In Between Two Homes That Really Aren't

I didn't have to take my identity seriously until I came to college. Perhaps it was because who I am at home doesn't mean anything, since everyone in a sense "is." At home, the family trusts that you will own up to the dignity accorded to you. With the constant request for IDs, sign-ins, swipe-ins, sit-ins, fit-ins, explanations of the words I use, and rewinding of sentences because of my accent, I have constantly been reminded of my place and indirectly reminded of my difference. During my first semester, I was wondering whether it would be necessary to work on acquiring an American accent, since it got a little frustrating when people kept saying "huh?" which is an impolite thing to say back home. Of course, I noticed the smiles on the faces of ladies whenever I spoke in class and decided to keep my accent. Barnard is awesome.

Westerners insist that those who come from any part of the motherland have to be called Africans, just like any light-skinned person is called white in most parts of Africa. The conclusion of the identification issue might have a great deal to do with the inherent difficulty Westerners have in telling the difference between Africans from the different parts of the continent. Interestingly, people from the 53 countries on the continent have been shoved into a single identity. Thanks to my new identity, I can genuinely celebrate the victory of Africans and isolate myself from the failure of individual African states.

Since it has become more difficult to escape from the African identity, I have chosen to embrace it. This also means fitting myself into an unfamiliar box and finding out more about what it means to be African.

To most people, I am African; I have an accent that reminds them of an accent they heard in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, or Dakar during a semester abroad or through a character in a movie they watched. Occasionally, people swear I am Caribbean or from Brooklyn. My attempts at convincing people to identify me as Ghanaian were not as annoying to them as my insistence that they add an -ian to the "Ghana," which they sometimes confuse as "Guyana."

Two years down the road, I realize that the two weeks I spent taking notes from the movie "Coming to America" hasn't helped in making any transition. I have never been more African and Ghanaian than I have been in the past two years; ironically, I have also never been more American. Kofi Annan couldn't have made me more proud as former Secretary General of the U.N., and the loss of the U.S. national team to Ghana at the last World Cup couldn't have made me feel more patriotic. Intellectuals like Anthony Kwame Appiah and the legacy of the Obamas keep me basking in the hope of what young black folks can achieve and reminds me of the daunting task ahead during the call for unity among people of color. Ironically, I might not, may not, could not pass for black.

As I take classes, read papers, listen to news, participate in discussions, and hunt for funding to stay in school and buy books, I have never let an opportunity to defend the African continent slip by. Neither the articles in the New York Times about constant war on the continent, nor the images of poverty on CNN, nor the stereotypical representation of Africans as people living in trees and caves by Animal Planet or The Discovery Channel, nor the talk about HIPC by the IMF, nor the constant pounding of Jeffrey Sach's Millennium development goals has wiped, changed, defeated, or eliminated the slightest bit of the African identity that I have ironically found in America. The oscillating definitions of who I am have given me options to celebrate any identity I choose from Africa. Funny enough, I can only do that while I am in America.

Yes, I might not buy textbooks for my class because I don't understand why everyone needs one when I used to share textbooks with three or four people in school; yes, I might ask a dumb question like, "Why don't insurance companies give me my money back at the end of the year when I don't have any accidents and don't fall sick?"; yes, I might not drink lattes (what are they?); I might not be able to tell the waiter at the restaurant exactly what I am trying to order, because I am not sophisticated enough to order a meal with Anglo-Franco jargons. I don't need my egg half-cooked, half-uncooked, boiled, scrambled, fried, roasted, toasted, poked, baked, or sun-dried at the same time.

Transitions aren't easy to make. Sometimes changes must come as a change of home. The idea of home is usually unclear until it has been abandoned for the other side of town. The new placement, the unfamiliar, the place of new beginnings and foreign concepts engages us in a web of constant re-definition until we have almost successfully embraced adaptation. The once confident, high-esteemed, and self-assured individual turns into a novice as he learns to juggle the jargons and attempts to replay and rewrite the script of his life through the lens of other societies. His identity is redefined, his personality is encrypted, his vision is distorted. Sometimes he must learn to pass his dreams on to the next generation while securing himself in a place in which he wasn't born. At other times, his dream must expand so that while pursuing something larger than himself, he might grow into a new self.

Like every traveler, I have made changes to accommodate new cultures and traditions, and I have found new meanings to my identity. In the process, when I call home, they barely understand me. They say I think differently now, I show less passion, I am too busy, I don't take religion seriously, I expect things to be done without delay, and I treat women and men alike. While the West points me back home, Africa points me to the West. Unlike a good farmer, instead of hunting and returning with ripe fruits, I seem to have plucked some fruits and collected some flowers. In America, I will always be African. In Africa, I will always be the "Afropolitan."