Spotlight On...

 

Kami Jordan

Diversity Council Administrative Assistant

 

“I’m a global nomad,” says Kami Jordan, Administrative Assistant at the Diversity Council. “That’s what sociologists call kids whose parents worked in the military, missions, or foreign service. It means you spend your childhood away from your ‘home culture’ and return to find it isn’t really home any more.”

 

As a child of missionaries, Kami moved to a small village in the mountains of Thailand when she was 3. Although her family was a part of the community there, they weren’t really part of the culture.

 

At age 8, Kami joined other global nomads at a boarding school in Chiangmai. Here she made close friends that shared her experience of living between two worlds. “As missionary kids, we all created our own culture.” Kami shares that feeling of being between cultures with other global nomads. “Even though we have lived all around the world—Senegal, Thailand, Ethiopia—we share the same experience.”

 

In 1992, Kami moved back to the United States to attend Taylor University in Indiana. “When I came back to live in ‘my culture,’ I found I didn’t understand the unwritten rules, I couldn't read the body language, I didn't speak the vocabulary of pop culture. Growing up between worlds, living in two different worlds and belonging to neither, gave me an interest in other people in similar situations—immigrants, minorities, people in mixed families.” Her interest in others encouraged her to spend a semester abroad in Israel before graduating with a degree in Bible.

 

After graduating, Kami moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where she worked as an office administrator for a church. She liked Columbia’s traditional values, warm temps, and friendly people, but after a while Kami began longing for new and different experiences.

 

“People were nice, but the culture was so monolithic. I felt like anything different was swept under the carpet.” As a contrast, Kami was drawn to return to Israel’s diversity. “Israel is such a new country, with immigrants from all over the world. Every religion, every culture, every language is represented. In Israel, it seemed like you could eat anything, speak anything, be anything!”

 

Kami lived in Israel for two years before returning to Rochester, Minnesota as a primary caregiver for her grandparents. “I like Rochester. There is an international population here with refugees, immigrants, visitors and workers at the clinic and other businesses. And the majority population here is more open-minded, interested in the outside world, more flexible than what I found in the South.”

 

As a person growing up “between cultures,” Kami has a unique perspective for what makes a welcoming, multicultural community. “I can see a difference between Rochester and other places I have lived. American traditions and heritage are valued, but the community is open to new people and ideas. I think that is one of the keys to success in a place where demographics are changing—continuing to value our own culture while assimilating elements of the cultures around us.”