Chapter 16 - Five Plane Rides

Excitement is in the air. Beverly Boggs and I are graduating from 8th grade today, and Harold Catto the field chairman is giving the commencement exhortation. This is a small but important gathering—the first graduation of Sentani School! Miss Heikkennen, Miss Randall, and Aunt Betty Johnson are joyful…we are the fruit of their hard work!

Mom and Dad beam at the reception. “We’re so proud of you, Marlene. You’re so mature now, and almost as tall as me,” Mom says, smiling. “Tomorrow we’ll borrow the van and drive to Hollandia to shop for clothes for high school.”

Our special holiday lasts about a week, and then I hug the family close before boarding the two-engine plane to fly to Dalat School in Viet-Nam. It’s the only 1st through 12th grade school the CMA has in the Orient—and the mission is willing to pay for these long flights. (Five of them one way, if I was beginning from the interior Ilaga Valley.) I am both excited and a little scared.

Dad hands me my tickets and passport as we sit in the small airport lounge. “Here is the list of names, addresses, and telephone numbers of all the destinations, and there’ll be someone to meet you at each airport. We’ll be praying for you every day…remember, the Lord is with you.”

“Thanks, Dad. I love you all!” I hug my parents and siblings tearfully. Danny and David are five and three—they’ll be more grown up when I see them again. Romaine will travel with me in two years when she graduates. “I’ll bring you souvenirs,” I promise.

Viet Nam is far away. But it’s better to attend high school there than fly back to the States for three years. Since the three month vacation for Dalat School is over Christmastime, I’ll be gone for four months, then come home for three months.

Today the plane to Biak is full of Dutch soldiers, and when I seat myself next to one blond uniformed man the others cheer and joke with him in Dutch. I smile timidly. Changing planes at the familiar Biak airport, I drone on across the ocean toward the Philippines. Almost fourteen, I feel both confident and unsure of myself. Thankfully, Mrs. Coles meets me at the Manila Airport, and even takes me shopping during my five day stay at the CMA guest home. I find Philippine souvenirs for the family and mail them home as a surprise…then board the plane for Bangkok.

The guest home is Bangkok old and elegant. It’s the same white pillared mansion I stayed at when five years old! And now it’s filled with around 30 other MK’s whose parents have dropped them off for their journey to Dalat School.

What a joy! I begin to make friends, and the next day we troop onto the plane headed for Saigon, Viet Nam with noisy confidence. We spend one night in the vast city at the guest home, then our band makes the final flight to the town of Dalat in a smaller plane, attended by delicate Vietnamese flight attendants. House parents meet us in large vans and drive us through the provincial town and up a low hill to white buildings framed in pines—Dalat School.

The two-storied boys and girls dorms are connected by a large dining hall. Above the dining room some of the lady teachers and a nurse live. Sports fields and teacher’s homes are scattered on the hills, with pine trees and flowers scenting the cool air.

I settle into a dorm room graced with four iron beds and two wooden dressers. My new roommates are in the 9th and 10th grades—all three friendly and cheerful. I am off to a good start!

But my strong confidence is short-lived. I have underestimated social differences! It had taken time to learn the culture and language of the Monis, the Danis, and Dalat School is no different. There are about 120 kids, 1st grade through 12th, with around 30 of these in high school. A rather small school by American standards, it is large to me.

The teachers are of the same caliber as Sentani, dedicated professionals investing their lives to train missionary kids for God. And our house parents, Uncle Gene and Aunt Cleo Evans are caring mission workers who have left their fieldwork to oversee us teenaged girls. (Their daughter Joanne is also a 9th grader, assigned to a different dorm room.) But most of the students have been attending Dalat since grade school from outposts in southeast Asia, and are already good friends. I am an outsider, and they are getting to know me.

I am not intimidated, however. Being a cheerful extrovert I participate in group activities and think I am fitting in, until one small incident collapses my confidence. My roommates and I are relaxing in our dorm room, and out of boredom I begin jouncing on my iron bed. It is springy…I keep bouncing up and down, up and down. It’s childish but fun until one roommate begins to deride me.

