Growing Up - Foreign

Recently I was sitting with a group of my friends and discussing the poignant topic of culture. I listened to them, speaking about who they were from a cultural standpoint, understanding and knowing their roots and feeling deep connections within their ancestry. It was at this point that I decided to write a piece about my own experience with that poignant topic - culture. 

My parents arrived from Yugoslavia in the early 90s, escaping civil war and attempting to settle in the recently (legally) liberated South Africa. After leaving Yugoslavia (now Serbia), they learnt a new language and adapted to new cultural norms and practices. Then I was born. 

My first language was Serbian but at the age of three, I learned English at my private primary school, which in the eyes of many, is the most basic form of privilege (I agree, it was). It was at this point that my cultural identity began to morph into a sort of hybrid, half-South African, half-Serbian.

Throughout my early years, I never really related to any of my friends when they spoke about family gatherings on Sundays or even the simple fact that their parents knew the Afrikaans language. My family was living in Serbia and my parents did not speak Afrikaans. I felt strange, knowing this yet still not fully understanding the nature of my feelings. 

My parents are wonderful people who always put me first. In doing so, we stopped speaking Serbian at home and English was now our primary language. When I meet Serbian people nowadays, they often remark how strange my accent is and how the gaps in my language are deplorable. When I speak to my fellow South Africans, they often ask me where I am from. I was born in Sandton, South Africa but clearly this does not reflect in who I am. 

I often say to myself, I am too South African to be Serbian and to Serbian to be South African. I find home and comfort in neither because I feel separate from both identities. 

Speaking to my own grandparents is difficult, my Eastern European side has practically been depleted from my memory, I speak with a broken language that I can say breaks their heart whenever I utter any words. Yet, I am often told by the people I grew up with, "Oh Mila is Serbian!". 

No, Mila is not. I am not Serbian, I cannot honestly call myself that, I have no cultural roots to that country besides my family. I am not South African, I have no roots here besides my memories of the past. 

It is hard getting by, convincing yourself that you are a citizen of the world when you know in your heart that you are not. It's strange how I feel like an immigrant, in the country of my birth. It's strange how I feel like an immigrant, in the country of my origin. 

These are not often stories that get told but I am glad that I told my experience on this blog today, maybe this will encourage other people to understand how I feel and understand the way that I am. 

As they say in Serbian, "Nema veze, ti si moya zvezda". 

- Mila Brkic