by Dee Harlow (Laos) | Jun 27, 2013 | 2013, Birthing, Culture, Eye on Culture, Inspirational, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
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.
Peng is a soft spoken but opinionated housekeeper who is meticulous, professional and very kind. Like many of her peers, she switched careers to become a housekeeper because it pays more money. After finishing high school, her father paid for her to attend trade school to become a trained cook, after which she began working a stable but odd hours catering job in a big hotel here in the capital city of Vientiane. Despite her burgeoning restaurant career, after one year Peng’s father advised her to become the housekeeper of his then foreigner boss instead, not only because it paid more but offered more reasonable hours and a nice environment in a large, well appointed home. She hasn’t looked back on her restaurant career and still agrees today that being a housekeeper for foreigners pays more than restaurant work as an assistant cook, even in large establishments.
The only time Peng has stopped working was when she became a mother to her daughter, Cofie, and raised her at home for her first four years. Cofie was born in 2001, in a small hospital near Peng’s house on the outskirts of the city. Peng said that she chose this particular hospital to give birth because it was close by and not as crowded as the main government run Mahosot Hospital. And good thing that it was nearby her home because she was turned back twice within two days after her initial contraction pains started. (more…)
One of Dee’s earliest memories was flying on a trans-Pacific flight from her birthplace in Bangkok, Thailand, to the United States when she was six years old. Ever since then, it has always felt natural for her to criss-cross the globe. So after growing up in the northeast of the US, her life, her work and her curiosity have taken her to over 32 countries. And it was in the 30th country while serving in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan that she met her husband. Together they embarked on a career in international humanitarian aid working in refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan, and the tsunami torn coast of Aceh, Indonesia.
Dee is now a full-time mother of three-year old twins and continues to criss-cross the globe every two years with her husband who is in the US Foreign Service. They currently live in Vientiane, Laos, and are loving it! You can read about their adventures at Wanderlustress.
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by Natalia Rankine-Galloway (Morocco) | May 29, 2013 | Childhood, Economy, Expat Life, Eye on Culture, Humanity, Morocco, Parenting, Poverty, Travel
My mom loves to tell stories about her girls…to anyone who will listen. One of her favorites is about my first plane ride home from her native Peru. At age 6, as I sat in the window seat watching Lima fade away beneath us, I turned to her and said (with wisdom far beyond my years my mum will add) “the trouble with Peru is that the Peruvians don’t take good care of it.”
Admittedly it is one of her less embarrassing stories, better by far than the one that has me passing most of a Greek holiday with a potty on my head. And lately, as my son gets older, I’ve been thinking more about it.
By the time we leave Morocco this fall, he will not quite be three. Throughout our time here, that fact made me sad. There is likely little if anything that he will remember about our year in Morocco and our travels in North Africa. But now, this has also made me slightly grateful.
I have started to see the cogs turning in his little head when we pass the women begging on the street, with toddlers his age strapped to their backs. I see him watching the kids selling cartons of tissues at the stop lights as I guiltily roll up the window.
As his little eyes observe more and more I am starting to be glad that we will leave before the questions start. He hasn’t progressed much past the basic two-word toddler interrogatives: dada gone? more biscuit? But I am imagining the questions forming, and I need more time to come up with good answers.
When he asks me about these babies on their mothers backs, or the ones selling on streets, what do I say? Moreover, how do you explain your own role in the perpetuation of this inequality. How do I explain that being asked for the 19th time in one day to spare just 1 dirham irritates me more and more in spite of the fact that had I given one each time, I would now be short only $2? How would I explain that the shoes he’s wearing would cover our gardeners weekly salary?
Observant though I might have been at age 6 about the socio-economics of Peru, it did not give me any head start on figuring out any actionable recommendations for the Peruvians about how to improve their problems of poverty, inequality, pollution. Nor do I have any for Morocco now, some 25 years later.
