So, what are you?

FEATURING THE WORKS OF: PETER ISOTA

MODELED BY: TRACY COELHO

I've grown up with the best of both worlds. I've been blessed enough to have submerged myself in different cultures, which was one of the benefits of belonging to a multicultural family. However, there was always this feeling of never belonging. I was constantly faced with the dilemma of not being 'Carribean' enough or not being 'Kenyan enough' in Kenya and while I'm in Canada, I'm not black enough. The only time in my life that felt like my ethnicity didn't matter was when I was with my father's side of the family, who were Filipino, Caribbean and Irish. We were just a bunch of people from different backgrounds who always managed to come together and be this loving and harmonious unit. 



 This concept of never being enough that extended into almost every aspect of my life. No matter my geographical location, I was never 'enough' to fit this social construct of who I was supposed to be. Of course, this mentality changed over the years. I'm comfortable with the person I've become and I love all parts of my diverse background. However, when I was younger, this was an extremely uncomfortable situation. The same time that I was trying to discover myself, I was being battered with a specific mold that I should fit. With the constant movement between countries, my ethnicity became fluid. I was Kenyan when I wanted to be. I spoke the little Kiswahili I knew. I was Caribbean when required and spoke with the thickest Bajan accent just like my grandmother, and I knew when to downplay both in certain company (I never had to pretend to be Irish or anything because I wasn't really in touch with that side of my family). I was neither true to myself nor my heritage. My culture became something that I hid behind and never fully embraced or celebrated. Rather than focusing on experiences and family, I was trying my best to communicate to others that this wasn't my first rodeo, that I already knew this and that because I am Jamaican/ Kenyan or whatever the hell it was I was supposed to be. My seven-year-old idealistic self-was perplexed and just wanted to be independent of all these variables, to actually just be without having to associate me with anything or anyone. My heritage was too cumbersome and felt like something I needed to hide instead of being proud of. 

The worst part of this dilemma was being called out for not behaving according to my ethnicity. At first,  I casually shrugged it off but later on people's responses manifested into the way I viewed myself as a person. As a young child, I did not have the capacity to understand racial/colorism issues and therefore it was never a problem for me. But as I got older it was something that became more prominent but I still never acknowledged or had to confront it until I moved for the first time. When I moved from Canada to Kenya I was pretty yellow. I looked like a bloody lemon 🍋because ya girl wasn’t out in the sun a lot. So when I came I was often mistaken for being of mixed race. I went to an 8-4-4 system school at the time and there was a lot of friction with everyone and culture shock. However, there was one thing that stuck with me from being in that school; it was a comment from my classmate directed at me, she said “She thinks she can get away with everything. She’s only pretty because she’s half-caste.” These two statements had no correlation whatsoever and I'm not even half-caste as this girl so ignorantly put it. But, I remember taking the comment quite personally. So there I was, delusional for thinking that I was enough simply because I was black, only to find out that I still wasn't black enough. Although the comment was not applicable to that situation it came to haunt me later on. Unfortunately, there are boys on this planet who think its absolutely fine to dehumanize and use people who are or look like they are of mixed race as props to showcase their friends. I had this misfortune of meeting so many of them and each time those words at the back of my head. 

Ironically, I had some of the same experience reiterated in Canada a few years later. I really couldn't run from myself (shocker). My person was constantly being compromised by people who simply couldn’t understand personal space and respect- a concept so alien like the fingers that dug into the thick halo of my hair followed by nosey inquiries of my origin, the constant teasing from being a fat girl whose accent was so thick it always sounded congested. I stuck out like a sore thumb in spite of all my efforts to blend in. Surprisingly African American's were my biggest critics. It was almost as if I was a failure to them because I didn't know how to assimilate into Western culture. They took pride in knowing they had no accent like I did. The word African or Carribean was used in a mocking manner to apologize for my difference. My cultural tendencies and homeliness didn't match the foreign hip urbane of Toronto, it left me in a situation whereby I felt that I was too much and at the same time too little. So I spent my summer break cleansing my palette from any trace of an accent, imitating the likes of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. 

Now that times have changed and things are slightly different, I feel more accepted. Probably because I hang out with more international students that have had similar experiences. Those who can echo that feeling of  'never being enough'. It's comforting to find something so relatable amongst what you would normally deem foreign, it feels welcoming and a lot more like home should feel.