Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish) started a few days ago here. It's a month of fasting that comes around once a year on the Islamic calendar. The Islamic calendar is lunar, so a year is 354/355 days. This means that every solar year (i.e. 2019 or 2020), Ramazan gets a 11 or so days earlier.
Fasting during Ramazan means refraining from eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset each day. Chewing gum and smoking are also refrained from. Pregnant and nursing women, children, the old and weak, and those travelling are exempt from fasting. Those fasting get up before sunrise to have a meal (sahur) before their fast starts and break their fast each day with iftar, a meal held straight after sunset, often a large celebratory meal shared with family or friends. For Muslims, it's the holiest month of the year and a time where they examine their lives and focus on their religion and God. Mosques are busier this month.
Not all of those who would identify as Muslim choose to fast but many do. Although this is our fourth Ramazan in Turkey, it's our first in the city we now live in. Different parts of Turkey vary vastly in how secular/religious they are, so foreign tourists who come to the very tourist-y areas of Turkey during Ramazan are unlikely to be impacted much. Istanbul has a mixture of more conservative and more secular areas. When we were in Istanbul, we lived in quite a secular area and walking down the nearby streets, cafes and restaurants would still be open and we'd see people in there eating and drinking in the day.Now we live in a more conservative city and so we assume that the majority of people around us are fasting.
Practically, that means this month we're avoiding eating and drinking out in public. We tried to do this while we were in Istanbul anyway, but we're more conscious of it here. Many cafes and restaurants are closed for the month, or at the very least have removed their tables from the pavements outside during the day. Cafes and restaurants that are still open may be closed during the day or have shorter opening hours, but then stay open much later at night, for those that want to eat out for their iftar meal.
To be honest, we don't go to cafes and restaurants much anyway - although there's something about knowing that you can't that makes you want to go more! Although children are exempt from fasting, I try to be sensitive and make sure that the boys have had their snack before they go to the park, rather than taking it to the park to eat there. We'll also avoid, for example, having a midday picnic at a picnic area at the weekend (and the picnic areas will be full quite early anyway, as people stake out a spot well in advance for an evening iftar picnic or barbeque).
We're also aware that the hour before sunset, traffic is often heavier as people are making sure they're home for the iftar meal - and drivers may be a little grumpier than normal if they haven't eaten or drank all day! So where we have a choice, we might try and avoid being out in the car at that hour.
One thing that we didn't know about before we moved to Turkey was the drummers. This is a long standing tradition in Turkey that drummers (sometimes wearing Ottoman-style clothing) go round neighbourhoods banging their drums to wake people up in time to have their pre-fast sahur meal. With the current sunrise time, we're hearing them about 3am each night. We heard them when we lived in Istanbul but they definitely seem louder here!
Fasting for a month from sunrise to sunset with no food or water is hard, especially in country like Turkey where in summer months it is hot and the daylight hours are long. I have a lot of respect for those who are fasting in the sincere belief that it will bring them closer to Allah and also sorrow that so many people are doing their best to earn their salvation through works such as fasting when I believe that there is no way to earn our salvation. I also hope and pray that as many people use this month to think on spiritual matters and to try to draw close to God that they would truly come to know God through the One he has sent.
Friday, 10 May 2019
Friday, 12 April 2019
The Comparison Trap
Last summer I was at a conference and sat next to a lady at one meal. We got chatting. She was probably in her 60s, a doctor, working in a village in Papua New Guinea. She was single and she told me about her work, that there had been quite a few families working in that village at one time but now it was just her and another single lady left. And then later she shared at a conference session later about different problems there had been but how God had been faithful through them.
As we finished our meal, my unspoken thought was that she was the real deal of what a worker looked like. I mean, she had spent many years working in such a remote and far off place, lived without access to many things that we take for granted in the UK, was exposed to so many physical hardships - and that was without even considering the pressures of work, the realities of singleness, the spiritual battle. I have so much admiration for her. Compared to her life, I didn't think my life was that hard at all.
But then she floored me. I'd shared a bit of where we lived and what we were doing and she turned to me and told me that she didn't think she could live where we lived when it was such a spiritual stronghold of another religion.
I wanted to point out that in many ways, my life is so much easier than hers. At that time, we'd just spent two years living in Istanbul, where we had excellent public transport and shopping centres and broadband Internet and friends who spoke English. Where people could come and visit us relatively easily. Where the Mediterranean coast was a package holiday destination. That I'd been blessed with a husband to do all the transition of moving to a new country together with and two lovely children. I mean, it wasn't necessarily easy. There were enough power and water cuts, cultural adjustments and other issues to confirm that. But if it wasn't easy, it had to be easier.
