When John Wasilwa was asked to urgently see the principal of a school that two of his sons attended, the Kenyan-born resident of Annapolis in the American State of Maryland was livid that he had to take time off work in the middle of the day.
Worse still, he had not been told why he had been summoned. But as he drove in the pouring rain, he thought to himself that perhaps Tony, his 14-year-old son, was once again involved in a fight. The boy had previously reacted angrily to racial banter from some of his schoolmates.
But when he finally got to the school, Mr Wasilwa’s initial shock changed to amusement when he was told the administration was concerned about pictures his sons had posted on their social media accounts chronicling their recent visit to Kenya.
“When we travelled home to Matunda (near Kitale) to attend my father’s funeral, my sons took a lot of pictures using their smartphones and shared these with their friends on Facebook, Instagram or whatsApp back in the States,” Mr Wasilwa told Lifestyle last week.
KILLING DINNER
The problem, according to the alarmed school authorities, was that images of his sons assisting villagers to slaughter and skin a bull were considered too “disturbing and traumatising”. Besides, the pictures were adjudged to show an animal being “abused”, something the teachers took so seriously that they reported the matter to the school psychologist to determine if Mr Wasilwa’s children or any of the pupils who viewed the images needed counselling.
“According to Bukusu traditions, as the eldest son, I was required to honour my late father by slaughtering a bull near his grave on the day he was being buried. My sons, who were born in the US, found this very interesting and, apart from lending a helping hand, they also wanted to show off their African experience to their friends in America by taking pictures of various activities,” he said.
So serious was the matter that the school was considering asking the Maryland State authorities to investigate the “abuse”. Not even Mr Wasilwa’s elaborate explanation of the cultural circumstances entirely convinced the school administration that believed that, just like in the US, the slaughtering of animals should only be done in abattoirs and away from children’s view.
“I was saved by a Kenyan teacher at the school who was called to verify my story. It was only after he told them it was a normal practice to slaughter animals at home in rural Kenya — including in the presence of children — that they let me off the hook. In fact they also found the whole incident amusing,” he says.
A similar situation played out in the UK when Mr Sam Ochieng and his wife Perez brought their UK-born children to visit Homa Bay County. One of Mr Ochieng’s aunties gave the children a cock that the they developed a liking for, especially because of the crowing that they were hearing for the first time in their lives outside the TV or movie screen. In fact, Mr Ochieng would later realise that the children considered it a pet just as they would a dog or a cat.
“One day we slaughtered it for supper,” recalls Mr Ochieng. “But apparently the children did not know that what they had eaten was their favourite pet.”
Their reaction after being told was to stop eating chicken from then on.
“We live in the West where they have never heard or seen animals being slaughtered. They just eat without knowing the process of getting the meat on the table,” he says.
Like thousands of people born and bred in Kenya but who are now bringing up their children abroad, Mr Wasilwa and Mr Ochieng recognise that what may be considered normal back home is often less so in their adopted countries. This, in some instances, provides multiple parenting hurdles.
Commenting on the cultural divide in raising children in Kenya and the US, Ms Judy Karanja, a resident of Darby, Pennsylvania, admits there are significant challenges that Kenyan-born parents have to navigate.
CHILD ABUSE
“Life in the US is very different from what we are used to in Africa. What is considered taboo back home in Kenya is perfectly normal here and vice-versa. For instance, I have learnt the hard way that America is not a good place to bring up children,” she told Lifestyle.
Ms Karanja says she is involved in a court case to keep her two children — a daughter, 10, and a son, 8 — who the State authorities threatened to take custody of. Ms Karanja’s mistake was that she had allegedly left the children alone in the house without an adult, something she considered too insignificant to warrant the punishment she may be subjected to.
“In Kenya, a 10-year-old girl is considered responsible enough to take care of her siblings when the parents are not at home. But in the US, that is considered abandonment and abuse. How do they expect single parents like me to provide for our children if we can’t go to work?” she asks.
So frustrated is Ms Karanja that she is considering relocating to Kenya once the case is over because she believes some US laws governing children’s welfare are unreasonable and out of touch with “African reality”.
In the UK, Mr Ochieng says he has once been visited by officials from the social services department for threatening to smack his child — something that is outlawed in Britain and other Western countries.
“Even picking up your child late from school is a big issue. And if they look a bit shabby or upset the social services officers may visit your house to conduct a medical test just to be sure the child is fine. I can tell you almost every African in the UK has to go through some of these things,” he says.
Even though the law in Kenya does not allow corporal punishment, particularly in school, it is not unusual for parents to “discipline” their children by beating them.
Mr Khalid Rajab, a Kenyan resident of Darby, Pennsylvania, says some US laws mostly favour “children, women and pets”, leaving men suffering in silence.
“That is why some frustrated Kenyan men opt to leave the US to go back home,” he says.
But Mr David Amakobe, a Kenyan resident of Middletown, Delaware, disagrees with Mr Rajab. He says the laws are important to protect the vulnerable.
“Most of the laws were put in place for a very good reason. In most cases, they protect children and women who don’t have the power and strength to fight back,” he says.
Mr Amakobe wonders what would happen to children left alone in a house in case of a fire or an accident.
“Children under the age of 10 should always be under the care of an adult especially in a country like the US where there are many fire outbreaks and child predators roam the streets,” he says.
Mr Ochieng says he appreciates the facilities and opportunities that life in the UK provides. But, given a chance, he would have had his children go through the education system in Kenya up to high school and then join universities abroad.
BARBARIC CUSTOMS
“The education system in Kenya offers more than just skills. It includes the kind of good manners we learnt as young people — things like offering a seat to an older person when he comes into the house — which is not common here (in the UK),” says Mr Ochieng.
