I think of life as a buffet. We’re born with a given plate and as life goes, we add different foods on it. Some foods are served to us at birth, like ethnicity and religion, others we add through experiences and knowledge. As a self-described food expert, I’ve always believed that some combinations, such as chocolate and orange, simply don’t work out.

My plate was given to me with a generous scoop of Cape Verdean and Somali heritage. I always believed that growing up with two cultures as literally different as the East and West, would be somewhat of an advantage, and something to be proud of. But as I grew older, I realized it wasn’t that easy. When describing my heritage to people, they would often ask which country I felt the most comfortable with; or which one I would chose. Despite both my parents’ blood running through my veins, it was as if I could only pick one country. Which felt like having to pick my favorite parent.

I tried to convince myself that there was nothing negative about having two ethnicities, but as television became a bigger part of my life, I also started to feel as if there was nobody out there like me. On TV, I never saw a young girl embracing and loving the fact that her parents came from different parts of the world. I only saw happy families, where everybody spoke the same language and ate the same kind of food. I started to believe this was how things were supposed to be and that there was something wrong with me.

That’s when I started acting out. When I was with my mother I was only Cape Verdean, and when I was with my father I was only Somali. When people asked me about my heritage, I would simply answer “African” or whichever country I felt the most attached to on that particular day. Would there be room for further explanation and if I felt like it, I would conclude with a “but I’m also…” one or the other. I would usually say, “I’m Samira Gomes and I’m Cape Verdean, but my dad is Somali” or “I’m Somali, but my mother is Cape Verdean”.

I introduced myself this way for many years, until I realized my friends had been depicting me as both Somali “and” Cape Verdean. This little conjunction I’d given so little importance to at first, slowly grew into my own vernacular.

I stopped introducing myself as “but” and slowly started introducing myself as “and”. That seemingly minor change was comparable to a tiny rock, which would ripple through my life, causing a tsunami. I quit believing I had to choose between two cultures, and realized I could simply dip the orange in the melted chocolate, creating my own flavor.

Most people might not be too fond of mixing the two together, but they make up my secret recipe. It isn’t something I came up with overnight and sometimes it might not even be my favorite food on my plate. But it is mine and no one else’s to savor. So, rather than trying to season it in order to accommodate someone else’s taste, I would rather stir it up my way and own it.

– Samira Gomes Ramos