I am a big believer in my own and my son’s capacity to save the world. I take part in fundraising campaigns, donate to charity and volunteer. I will always encourage him to live a life of tolerance, patience and understanding. But when you live in the midst of an unequal society – to what extent are you compromising your principles by continuing to live in the manner to which you are accustomed?
So while I doubt that I will ever come up with any Nobel Peace prize winning solutions to global income inequality myself, I would at the very least time to come up with a way of explaining poverty to my son. I would like to be able to explain to him that he is lucky without teaching him conceit or entitlement. I would like to teach him that our relative wealth comes with a responsibility to those less fortunate in such a way that empowers and doesn’t leave me stinking of rank hypocrisy when I look away from the outstretched hands on the street.
How do you teach your children about income inequality when you are living on the “have” side of an unequal society?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by our contributor, Natalia Rankine-Galloway, who writes at The Culture Mum Chronicles. She is now writing from the U.S. Embassy in Morocco.
Photo credit to the author.
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 Ana Gaby | May 1, 2013 | Cultural Differences, Expat Life, Eye on Culture, Family, Indonesia, International, Living Abroad, World Moms Blog
Lately I’ve read so many articles regarding the so-called “mommy-wars”. They are all over the news, on magazine articles on blogs and even on TV. Every time I read a new article I’m surprised to find that alongside fulfilling the always challenging role of being a mom the expectations and pressures we put on ourselves to be perfect in everything we do are not only unattainable but exhausting.
When I think of these things, I’m just so glad to be in someway sheltered from it. I live in a completely different world. I live in South East Asia, and I’m not a local, so the expectations put upon me are quite bearable and, in fact, easy to fulfill.
From the day I became a mother and gave birth to my first son in Thailand (where the nurses pampered me with massages and asked me if I would prefer the Thai, Japanese or Western menu!) to the day I came to Jakarta with a big pregnant belly and was rushed thru the express lane in the airport, being a foreign mom in South East Asia has been a fun and eye-opening experience from day one. (more…)
Ana Gaby is a Mexican by birth and soul, American by heart and passport and Indonesian by Residence Permit. After living, studying and working overseas, she met the love of her life and endeavored in the adventure of a lifetime: country-hopping every three years for her husband’s job. When she's not chasing her two little boys around she volunteers at several associations doing charity work in Indonesia and documents their adventures and misadventures in South East Asia at Stumble Abroad.
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by Karyn Wills | Apr 25, 2013 | Cultural Differences, Eye on Culture, Human Rights, Humanity, New Zealand, World Moms Blog, World Voice
So, you have one national day? Here in New Zealand we have two…sort of.
The official national day for New Zealand is Waitangi Day on 6th February but I’ve always been reluctant to write about it; it’s not much of a day of celebration here. There are no buntings or fireworks; there are no parades or people getting dressed up in national costume. It’s a political hot-potato and it’s all a bit “blergh” for many Kiwis.
The problem is one of those dilemmas of humanity: conflict has arisen from good intentions.
Back in 1800s, when the world was being colonized by the English and Europeans, there was a widely held belief, by the colonisers, that unless the landscape had been changed through agriculture or construction it was considered to be unoccupied and unowned. We all know how that turned out for many indigenous peoples. To a great extent, that was no different for the resident population of Maori who had been here for over a 1,000 years by the time the Europeans arrived. The difference has been that we have a Treaty, a signed document between the representatives of Queen Victoria and various Maori chiefs of the 1840s.
The problem is this: there are two versions of the treaty. One written in English and one written in Maori. I’m sure you can all appreciate that you cannot always get a direct translation between two very different cultures and languages. The treaties don’t actually match and, in spirit, they are very different. (more…)
Karyn is a teacher, writer and solo mother to three sons. She lives in the sunny wine region of Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand in the city of Napier.