How quickly we fall into the comparison trap.
The months since we moved to our new city have not been easy months, for a variety of reasons. Moving to a new city is always stressful and we've been navigating various bureaucratic processes to set up life here and get permission to stay. I have found my third pregnancy to be significantly harder than the previous two. I had worse morning sickness, we had quite a few bouts of illness, I've been more tired than before. And just when I thought that I had finally got out of the tiredness stage that traditionally finishes with the end of the first trimester but seemed to stretch half way into the second for me, my body decided to remind me that I don't have quite as much energy as I thought I did. So a a few weeks ago, I spent a pretty terrible week completely wiped out energy-wise, with a mouth full of ulcers that had me in pretty much constant pain and unable to eat or talk very much. Thankfully that is behind me now and has not recurred. Plus, ministry is just messy in every country and sometimes that can be compounded by cross-cultural issues, or at the very least having to do everything in a second language.
And I start to play the comparison game. Yes I had worse morning sickness this time, but it was only (constant) nausea. I've some friends who threw up multiple times a day for the first few months of their pregnancies. Or felt nauseous their entire pregnancy. Or felt nauseous and threw up their entire pregnancy. So any hint of me admitting that it was harder this time comes with the add-on that I can't complain, it could have been worse. Yes I've been tired. But I only have two small children. Imagine how much harder it is for those who are on their third or later pregnancies. And L helps out a lot around the house and with the children. So it's nothing to mention really. Yes a couple of months back I had a bit of a rough week health-wise. But it passed, at the end of the day it wasn't a serious health issue and there's always someone in a worse situation. And look at all the things I have to be thankful for - two healthy children, a healthy baby developing, a loving husband who supports me as much as he can and retains more flexibility to help me than most people.
So often we want to compare ourselves. Often it's to other people, either real or imagined. But sometimes to an invisible standard that we think marks the bar of where our issues feel serious enough to warrant mentioning, or asking for prayer, or using it as a rationale to explain why we've had to back out of doing something without wondering whether everyone will think it's just an excuse, or even if we can possibly start classifying it as a 'trial' or 'suffering'.
We tally up the hardship factors on one side against the blessings of our life on the other, and try and work out whether one outweighs or merely counterbalances the other, and therefore do we meet the invisible standard of hardship or trials or do we just need to quit complaining and get on with it. I live in a different country and not only that but in a city away from most foreigners. One for the hardship column. But I also live in a large apartment on the edge of the city. And I can even do my food shopping online and get it delivered that day. That must balance out living in a different country/city, at least to some degree. Pregnancy is tiring and I miss the NHS. But the hospitals here are so much better than in most of the world and my mum is coming to stay when the baby is born. And it would be tiring as well if we were in the UK. And so it goes on.
But there is another way. We don't have to prove to ourselves or others that our troubles are significant.
If we have trusted in the death of God's Son for the forgiveness of our sins, then we are adopted as God's children and have the grace of God. And this grace flows into our lives, filling every nook and cranny, covering us completely. It says that we don't have to compare ourselves to others, we don't have to check and see how serious our problems are to consider them trials, we don't have to prove ourselves to be deserving enough to be heard.
Grace allows us to bring our troubles to our heavenly Father. And not just bring them hesitantly, but to cast our cares onto him. Cast as in throw, toss, fling. And not just the significant trials but our 'cares' - it doesn't matter how big or small they are, our Father wants us to bring them to him.
Young children are the perfect example of this. My children do not consider whether or not a problem is significant enough to bring it to my attention. If I am occupied with one child's issue, that does not stop the other coming with his own problem. The level of seriousness of the first issue that I'm dealing with has apparently no bearing whatsoever on the other child's problem and whether that moment is really the best time to bring it up with me. They simply do not compare their issue to their sibling's issue. And they definitely do not calculate how serious their problem is in relation to all the other good things in their lives.
They assume that if they think it's a problem or issue, they should let me know about it immediately, regardless of anything else and presumably because (even if they can't articulate this yet), they know at a deep level that I love them and will listen to them and try to help them. When my children come to me with their cares and problems, I do my best to listen to them, to be patient and to take them seriously. Sometimes my 'help' may not be what they think the 'help' should be but they hopefully at least understand that I hear them and their problems. In my better parenting moments, I understand that however insignificant their problems might seem to me, they matter to my children and because I love my children, those problems then matter to me. (In my less impressive parenting moments, I show my impatience at why exactly something that seems so insignificant to me is such an issue and can't they please just get over it, but that is why God is our perfect ultimate Father and parents will always be rather imperfect in imitation.)
