When I was younger, my feelings about being Ethiopian were unambiguous. If I had to introduce myself back then, it would have been very simple and very straightforward: I was an “Abesha”. I felt that way because we ate “injera” every day, observed all the traditional and national holidays, upheld the same moral values as many Ethiopians, and acted according to the social decorum that our parents instilled in us. I was born to Ethiopian parents, and except for infancy spent in Belgrade, I lived in Addis Ababa until just before I turned 18. It seemed pretty obvious to me who I was, despite the following paradox: I grew up somewhat bilingual and in-between two cultures, one that I shared with my siblings and experienced at school, and the other at home with my parents and relatives.

From an early age, I attended an international school where English was the language of instruction and the teaching staff was predominantly American and Canadian. The curriculum was somewhat broad, offering the International Baccalaureate and Ethiopian School Leaving Certificate, as well as the opportunity to take US college preparatory exams. At home, my siblings and I always addressed each other in English, with the same natural manner that other Ethiopians spoke Amharic. We watched imported sitcoms from the US and England, read English-language novels, and adopted Westernized belief systems. Only with our non-English-speaking relatives did we converse in Amharic, often awkwardly and shyly, feeling self-conscious of our foreign accents.

My father, who had studied abroad and built a successful career for himself as a doctor, encouraged us to excel in school. Though our parents did teach us to have pride in our Ethiopian heritage, they also urged us to acquire fluency in English. It became natural for us to respond in English to their questions in Amharic, to write journals in English, and to prefer Western music to Ethiopian folk songs. Despite all the contradictions of growing up surrounded by two distinct cultures, I never questioned our Ethiopian identity, and except for those occasions when visitors and relatives mournfully shook their heads and bemoaned our lack of fluency in the Amharic tongue, telling us we had become too Americanized, I had no doubts that I was anything other than an Ethiopian who happened to claim English as a first language. I may not have known the country or its landscape as intimately as others, never having traveled more than three hours out of the capital, but what I knew, I loved, in my own quiet and introverted way. To me, that was the essence of being Ethiopian.

All of that changed when I started college in upstate New York. People were suddenly curious about my background: an Ethiopian who spoke Amharic haltingly and displayed few, if any, traits and mannerisms that were obviously non-American. Foreign students who took for granted their own cultural identifications refused to see me as a `true' Ethiopian. Americans, who had trouble placing my accent in any one of the 52 states, but who had just as much difficulty placing it outside of the US, viewed me as something exotic. Everyone I met gawked with disbelief. That's when I knew that something was wrong.

Suddenly, there were parts of me fighting to be acknowledged on an equal basis. Was I Ethiopian enough if Amharic words didn't roll off my tongue as easily as American r's? Or, if when another Ethiopian stopped me on campus, as was often the case, with a friendly “Abesha nesh?”, and I replied with an English “Yes”? Could I still preserve a personal Ethiopian identity while embracing a different cultural and linguistic one? During my first year, I clung tenaciously to my childhood memories, looking back to a seemingly coherent past through the hazy lens of nostalgia. At the same time I experienced the natural desire to belong in my new environment. I was fortunate in that there was no language barrier to overcome and my familiarity with the societal norms allowed me to easily sidestep the burden of culture shock. The longer I stayed there, the less I yearned for home and the more I felt comfortable in America. I forgot the already minimal knowledge of Amharic that I possessed. In short, I began to see myself as an anomaly, a part-time Ethiopian of sorts. This stood in stark contrast to earlier self-perceptions, which though not consciously Ethiopian, nevertheless carried the subtle awareness of a collective Abesha identity. To be sure, I didn't consider myself “American” either, at least not in the way it is normally understood. Though I did feel a closeness with the culture, the language, and the landscape, I felt equally at home with my Indian, Japanese, Nigerian, Hungarian, Swedish, and Korean friends, some of whom had spent all but a few years of their lives in the US. For me, it wasn't a question of nationality, but rather, a question of being perpetual outsiders. Perhaps because of our common experiences as people with marginal cultural habits, did we find it easy to befriend each other. I came into my own during my college years, which explains the attachment I developed to the country. I still recalled with clarity many images of a previous life in Ethiopia, but now they appeared to me in sepia, as if to show me even more how much of an outsider I had become.