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by Tara Bergman (USA) | Apr 18, 2013 | Education, Eye on Culture, Family, Motherhood, Older Children, Parenting, Tara B., USA, World Moms Blog, World Motherhood
My husband and I had been puzzling over the Boy Scouts of America for some time. My husband was a scout, and we assumed our boys would be too. There are so many positives to the club – building life skills, fostering peer relationships, and helping in the community. However, when we learned of the anti-LGBT policies of the scouts (currently banning non-heterosexual parents from leadership and expelling gay scouts), we were dismayed. We weighed the variables.
We live in a rural area, and there isn’t a plethora of choices. BSA talks about re-assessing their policies from time to time, so maybe they’ll change their stance before our kids are older. My husband and I are not in the LGBT community, so while we oppose the policies, it wouldn’t prohibit us specifically from participating. And my 7 year old has classmates joining the local troop. In the end though, we just couldn’t do it. We felt that joining would send the message to the Boy Scouts, our kids, and the greater community, that we can turn a blind eye because this bigotry doesn’t affect us directly. We couldn’t reconcile that.
Before going on, I need to say that there are people in my life whom I respect and admire tremendously, who are amazing parents, and who do participate in the Boy Scouts. I don’t judge them nor am I addressing their specific decisions. I’m writing this to share why we made this choice for our family.
Since my husband and I decided to walk away from the idea of scouts, we were left to come up with an alternative. I decided to ask some local friends if they would be interested in forming a club. We could get the kids together once a month to work on life skills and socialize….sort of like a playdate with projects. If it sticks, over time we can consider appropriate community service endeavors. (more…)
Tara is a native Pennsylvanian who moved to the Seattle area in 1998 (sight unseen) with her husband to start their grand life adventure together. Despite the difficult fact that their family is a plane ride away, the couple fell in love with the Pacific Northwest and have put down roots. They have 2 super charged little boys and recently moved out of the Seattle suburbs further east into the country, trading in a Starbucks on every corner for coyotes in the backyard. Tara loves the outdoors (hiking, biking, camping). And, when her family isn't out in nature, they are hunkered down at home with friends, sharing a meal, playing games, and generally having fun. She loves being a stay-at-home mom and sharing her experiences on World Moms Network!
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by Susie Newday (Israel) | Mar 25, 2013 | Culture, Eye on Culture, Family, Holiday, Israel, Religion, Susie Newday
Tonight is the first night of Passover, a Jewish holiday that commemorates the story of the Exodus when the Jews were freed from prolonged slavery in ancient Egypt.
On Passover (also called Pesach) we refrain from eating “chametz”. Chametz (leavening) is anything made from five types of grain and left to rise more than 18 minutes. So basically, the prelude to this holiday is crazy spring cleaning, getting rid of any chametz in the house before Passover starts, and not bringing anything not kosher for Passover into the house until after Passover. It also involves koshering your kitchen and making sure not to mix the “chametz” with the Passover stuff.
As you can imagine, the logistics are enough to cause anyone an ulcer. At least they are if you are not living alone, continue to work and have a family to feed and take care of while trying to get everything else done. Say the word Pesach to me and there is an immediate visceral reaction of stress.
The question I have been asking myself for years is why do we all tend to make things so much harder on ourselves than it really has to be. Passover is the holiday that represents freedom yet way too many people feel like slaves in the weeks before Passover. A self imposed slavery. (more…)
Susie Newday is a happily-married American-born Israeli mother of five. She is an oncology nurse, blogger and avid amateur photographer.
Most importantly, Susie is a happily married mother of five amazing kids from age 8-24 and soon to be a mother in law. (Which also makes her a chef, maid, tutor, chauffeur, launderer...) Susie's blog, New Day, New Lesson, is her attempt to help others and herself view the lessons life hands all of us in a positive light. She will also be the first to admit that blogging is great free therapy as well. Susie's hope for the world? Increasing kindness, tolerance and love.
You can also follow her Facebook page New Day, New Lesson where she posts her unique photos with quotes as well as gift ideas.
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