by Mama B (Saudi Arabia) | Sep 11, 2013 | 2013, Cultural Differences, Culture, Family, Family Travel, Grandparent, Home, Life Balance, Saudi Arabia, Uncategorized, World Motherhood
The first week of school, after a two and a half month summer, is nearly over and we are slowly getting into the swing of things.
I love the schedules, the school calendar, the time tables. The order of it all is just so… ahh… comforting! It only takes a short while before I start dreaming of our next break, but being back home is such a blessing.
There is a feeling I get when landing back in Riyadh, which is like sitting back in your favorite chair that has moulded its self to your body perfectly. Everything fits into the right place. It is an enormous relief, no matter how much fun we were having, to be back home where I know where everything is if I need it.
When I am traveling I feel totally disconnected. My life here revolves around my family – ‘my tribe’ as I call them. This is not only my ‘mini tribe’, consisting of my husband and children, but of my whole tribe of mother, father. sisters, sisters in law, brothers in law, cousins, aunts and uncles. It is a foreign feeling to be somewhere without the them for a long while.
Mama B’s a young mother of four beautiful children who leave her speechless in both, good ways and bad. She has been married for 9 years and has lived in London twice in her life. The first time was before marriage (for 4 years) and then again after marriage and kid number 2 (for almost 2 years). She is settled now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (or as settled as one can be while renovating a house).
Mama B loves writing and has been doing it since she could pick up a crayon. Then, for reasons beyond her comprehension, she did not study to become a writer, but instead took graphic design courses. Mama B writes about the challenges of raising children in this world, as it is, who are happy, confident, self reliant and productive without driving them (or herself) insane in the process.
Mama B also sheds some light on the life of Saudi, Muslim children but does not claim to be the voice of all mothers or children in Saudi. Just her little "tribe." She has a huge, beautiful, loving family of brothers and sisters that make her feel like she wants to give her kids a huge, loving family of brothers and sisters, but then is snapped out of it by one of her three monkeys screaming “Ya Maamaa” (Ya being the arabic word for ‘hey’). You can find Mama B writing at her blog, Ya Maamaa . She's also on Twitter @YaMaamaa.
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by Mama Mzungu (Kenya) | Aug 28, 2013 | 2013, Cultural Differences, Education, Inspirational, Kenya, Kids, School, Special Needs, Uncategorized, World Motherhood
In the US, people with physical disabilities focus on fighting stigma, on being viewed as people who can do almost anything despite of their physical limitations, and on fighting for the world to make appropriate accommodations in order to even the playing field.
In Kenya, like so many low-income countries, people with physical disabilities, children in particular, are fighting for their very survival.
A friend, who runs a school for the disabled here, recently told me an illustrative story. The man who founded the school was visiting a friend in a rural area and came across a disabled child who was tied to a tree while his parents went to work in the field. The boy was left with a bowl of food and forced to defecate in the radius rope permitted. The school founder, touched by this scene, made it his life’s work to make lives better and futures brighter for these children. (more…)
Originally from Chicago, Kim has dabbled in world travel through her 20s and is finally realizing her dream of living and working in Western Kenya with her husband and two small boys, Caleb and Emmet. She writes about tension of looking at what the family left in the US and feeling like they live a relatively simple life, and then looking at their neighbors and feeling embarrassed by their riches. She writes about clumsily navigating the inevitable cultural differences and learning every day that we share more than we don’t. Come visit her at Mama Mzungu.
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by Jill | Aug 14, 2013 | 2013, Africa, Being Thankful, Childhood, Cultural Differences, Health, Human Rights, International, Loss of Child, Poverty, World Motherhood
Malaria has been in the news this week. Or, rather, the antimalarial medication mefloquine has been getting a lot of attention. The FDA recently issued a black box warning on this old standard for soldiers, vacationers, and expats in faraway, mosquito-infested lands. Faraway lands like the Congo, where I live with my husband and two small children.
For us, malaria is always on our minds. We think about the disease as we spray on our daily layer of chemicals in the morning, shun outside games at dusk, and gaze through the gauze of the nets above our beds just before closing our eyes at night. My son was even an Anopheles mosquito for Halloween one year. Malaria is that scary—and also that normal—for our family. (more…)
by Mannahattamamma (UAE) | Jul 24, 2013 | Cultural Differences, Economy, Expat Life, Human Rights, Older Children, Politics, UAE, World Motherhood
Decades ago, as I moved around Manhattan from cheap apartment to cheap apartment, most of my stuff fit into “New York luggage:” big black Hefty garbage bags. Now that I’ve acquired children, however, and all their junk precious possessions, the New York luggage has been retired. Now I have to hire professionals, like the team of four guys who hauled our furniture and approximately eighty gazillion boxes into long-term storage when we moved from New York to Abu Dhabi two years ago. It took us more than three days to finish that move—I’m sure those movers still have a dart board with our apartment number at its center.
That move almost killed me—and I’m not even including the hours we spent packing and re-packing the twelve suitcases we were lugging to Abu Dhabi, in a desperate attempt to make sure that no one suitcase went over the weight limit for checked bags.
