By: Maisy Hakimdin
Nigeria to America in 2020
Nsa Koofreh reveals her experiences and struggles from leaving her home in Calabar Nigeria, to live in the United States during a global pandemic for a better life. She first got to the United States in October of 2019, just months before the shutdown. Nsa moved with her Mom, sister, and grandmother.
Leaving your home is not an easy experience. Even moving to different towns can be difficult because you are leaving many memories and people behind, never mind moving to a completely new country. When moving to another country, you have to adapt to a completely new way of life. Every country has its own culture and way of life. Nsa has to adjust to the Americas.
She answers the question, “What was the biggest culture shock you experienced when moving to the United States?“ Nsa responds while laughing by saying
“The whole LGBTQ+ community was something I was kind of exposed to but not a ton. In Nigeria the LGBTQ+ community does not have as much of a voice. Nigerians are more conservative, so that community is not as vocal.“
She then continues to add on in a more serious tone that she is willing to adjust to this culture shock.
“I am willing to learn more, and from what I have learned I have been able to appreciate and accept the community.“
It became hard for Nsa to form new relationships. Since the pandemic caused there to be close to zero face to face interactions, it was hard for her to meet new people. When she did have the opportunity to meet new people, she still had to adjust to how people in the United States interacted with each other, instead of how people in Nigeria interact with each other.
“We couldn’t see anyone or meet anyone and if we did, it was weird and online.¨
Through Google meets and zoom, making friends was a little hard. You really can not form relationships with people and get to know people through a screen. This made me kind of isolated with just the relationships I came here with. It was fine when we could go back into school in person, though. There I was able to make friends in classes and start to hang out with those friends outside of school“
Nsa then, with a straight face, went on about adjusting to how kids at Oliver Ames talk to each other and make friends is very different from what she had previously known how to do.
“The biggest struggle was the overall difficulty of trying to make friends and having people understand you because the way people think and the mindset of people in Nigeria is different from here in America. So being able to relate with people was kind of hard. I grew to be more open-minded and accepting as a person which don’t get me wrong I already was but at the same time I was exposed to things that were not really as popular in Nigeria. The pandemic really affected once again the making friends and the meeting new people part of the high school experience.“
When Nsa could finally meet people and form relationships face to face, she realized that there were a lot of misconceptions and ignorance that kids in the United States had about Nigeria. She smiled and laughed to herself remembering the silly questions that her fellow classmates would ask her when they found out she moved here from Nigeria.
“Now to compare America to Nigeria. If you think that the government in America is bad and does not listen to the citizens, I’ll let you know that it is worse over there. You can literally pay your way through anything, from school to government positions. I came back to America to have a better opportunity in life, for better education, health care and better security even though it might not be 100% perfect. It is way better than what I would have had to go through if I was still in Nigeria. Moving to Nigeria was actually not that bad because I got to learn my culture and see my family who I had never met before, but staying there and living there was not the best. By the way, just to put this out there, most African countries speak English. I remember when I just came here in freshman year, someone asked me if I lived in a hut before and if they spoke English. I was really thrown off by that question, but it was really funny“