Sprawled out on our moldy carpet, I laughed as my uncle joked about the latest episode of Juana La Virgen, the most popular telenovela in Ghana that year. Just as Juana was about to kiss Mauricio, our electricity went out. It was my neighborhood’s turn to endure the load shedding caused by the long drought that had diminished our hydropower plant and plagued our lives for over a year. With the power outages came a surge of heat that engulfed us in our home and forced us to sit outside, underneath a mango tree commiserating with our neighbors.
In between the laughs and curses hurled at the government for their incompetence, I imagined my mother relaxing in an air-conditioned apartment in America, eating a cheeseburger while laughing at a movie on a big-screen TV. I envied her. I envied her for being closer to heaven than I was. Surely, that was where America was: one step from heaven.
Instead, she stood alone outside the airport in the thick of the Detroit winter season, looking for a friendly face. By the time she sat in the car of the kind stranger who offered to drive her to the address scribbled on a piece of paper, her fingers were purple and pinched from the frost. My mother had left Ghana a few weeks after her business failed during the country’s economic collapse, leaving my siblings and me in the care of my aunt and her husband. We wouldn’t see her for nine years. When she finally saw my siblings and me walking hand in hand out of the Detroit airport nine years later, she cried knowing that we would soon be citizens, never having to worry about an ICE raid or legal stipulations that would prevent us from dreaming.
My family immigrated to the United States for no other reason but in search of a better life. Not for the snow, or the clout, or the accent, or the culture of excess, but for limitless opportunities to make something of our lives.
For many, the New American experience began in high school, where they learned that football and soccer aren’t the same sport, or during lockdown drills in middle school where they learned that the school building was also another place to die, or it might have begun like my mother’s as they stood outside the Detroit airport, freezing their dignity away on the coldest winter day of the year, hoping for a stranger to offer some help–any help. She knew no one.
My American experience began at 4 am outside the United States Embassy in Accra. Two months prior to my interview at the embassy, my aunt and uncle spent their days fasting and praying for us. How else would we receive the visa if not for the unction of God? At 3:00 am, with sleep still heavy on my eyes, I watched my aunt scramble about the house packing food, water, and tissues. We didn’t know many people who had been past the interview stage at the embassy and so we packed everything — it would be a shame to arrive at the embassy only to find out that drinking water wasn’t free.
The cold breeze of the morning hit my face left-ways and up as we boarded a bus headed for Cantonments, Accra. My siblings and I itched with excitement as we imagined our new lives in America–a life where neither of us would have to wait for the bus to fill up before setting off.
Of course, the embassy didn’t open until 8:00 am and so we sat on the grass across the street and waited. Next to us, a self-proclaimed pastor screamed verses from the Bible, decorated with words of encouragement and prayers at the nearly sixty-person congregation. A few people nodded in agreement with him as he hurled blessings at us but when he passed his hat around for “offertory unto the Lord”, every head turned away.
All sixty-something of us didn’t intend to miss our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enter the US and so we arrived four hours early for our appointment. When have black people ever been four hours early anywhere?
When the doors finally opened and we rushed to form a line outside, I watched as half the people who had waited with us were turned away. My aunt was too aggressive to allow that to happen to us and so we were fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh in line. I don’t know if the others ever got to reschedule.
For many, the New American experience began in high school, where they learned that football and soccer aren’t the same sport, or during lockdown drills in middle school where they learned that the school building was also another place to die…
Two years into my new and privileged life as an American, Mike Brown was killed. He was killed the same year I decided to wear out my natural hair and to wear as little makeup as possible. He was killed the year I decided to be Black.
One evening, on my way home from thrift shopping in a predominantly white and working-class community, a policeman pulled me over. Fresh with the trauma from protesting for justice for Mike Brown, I panicked and called my father. The policeman walked over, took one look at me, and told me to drive into the nearby park. With the swiftness of a person fearful for their life, I drove into the nearest parking spot, rolled down my window, and locked my doors. I had read an article two days earlier that explained in detail how some policemen planted drugs into cars to increase their arrests and I didn’t plan on helping this one reach his quota that night.
The policeman requested my license, looked at the address on the card, and asked me if it was fake. My parents saved up for ten years to move into a wealthy white neighborhood so that my siblings and I could attend school in the best school district in Michigan, and here this white man was, asking me if I had faked my address. Two seconds later, three more police cars joined us in the darkness of the park and I stopped breathing.
The policeman poked his head closer and said he smelled marijuana in my car and so needed me to step outside the vehicle. Filled with exhaustion and anger at this stranger who evoked a senseless fear in me, I snapped, “I don’t smoke, and I don’t have drugs on me. I’m not stepping out.” By then, his colleague was standing at the passenger seat looking in. There were four police cars surrounding me and I wished with all my might that I was still in Accra, waiting for buses to fill up before setting off.
I’m not sure why the second policeman at the passenger window said this, but he did, “The smell of pot is coming from the woods. Let her go.” And let me go, they did.
My New American experience has been a rollercoaster of exasperation and humiliation with a sprinkle of the opportunities that brought me here in the first place. Some days, it feels like I exchanged my humanity for a passport. On other days, my political radicalization makes up for this loss. But on most days, I am filled with disappointment in the country my family believed would cushion us, from Trump’s presidency to the American selfishness tied to the rapid spread of Covid-19. The branding was strong for this one.
When did you become American?
