Who am I? This is such a hard question to answer. Each and
everyday I am continuing to figure out who I am. I am a lot. There is a lot to
me. I am many things and I am one thing. I am not something lying around like a
book or a scarf or a blender. I am a living, breathing woman.
I am Germawit (Grrr ma wit).
I am a Texan who was born in Rochester from a beautiful
Ethiopian lady and a handsome, glamorous Jamaican Rasta. I have a younger sister who is a lot taller
and skinnier than me. I was raised to love both of my parents’ cultures as one
melting pot of African culture just from different parts of the world. I grew
up around almost every kind of person growing up. My parents enrolled me into an
urban suburban program where I woke up at 5 am every morning to get on a bus to
drive an hour out of the city to go to school with white kids. All white kids.
I may have been one of the three or four black children in the whole school.
Early on I had to learn how to adapt to a different environment and communicate
with kids whose cultures I didn’t know much about. Being that I am pretty
social, I didn’t have much of an issue making friends and joining some sports teams.
Up till high school I moved to a district where the school was much more
diverse than my last and had people from every corner of the world.
I’ve been in love with food for most of my life and decided
I wanted to become a chef. The day after my 18th birthday I got on a
plane to NYC to attend the French culinary institute. As soon I managed to walk
around the city alone when I got here, I realized that my life would never be
the same and that amazing, fun and interesting things would happen. I also
realized that if I hadn’t come to NY and stayed in Houston, that I’d probably
be married, with a child and a mortgage. Moving to New York helped me further
realize that there is never a “proper” way of doing things. Everyone creates
the paths that they want for themselves.
For me, almost everything that I have done and
all the people I have met here has helped shape who I am at this moment. Every
day I am changing and learning.
