How I dreaded this question when I was younger! It always meant going into far too much detail or turning the question around: ‘Do you mean where I was born or where I am living now or…?’

But now I relish it, as I find that more and more of my friends are in a similar position. We are what is known as ‘third culture kids.’

Personally, I don’t like that phrase. First of all, many of us are no longer kids (although we probably were when we first got exposed to foreign cultures). Secondly, many of the people I know are actually fifth or sixth culture individuals, that is, they operate within more than just two cultures (their parents’ culture and the culture of the country they are growing up in). I much prefer the term ‘global nomads’ (although that makes us sound a bit shifty and feckless) or ‘global citizens’.

James Gannon, 13, who has personal experience of growing up in several cultures, argues that it is a very different experience from growing up in a multicultural environment. There has to be more than just some influence from other cultures, it has to be complete immersion in one culture after another to the point where ‘the differences don’t matter any more and what becomes most important are the similarities’.

As I look around at the growing number of second-generation nomads that I am meeting, I think the definition needs to be expanded. First of all, many of these children are growing up in households where the parents were exposed later to different cultures, but have nevertheless wholeheartedly embraced them and can never go back to being monocultural.

What do I mean?

Well, a lot of us went to study abroad and met our life partners there (who were also from a different country). So we got married, settled in the country where we met or perhaps yet another country, and had children who belonged to perhaps 3-4 cultures simply by virtue of their birth.

What do I call the daughter of a French father, Chinese mother, who is growing up in England but spending her summers in France? What about the children of the half-Spanish, half-Australian mother and German father, whose household language is English, but are now living in Greece?  Maybe these children are even more immersed in the local culture than the children of diplomats and other expats, because they do not attend expensive international schools and grow up in gated communities. They have that immediate relationship with the local society, warts and all, that only having relatives and friends in that society can confer you.  And they spend quite a good portion of the year in other countries as well.

Perhaps the best way to test if someone is a global nomad is by asking the question: ‘Where are you from?’.  If they hesitate and launch into lengthy and complicated explanations, then they probably are.

So I tested this on my own children.  OK, they are only 4 and 6, but they weren’t sure what to answer, other than their current street and house number. I know they will never view Greece or Romania as tourists, but as insiders. They also feel a special attachment to France and Switzerland, where we lived for nearly two years. They are British citizens and speak English among themselves.

Oh, they may be restless and footloose later on in life… (Then again, they may crave stability and become really conservative.) But they will have choices. They will love several countries and be able to mediate between different cultures. They may be a bit stumped as to which national football team to support in the World Cup.  Then again – more choice, less chances of going out in the first round!. But I am pretty sure they won’t be brainwashed by nationalistic rhetoric and will always be able to see the other side in an argument.

That’s got to be worth something, hasn’t it?

… visions …

Today, let me share with you this profound essay written by Carlos P . Romulo.

Whatever spiritual creed you profess (if you do profess one), whatever your native dialect is, wherever you are right now, and whether you are pure-blooded or mestizo/mestiza… as long as your heart remains with the noble race of the Far East, you remain to be a child of the sun… a people set apart by its glorious past, its colorful present and its uncertain future…

Despite and in spite of everything, I hope that you will always remain to be proud of being a Filipino! And being proud does not end with the feeling of pride, but should translate into action – into a constant and conscious effort to uplift the lives of our dear countrymen and to work together towards creating a better future, a feat that we owe to future generations.

This is quite a long read but I do hope you will like it.

I AM A FILIPINO

by Carlos P. Romulo, former Secretary-General of the United Nations

I am a Filipino – inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future. As such I must prove equal to a two-fold task- the task of meeting my responsibility to the past, and the task of performing my obligation to the future. I sprung from a hardy race – child of many generations removed of ancient Malayan pioneers. Across the centuries, the memory comes rushing back to me: of brown-skinned men putting out to sea in ships that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I see them come, borne upon the billowing wave and the whistling wind, carried upon the mighty swell of hope- hope in the free abundance of new land that was to be their home and their children’s forever.

This is the land they sought and found. Every inch of shore that their eyes first set upon, every hill and mountain that beckoned to them with a green and purple invitation, every mile of rolling plain that their view encompassed, every river and lake that promise a plentiful living and the fruitfulness of commerce, is a hallowed spot to me.

