TCK Journey Vol 1

What is TCK? Third Culture Kids are children who grow up in foreign cultures, outside their own native land. I am a TCKer, who grew up during the post WWII years, when our country became properous, transient, and shifted from rural to suburban majority between the 1950's and 1960's. This is the first book in a series that chronicles my life-long journey as a TCKer. I gave no thought to the fact other kids lived differently. As Navy dependents, my sisters, Mom, and myself were used to moving every year or two, when my dad transferred to another base, or ship. We moved at least a dozen times between 1952 and 1970; I attended four public schools and two DOD schools before graduating in 1970: Charleston, SC; Wilmington & Gastonia, NC; Norfolk, Virginia; Panama Canal Zone, Panama; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Kittery & Eliot, Maine; Groton, Connecticut; Conowingo, Maryland; and Kenitra, Morocco. Only now, 60 years later, are the effects of all those moves being studied in the field of Education, under the umbrella title: Third Culture Kids [TCK]. Learning Spanish in kindergarten in our DOD school in Panama, practicing my high school French while living in French Morocco (think Casablanca), has definitely affected my outlook. There was no Henry Higgins to ease the transition between my ex-pat world of mixing and mingling with hundreds of other international ex-pats in our daily living, then returning to my hometown land where life was quite different from the everyday norm I was used to. Between 2013 and 2014, a period of unemployment occurred after I made the mistake of turning 60 during my previous international teaching job in Kazakhstan. Their rule for foreigners [me] is: no work visas after age 60; as a result I became unemployed through no-fault. For 15 months. Then one day, out of the blue, an offer of employment arrived, from the director at The American School of Douala. In Grade 5, the class numbers were way high, so a new Grade 5 section was opening up and needed a fully certified, vetted, very experienced elementary teacher, yesterday. Even with the massive amount of negative publicity regarding Boka Haram and the Ebola scares, at age 62, I was pleased to accept the job and have this "once more into the fray..." opportunity. This Vol 1 describes some of the everyday events, people, and places during my first year in Cameroon as a Grade 5 classroom teacher at the international school in Douala.