It wasn't until after completion of my studies, when I traveled to Germany to pursue a Masters degree in literature, that my notions of identity and belonging were drastically challenged. Suddenly, I was faced with the hurdles of learning a new language and acclimatizing myself to a culture that was relatively more foreign to me than the American one I knew so well. I was acutely aware of not belonging here, yet I had no illusions about belonging anywhere else. Learning a new language provided me with formal lessons in self-examination. I began looking for an identity that allowed me to negotiate between different cultural and linguistic terrains. Occupying the spaces in-between these worlds, I was frequently racked with guilt, feeling increasingly estranged from the country of my birth. Whenever I noted my progress in learning the German language, I regretted never having mastered Amharic. As my German improved, I grew paranoid about losing my English, sometimes to the point of resisting growing accustomed to my new surroundings. It wasn't long before I lost all sense of having a personal identity. I survived this exhausting disorientation by setting specific goals and achieving them, letting my subconscious do the processing involved in reflection and self-analysis. I remember especially how studying grammar rules in German became a sort of daily ritual, often grueling and frustrating, but always with tangible results that kept me motivated. With time, I was able to effortlessly switch back and forth between English and German, no longer feeling that conquering one meant surrendering the other. I stopped chiding myself for being immersed in anything other than English and slowly began to accept that language alone did not make me who I am.

Although I had lived the greater part of my life speaking, thinking, and feeling in English, I didn't allow myself to feel threatened by newness. Where at first I had believed that learning German was a conscious act of forgetting myself, and a particularly vicious betrayal to any remaining feelings of Ethiopianism, I came to realize that identity is a non-static process. More importantly, I no longer ascribed to the notion that cultural identities could be reduced to singular characteristics. I may not speak Amharic, but I am still very much rooted to things Ethiopian: I love eating “injera” and “wot”, I greet fellow Ethiopians by kissing them multiple times on each cheek, I raise my eyebrows to show that I am answering in the affirmative, and I sometimes unconsciously make interjections in Amharic. I detect pride in myself whenever I explain the Ethiopian connection to Rastafarianism, or when people casually mention that Pushkin's great-grandfather was Ethiopian, or when travelers speak of their adventures in Ethiopia, as one man once related how he went rafting down the Omo River. Yet the sheer fact of the matter remains that I am as much a figure in motion with a hybrid identity as I am an Ethiopian-born, English-speaking, westernized individual. My favorite authors span all seven continents. I can enthuse as much over the weather in the highlands of Ethiopia as I do about autumns in the New England area. I read Emily Dickinson poems with passion and enjoy toothsome German food. There is no one factor that forms the essence of my identity. What I am is neither fixed nor self-evident, but rather fluid and plural. I view my identity as constantly transforming, just like the changing landscapes and seasons that have accompanied me throughout my life.

I am grateful for all the encounters and influences that have formed me into the woman I am today. I know, too, that I will continue to change with each new experience, by turns forgetting and recollecting the memories, and always becoming. What that entails for me is a claim to language, for it is through language that I imagine the possibilities and fathom my experiences. I don't need to have a coldly academic relationship with Ethiopia in order to locate myself, and I refuse to pretend to be something that I am clearly not. A friend once confided in me his experience of feeling part Ethiopian, part European, and part of everything else. He expressed his wish to know more about his Ethiopian and African heritage, but, he proclaimed, he would get there on his own terms. No amount of finger-wagging or guilt trips will change my whole-hearted approval of his stance. Celebrating my heritage means to me nurturing the simple desire to understand other people and cultures, while at the same time acknowledging the differences within me. I am not ashamed for being able to co-habit different spaces, for re-positioning and re-inventing my identity without confining myself within geo-political or cultural boundaries.

Somebody once remarked that my interjections in Amharic were a sign that I am Ethiopian at heart. I like to think that Ethiopia has a place in my heart, but certainly not for this simple observation. I would be no more German if in a fit of frustration I exclaimed “Mensch!” (equivalent in American English: “Man”!). I don't have any profound answers for why I feel at home between borders. I'm happy to live with these contradictions, all the while negotiating my identities. That is my reality.