He adds that he has been explaining to his children the importance of such courteous gestures.
Dr Theresa Bitengo, a specialist in early childhood development, says it is possible to nurture such values in a child, especially at a tender age. But the same will easily disappear as they grow up and start behaving like everyone around them.
“Some values will remain with the child, however small,” says Dr Bitengo, a former lecturer at Kenyatta University who is currently pursuing a programme in the University of Johannesburg. Ironically, she says that while in South Africa she gets offered seats by younger students more often than in Kenya.
These differences in experiences, upbringing and cultural values are at the core of the tensions that exist within the Kenyan family abroad — between couples, their children and co-workers, at times with disastrous outcomes.
“A lot of the challenges that the Kenyan family abroad faces in most cases has something to do with these tensions. Many people find it hard adjusting to life here in the US where children’s personal freedoms are considered more important than the values of family and collective responsibility inculcated among people when growing up in Africa,” says Prof Keiffer Lee, a history lecturer at Neumann University in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Referring to Mr Wasilwa’s school story, Prof Lee, who is a regular visitor to Africa, explains that “new” experiences such as exposing children born and brought up abroad to the slaughtering of animals may appear trivial, but they could indeed be traumatising.
“Many people in the West would consider common practices in Africa such as chasing chicken around the homestead to slaughter for visitors or even slaughtering a bull at home to be backward, barbaric acts. In as much as they love to eat chicken or beef, they would rather not know how these got on the dinner table,” says Prof Lee.
Dr Bitengo says it is natural for culture shock to occur whenever somebody is taken to a place where people behave differently.
“But with time, people tend to internalise the new culture if they stay there for a long time,” she says.
Mr Anthony Kagiri, a Nairobi-based counsellor, says it helps for parents to understand the places they visit or intend to bring up their children in to help in predicting culture clashes.
Parents living abroad should gradually introduce their children to cultural basics before travelling back to Kenya for visits.
SILVER LINING
“With the help of Google, use videos and pictures and when they are shocked avoid scolding and talk to them. You have to make them appreciate the culture,” he says. “In extreme cases, a child counsellor will help them overcome.”
A November 2013 blog post also brings forth the identity dilemma that parents face.
“Do you want them to be like you or do you want them to be like the rest of people around them? Do you insist on them learning your mother tongue in addition to the language of the host country? Do you want them to identify by your native country or by the country of their birth and residence?” Christopher Ejugbo posed on Africaontheblog.
Opportunities abound
But it is not all gloom. The advanced infrastructure and systems abroad provide the children with a platform to discover and nurture their talents early in life, an opportunity that many of their Kenya-born parents lacked.
Mr Ochieng’s 11-year-old son, Henry, has been conducting trials with the junior side of the English Premier League side West Ham United, and has been called up to the England Under-13 national team. Henry is also a member of the Heroneans Cricket Club in Chigwell and apart from playing for Essex Crickets Under-13 team, all in the UK. He is also a singer.
“These are some of the opportunities that are available here,” says Mr Ochieng.
Together with his wife, Perez, he now trains Africans settling in the UK on the need to have all the required paperwork and how to navigate some of the challenges.
Being raised abroad has also produced world-class acts such as Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, who is the daughter of Kisumu Senator Anyang’ Nyong’o and was born in Mexico.
A Kenyan-born resident of London, who did not want to be named, also says the strict laws have helped him to bond with his three-month-old baby.
“Employing a house-help is too expensive in the UK so I have to share chores with my wife. In the last few months I have learnt a lot while taking care of the baby,” he says.
He adds that mothers are also expected to attend parenting classes where part of the session involves being asked if their partners are helping to take care of the baby. Houses are also inspected to determine if they are “child friendly”.
“This puts pressure on the men to be more responsible. The support system is great,” he says.
However, he believes that bringing up children of school-going age is trickier because there are very few options of “disciplining” them.
“I have seen some Kenyan teenagers ruin their lives by getting into crime and drug abuse just because their parents feared telling them off or even administering the occasional slap for fear of being reported to the authorities,” he says.
Just like Mr Wasilwa found out after the bull slaughtering pictures “scandal”, the differences in the life experiences between Africa and the West continue to define how Kenyans living abroad bring up their children, whichever way one looks at them.
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ADAPTING TO TWO CULTURES
Children raised in a culture outside of their parents’ for a significant part of their development years are referred to as third culture kids (TCKs or 3CKs).
The term was first coined by sociologists John and Ruth Useem in the 1950s as they used it to describe the children of American citizens working and living abroad.
The first culture of children refers to the culture of the country from which the parents originated, the second culture refers to the culture in which the family currently resides, and the third culture refers to the amalgamation of these two cultures.
Studies show that TCKs have certain characteristics.
According to the International Journal of Intercultural Relations, such children are particularly adept at building relationships with other cultures while not possessing a cultural identity of their own.
In the book Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, Ruth E Van Reken, a second generation adult TCK and mother of three adult third culture kids writes that such children have an expanded worldview. They possess an understanding that there is more than one way to look at situations that they are exposed to or experience.
These children have interpersonal sensitivity. Increased exposure to a variety of perceptions and lifestyles allow them to monitor their emotions, and register societal norms and cues more adeptly so as to produce higher sensitivity to other cultures and ways of life.
Another is an ignorance of home culture. TCKs are often lacking in knowledge about their home nation, culture, town, and/or family.
A challenge TCKs face is that they have confused loyalties, sociologist David C Pollock, and Van Reken say in their book Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing up Among Worlds. They experience confusion with politics, patriotism, and values.
In addition, they have painful awareness of reality. This means difficulty adjusting to cultures where the only culture that is discussed or focused on is itself.
– By Carlos Mureithi, Chris Wamalwa and Ken Kiberenge
-Daily Nation
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