So after that move, moving from one neighborhood in Abu Dhabi to another was a piece of cake: on moving day, a squad of ten men showed up armed with huge rolls of bubble wrap and cardboard; they fanned out across our apartment and hey presto! the contents of our apartment vanished in a few days.
When we moved from New York, I don’t remember thinking much about the difference between my life and the lives of the men putting our boxes in the truck. At the risk of generalizing, I assumed that I had more education than they did, and that my children probably went to “better” public schools than theirs did (if even they had kids). I mean, I know I’m generalizing here—and maybe the movers were PhD candidates in philosophy out to make an extra buck, but that seems like a stretch. (more…)
After twenty-plus years in Manhattan, Deborah Quinn and her family moved to Abu Dhabi (in the United Arab Emirates), where she spends a great deal of time driving her sons back and forth to soccer practice. She writes about travel, politics, feminism, education, and the absurdities of living in a place where temperatures regularly go above 110F.
Deborah can also be found on her blog, Mannahattamamma.
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by Natalia Rankine-Galloway (Morocco) | Jul 17, 2013 | Body Image, Cultural Differences, Culture, Expat Life, Feminism, International, Life Lesson, Living Abroad, Morocco, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Sexuality, Travel, Uncategorized, World Motherhood
Recently, my boobs took a trip to Jordan. At least it seemed at the time that the rest of me was just along for the ride. Never had my cleavage gotten so much attention; never had it occupied my thoughts so completely.
Having lived in Morocco for almost a year, I thought I knew how to strike the proper balance….somewhere between my usual, US appropriate signature style and a more modest décolletage that I felt was an appropriate concession to my host country’s social norms.
This balance was clearly off-kilter for Jordan. My ensembles were getting more attention from the male Jordanian population than a Britney Spears get up. Given that I have been a little sensitive about my dwindling cup size since giving up nursing my son, I was momentarily flattered….before being sincerely uncomfortable and confused.
I knew in theory that one country in the Middle East or North Africa would not necessarily adhere to the same standards of dress for women as the next, just as various areas or social classes within Morocco dressed worlds apart.
(more…)
Natalia was born a stone's throw from the Queen's racetrack in Ascot, UK and has been trying to get a ticket to the races and a fabulous hat to go with it ever since. She was born to a Peruvian mother and an Irish father who kept her on her toes, moving her to Spain, Ireland and back to the UK before settling her in New York for the length of middle and high school. She is still uncertain of what she did to deserve that.
She fled to Boston for college and then Washington, D.C. to marry her wonderful husband, who she met in her freshman year at college. As a military man, he was able to keep her in the migratory lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. Within 5 months of marriage, they were off to Japan where they stayed for a wonderful 2 and one half years before coming home to roost. Baby Xavier was born in New York in 2011 and has not slept since.
A joy and an inspiration, it was Xavier who moved Natalia to entrepreneurship and the launch of CultureBaby. She has loved forging her own path and is excited for the next step for her family and CultureBaby.
Natalia believes in the potential for peace that all children carry within them and the importance of raising them as global citizens. She loves language, history, art and culture as well as Vietnamese Pho, Argentinian Malbec, English winters, Spanish summers and Japanese department stores...and she still hopes one day to catch the number 9 race with Queen Liz.
You can find her personal blog, The Culture Mum Chronicles.
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by Mama Mzungu (Kenya) | Jun 19, 2013 | Casting a Wider Net, Cultural Differences, Grandparent, Interviews, Life Balance, Motherhood, Parenting, Social Good, Traditions, Uncategorized, World Motherhood, World Voice
Our “Casting a Wider Net” series features mothers around the world whose voices have typically been excluded from the blogosphere, due to lack of access to the internet, low literacy or poverty. This feature aims to include their important and distinct perspectives with interviews and occasional video clips.
My grandmother, even at 91, never ceases to amaze me. She has fought back from accidents and illness, car wrecks and strokes, with unexpected strength and optimism, probably from a deep drive to feel fully engaged in the world. When my grandfather, the love of her life, widowed her over 30 years ago, she saw past her grief to discover new joys, taking up folk dancing and beginning a new career as a pre-school teacher. Today, her hands shake, the result of essential tremors, but that was beside the point when she decided to take up pottery – a unquestionably physical art form – in her 8th decade of life. Her brightly colored ceramic creations fill her small apartment and she makes gifts of them for her 5 grandchildren and growing brood of “greats.”
But it’s not just her zest that draws you in. She’s warm, the kind of woman it’s easy to open up to, a good listener and curious question-asker. It’s probably this quality, along with her undeniably sweet demeanor, that has kept her in companionship since my grandfather passed. And it’s this quality that made me want to turn the tables and ask her questions. (more…)
Originally from Chicago, Kim has dabbled in world travel through her 20s and is finally realizing her dream of living and working in Western Kenya with her husband and two small boys, Caleb and Emmet. She writes about tension of looking at what the family left in the US and feeling like they live a relatively simple life, and then looking at their neighbors and feeling embarrassed by their riches. She writes about clumsily navigating the inevitable cultural differences and learning every day that we share more than we don’t. Come visit her at Mama Mzungu.
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