We are to be like little children. We come to God with the faith that he hears us, he loves us, that nothing is too small for him to be concerned about, that we don't need to compare ourselves to our spiritual siblings. We don't have to try and work out if our troubles measure up to the invisible bar of significance, or calculate if they are outweighed sufficiently by other things that we should just grin and bear it. We know that God is infinitely patient and loving with us. We don't need to worry about how big our troubles are but we are free to express our hurts, doubts, frustrations, disappointments, anxieties, troubles to our Father in prayer safe in the knowledge that he cares for each of us individually.
As we finished our meal, my unspoken thought was that she was the real deal of what a worker looked like. I mean, she had spent many years working in such a remote and far off place, lived without access to many things that we take for granted in the UK, was exposed to so many physical hardships - and that was without even considering the pressures of work, the realities of singleness, the spiritual battle. I have so much admiration for her. Compared to her life, I didn't think my life was that hard at all.
But then she floored me. I'd shared a bit of where we lived and what we were doing and she turned to me and told me that she didn't think she could live where we lived when it was such a spiritual stronghold of another religion.
I wanted to point out that in many ways, my life is so much easier than hers. At that time, we'd just spent two years living in Istanbul, where we had excellent public transport and shopping centres and broadband Internet and friends who spoke English. Where people could come and visit us relatively easily. Where the Mediterranean coast was a package holiday destination. That I'd been blessed with a husband to do all the transition of moving to a new country together with and two lovely children. I mean, it wasn't necessarily easy. There were enough power and water cuts, cultural adjustments and other issues to confirm that. But if it wasn't easy, it had to be easier.
How quickly we fall into the comparison trap.
The months since we moved to our new city have not been easy months, for a variety of reasons. Moving to a new city is always stressful and we've been navigating various bureaucratic processes to set up life here and get permission to stay. I have found my third pregnancy to be significantly harder than the previous two. I had worse morning sickness, we had quite a few bouts of illness, I've been more tired than before. And just when I thought that I had finally got out of the tiredness stage that traditionally finishes with the end of the first trimester but seemed to stretch half way into the second for me, my body decided to remind me that I don't have quite as much energy as I thought I did. So a a few weeks ago, I spent a pretty terrible week completely wiped out energy-wise, with a mouth full of ulcers that had me in pretty much constant pain and unable to eat or talk very much. Thankfully that is behind me now and has not recurred. Plus, ministry is just messy in every country and sometimes that can be compounded by cross-cultural issues, or at the very least having to do everything in a second language.
And I start to play the comparison game. Yes I had worse morning sickness this time, but it was only (constant) nausea. I've some friends who threw up multiple times a day for the first few months of their pregnancies. Or felt nauseous their entire pregnancy. Or felt nauseous and threw up their entire pregnancy. So any hint of me admitting that it was harder this time comes with the add-on that I can't complain, it could have been worse. Yes I've been tired. But I only have two small children. Imagine how much harder it is for those who are on their third or later pregnancies. And L helps out a lot around the house and with the children. So it's nothing to mention really. Yes a couple of months back I had a bit of a rough week health-wise. But it passed, at the end of the day it wasn't a serious health issue and there's always someone in a worse situation. And look at all the things I have to be thankful for - two healthy children, a healthy baby developing, a loving husband who supports me as much as he can and retains more flexibility to help me than most people.
So often we want to compare ourselves. Often it's to other people, either real or imagined. But sometimes to an invisible standard that we think marks the bar of where our issues feel serious enough to warrant mentioning, or asking for prayer, or using it as a rationale to explain why we've had to back out of doing something without wondering whether everyone will think it's just an excuse, or even if we can possibly start classifying it as a 'trial' or 'suffering'.
We tally up the hardship factors on one side against the blessings of our life on the other, and try and work out whether one outweighs or merely counterbalances the other, and therefore do we meet the invisible standard of hardship or trials or do we just need to quit complaining and get on with it. I live in a different country and not only that but in a city away from most foreigners. One for the hardship column. But I also live in a large apartment on the edge of the city. And I can even do my food shopping online and get it delivered that day. That must balance out living in a different country/city, at least to some degree. Pregnancy is tiring and I miss the NHS. But the hospitals here are so much better than in most of the world and my mum is coming to stay when the baby is born. And it would be tiring as well if we were in the UK. And so it goes on.
