Global Voices

In this issue

The Ongoing Search for Home: Third Culture Kids Plato from a Computer Screen: What I learned from my experience studying Philosophy with Pamoja Poetry- 'Not Every Rain is Beautiful' Plastic free initiatives International Recipe!

Foreword Welcome back to Global Voices; we’re excited to have you back!

This issue covers a variety of topics, starting Until our next newsletter, you can stay in touch by following us: with an article about growing up as a Third Culture Kid and trying to understand what home should be. We also have a piece giving @pamojagsc insight into what it is like studying Philosophy with Pamoja.

We also have some treats for you! These include some poetry, some international news about a plastic free initiative that the Cayman Islands are buzzing about, not to mention an international recipe for you to try out!

Best wishes,

Radha Publishing Officer

What’s been inspiring you recently? Have you been creating art, taking photos, or even writing pieces that you wish to be published for a wider audience? Send us your work via our email: gsc@pamojaeducation.com Don't forget you can DM us about anything you would like to know about Pamoja, the GSC, or simply to connect with us so we can grow into a more connected, and global community as Pamoja learners!

Enjoy this issue, send us your feedback!

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The Ongoing Search for Home: Third Culture Kids

by Radha

It started due to summer moves. We would get settled in August, start new schools with new A third-culture kid is defined as a child who people, struggle to fit in with preexisting groups in grows up in a culture different from the one in which his or her parents grew up. It has also been each new environment, then by the time vacations would come around we would take it as defined as a child who grows up in a country a breather, exploring the new place we were to other than the one on their passport. The term was coined by American sociologist Ruth Useem call home for around two years. By the time the next summer would roll around my brother and I who used it in her studies focused on expats would have friends, we would want to do living in India. activities, maybe my parents wished to take us I am a Third-Culture Kid, and so far, I have come on a family vacation. Before we knew it, years had gone by before I returned to my supposed to realize that there is one major difference home. I have no friends there, only family between us TCKs. Some of us have a strong members, I barely speak the native languages feeling of belonging to a certain country- some (Papiamentu and Dutch), I don’t know any of my families return to one place every year, every cousins, I have no idea where the good Christmas, or for special occasions. Some of us do not. My experience as a TCK is one which has restaurants are, or where the most popular spot is for people my age. Is this what home is always been accompanied by one particularly supposed to be? looming question: Where is my home?

I was born in Aruba, a colony of the Netherlands, my passport is Dutch, and my parents own a house there. These are the immediate thoughts that enter my mind when I think of my birthplacethe country where I am entitled to privileges due to being born there. I left Aruba when I was three and a half, I have virtually no memories of living there. My parents truly had the intentions of bringing my brother and I back home every year but as with many other aspects of our lives, it got pushed back time, after time, after time.

Is home supposed to be a place in your mind that you claim as your own but upon arrival, you feel as alien as you have in other countries? Is home supposed to be where you were born? Maybe it’s supposed to be a place where you visit regularly… is there a quota for how many times you return before it turns into home? It dawned on me that home didn’t necessarily have to be a place, I thought about the things that make somewhere feel like home, it wasn’t the house I lived in, it wasn’t the city or country I moved to.

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I looked at what always stayed the same when I moved to different places. We always moved together, my mom, dad, brother, and I. We always boxed up our belongings and moved with our pets, no matter where we ended up we were always together and at the start of a move I was always surrounded by cardboard boxes, beige tape, dust mites, and my family. I decided that for me, home isn’t a place, home is the feeling at the end of the day when you’ve traveled for 16 hours, you end up exhausted sitting in a hotel room with nothing but your suitcases and your family.

For myself, and many other third culture kids I’ve met and talked to, home isn’t a physical place. Home is almost always the items we bring along in the shipping containers, the animals that have to travel the same miles we do, and the family that end up facing the same challenges as we do with every new country you go to. Don’t get us wrong, we love our legal home, the country on our passports, but sometimes we need a bit more than that.

"What Is A 'Third-Culture Kid'?." Merriamwebster.com. N. p., 2019. Web. 25 Feb. 2019.

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Plato from a Computer Screen: What I learned from my experience studying Philosophy with Pamoja One of the last conversations I had with my philosophy teacher was about his pilgrimage to the Camino de Santiago. I don’t remember the exact contents of that conversation, only that at that time, I was struck by two things; the thought that there was a world beyond the one I knew, and the desire to get to know it better.

relates to late night TV shows like “The Daily Show" with Trevor Noah and “Patriot Act” with Hasan Minhaj, which provide comedic takes on serious, polarising issues like the death penalty, euthanesia, and whether some presidents were secretly colluding with some foreign governments. The keywords in all this being: “polarising” and “issues”. Which are important to note because these shows usually have a bias towards one side of the issue.

Okay, the former may sound obvious and the latter contrived, and fine, the way I wrote this sounds like I’m exaggerating—but hear me out.

This won’t apply to everyone, but some people take these biases at face value and incorporate them into their personal ethics. I used to be one of those people, and at least for me, it came out of a sense that my ethical beliefs were a sign of my moral superiority (what people mean when they talk about high horses). Soon enough, I had all these ethical beliefs which I had essentially bandwagonned into. This is what I mean when I talk about “knowing of” something.

