CIIP: '18: Week 3

Earlier this week, a fellow CIIPer asked me if I have considered living in Baltimore after college. Now this is something I have been thinking about for the past few weeks. Without thinking too much, I responded: “why not Baltimore?” Here me out. Here I am, a part of CIIP for the second year in a row and I am still finding myself in awe with how much I don’t know about this city. Since my first year in CIIP, my inquisitive nature has led me to listening podcasts such as “Out of the Blocks” and more recently The Daily’s “Charm City” series. I have taken a Baltimore-centered class in our Public Health department and I am currently reading “Not in My Neighborhood.” The more I learn, the more questions I have about how a city with so much culture, history, and love can be equally filled with violence, distrust, and structural inequalities. I am devoting so much of my time to absorbing and questioning this place I not only attend school, but am starting to call home. How can I take these four years of growing through external conversations with my peers and internal reflections with myself and just leave to another city or state to “start” my life? Why can’t my life have already started here in the city and my graduating from school just be a continuation of my journey?

Before I continue, I’d like to preface why I feel this way with a brief history of me. I was born in Tema, Ghana and when I was 8 years old, I immigrated to the United States. I moved around a bit before attending high school in Baltimore county. My first glimpse of the city was attending a church in Broadway East. At this point in time, I am in the process of obtaining my US Citizenship. I have found it difficult to say where home is for me. While I love my home country and its culture, I am simply not familiar enough to go back and be “comfortable” (ask me in person and I can better articulate my thoughts). Living Baltimore county is a completely different experience than in the city- my commute to work tells me that every day. Living in Baltimore city is also challenging in some regards because I am not from here. While I’d like to call it my home, I still very much feel like an outsider. I cannot answer the classic “where’d you go to high school” question. It feels like there is something intrinsically powerful and yet unexplainable about being from this city that makes me feel like I am not truly a part of it. However, I want to not only be a part of it but I want to feel like it too. During orientation, I spoke with Councilperson Dorsey about me feelings and he responded with basically “it takes time.” While this may seem super simple, it really changes my perspective about what it means to call a place home. No matter where I live, if I spend time with the people and put the effort to learn about it, it shouldn’t matter whether I was born there or not.

If it really comes down to time and effort, then why not Baltimore? I am spending my time now and putting in the effort. I understand that there’s a much bigger world out there and I would like to explore, but ultimately, I do not want my time here in Baltimore to be a waste. I am intrigued by this city and I want to do my part.

I still have two years to go and who know how things will unfold, but for now, I this is where I stand.