Week 5: Cultural Practices

Me and my little cousin Abi.

I’d imagine that for immigrant children, especially those who are moved here at some point in their young lives as opposed to being born in this country to immigrant parents, saying that school here is an adjustment would be an understatement. And a large one at that. For one thing, the language barrier is probably the most immediate and obvious factor requiring getting used to for a young child from a foreign environment. To see most of your new group of peers as completely separate from yourself isn’t exactly easy to deal with at a very young age. However, a lot of kids, especially the younger children, seem to adjust very well. Take, for example, my 7 year old cousin Abicsha, who lives in Colombo, the capital city of Sri Lanka. When I stayed with my uncle’s family this past summer, she was at first definitely scared of me ( We hadn’t met before as it had been something like 8 years since I had visited), and over the course of one or two weeks, had actually picked up a good amount of English from talking to me more and more, and even was teaching me some Tamil, one of Sri Lanka’s native languages, though I wasn’t nearly as adept a student. The rapidness of her becoming very familiar and even close with me showed, in my opinion, that at times younger kids can adjust to new factors very well and accept them fully, even develop preference for new things learned over old concepts. Some kids, however, seem to retract for the most part, mainly because, in my opinion at least, they have no window of reference for anything they observe and seem to see everything as completely foreign, and this can even be synonymous with bad at times. My mentee, Kevin, in particular is very quiet, but as the weeks go by its clear that even though I don’t speak Spanish very well at all, he’s becoming increasingly comfortable and familiar with me, waiting for me to walk back to class and waving any time we see each other in the school. He obviously mocks my poor grasp on his language, but like I said, he seems to be adjusting to the situation he’s placed in. At first, there was very little communication from his side, as he always kept his head down, nodding or shaking his head as an answer, and mumbling. The last two times we went to AMIS he seemed a lot more personable and opinionated about a lot of things, indicating a building level of comfort. We’ve talked(to an extent, obviously) about what he thinks of his school and the new environment, however, and he doesn’t hesitate at all in making it known that he prefers his home culture to that of his current environment. Though he’s in a class with other Spanish speakers, I never have seen him interacting with other kids his age, but this could also just be because he’s very new to the school, according to members of the staff I’ve spoken to. His interactions, though limited as I just said, seem to be primarily with other Spanish speakers, mainly teachers, and not by choice but by obligation, though he never seems angry or visibly upset in any way. I think because of his relative lack of time spent in this environment, his home culture is very much kept alive, because his lack of exposure in rarely interacting with others would mean that’s probably still the only influence on his particular “culture.” In my case, when I was very young, as in birth to the age of 5 or 6, I was still involved heavily in my homegrown Sri Lankan culture, because my mom still lived with us and she always brought me to play with other Sri Lankan kids, those of her friends, as there was (and still is) a pretty tightly knit Sri Lankan community in Cincinnati. But when she left to Sri Lanka, as my dad was forced to pretty much work around the clock and take care of my sister and I, we started to lose touch with that side of ourselves. I was fluent in Tamil at that age, but as my dad had to prioritize our education and happiness, he didn't have time to reinforce a home culture and so I lost touch with it gradually. Because after all of this I grew up not being around any of my peers, meaning Sri Lankans aside from my father and sister, and grew very close to my predominantly white friends, I really never had a chance to keep any of my cultural practices alive over the years, and so my home culture has faded over time, something I’ve always regretted. For that reason, I think it’s a good thing Kevin is so attached to that very home culture, because it really is an important part of his identity and something he should hold onto as he gets older and older, as opposed to my approach, trying to recapture it now.

With my sister(middle), my aunt and uncle, when home culture was a central part of life.