“If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know who you are”. This is an old saying that I suppose has been coined by travellers long time ago. The need to keep a link with one own place, to feel roots and identity is in human nature. For some more than others, but it is there. I am thinking about this while in Bangkok, waiting for the taxi to pick us up and bring us to the airport to catch the flight to Colombo this evening.
Yesterday I had a similar conversation with an Italian friend living here and again the theme of our roots, how to keep them while working abroad is one that takes always our conversation. I am thinking about it also looking at Olga, who is now one and half years old and so far has been twice in Finland, once in Italy, has lived in Cambodia and has visited Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia. She is starting to speak and uses a strange language which si a mix of all the sounds she hears daily: Khmer, Finnish, Italian and English. We are going back also for her, to give her some roots and a mother tongue, but at the same time make her relaise that she is not just from one palce, but she’s from several and that all these places with all their differences, are part of the same world.