By the strength of their hearts and hands, by every right of law, human and divine, this land and all the appurtenances thereof – the black and fertile soil, the seas and lakes and rivers teeming with fish, the forests with their inexhaustible wealth in wild life and timber, the mountains with their bowels swollen with minerals – the whole of this rich and happy land has been, for centuries without number, the land of my fathers. This land I received in trust from them and in trust will pass it to my children, and so on until the world is no more.

I am a Filipino. In my blood runs the immortal seed of heroes – seed that flowered down the centuries in deeds of courage and defiance. In my veins yet pulses the same hot blood that sent Lapulapu to battle against the alien foe that drove Diego Silang and Dagohoy into rebellion against the foreign oppressor.

That seed is immortal. It is the self-same seed that flowered in the heart of Jose Rizal that morning in Bagumbayan when a volley of shots put an end to all that was mortal of him and made his spirit deathless forever; the same that flowered in the hearts of Bonifacio in Balintawak, of Gergorio del Pilar at Tirad Pass, of Antonio Luna at Calumpit; that bloomed in flowers of frustration in the sad heart of Emilio Aguinaldo at Palanan, and yet burst fourth royally again in the proud heart of Manuel L. Quezon when he stood at last on the threshold of ancient Malacañang Palace, in the symbolic act of possession and racial vindication.

The seed I bear within me is an immortal seed. It is the mark of my manhood, the symbol of dignity as a human being. Like the seeds that were once buried in the tomb of Tutankhamen many thousand years ago, it shall grow and flower and bear fruit again. It is the insigne of my race, and my generation is but a stage in the unending search of my people for freedom and happiness.

I am a Filipino, child of the marriage of the East and the West. The East, with its languor and mysticism, its passivity and endurance, was my mother, and my sire was the West that came thundering across the seas with the Cross and Sword and the Machine. I am of the East, an eager participant in its struggles for liberation from the imperialist yoke. But I also know that the East must awake from its centuried sleep, shape of the lethargy that has bound his limbs, and start moving where destiny awaits.

For, I, too, am of the West, and the vigorous peoples of the West have destroyed forever the peace and quiet that once were ours. I can no longer live, being apart from those whose world now trembles to the roar of bomb and cannon shot. For no man and no nation is an island, but a part of the main, there is no longer any East and West – only individuals and nations making those momentous choices that are hinges upon which history resolves.

At the vanguard of progress in this part of the world I stand – a forlorn figure in the eyes of some, but not one defeated and lost. For through the thick, interlacing branches of habit and custom above me I have seen the light of the sun, and I know that it is good. I have seen the light of justice and equality and freedom and my heart has been lifted by the vision of democracy, and I shall not rest until my land and my people shall have been blessed by these, beyond the power of any man or nation to subvert or destroy.

I am a Filipino, and this is my inheritance. What pledge shall I give that I may prove worthy of my inheritance? I shall give the pledge that has come ringing down the corridors of the centuries, and it shall be compounded of the joyous cries of my Malayan forebears when they first saw the contours of this land loom before their eyes, of the battle cries that have resounded in every field of combat from Mactan to Tirad pass, of the voices of my people when they sing:

Land of the Morning,Child of the sun returning…Ne’er shall invaders, trample thy sacred shore. 

Out of the lush green of these seven thousand isles, out of the heartstrings of sixteen million* people all vibrating to one song, I shall weave the mighty fabric of my pledge. Out of the songs of the farmers at sunrise when they go to labor in the fields; out of the sweat of the hard-bitten pioneers in Mal-ig and Koronadal; out of the silent endurance of stevedores at the piers and the ominous grumbling of peasants in Pampanga; out of the first cries of babies newly born and the lullabies that mothers sing; out of the crashing of gears and the whine of turbines in the factories; out of the crunch of ploughs upturning the earth; out of the limitless patience of teachers in the classrooms and doctors in the clinics; out of the tramp of soldiers marching, I shall make the pattern of my pledge:

“I am a Filipino born of freedom and I shall not rest until freedom shall have been added unto my inheritance – for myself and my children’s children – forever.

*Just a footnote: The National Statistics Office (NSO) has projected the Philippine population to be at 92.23 million by 2009. As of the August 2007 census, we are at 88.57 million.