“All God’s Children” – Writing and Watching

My husband and I just put on “All God’s Children”, a film about MK life at Mamou (Guinea) boarding school in the 1950s and ’60s.

The old missionary footage is spellbinding. At least it is to me. These are the first action scenes of missionary work in ‘colonial’ Africa that I’ve ever seen. But where I would normally have reservations about the imperialist baggage of missions, I’m actually anxious about the *other* abuses that went on duing this time – sexual abuse of MKs in boarding school by their own “Christian” dorm parents.

Some of those poor missionary parents were really between a rock and a hard place – feeling destined for mission work yet forced to send their kids away. Boarding school was mandatory. How horrific it must have been. Not to mention how it was for the kids.

Children as young as 6 were ‘boarded’. Siblings were separated. Kids were scolded for missing their Mom and Dad, because those feelings ‘undermined’ their parents’ mission work. Kids’ letters to their parents were censored.

Punishment was inevitable. The abuse was cruel and nonsensical. Children were not allowed to use the washroom during class. Teaching sticks were broken over children’s bottoms. Leather belts met any kid still awake after lights out. And sometimes they drew blood.

And then there was sexual assault. Molestation. Rape. Unspeakable crimes committed against lonely and vulnerable kids.

Some of the MK’s parents (now retired) say they didn’t dream, back in the day, that their ‘friends’ were capable of abusing the kids in their care. Evil lurks in the friendliest faces, I guess.

Kids were silenced by fear. Fear of punishment. Fear of hurting their parents, or of ‘ruining’ their parents’ ministry. Fear of angering God, of going to hell. Fear is what they lived, breathed and slept. So they didn’t dare whisper a word of their horror for decades.

“Mental rape.” What a perfect description of what abused MKs live through. It’s amazing how easily the Bible can be twisted (by fundamentalist evangelicals in this case) and wielded at kids as abusively as those wooden paddles and belt buckles.

“It’s not that victims are against forgiveness. Victims are against ‘forgiveness’ as the solution to the problem” because as long as victims forgive the mission organization, the organization doesn’t have to address the issues.

Organizing my life

I recently shared with my brother that my husband and I are finally organizing our kitchen this weekend, making things more efficient now that we have an extra shelf unit in our pantry. After yesterday’s work, our larger appliances no longer take valuable kitchen space and are instead neatly tucked away out of sight. Next, we’re getting ready to reorganize the canned and dry goods, as well as all of our spices, glasses, mugs and dishes. It feels wonderful!

Being the lord of the unblemished environment that he is, my brother congratulated me on our accomplishments so far: “Yeah! A convert to being organized!” he cheered.

But I’ve always been a convert on the inside, I told him.

“Yeah! A convert to actually acting out what’s on the inside and being organized!” he clarified.

But seriously, my TCK upbringing seems to have influenced me to suppress my ‘dream to clean’. While my brother reacted to the chaos of our family’s transient lifestyle by controlling, cleaning, and organizing his environment, I on the other hand developed a subconscioius resistance to putting effort into organization, because I figured that if I could count on anything it was that real life would come along to uproot and cause chaos all over again. I feared the futility of lost time and energy, so I just never botherd to begin with.

From my perspective, spending time and energy on organizing is a big ‘risk’ to take, because you never know when or how all of your efforts will be tossed out the window by life circumstances, like a sudden relocation which was most common to me as a child.

Nevertheless, this is what my husband and I are up to today, and I remain cautiously optimistic. At the very least, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts!

Unrooted Childhoods

[Third Culture Kids] struggle with answering simple questions like “Where are you from?” They belong nowhere. They contend with migratory urges and the conflicting desire to root. Travel, adventure, and danger cause them to mature early, yet they continue to experience confusion about their identity, direction, and belonging. Estranged from their parents’ home culture and disconnected from their host culture, they proceed through the world identified as chronic outsiders, known only superficially to those around them, longing, in each new home, to establish connection, yet fearful of becoming too attached. The result is a cultural changeling, alienated from self and aloof from others.

From Unrooted Childhoods, ed. Faith Eidse & Nina Sichel, p. 81