“Come on, Marlene—keep jumping! Keep bouncing!” It’s a mocking tone…and the others join in, on and on.

Embarrassed, I keep springing on the bed. When they quit the spiteful teasing I stop, and we leave for dinner as the bell rings. But the hurt remains. And there is no one to share my heart with. There is a subculture to this high school that I have not yet absorbed. I am also learning how to dress, how to fix my hair, how to be cool.

I become quieter, observant, introspective. Aunt Cleo takes notice of me, sometimes offers to style my hair at night in rollers—and the next day my blond curls look better! But the spurts of confidence are short lived.

There are no group devotions here at Dalat, but we do have Sunday church and in the evening, youth group. We are to have our own quiet times with the Lord. And I do. Sitting on my bed, leaning against the wall I read the New Testament, searching for strength, comfort.

“I’m so lonely, Lord! Please help me.” I sense his Presence. He is there. But somehow I don’t break through to fullness, completeness. My hurt is not healed. Even in my schoolwork I don’t excel like I used to. Many in senior high are achievers who mostly make A’s. I make B’s now…I am average…feel average. Even below average.

The authors of Third Culture Kids write,

“When someone is moving, and particularly between cultural worlds, the messages

being reflected back by the community anchor/mirror can be vastly different in one

place than another. These fluctuating judgements of who they are can leave many

children wondering, Am I this competent, choice-making self, or am I totally stupid

and invisible in my community? This is one reason why personal identity as well as

cultural identity becomes a difficult thing to sort out for many TCKs.” (p.122)

The house parents are creative in sponsoring fun weekend activities. We have hikes and picnics, bonfires in the forest, outings to Dalat town, and many Friday night basketball games. Occasionally I have a date, but being self-conscious I hardly know how to act.

Each semester break when I fly home my emotional life swings upward. I am cherished, important to my parents, esteemed by the Danis. I can be myself again.

One of the vacations is so short—four weeks—that all of the MK’s from Indonesia and Irian Jaya stay with the house parents and have a short holiday in Saigon. It’s special, but that year I don’t see my parents for nine months. Dad comments to me after I’ve been home a couple months, “We felt badly that you looked down a lot, Marlene…you didn’t look up and face people. You were withdrawn.”

“That’s true, Dad. I’ve felt inferior at Dalat. But when I come home I become happier and secure, among family and the Danis. I wish it could be different for me at high school.”

“I do too. Maybe when Romaine attends also, you can help each other.

My last year at Dalat is definitely better. Ro is in the ninth grade, I in eleventh, and though we live in different parts of the dorm, we are family together.

I have been practicing clarinet—Dad gave me lessons over the summer. I continue music instruction at Dalat, and play at the annual recital in a new white dress. It’s Mozart’s concerto for clarinet in B flat, a lilting, haunting melody that he wrote soon before his death. The audience claps loudly, and I smile. Romaine is there beaming—if only Mom and Dad could be there! They would have been so proud.

During my last semester (the second half of 11th grade), I experience serendipity. Or, it can be called a unique answer to prayer! Dalat offers housing and the chapel to American servicemen who want a spiritual retreat, a break from the war. These soldiers are stationed at different outposts in southern Viet-Nam, so the cool highlands of Dalat are welcome to them. During one of the retreats Jack, a 19 year old chaplain’s assistant, takes special interest in me. He is dark haired, good looking. We date a little, then from Saigon he sends letters, candy.

My life brightens because of this love and attention. I am special to one young man! Also—Judy Whetzel, Judy Thompson, and I begin to hang out as good friends…the puzzle pieces of high school life are slowly fitting into a cheerful picture, just as I am about to leave. Even so, I am still glad that furlough is coming. In June Mom and Dad, Danny and David will come to Dalat, and we’ll all fly to the States for my senior year.

When Jack’s deployment is over I sadly say goodbye to him for the last time. He is from California—I’ll be living in Livonia, Michigan.