Ethiopia Self

It seems there are many selves that inhabit my body. I have my improvisation self that I use when I am doing improvisational comedy on stage. This is the body where I adapt to change and ambiguity very quickly. I feel the improvisation body when I feel an expanse of chaos opening up around me. My body and tongue moves with the training and discipline of an improviser at the expense of careful reflection and varied interpretation.
Just this week I realized that I have another self that I developed while in Ethiopia. Whereas my improvisation body was trained through classes and refined through practice. My Ethiopia body was trained by the country itself. Countries train your body so that you make sense within the country. To be a little less figurative, people inside countries have facial expressions, gesticulations, and body movements. People reward you through nonverbal communication (smiles, eye contact, ect.) if you conform or at least connect with these non verbal behaviors.
Let me tell a story to ground the explanation in a lived experience. My wife and I were at her company’s diversity themed picnic. Wearing of ethnic dress was encouraged at this picnic. We weren’t sure if we were required to wear our own ethnic dress or just any dress that was strongly identified with an ethnicity, so we chose to wear our Ethiopian clothes. Jessi wore her Oromo dress and I wore my cotton Ethiopian long shirt. We figured that since current research tracing mitochondrial DNA traces (www.fwquestclub.com/welcome_files/papers/dna.pdf) all humanity back to Ethiopia, we had a good claim to Ethiopia’s ethnic dress. As we were walking to our car we saw two Ethiopian ladies shining a bright smile on both Jessi and I. We walked by them with a smile, then were drawn to turn around.

“You are wearing our culture clothes.” A lady said, starting a conversation.
“We just returned from Ethiopia a month ago.” We put out there as a hook for more conversation.
“Where do you live?” An interesting question posed by a man who just arrived to meet the two Ethiopian ladies.
“We are from uptown.” My wife and I respond. Identifying our uptown village pride.
Soon both my wife and I fell into our Ethiopia selves. My personal bubble shrank as I began talking to the male in the group. Jessi started gesticulating expressively. She then sought to explain the traditional medicine we had while sick in Ethiopia. She bent down and picked up a weed that resembled the leaves of medicine we took. As she pointed to the weed, I knew that she picked up right where we left off when in Ethiopia. She would never pluck grass from the ground and gesticulate like she was doing if she were explain something to a native United States-ian. In fact even she wouldn’t do it for a person from outside the US. This form of expressive and improvisational communication was the residual effect of our experience trying to communicate sans-lingua with people in Ethiopia. The accent, skin tone and knowledge that these strangers were from Ethiopia probably triggered the change. Before I know it Jessi was holding hands with the lady while trying to come up with the word for the medicinal plant.