But there is another way. We don't have to prove to ourselves or others that our troubles are significant.
If we have trusted in the death of God's Son for the forgiveness of our sins, then we are adopted as God's children and have the grace of God. And this grace flows into our lives, filling every nook and cranny, covering us completely. It says that we don't have to compare ourselves to others, we don't have to check and see how serious our problems are to consider them trials, we don't have to prove ourselves to be deserving enough to be heard.
Grace allows us to bring our troubles to our heavenly Father. And not just bring them hesitantly, but to cast our cares onto him. Cast as in throw, toss, fling. And not just the significant trials but our 'cares' - it doesn't matter how big or small they are, our Father wants us to bring them to him.
Young children are the perfect example of this. My children do not consider whether or not a problem is significant enough to bring it to my attention. If I am occupied with one child's issue, that does not stop the other coming with his own problem. The level of seriousness of the first issue that I'm dealing with has apparently no bearing whatsoever on the other child's problem and whether that moment is really the best time to bring it up with me. They simply do not compare their issue to their sibling's issue. And they definitely do not calculate how serious their problem is in relation to all the other good things in their lives.
They assume that if they think it's a problem or issue, they should let me know about it immediately, regardless of anything else and presumably because (even if they can't articulate this yet), they know at a deep level that I love them and will listen to them and try to help them. When my children come to me with their cares and problems, I do my best to listen to them, to be patient and to take them seriously. Sometimes my 'help' may not be what they think the 'help' should be but they hopefully at least understand that I hear them and their problems. In my better parenting moments, I understand that however insignificant their problems might seem to me, they matter to my children and because I love my children, those problems then matter to me. (In my less impressive parenting moments, I show my impatience at why exactly something that seems so insignificant to me is such an issue and can't they please just get over it, but that is why God is our perfect ultimate Father and parents will always be rather imperfect in imitation.)
We are to be like little children. We come to God with the faith that he hears us, he loves us, that nothing is too small for him to be concerned about, that we don't need to compare ourselves to our spiritual siblings. We don't have to try and work out if our troubles measure up to the invisible bar of significance, or calculate if they are outweighed sufficiently by other things that we should just grin and bear it. We know that God is infinitely patient and loving with us. We don't need to worry about how big our troubles are but we are free to express our hurts, doubts, frustrations, disappointments, anxieties, troubles to our Father in prayer safe in the knowledge that he cares for each of us individually.
Saturday, 6 April 2019
Cappadocia - Swords Valley
It was slightly embarrassing to admit that we've lived an hour's drive from Cappadocia, one of Turkey's most famous regions, for seven months now and hadn't been over to there since we moved here. Cappadocia is famous for its unusual landscape and rock formations, especially since the inhabitants of Cappadocia many hundreds and even thousands of years ago carved their houses and churches into the rock. So it tends to be on any must-see list of tourists travelling around Turkey.
But the first couple of months we were here we were busy settling in and then the weather turned rather wintery - which is definitely not the best time to visit Cappadocia. And in our defence, L and I visited about 4.5 years ago when we were on holiday backpacking in Turkey so we have been before.
However, today we finally made it across to Göreme, a village in Cappadocia which is surrounded by valleys perfect for hiking. With two small children, we chose one of the shortest valleys to walk - Kılıçlar Vadisi, or 'Swords Valley'. It's only a couple of miles long but more than made up for its short length with an impressively long (apparently about 300m) and rather narrow tunnel and a good section of the valley being more akin to a super-narrow gorge, with rocks towering above us.
In retrospect, it was probably a slightly challenging walk for us to manage with a nearly 4 year old and a nearly 2 year old and me 7 months pregnant, but we all loved it (although for J and S, going through the tunnel once was enough...). We reached the end, explored a little and then had a picnic lunch (which had been a significant motivating factor for J). It was lovely to get out into nature and to have the opportunity to point out things like wild flowers, butterflies and even lizards to the boys. And while we had thought that L might have needed to walk back and bring the car round to us, the boys even had enough energy that we all managed to do the walk back up the valley to the car again - going up was definitely easier than going down!
But the first couple of months we were here we were busy settling in and then the weather turned rather wintery - which is definitely not the best time to visit Cappadocia. And in our defence, L and I visited about 4.5 years ago when we were on holiday backpacking in Turkey so we have been before.
