Making Myself at Home in the World
My Life's Journey on Four Continents
by
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Preview from Chapter 3: The Heart of Darkness: Léopoldville (October 1956 – December 1958). My abandonment in the hospital taught me I was a fighter and a survivor. I refused to give in to my loneliness and began to spend more and more time at the homes of friends, many of them missionaries. I was exposed to evangelical Protestantism in their homes and in Sunday school, where I had to memorize the order of the books of the Bible and lengthy passages from the New Testament. I even went on a vacation with one missionary family, driving from Brazzaville (across the river from Léopoldville) to Pointe-Noire on the Atlantic coast of French Congo. The distance is 348 miles; on today’s roads, you can drive it in a little more than eight hours. Back then, on potholed dirt roads, it took four days each way. I also pulled out all the stops to excel in home arts and physical education (both of which were graded) as well as in my academic courses. I learned how to crochet and knit. I worked out until I could climb the ropes to the top of our very tall school gym and swim faster than anyone in my age group. I tapped into every possible resource, including getting my sister’s Dutch boyfriend to help me with my Flemish homework. (Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands, whereas Flemish is a dialect spoken in parts of Belgium and France.) Once I was ranked, my class standing steadily improved. Much to my Belgian classmates’ chagrin, I ended up at the top of my class. Their parents didn’t take kindly to the fact that an American could do better than their own children; I heard rumors that some of them had been beaten. I was no longer invisible but wished I still were. The only black mark I ever got was in “soin” (carefulness) when my father forgot to sign and return my report card. From then on, I signed them myself. I had, in effect, taken parenting into my own hands. I had no choice. My parents paid absolutely no attention to me. I rode my bike by myself back and forth to school twice a day. In Belgian colonial style, we had a two-hour lunch break to eat and take a siesta, so two of those trips were in the scorching midday sun. Looking back, I presume kidnapping of diplomats’ kids wasn’t a problem, but it seems it might have been risky. My friends and I played regularly in the large rainwater sewers that flowed into the Congo River at the edge of our yard. Several times, we were almost harmed, including once by DDT sprayed into the sewer and once by a flash flood after an unexpected rainstorm. Other dangers included crocodiles wandering into our yard, mamba snakes hanging down from our trees, and diseases like schistosomiasis and onchocerciasis (river blindness) from swimming in the river. With the benefit of time — some 60 years in this case — my sojourn in the Congo seems a bit surreal. It could be the work of fiction, like Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. (The author’s family lived in the Congo in 1963 when she was 7; her father was a physician working in a remote village.) In fact, Barbara Kingsolver’s fiction parallels our nonfiction life in many ways. There were four daughters in The Poisonwood Bible — Rachel, 15; twins Leah and Adah, 14; and Ruth May, 5. (We were 15, 13, and 10.) They, too, lived in the Congo on the brink of civil war, and they, too, had a rather oblivious father. Mirroring the conflict in the Congo, their family, like ours, begins to disintegrate. Fortunately, I, as the youngest, was not killed by a green mamba snake like Ruth May but easily could have been. I consider myself lucky: I left the Congo two years and two months older and considerably wiser. I returned home with many gifts: several new languages (French, Flemish, Latin, and a smattering of local Congolese dialects), knowledge of two countries (Belgium and the Congo), familiarity with the Bible from my missionary friends, and pride in myself for having made it to the top of my class. I was still introverted, shy, and fearful, but a lot less so. I was sad to be returning home without our dog, Foxie; he succumbed to a crocodile attack and was buried under a flame tree on the edge of the Congo River.
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About the Book
This book is the story of a well-traveled and well-informed American expatriate woman, Sybilla Green Dorros. It’s recounted in chapters — one for each place she lived — starting in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and ending in San Diego, California. While the bookend chapters are set in the United States, most of the locations are global. Four of them involved assignments with her family of origin (her parents and the earlier ones with her two sisters): Paris, Léopoldville, Accra, and Casablanca. Two were on her own: Rome and her first stint in Geneva. The last two, and the longest sojourns spanning nearly a quarter century, were in Manila and back in Geneva with her family by marriage (her husband and three children). Each relocation — to disparate countries at different stages of her life — presented new sets of challenges. This book reveals how she tackled these challenges and how she felt — and continues to feel — at home almost anywhere but with nowhere to truly call home.
About the Author
Sybilla Green Dorros is a well-traveled and well-informed American expatriate woman. As the daughter of a U.S. diplomat and later the wife of an international civil servant, Sybilla lived on four different continents, including 10 years in Africa, 14 years in Asia, 10 years in Europe and the rest in the U.S. In addition to living in nine foreign countries (France, the Belgian Congo, Ghana, Italy, Morocco, Switzerland, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines), Sybilla traveled extensively worldwide. She also served with the American Red Cross in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sybilla had a varied career. She taught Chinese politics at universities in the Philippines and Switzerland. She wrote and edited on a contract basis for various international organizations. She is the author of more than 200 articles published in magazines and newspapers. She later worked in fundraising communications. She was a certified childbirth educator and author of A Lamaze Guide for the Philippines, and is currently a certified Kundalini Yoga instructor.