are behaving so “strangely” and so on... They see their home country as some heavenly place, forgetting all its drawbacks, and they often lack the multicultural awareness that would allow them to get a fair understanding of the Indian culture, or India’s economic problems, let alone see its many beauties.
This is what I’d like to change, and this is why I came-up with the Convergence Project concept.
Self-expression and
multicultural awareness
I’ve often been wondering, when I was chatting with my students about
their experience as expats, or about India: how could I help them enjoy their
experience in Chennai more? How could I help them realize that there’s so much more for them to understand and enjoy about it than they think?
The first thing, I thought, is to allow them to express their feelings in all freedom. If they dislike being here, there should be a place where they can just say it, without fear of being judged or disappointing anyone.
The second thing is to actually be able to tell a story: theirs! We know from travel diaries and expat blogs that a change of setting is an infinite source of inspiration for people who, otherwise, don’t have a tendency for writing or making pictures. I mean, just imagine a child or a teenager going home after a few years abroad: how many fascinating, unusual and funny stories to tell friends and classmates! Why wait to be home? Why not start here and now?
The third thing is to make them see, and understand, what they usually don’t get to see or understand. Thing is I’ve come to realize that expat children often live in a overprotected world: they have few opportunities to meet Indians or to go to other places than home, school, Phoenix Mall and 5-stars hotels on weekends. Maybe if they were to see more, and to discuss the specifics of the Indian culture and its economic situation with people who actually understand them, they’d be less judgmental about it.
The fourth and final thing is to help them realize that their own cultural standards aren’t universal. When you get to understand the logic behind cultural standards different from yours, you get to realize that different societies make different choices, and that the way of life you’re familiar with is first and foremost the result of such subjective choices. Multicultural comparison then takes a whole other dimension: it’s not about “better” and “worse” anymore, it’s all about who chooses what and why.
Art as a medium
It finally became obvious to me that there was a need for a project that would work on this particular aspect of life: expatriation as a youth, that such a project could help improve the life of dozens expat children in Chennai. But what shape could such a project take? There was only so much I could do in the context of language lessons; it had to be something else, something more!
It finally became obvious to me that there was a need for a project that would work on this particular aspect of life: expatriation as a youth, that such a project could help improve the life of dozens expat children in Chennai. But what shape could such a project take? There was only so much I could do in the context of language lessons; it had to be something else, something more!
Then it hit me: arts. Self-expression is good, creative self-expression is better. What I mean is that everyone can write a diary about their experience, but it only becomes enjoyable for others to read when it has a certain level of literary qualities to it. And one doesn’t have to write a diary. It can be painted, it can be photographed, it can be danced, it can be made into a movie. The point is that it should be made into something meaningful and beautiful enough for other people to want to see it! Different children have different sensibilities and predispositions: they should be able to choose the most suitable artistic medium(s) to explore the themes of personal experience and multiculturalism. The point is that it goes further than doing something: you get to show and share that something with an audience. Few people but the actors’ parents are interested in seeing a child’s play for example. But what if the child’s play (or film, or exhibition...) addressed something that touches more or less every expat family in Chennai? And what if the result of the children’s works could also be shared online, for their ex-classmates and family to see at home? Thus was born the Convergence Project!
It’s a good question! Obviously, I was not going to start a project about multiculturalism and tell an Indian child who’d like to join: “Oh, sorry but you’re not an expat, go home, thank you”. But I wouldn’t have to do that anyway. To some extent, I believe the Convergence Project can also be beneficial to Indian children, at least those who study in international schools or language institutes. There, they get to meet teachers and classmates with different expectations, different cultural values. This, also, requires some level of adjustment. This, too, is a personal experience that differs from being in a local school with only local people, who share your language and cultural standards.
Indian children who have lived abroad at some point can also find here an interesting space to speak about past expat experiences and how it feels being back home after a few years abroad. And Indian children whose families are planning to move abroad can join us and prepare their future experience as an expat child!
Creativity is an ambitious thing in itself. It’s an intimate process, one that requires personal guidance and a lot of dedication from the part of everyone involved. Our workshops and activities need to be adjusted to each child’s personality and age category. Obviously, primary students will need more guidance than teenagers, but all can come up with their own ideas! For that reason, our workshops will be conducted by highly skilled, professional teachers, people with experience in arts and getting creativity out of ordinarily non-creative people. Finding such teachers was my first purpose!
As for the bi-yearly events, well, that’s what I do. At least that’s what I used to do before I became a teacher: I was a cultural events manager and I was lucky enough to organize anything from concerts to exhibitions to huge festivals. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about events, it’s that in order to be successful, they have to be more than artists showing something to an audience. They have to be unique moments for people to meet and exchange around a theme or a concept. In that regard, The Convergence Project can, and will be more than a German International School project and a series of workshops and performances. It has to create social links in a community. It has to be a friendly opportunity for people to meet and share experiences. This is why I wish to invite other schools, language institutes and cultural associations to join the project as privileged partners. This is why I’d like our bi-yearly events to take place in venues other than our own and be attended by more people than just the involved children’s families.
I think the Convergence Project can, and will speak to every expat family in Chennai, to every Indian family with a child in an international community in Chennai.
In that sense, it’s way more than the sums of its parts.
Mr. Fred, head manager of the Convergence Project.
