The Nature of Nurture

Imagine, if you could, the feeling. The feeling of a 13 year-old boy, five and a half thousand miles from home, stood in a strange environment, surrounded by smiling, laughing children from many nations, but not his own. He is different, alone.

Well, not exactly alone, but the feeling of loneliness is palpable as he enters the bedroom of his boarding house that first night. He is the youngest in that house and in this room of three, the other two are already fast friends. They speak a common language, common to many of the boys in the house, but not to him. It is a hard first night.

The following day, school starts for real and the boy throws himself into his work. Hard work is part of his country's culture, but it's hard to work on your own all the time. To his pleasant surprise, however, his colleagues don't see him as a stranger and welcome him into the school community. He makes friends fast. The helpful staff also look on him as any other and do their best to ensure the new boy learns the ropes and becomes a part of the school.

But it's still hard from time to time. All the other foreign students go around in little groups at break time, talking, joking and reassuring each other in their own language, it's natural, but not him. There is no-one. He has to make do, to be tough, resilient.

This matters less and less, however, as the year goes by and the boy, made to feel safe and secure by those around him, has grown confident and comfortable in his new environment. "Anyway," he tells himself, "there's bound to be someone from my country next year." To his disappointment, there is not, nor the next year, nor the year after that. He gives up any hope.

By this time, however, he is seventeen, in his last year of A-levels, a prefect, a well-respected member of the student community, and thanks to his tenacity and the nurturing environment in which he has lived, an erudite, polite young man with aspirations to achieve in higher education. He even wants to become a British citizen. Imagine his joy then, when, on the first day back in the boarding house, he learns that two boys from his own country have just joined the school!

You would forgive this young man, therefore, if he chose to spend his time with his compatriots, conversing in their own language, cooking and sharing national dishes with them, catching up on what he has missed. And indeed he does; with one sizable addition.

He takes the new arrivals, still unsure themselves of what to do and how to act and feeling much as he did, under his wing. He shows them around, introduces them to his friends of many nationalities (even those who are much older), ensures that they would not have to go through the same uncertainty as he did and that they would feel the way that he has grown to feel, that this is home.

"Who is it you're talking about?" you ask.

No names are required. He is a friend, a schoolmate; an Alfred man; an Ashford boarder.