I brought up that anecdote as a lead-in to the idea that there’s a distinct difference between “knowing of” something and “knowing about” something. Not in the linguistic sense, in which they are admittedly the same. No, I coined the two phrases while writing this piece to express the following.

With the spread of technology providing a hotbed for information, now more than ever we’re exposed to more and more ideas. And a good deal of them are morally significant.

“Morally significant” meaning they directly or indirectly address the question of how we should live.

Despite how I sound right now, I don’t think having beliefs is a bad thing. What I argue against is the unfoundedness in which these beliefs may have been adopted. This is where “knowing about” something and learning online philosophy comes in.

The best example I can think of is one that

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Learning philosophy gave me the framework to actively incorporate critical analysis into my everyday life. And if my good grades from middle school gave me the false sense that I knew what critical analysis was I was about to be rudely awakened. Critical analysis involves picking apart an argument for its assumptions, implications, context. It means engaging in conversations with people from a completely different times, who spoke different languages from you, who might have died from a disease you were vaccinated against when you were 3.

And then going over those conversations with someone who lives a phone call away.

But learning, no, doing philosophy, has given me the tools that I know will enable me to know about it. When my teacher told me about Camino de Santiago, I had the feeling that “this is the sort of world that’s waiting for me when I graduate”.

I want to be able to walk a path like he did, a path of pilgrimage where I can find my own beliefs about what sort of person I want to be, and the life I want to live.

Thank you, Mr. Hernandez, Lauren, and everyone in my philosophy class, for helping me see the yellow signs marking the path I want to walk on.

Living in the information age, or whatever you want to call it, you have the feeling that you already know of the world.

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Not Every Rain Is Beautiful

By Shizah

There is rain inside all of us for some what's blue and soft and slithers down backs like cashmere shawls is grey and gouging and grates along cavernous ribcages for others I've caught strangers on trains steal their eyes from mine - stern and taciturn, when sheets of the sky's tears tore up the papyraceous highways caught glimpses of their own sheets, rolled up, rankling and secretive the rain outside whispered secrets of their own to ears grown wearied of sweet smiles and goodbyes; to eyes borne silent by raging seas of unknowing; to limbs still yielding vitality to heavy dreams; but the rain outside crashed on the rivulets on their raincoats a facade for the drought in their minds - all moisture evades them there all the water in their eyes is mixed into the rainwater on their cheeks sallow, seeping with a decisiveness rivaling that of shying deciduous maidens onto the outstretched palms in their laps and settling there like an unspoken prayer the train reaches its station we droop off it like dew off leaves, fastening our raincoats even tighter around our sad waists, we travel home while our shoes fill up with the rain in our toes.

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Plastic free initiatives!

By Maia

Plastic can now be found on every beach in the world, with approximately 8 million pieces of plastic pollution entering the ocean every day.

This problem continues to grow and devastate marine life and environments. Studies have shown that the estimated 269,000 tons of plastic in the ocean (equivalent to the weight of about 38,400 large male elephants) kills over 1 million marine animals each year. The issue is not limited to the ocean; toxic chemicals from plastics are found in the blood and tissue of almost all of us. The countless horrifying statistics have finally stirred a response, and people are taking legal action regarding plastic.

Banning plastic has become a global movement that might just save our lives.

The movement goes beyond plastic as well. San Diego joined the growing number of cities that have banned Styrofoam food and drink containers in January of 2019.

All of these actions have a ripple effect, spreading quickly around the world, even reaching small islands in the Caribbean. The Cayman Islands currently have a strong movement to ban singleuse plastic and restaurants around Grand Cayman are signing pledges to reduce plastic waste, with the ultimate goal of eliminating it completely.

Countries from all parts of the world have taken steps toward banning the material. As of December 2018, Peru passed a law to phase out single-use plastic over the course of three years.

The European Parliament approved a measure to ban single-use plastic, which will be in effect by 2021 if it passes additional procedural measures. In July of 2019, US restaurants will be fined if they continue to offer plastic straws in Washington, D.C.

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Each of these large movements are instrumental to triumphing over the problems that plastic pose on the environment; however, small actions are how everything begins. There are many easy switches that individuals can make, such as switching to a bamboo toothbrush and using a reusable water bottle. People can also show solidarity by participating in “No Straw November� in 2019.

Every step away from plastic is a step towards a better and healthier future for ourselves and the environment.

Indian Vegetable Rice

by Harneet By 1. Cut up ½ red pepper, ½ green pepper, 6 baby carrots, and a medium sized onion in long strips

6. Add 2-3 teaspoons ketchup

2. In a pan, pour one tablespoon cooking oil. Add 1 teaspoon cumin seeds when the pan gets hot.

8. Mix everything together, and then add 1 cup of uncooked rice and 2 ½ cups water

3. Sautee the onions in the pan. Also, grate one piece of ginger and add it to the pan.

9. Keep on medium heat until rice is fully cooked.

7. Add 1 teaspoon turmeric

Enjoy!

4. Add all remaining vegetables. Put the pan on medium heat.

Pro tip: If you like spicy, feel free to add green chili at step #3!

5. Add 1 teaspoon black pepper and 2 teaspoons of salt

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@pamojagsc gsc@pamojaeducation.com

Global Voices The Student's Voice

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