Pt.4 An American in Ethiopia -- An Ethiopian in America

Now What Will You Do With Your Luck?

In December of 2023 I embarked on a 20 day trip to Ethiopia after not being back for 25 years. The revelations that followed suit have arrested me. This is Part 4 of a series dissecting my identity as an Ethiopian-American called “Now What Will You Do With Your Luck?”

Click here to read Part 1: I Could’ve Been a Hannah

Click here to read Part 2: The World of Addis Ababa

Click here to read Part 3: My Immigrant Parents Don’t Understand Me — But Did I Try to Understand Them?

It’s hard for me to explain to you everything. Some moments explode with so much life you can only start by picking up a few pieces. These are the pieces I was able to scavenge. I hope it’s enough for you to understand how it has changed me.

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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

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Life was jarring there and I can’t say that it wasn’t. A still shock ran through me the entire trip. Life was just so different…

Orthodox Christians and Muslims feverishly populated the city. The country felt drenched in God. It felt impolite to wear anything too revealing. Even wearing shorts with an oversized jacket garnered me harsh stares.

Water and electricity were never a guarantee. Luckily, where we were staying kept these amenities afloat for the most part. Though some un-opportune evenings the water would be out until morning. Or the outlets would suddenly stop working. We kept giant tubs of water filled in our kitchen and I frantically kept our devices fully charged just in case.

Though visiting family members was where we could not escape it. Most of Addis was under a water-rationing plan. Where running water was to be provided only a few days out of the week. All of our relatives were affected by this. It didn’t matter who you were, you had to ration. That meant keeping enough water stocked in your home to cook, wash your hands, shower, flush the toilet, and anything else you would use water for. For drinking water everyone bought water bottles. And power blackouts were always to be expected. You just had to keep flashlights handy.

Everyone dealt with this with grace. It didn’t feel right for me to complain. It grated on me, surely, but if they could do it, so could I.

It surprised me how you how you could adjust to almost anything. Even things you thought you needed, with time, you were actually able to do without.

Though there were some things I could not get used to.

I could feel the firmness of the gender roles. I clocked men speaking with more authority to my father instead of my mother. Which was ridiculous because my mother was in charge of everything. I watched women fan out to do everything in the house. Preparing food, welcoming guests, gathering children, all while socializing. While the men…just socialized.

I caught the long stares of men on the side of the road. Probing through me as if they could control me. As if beauty is a thing you can control.

Though, it started getting to me after a while. I kept having to repeat to myself, “I’m an American, I’m an American, I’m an American”, as if to make myself invincible from the beliefs in their stares. As if I could exempt myself.

But where was the line within me that divided being Ethiopian and being American?

So many people we encountered hassled my parents pseudo-playfully asking, “Why didn’t you speak to her in Amharic? Why didn’t you teach her the language?”

To which then I would forcefully interject, in English, to say “They did. It was my choice not to speak it.”

I remember vividly as a child all of my relatives telling me how I would grow up and regret how I didn’t commit to learning Amharic. Even though I could understand every word, speaking it was lost on me. I remember then, as a brazen child thinking, “They don’t know me. They don’t know how I will absolutely not regret this.”

And even now, as a a full adult, who still struggles to speak the language yet understands it pristinely, I don’t regret my childhood decision. They didn’t understand my reasoning. They didn’t understand the conditions I was given.

People cope with being a child of immigrants in different ways. I just really wanted to fit in and it felt dangerous and isolating the farther away I was from being able to. If that meant I would have to cram Amharic to only half of my brain, to only listen to at home, so that my English was clear of any accents, so that I became dextrous with the language, then so be it, that was the safest and smartest thing for me to do.

I sometimes wonder if that’s why I became a writer because my grasp of the English language has always felt dire. I needed it to be pliable, to fall and flow off my tongue, to be able to pull words like a magician. In order to conceal, to throw perfect speech over myself — because that secured your future, that secured you being liked, that secured you not being so different, but instead spectacular.

It felt like an intricate gymnastics act to be born of two immigrants, yet show no sign of them on your upbringing.

And I felt I stuck the landing.

I watched how my parents needed English to move through the world. I saw it as my duty to have my agility with the language be as expert as possible. As if I could conceal their immigrant-ness with my shining American splendor.

Yet, now here, back in Ethiopia, and after a decade of me understanding my most treasured parts of myself, come not from my grown American qualities, but from my innate Ethiopian culture — it all feels like a tumbling mistake. That now, switched on the other side of the world, the gymnastics act that won me gold, now has disqualified me from the competition.

It felt like a safety would be taken from me if I revealed I was less American. As a sensitive child, that is all I can say. And I place no blame on myself for that. I did, what I believed, would grant me success, safety, and a sense of belonging. And although now, I am playing a game of catch up, of now learning the language that was afforded to me from birth — I feel happy that I am doing so under the conditions that I am not being forced to. How I am embracing my language because I have learned now how to embrace myself.

They didn’t understand being Ethiopian for me was also something else. Something else they didn’t have to experience. My lens of my culture was through a sense of otherness. I was introduced to my own self as a “minority” — they were born into believing themselves as the only thing that exists. I knew of myself as a small sliver inside a sprawling, white piece.

But, that is my deck of cards. These are the things I have been given. With my American privileges, I lose some contact with something eternal here. I’m now trying to find a way to bring it back.

So, in these conversations with people in Ethiopia, giving my parents a hard time, I would then try to explain to them, in broken Amharic, “You didn’t know what it was like trying to be an American child.”

Even my distance from my culture, was my culture.