Ellen Decker

My early years were deeply impacted by growing up a “Swazi Girl” in the Kingdom of Swaziland (now Kingdom of Eswatini). Except for my sister, all my friends in my early years were Swazi. We were young and barefoot under bright skies. Adventures, rich friendships, fresh air, the capacity for imagination if I needed invention. Most of our games were free: tag, tree-climbing, hikes, mud clay figurines, hopscotch, sliding down hay on cardboard, pick-up-sticks, chasing cows, hide and seek. I had the tremendous privilege of never being bored as a child.

I was also blessed to be surrounded by lives full of significance and purpose. Every day around me hungry people were fed, children were educated, adults were trained, sick people were lovingly cared for, the poor were taught skills, ordinary citizens were empowered to make their own choices, those bound in the wretchedness of witchcraft and superstition found peace and freedom. How profoundly grateful I am to have had the rare opportunity to grow up on the front lines, seeing God’s plan unfold.

On the other hand, my umbilical cord of identity stretches from Africa to America. Did I miss all the Thanksgivings and Christmases and birthday celebrations and game nights with our biological family? Was growing up and living my life – not heritage-culture blue, not host-culture yellow, but always the slightly odd culturally-blended green – incredibly challenging? Is it sometimes hard having “a wistful longing for a person or place that is far away in time or distance” a permanent part of my life?

Yebo. Yes.

Diary of a Third-Culture Kid showcases the good, the bad, and the astonishing of a childhood straddling multiple cultures. While most of Diary of a Third-Culture Kid is set in African countries, five chapters detail travel in the Middle East, America, and Europe. A Cityrama Tour of Paris in a glass bus. Visiting the Garden of Gethsemane by the Mount of Olives. A London picnic across from Buckingham Palace. Within Africa, we cross Botswana on the last train before one derails and many lives are lost. In Zambia we are chased by a jeep full of angry gun-toting soldiers. We travel into Mozambique in the middle of a civil war, and in South Africa we get dirty protesting apartheid. Chased by a hippo, majestic elephants bathing, four lions walking like kings down the road.

There is a joy in being awake in the early morning out in the African bush when all earth is waking up. Darkness slides off the sky like a blanket. Carol looks up, and suddenly there is a giraffe with its head above a treetop. 

(Chapter 19, Be Brave)

Click here to take a look at more of the book.  Diary of a Third-Culture Kid