A Childhood on the Hop.
I lived in 16 houses in my first 18 years of life. I did not like to say it because I seemed like a liar. My father was a doctor who worked abroad mostly for oil companies. Being capricious and having a severe case of itchy fate we went on a round the world rodomontade.
I was born in my actual country: Ireland and then moved to Libya, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Chad, France, Russia, Qatar, the US, and finally Oman before leaving school. To give me some stability I was sent to boarding school aged 7. There were always three countries in my life – Ireland where I am from, Great Britain where I effectively grew up and wherever my parents happened to be. This could be said to be the makings of an identity crisis.
A friend of mine named Marcus had a similarly peripatetic childhood. He was born in Jerusalem to an English father and an Irish mother. After leaving Israel he lived in London, Moscow, Cairo back to Jerusalem for a second time and Belfast. Marcus said that as a child who grows up around the world one goes one of two different ways. One either becomes a citizen of the world or one embraces one national identity even more closely. He opted for the later became a British nationalist, an ultra Tory royalist and Anglo-Catholic fanatic. He is now an Anglican priest and recently came out as gay.
When I was a tot it did not occur to me to object to my situation. I knew nothing about countries or identities. It was only when I was about 7 that I began to think something was amiss. I said to myself that as an Irish child I ought to live in Ireland and not in Saudi Arabia. Having said that I did to some degree identify with Saudi Arabia even though I was certain that I was not a Saudi and I could not even count the fingers on one hand in Arabic.
My parents were always raving about the splendour of Ireland. It gradually dawned on me that there was a mismatch between this rhapsodizing and the fact that they did all they could to put distance between themselves and the Emerald Isle. Now here is a revolutionary idea – if Ireland is so stupendous why not actually life there? This was the 1980s when unemployment was structurally high and taxes were higher. However, property was cheap as chips. As a doctor my father could have had a very good life there as did many doctors at the time. My mother had she been bothered her barney to work as a teacher (as she was qualified to do) would have had a decent life too. If Ireland was not such a tremendous country there should have been a little less euologising about it.
As I grew to adolescence I formed my identity as British and Irish within that. I came to reject Irish nationalism and see that there need be no contradiction between being Irish and being British. I chose to live in Great Britain as an adult not because I am not keen on Ireland but simply because all my friends live in Ireland’s neighbour.
Boarding school stretches one’s relationship with one’s parents. My parents are virtual strangers to me. That is partly owing to family rows though and is not solely attributable to me being packed of to school before I could tell the time. I was at school with my middle sister for three years and then she went to a different school from me. I was three years old when my eldest sister was sent away to boarding school.
Sending children to boarding school so young is bizarre. Why have children? It is said to make children more independent but in fact it renders them institutionalised. Boarding school in the 1980s was a much more austere proposition than it is now. This is before the internet. We were not allowed to make or receive phone calls except on our birthday. This is now illegal. I was allowed to watch telly on Saturday night only. Consequently I bereft of the major cultural influence of my generation.
Living as an expatriate child can cause the child trouble when they attempt to reintegrate into their home nation. For instance, I knew of a Canadian who grew up in Saudi Arabia. He moved back to Canada as an adult and had trouble adjusting to his own country.
It can of course work beautifully. An expatriate child can come to belong to the country where they are resident instead of going back to their ancestral nation. There is no right or wrong outcome.
I ask parents to be aware that there child has had a different upbringing from the parents themselves. My parents were decidedly lukewarm about the British identity my sisters and I have. They did not seem to appreciate the fact that Great Britain shaped us because my parents opted for us to live there.
I swore to myself that I would never live overseas not even for 6 months. However, I lived in Romania for 2 years and now I have started a 2 year contract in Azerbaijan. Yet still the Thames Valley is the centre of the universe for me. I pine for the British Isles more and more. I feel I am missing out big time. I have migrated for push more than pull factors. No, I did not grew up yearning to live in Azerbaijan. I am here partly for the dosh but I am also a refugee from the political correct oppression and insanely excessive bureaucracy of the Labour Government which Cameron’s Nottheconservative party have failed to reverse.
