A third-culture-kid

When I was a child, I wondered, “Who are they, and who am I?” I meant my parents, siblings, friends and schoolmates. The people around me, the things that shaped my childhood, fascinated me. So I asked many questions and got some answers.

A child between two worlds

I was called a child of the third culture. I didn’t really belong to my Kazakh roots nor life in Germany. The feeling was in between two worlds — a citizen without a passport. When my parents told me about Kazakhstan life, I was eager to absorb these strange images. The stories of my parents sent me on adventurous daydream journeys into the far distance.

My yearning for faraway places became more substantial without being asked, and I felt a thrilling longing to touch the unknown. At that time, I went to school and worked in mechanical engineering after my apprenticeship. Although I postponed all plans in my head, I knew I would go abroad at least once in my life in the future. After some detours, I came to Asuncion in Paraguay. I got to learn Spanish and another world. From a planned 12-month stay became a 19-month stay abroad.

This time in South America roused something further in me. Because I wanted to get to know more people, places, and cultures to understand myself more clearly, I traveled to as many countries as possible. Driven by this passion, I became a student at the Columbia International University in South Caroline, USA. The colliding of different world views, religions, and cultures during my studies opened new horizons for me and developed the ambition and enthusiasm to share my experiences with others. I’ll never forget an important lesson: Whoever asks the right questions will get good answers.

Journalism as my passion

I had been working as a Community Advisor for two years. My task was to develop a vision of life for young people and support them in practical approaches. As a second job, I worked in customer service at Apple. I am fascinated by their philosophy to enrich others’ lives, supporting me in my passion.

Today I know that I want to help people better understand the moment in which they live and encourage them to leave their comfort zone. For this reason, I wanted to learn journalism as a tool and including make others able to speak. Freezing time to help people explore the unknown and connect people worldwide, for me, this is the heart of journalism.

As a third culture child, Kazakhstan is home and alien to me at the same time. With this tension in my heart, which drives me positively, I decided to go to the KIMEP forge and see in it the chance to learn journalism professionally, both in theory and practice. To develop myself further and enrich other people with it. In this way, the experiences made for me can be transformed into something shared and the unknown into something elemental.