However, today we finally made it across to Göreme, a village in Cappadocia which is surrounded by valleys perfect for hiking. With two small children, we chose one of the shortest valleys to walk - Kılıçlar Vadisi, or 'Swords Valley'. It's only a couple of miles long but more than made up for its short length with an impressively long (apparently about 300m) and rather narrow tunnel and a good section of the valley being more akin to a super-narrow gorge, with rocks towering above us.
In retrospect, it was probably a slightly challenging walk for us to manage with a nearly 4 year old and a nearly 2 year old and me 7 months pregnant, but we all loved it (although for J and S, going through the tunnel once was enough...). We reached the end, explored a little and then had a picnic lunch (which had been a significant motivating factor for J). It was lovely to get out into nature and to have the opportunity to point out things like wild flowers, butterflies and even lizards to the boys. And while we had thought that L might have needed to walk back and bring the car round to us, the boys even had enough energy that we all managed to do the walk back up the valley to the car again - going up was definitely easier than going down!
Swords Valley
This was one of the steepest/narrowest bits
Classic Cappadocia scenery
View from our picnic spot at the end of the valley, with some of the rock caves visible.
We sat eating our sandwiches looking out across at this scenery, L and I thinking that the last time we came to Göreme we could never have imagined that 4.5 years later we'd be coming on a day trip from our home an hour away, with our two boys and another on the way. God has been so good to us.
We finished off with a quick trip into Göreme to get our first ice creams of the year, realising that despite it being only early April we had all managed to get very slightly sunburned. Oops. And then headed home, with both J and S fast asleep in the car within 5 minutes of setting off - definitely the sign of a successful day out!
Monday, 25 February 2019
Monday encouragement
I read this post this morning and was so encouraged by it.
Our Sunday gathering starts at almost exactly the time that J and S eat lunch and S usually goes down for his nap. So almost every week usually involves L or I dealing with a tired, but stimulated enough by everything going on that he has no intention of sleeping, toddler who keeps going until well past his normal nap time then crashes out in the car on the way home but only sleeps the 15 minute length of the car journey.
So it was good to remember the day after that what was, for various reasons, a particularly hard Sunday, that Sundays are good for our small children.
"Sundays may mean disrupted naps and delayed meals, but our children are trading earthly provision for something far better for their undying souls. On Sundays, everything is rearranged so that they might hear the Word proclaimed in the power of the Spirit. On Sundays, every ordinary thing takes a lesser place in favor of “the one thing necessary”." (article linked above)
Our Sunday gathering starts at almost exactly the time that J and S eat lunch and S usually goes down for his nap. So almost every week usually involves L or I dealing with a tired, but stimulated enough by everything going on that he has no intention of sleeping, toddler who keeps going until well past his normal nap time then crashes out in the car on the way home but only sleeps the 15 minute length of the car journey.
So it was good to remember the day after that what was, for various reasons, a particularly hard Sunday, that Sundays are good for our small children.
"Sundays may mean disrupted naps and delayed meals, but our children are trading earthly provision for something far better for their undying souls. On Sundays, everything is rearranged so that they might hear the Word proclaimed in the power of the Spirit. On Sundays, every ordinary thing takes a lesser place in favor of “the one thing necessary”." (article linked above)
Six months
We've been in this city for just a few days over six months now. I know this because legally we can only drive in Turkey on our British licences for six months after coming into Turkey. We're hoping to have our Turkish licences come through in the next few weeks (thankfully there's a process to swap our British licences for Turkish ones rather than having to sit a driving test here) but until then I can't drive. L did a weekend hop to the UK a couple of weeks back, which starts him off on another 6 month period, so he's now the official family chauffeur.
Six months. That time has flown by. We still get asked fairly regularly if we've got used to life here. Our answer is usually 'yes and no'. On one hand, we have settled here. This is home. We have pictures hanging on the walls and a flat full of the messiness and paraphernalia that comes with family life - artwork on the fridge, drawers with odd socks in them, Duplo bricks behind the sofa and random objects stuffed down the side of sofa cushions. We have different names to distinguish the different parks within walking distance of our flat. The employees at the little supermarket we go to most regularly know the boys by name. We have routines, regular places that we go and know when our preferred city centre car park is most likely to be full and when we're likely to find a space. Our life in Istanbul feels a long time ago.
