Identity: Who do you think you are?

[Jacpher]

Identity: Who do you think you are?

 

My overriding identity is Somali although I live in the United States. If you asked me what makes me who I am? I think it would take me a while to respond.

 

Our identities are shaped by the world in which we live. Outsiders influence how we think and even look at ourselves.

 

I think being Somali is contradictory because the Somali identity is mixed, and even, dare I say, confused.

 

We are Africans... and yet we are also part of the Arab world.

 

I belong to a powerful clan in Somalia, but I have no affinity for it.

 

Our psyche, worldview and even who we are is mingled with what happens in the Arab world.

 

Our Somali identity is real: our music, food and everything we do smells of a unique Africa.

 

Beautiful and proud, Somalis remain Somali.

 

Clan means so much to so many of my people.

 

Yes, I belong to a clan, a powerful clan in Somalia, but I have no affinity for it.

 

I choose to be Somali.

 

But I am also more than Somali, I am the product of many oceans, always changing, revolving, learning and growing.

 

Yet my Somali culture and history remains the tower that gives light to the oceans I swim in.

 

I breathe like a Somali.

 

My culture is not a fixed configuration but a constructive process.

 

This is maybe a weakness on my part, but my identity and culture are always conditional to my environment and the centre of the process that I feel is never complete but always under construction.

 

This is the Somali story: we are the product of many cultures, ideas and people.

 

I am Somali.

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