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     I belong to an ever-growing community of West Africans in diaspora, more 
specifically Nigerians in America. Immigrating to another country is never an 
easy task. To leave centuries of history and connection behind is an ask that can 
only be justified by the issue that merits such displacement, of which there are 
many. Be it escaping from traditional customs that endanger the lives of your 
family or winning the visa lottery, a golden-ticket opportunity to rewrite the sins 
of the past and start life anew. Or for the plain desire to create a better life for 
your children in an environment away from your birthplace which slowly seems 
to be collapsing in on itself. It was rough enough when they were children, but 
they never imagined that it would become much worse. Regardless of any given 
reason, we make the journey to a new continent, a new world.

     We are everywhere. We go to the same grocery stores, get excited for the 
latest movie releases, and eat the same burgers found in the seemingly endless 
rows of restaurants. We vote in the same elections, actively advocate for change 
in American society and face the same universal struggles. Despite these shared 
similarities, we couldn’t be more different from American culture if we tried. We 
shop at the only few African markets around, dress up in our traditional clothing 
every Sunday for an inarguably African church service, pray for change in our 
dishonest Nigerian government, and hope our families in the motherland stay 
safe from random acts of violence. We attend the same schools, have similar 
teachers and learn the same subjects. But wherever we go, our accents follow us 
as a reminder of what we left behind.

     Middle school, as bad as it was already, only got worse if you spoke with a 
different accent. As if the hundreds of consciously and unconsciously anxious 
and self-negligent tweens did not have enough ammunition to fuel their bursts of 
mockery and displays of insecurity, now they had another tool, one that could be 
launched anytime you so much as opened your mouth to express why you did not 
deserve to be treated this horribly. Even worse are your attempts to defend an-
other classmate getting bullied only for the focus of ridicule to be shifted to you, 
them mouthing your words, stretching their faces to accentuate its hilariousness, 
and puckering their lips in that strange way they did when mimicking African 
accents. Afraid of it happening again, from now on you would look the other way 
anytime you saw a peer suffering the same fate you try so hard to shield yourself 
from.

     Perhaps you develop a second accent, one for home and another for every-
where else, in hopes of better successfully assimilating with the people who 
have caused you great torment. You pray that they do not recognize your African 
heritage and instead ignorantly embrace you as “one of their own.”  You wonder 
if they smell the jollof rice you had for lunch or the amala you ate for dinner 
yesterday in your breath. You even begin to look down on your other African 

Daniel Awosika

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classmates who were not as quick to jump ship, who, unlike you despite all the 
bullying and harsh critics, they’d still rather stay true to their roots than to be 
indoctrinated to the shallow depths of a half-baked life. Although this strategy 
may work for a time, you begin to feel ever more alienated because (a.) everyone 
knows you’re African, and (b.) everyone notices how hard you try to hide it. You 
never feel at home with any group because you’re never sure when to let your 
guard down.

     It’s a balancing act, being an immigrant. You get the best and worst of both 
worlds. The desire to be so firmly planted in one group lingers still, and you seek 
out any avenue of connection and understanding. Over time though you begin to 
accept your accent, love it even. Every slip of the accent into a more traditional 
one outside of home now represents a reconnection to a shared heritage. Sundays 
are the days you feel most comfortable; the medley of tradition combined with 
youthful empathy, for a moment, drowns out the pain from the past week and 
beyond. Then you wake up the next day at six o’clock in the morning to replay 
the reality of being a foreigner in another country.