On the other hand, it's only six months. Six months is not a long time. We're still discovering lots of new places in the city and get caught out by road systems that do unexpected things. And if we were in the UK and moved area, I wouldn't generally expect six months to be long enough to establish good friendships (unless of course you're a student or maybe a young-ish single person). And that applies even more so when the friendships we are slowly forming are cross-cultural, so it is not a surprise that six months does not feel long at all.
Last Friday L's work permit arrived, valid for a year, and this morning we submitted the paperwork for the boys' new residence permits. My residence permit application will be done in the next couple of weeks. With that work permit comes a sense of stability, or at least a sense of temporary stability, in knowing that we can be here until at least next February. As foreigners, our ability to live here will always remain fragile. But the last six months have seemed particularly fragile, as we moved to this city, started building our lives here, establishing a business, on the hope and expectation that we'd be able to stay.
Our first six months here has gone. I remember when we marked six months living in Istanbul and it was with the realisation that a quarter of our Istanbul-allotted time had gone. Now we have the privilege of marking six months here and knowing that we have permission to be here for another year, and God willing, for a long time after that.
Six months. That time has flown by. We still get asked fairly regularly if we've got used to life here. Our answer is usually 'yes and no'. On one hand, we have settled here. This is home. We have pictures hanging on the walls and a flat full of the messiness and paraphernalia that comes with family life - artwork on the fridge, drawers with odd socks in them, Duplo bricks behind the sofa and random objects stuffed down the side of sofa cushions. We have different names to distinguish the different parks within walking distance of our flat. The employees at the little supermarket we go to most regularly know the boys by name. We have routines, regular places that we go and know when our preferred city centre car park is most likely to be full and when we're likely to find a space. Our life in Istanbul feels a long time ago.
On the other hand, it's only six months. Six months is not a long time. We're still discovering lots of new places in the city and get caught out by road systems that do unexpected things. And if we were in the UK and moved area, I wouldn't generally expect six months to be long enough to establish good friendships (unless of course you're a student or maybe a young-ish single person). And that applies even more so when the friendships we are slowly forming are cross-cultural, so it is not a surprise that six months does not feel long at all.
Last Friday L's work permit arrived, valid for a year, and this morning we submitted the paperwork for the boys' new residence permits. My residence permit application will be done in the next couple of weeks. With that work permit comes a sense of stability, or at least a sense of temporary stability, in knowing that we can be here until at least next February. As foreigners, our ability to live here will always remain fragile. But the last six months have seemed particularly fragile, as we moved to this city, started building our lives here, establishing a business, on the hope and expectation that we'd be able to stay.
Our first six months here has gone. I remember when we marked six months living in Istanbul and it was with the realisation that a quarter of our Istanbul-allotted time had gone. Now we have the privilege of marking six months here and knowing that we have permission to be here for another year, and God willing, for a long time after that.
Saturday, 2 February 2019
TCK myths: language learning by osmosis
If our children spend their formative years in Turkey, which is our plan, they will be Third Culture Kids - TCKs for short. One of the most commonly used definitions of a TCK is:
“A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, a sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.” (Pollock and Van Reken)
J and S are growing up in a culture that is not mine and L's culture or their passport culture. Because they are growing up in a different culture to the UK, they will never feel fully British. But with British parents and a British passport, they will never feel fully Turkish either. They will develop a strong relationship with both British and Turkish cultures but their sense of belonging and identity will be to a third culture i.e. to the group of people who have also grown up in different cultures from their parents. In other words, J and S are likely to find more in common with other TCKs (even if they are, for example, American but grew up in South Asia) than they will with those who are British and have lived in the UK their whole lives.
There are many, many things that have been written about the advantages and challenges of being a TCK by people far more knowledgeable than me so I'm not going to repeat them. But I do want to dispel some of the myths about TCKs.
One that I have heard several times relates to TCKs naturally achieving fluency in the language of their host country. It's the different variants of 'your children will be so privileged, they'll grow up speaking Turkish', with the assumption that just because we live in Turkey, our children will learn to speak Turkish fluently and be bilingual.
Unfortunately, this is not true. Language learning by osmosis is sadly not a recognised method of language acquisition, much as I wish it were. I think that the view is that because children learn and grow so fast, they will just automatically 'pick up' a second (or third etc.) language by being around it and hearing it.
However, it takes time and effort for anyone, including children, to learn a language. Unsurprisingly, children who are immersed from a young age in a day care setting or school where the second language is the main language spoken do learn the second language well. But that is because they are spending eight hours a day hearing that language, five days a week for the entire academic year! I have no doubt that if I were to spend that amount of time in a Turkish speaking environment, my Turkish proficiency (at least in listening and comprehension) would improve significantly. Even then, despite the immersion, it is very common for a child not to speak the second language at all for a year or so.
