I'm sure most of us have a love-hate relationship with the question, "where are you from?" How it is asked comes in a variety of ways. I walked into my class the first day of the semester during my last year in college and the professor looked at me and said you must be from Somalia. Oh my, she was quite right because I always got, you are either Ethiopian or Eritrean since there were many that live in the Washington, DC area. I'll never forget the next thing she said and I quote, "you know when God was making bread, the first time it turned out too white, so he gave it a second try and he left it in the oven too long so it became really dark, but the third time just turned out right, brown, golden and pleasing to the eye. So you must be some of the brown bunch." I couldn't help but laugh........
In the states you are always reminded about the color of your skin, whether it's through conversations or something as simple as filling out an application. Depending on the crowd you are with you are always labeled somehow. In the white community, I am black, in the black community I am African, in the African community I am Somali, and in the Somali community I was a certain tribe. This became a role that I came to understand and accept.
When I decided to come back to Somalia and work here for a bit, to my surprise, I quickly realized that it was a whole new ball game; there was a different kind of categorization. It was not your usual tribal supremacy and tribal institutionalization that I was familiar with. Rather what I found was quite amusing, there was a new tribe called 'Diaspora.'
During a quick outing to the local market in Garowe, the cashier asked, "So where are you from?" With an annoyed look on my face, I said, "Did you mean to ask me either what region am I from? or what my tribe is?" He chuckled and said, "No. I mean what country, because you are obviously Diaspora."
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