Walk like an Egyptian: Have you met our kids?

Pour la traduction en Francais, cliquez ici.

Originally, this blog was started to record our changing perspective of Egypt and keep a record of our lives. In addition, our Buls are young and even though personal anecdotes remain private to the myriad of information on the web, this blog is also for them and I hope that, one day, they can find the time to read about their ‘different’ life abroad.

Indeed, it has been a while that I have wanted to talk about how travelling has affected our children, attempting to escape the Manichean way, but instead, focusing on the main outcomes of our decisions on their very strong personalities.
This week, being alone with them (because some of us are diving with sharks and manta rays), the timing is perfect.

The first impact has to be LOVE.

Our “babies” have been loved and cherished by thousands of people by now: from the strangers on the streets of Turkey and Egypt to the hundreds aunties and aunts all around the world. They have been the target for kisses, pats on the head, generous gifts in the bazaars and chocolates from nearly every Middle Eastern person we have encountered. That is great for the soul and keeps us afloat, when the storm of guilt for being away overwhelms us.

Our children, like their parents, miss their family members, and their friends back in Europe/Australia. Not having the kinship around, such as grand-parents, uncles and aunts or cousins, is hard on everybody and is one of the biggest downfalls of our lives. Of course, with a yearly visit, bonds are created but they are fragile and demand much more efforts on each part.

As for our unit of four, it is an unbreakable thread that has started building in Turkey and keeps on tightening in Egypt. Our Buls, perhaps unlike other children, wake up daily (at 6/7AM!)with only two strongholds named “Issi” and “Maman”, which is beautiful but also means that their level of dependence and therefore our level of independence are interconnected.

This situation can be dangerous for a couple, who can never act spontaneously and must careful time their outings.
One way to cope is to allow ourselves time together (thankfully, we have found the best baby sitters on the planets) but also time alone as a remedy and to sustain a decent level of sanity and individuality.
Our children rely on us more than some can fathom, and yet, I wouldn't exchange our situation even if I could.

The second hit would be their identity.

To some people, your language reflects your identity. That is a very difficult concept in our house, as our children have French, Estonian at home with a passive accented English as background noise. At school and with their international aunties and uncles, they have to communicate in English and as if life hadn't been hard enough, our son is now learning Arabic. However wonderful this may seem, he has to cope with different phonics, the endless amount of French silent letters, the fact that you cannot write Latin letters from the right to the left!

Yet, they are not confused in their speaking and automatically switch once they have identified the language of their interlocutors. It has been pointed out, often, that their accent isn't necessarily “authentic” or “proper” in some languages, which, to a French person speaking English with a “subtle” French accent, holds absolutely no importance.

To the question; “where are you from?”, our son answers “I was born in Istanbul but now, I live in Cairo, it is in Egypt. I liked Istanbul because there was a pool and I like Egypt because of the dinosaur desert (Whale to be precise). I prefer France because they have Walibi (themepark) but I prefer Estonia too because we can pick blue berries there”.

You may think it will be hard for them to see themselves as French or Estonian and you may be right. However, to us, as long as the mother tongues become fluent, perfumed with Turkish and Egyptian sayings, their personalities will hopefully reflect their dual nationalities and their respective traits.

Our children move often, preparing themselves for their fourth house move since their birth, as Tunis awaits. So far, the process of moving has been quite easy and despite comments about Istanbul, it seems our children are happy to have moved here and excited to discover their next house.

The final and most important consequence will be who they become.

They travel every other month, using every possible and reasonable transportation mean you can think of.

They have seen in their tiny lifetime more than we, parents, could dream of at the age of twenty, and that is another thought that helps through the rainy days, when you wonder if you are making the right choices for them. Through travels in Turkey, Egypt and also Europe, they have already an understanding of the unfair scale on which the world stands, facing the rich, clean and somewhat colder air of certain areas, but also the poverty and living conditions that some people have to face daily. Let us hope that it leaves a permanent sense of empathy and compassion in them, that they will desperately need in their lives.

Understandably, after sand boarding, running around Khufu, played hide and seek in the deserts, diving in the Red Sea and travel every summer to different destinations back in both “homes”, the results is that you have two very active, curious, loud and inquisitive children who ask questions about polytheism, groupers, owning a countless collection of ‘treasures’, aka fossils, found in the deserts they roamed.