The advantage young children do have in learning a language is that they may be less self conscious about speaking the second language, feel less pressure to be perfect and speak with a better accent. But it is not necessarily true that the younger a child is, the quicker they will learn a second language. Language skills transfer from one language to another and a young child may not yet have training or skills in their mother tongue to transfer to a second language.
We hope that our children will speak Turkish well. We're not actually aiming for them to be bilingual or to be academically fluent in Turkish. The ability to speak more than one language is a great advantage - as well as the practical benefits of speaking a second language, it also stretches and develops the brain in different ways. But we are realistic enough to know that English will be their first language and that mastery of English, not just proficiency, is vital. So we are planning and aiming for the boys to be fluent at a conversational level in Turkish but accepting that they will not have the academic fluency to complete their education in Turkish or be at the same level as their Turkish peers in reading and writing.
As our children are still young and spent most of their time at home with me, they naturally hear a lot of English and we have to work hard on their Turkish. It's been suggested that we could put J in a creche or preschool to improve his Turkish but for various reasons that's not something we're considering at the moment. The boys hear Turkish a fair amount on Sundays and if we go to Turkish people's houses or people come to us. But that is not enough for them to learn Turkish. Sometimes L and I will speak Turkish at home and try and encourage the boys by speaking to them in Turkish. Generally if I'm out in public with the boys and there are other people around, I'll try and talk to them in Turkish. We also have books and songs in Turkish, a lot of the (limited) screen time they are allowed is in Turkish (thank goodness for Thomas the Tank Engine dubbed into Turkish!). They are also currently using an online program called DinoLingo which is designed to teach a second language through videos and animated stories. And one of the most useful things we are now doing is that the boys have an oyun ablası ("play big sister") who comes one morning a week. She looks after the boys, plays with them and speaks to them entirely in Turkish which allows me a couple of hours to get some admin work/language study/rest in. From next week, J will also start a twice weekly gymnastics lesson at a local sports centre. This will obviously be entirely in Turkish, which I think will be quite a learning curve for him and maybe not very easy to start with, but should be good for him.
And with all that, so far J is actually able to understand some basic Turkish. He'll speak some odd words and phrases but generally prefers not to speak in Turkish right now, which is very normal. S doesn't speak at all yet in any comprehensible language, although he understands a fair amount of English and I'm pretty sure he understands 'yapma!' in Turkish (which translates as 'don't do that!).
We understand that learning a language is a process, it takes time and children learn in their own time and we're grateful for the progress that they are making. But we are definitely conscious that TCKs do not automatically learn the language of the country they live in and that it will take time, effort and active work on our part to help J and S learn Turkish.
“A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, a sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.” (Pollock and Van Reken)
There are many, many things that have been written about the advantages and challenges of being a TCK by people far more knowledgeable than me so I'm not going to repeat them. But I do want to dispel some of the myths about TCKs.
One that I have heard several times relates to TCKs naturally achieving fluency in the language of their host country. It's the different variants of 'your children will be so privileged, they'll grow up speaking Turkish', with the assumption that just because we live in Turkey, our children will learn to speak Turkish fluently and be bilingual.
Unfortunately, this is not true. Language learning by osmosis is sadly not a recognised method of language acquisition, much as I wish it were. I think that the view is that because children learn and grow so fast, they will just automatically 'pick up' a second (or third etc.) language by being around it and hearing it.
However, it takes time and effort for anyone, including children, to learn a language. Unsurprisingly, children who are immersed from a young age in a day care setting or school where the second language is the main language spoken do learn the second language well. But that is because they are spending eight hours a day hearing that language, five days a week for the entire academic year! I have no doubt that if I were to spend that amount of time in a Turkish speaking environment, my Turkish proficiency (at least in listening and comprehension) would improve significantly. Even then, despite the immersion, it is very common for a child not to speak the second language at all for a year or so.
The advantage young children do have in learning a language is that they may be less self conscious about speaking the second language, feel less pressure to be perfect and speak with a better accent. But it is not necessarily true that the younger a child is, the quicker they will learn a second language. Language skills transfer from one language to another and a young child may not yet have training or skills in their mother tongue to transfer to a second language.
