Who am I?

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 18^th 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.