We hope that our children will speak Turkish well. We're not actually aiming for them to be bilingual or to be academically fluent in Turkish. The ability to speak more than one language is a great advantage - as well as the practical benefits of speaking a second language, it also stretches and develops the brain in different ways. But we are realistic enough to know that English will be their first language and that mastery of English, not just proficiency, is vital. So we are planning and aiming for the boys to be fluent at a conversational level in Turkish but accepting that they will not have the academic fluency to complete their education in Turkish or be at the same level as their Turkish peers in reading and writing.
As our children are still young and spent most of their time at home with me, they naturally hear a lot of English and we have to work hard on their Turkish. It's been suggested that we could put J in a creche or preschool to improve his Turkish but for various reasons that's not something we're considering at the moment. The boys hear Turkish a fair amount on Sundays and if we go to Turkish people's houses or people come to us. But that is not enough for them to learn Turkish. Sometimes L and I will speak Turkish at home and try and encourage the boys by speaking to them in Turkish. Generally if I'm out in public with the boys and there are other people around, I'll try and talk to them in Turkish. We also have books and songs in Turkish, a lot of the (limited) screen time they are allowed is in Turkish (thank goodness for Thomas the Tank Engine dubbed into Turkish!). They are also currently using an online program called DinoLingo which is designed to teach a second language through videos and animated stories. And one of the most useful things we are now doing is that the boys have an oyun ablası ("play big sister") who comes one morning a week. She looks after the boys, plays with them and speaks to them entirely in Turkish which allows me a couple of hours to get some admin work/language study/rest in. From next week, J will also start a twice weekly gymnastics lesson at a local sports centre. This will obviously be entirely in Turkish, which I think will be quite a learning curve for him and maybe not very easy to start with, but should be good for him.
And with all that, so far J is actually able to understand some basic Turkish. He'll speak some odd words and phrases but generally prefers not to speak in Turkish right now, which is very normal. S doesn't speak at all yet in any comprehensible language, although he understands a fair amount of English and I'm pretty sure he understands 'yapma!' in Turkish (which translates as 'don't do that!).
We understand that learning a language is a process, it takes time and children learn in their own time and we're grateful for the progress that they are making. But we are definitely conscious that TCKs do not automatically learn the language of the country they live in and that it will take time, effort and active work on our part to help J and S learn Turkish.
Tuesday, 1 January 2019
Neighbours
I asked a lady I know recently how she became a believer. She told me that when they lived in a previous apartment, they got to know a Turkish family who were living in the same building. The family they got to know were already believers and told them the Good News and invited them along to a Sunday gathering. The lady's husband believed first and about a year ago the lady believed. She finished by telling me that if this other family hadn't happened to live in the same building she would never have become a Christian.
There are about 1 million people in our city and less than a handful of believing Turkish families. In statistical terms, the chance of finding yourself living in the same building as a Christian Turkish family is minuscule.
We're obviously not Turkish but we have the same Good News to share. So my prayer is that in 2019 we would build relationships with our neighbours and have opportunities to share the reason for the hope that we have. And beyond that, considering that the chance of living in the same building as a believer is so small, that we would be able to develop relationships with others in the community.
Humanly speaking it seems hopeless. There are so many people here who have never met a Christian, never opened God's Word, never seriously considered the claims of Jesus. There are so few believers.
But our God doesn't deal in 'humanly speaking'. It wasn't an accident that led to my friend living in the same building as a Turkish Christian family or that led to that family befriending their neighbours. Our God is sovereign and he is at work here. And knowing that gives me the faith to pray that this next year there will be people added to the Kingdom from this city - and then the impetus to get to work myself.
"And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
There are about 1 million people in our city and less than a handful of believing Turkish families. In statistical terms, the chance of finding yourself living in the same building as a Christian Turkish family is minuscule.
We're obviously not Turkish but we have the same Good News to share. So my prayer is that in 2019 we would build relationships with our neighbours and have opportunities to share the reason for the hope that we have. And beyond that, considering that the chance of living in the same building as a believer is so small, that we would be able to develop relationships with others in the community.
Humanly speaking it seems hopeless. There are so many people here who have never met a Christian, never opened God's Word, never seriously considered the claims of Jesus. There are so few believers.
But our God doesn't deal in 'humanly speaking'. It wasn't an accident that led to my friend living in the same building as a Turkish Christian family or that led to that family befriending their neighbours. Our God is sovereign and he is at work here. And knowing that gives me the faith to pray that this next year there will be people added to the Kingdom from this city - and then the impetus to get to work myself.
"And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)