Cameroon		Nigeria
	Egypt		South Africa
	Ghana		Zimbabwe
	Guinea

African Nations

Though the majority of people who came to this country from Africa were brought here during the most shameful and despicable era of American history, the real African immigrants - those who have come here to seek freedom, safety, prosperity and peace - are enriching our culture in Queens one person at a time.

A myriad of nations, Africa is the cradle of civilization, the home of human evolution and a continent that is home to some of the oldest cultures in the world.

Those from African nations who have come to Queens have brought with them some of the greatest tales of family, culture and survival. Here are some of their stories.

Cameroon

Name: Annie Mouafo
Age: 22
Years in America: 1

Annie Mouafo is a long way from home, from the colorful parrots and “Killer Lakes” that brought fame to her homeland in Cameroon, Africa.

Mouafo arrived in the U.S. last December to fulfill her dream of obtaining a nursing degree.
“It’s a first step,” Mouafo said. “My mother would like me to become a doctor.”

Mouafo said she shares her mother’s dream for her own future, and would eventually like to attend medical school - and one day hang a shingle that reads “Annie Mouafo, Gynecologist.”

For now, however, her days and nights are spent cramming for the nursing degree she hopes to complete in 2007, she said.

Leaving the Homeland
“It was very difficult for me when I first arrived in the U.S.,” Mouafo said. “It was a strange place. I knew few people, but those I knew helped me to adjust and get used to being here alone,” she said.

“I have to do everything by myself, for myself. My family back home, especially my mother, told me to be strong,” Mouafo said. “It hasn’t been easy.”

Mouafo said her country is “very different” from the U.S. “We have a nursing school, but not like here,” she said.
“When you finish school here and go back to my country, you have a much better time getting a job. They look at your background, and it makes a difference,” she said.

In Queens
Mouafo plans to return home once she completes her studies at Queensborough Community College. She is uncertain when she will return to become a doctor, but she is determined to follow-through on the dream.

Obtaining an education in the U.S. is her American dream, Mouafo said, but she plans to pack-up the dream and return home to put it to work.

“My mother is a single mother,” she said. “She raised me, my sister and two brothers by herself. We did not need a father. I would like to return home to help her now. This is the first time I have ever been away from my family, my mother, for even one moment,” she said. “I used to be with her all the time.”

Mouafo said it was a difficult decision, to leave home and come to the U.S. “But when the opportunity came, and when I was accepted at the school, I knew what I had to do,” she said.

Mouafo hasn’t been home since she arrived in Queens a year ago.

“If you go back home, even to visit, you can’t be sure you will be able to get another visa,” she said. “It’s too risky.”
“Every time I call home, I cry,” Mouafo said. “My mother cries sometimes, but most of the time she just tells me to be strong,” she said.

“But I know she is crying when she hangs up,” Mouafo said. “It’s not easy.”
- By Liz Goff

Egypt

In Egypt, Ahmed Essawi was just another English language teacher, but here in America he is a prominent figure in his community.

Leaving the Homeland
Essawi’s wife had moved here in 1979 and then came back to Egypt. Her stories of America interested and enticed Essawi until he finally decided to give a go of New York City - he hasn’t left since.

The transition was very smooth, “I was very lucky,” he said. He already knew how to speak English and soon his career was taking off even if “for not one minute did I think my career would work here,” he said. The hardest adjustment he had to make was the hectic lifestyle that New York City is so proud of. The fast pace “looks like a marathon,” said Essawi, but he does his best to work within it and not get overwhelmed.

In Queens
Finding a job proved a little difficult at first. “At first I would accept anything to work,” he said. But things started looking up for him just a few months later when he started working for the United Nations. That experience helped him further his teaching career in foreign languages. A few years later he started his own professional foreign language institute - the Arabic Institute of Languages in Woodside.

“I am very proud of my institute,” he said. Today, Essawi is very busy between a number of jobs with and outside the institute, including doing programs for an Arabic TV station in New York City.

Retaining one’s culture when immersed in an American city with such a frantic pace can be hard, but Essawi manages to keep his culture intact at home. He has kept much of his Egyptian furniture and home décor.

Essawi’s children are also attending a private Islamic school in Queens and are spoken to in both English and Arabic at home. The family celebrates the festival of Ramadan together as well as the day of the sacrifice of Ishmael.
His wife cooks traditional foods like fried Okra with lamb and fatta, a pita bread with broiled lamb in a tomato-based soup. “It’s very pleasing,” Essawi said. It’s easy, Essawi said, to not forget where you come from and still achieve your goals. “Even if something happens here and you fall,” he said. “You can get back up again - it’s the dreamland really.”
- By Lisa Spinelli

Ghana

Name: Joe Osei
Age: 45
Years in America: 14
For many, Halloween night is a celebration filled with a night of masquerade and pranks, but for Joe Osei Halloween marks the anniversary of his new life in America.

Leaving the Homeland
Osei decided to leave his import-export business in Ghana to his brother and seek better financial opportunities. He saw the thriving economy of the United States and set sail for New York City.

He was picked up from John F. Kennedy Airport by one of his good friends and taken to his apartment in Brooklyn - where Osei was advised to avoid sightseeing on Halloween night. Osei lived in Brooklyn for three weeks and said he determined there was nothing special about the borough. “The neighborhood I lived in made me think, is this all that America is about?”

Some of Osei’s friends realized he was unhappy in Brooklyn, so they invited him to live with them in the Bronx - a move that he said was just as bad. On his way to work one evening, Osei was mugged by three guys as he was leaving the subway.

“One guy held my neck and I couldn’t breath,” said Osei.

Yet Osei stayed on in the Bronx. He finally visited one of his friends in Queens and said, “I loved Queens,” said Osei. He decided to stay from then on. He moved in with his friend and has not left Queens since.

In Queens
Now Osei is a maintenance engineer for a hotel and also owns the Queens African Market. Although Osei has lived in the U.S. for 14 years, he still considers himself an African. He came to America to make a better life for his wife and four children, but his heart is still in Ghana. Going back and seeing his friends and family, and how successful they have become, Osei said he sometimes questions his move to America. But after looking at what he has in America, and the static African economy, Osei is convinced that he made a good choice.
- By Raynelle Cerica Bull

Guinea

Name: Boubacar Diallo
Age: 25
Years in America: 4
Boubacar Diallo was born in Guinea but now lives in Lefrak City and is here on a tourist visa, studying Actuarial Science, as an undergraduate student at St. John’s University.

Leaving the Homeland
Leaving Guinea in 2000 to pursue his education, Diallo passed his GED exams and enrolled at LaGuardia Community College. From there, he not only was accepted to St. John’s University, but has received an $11,000 scholarship from the institution as well.

When he came here, Diallo had to not only finish his high school equivalencies, but had to learn how to speak English.

“Here you have an opportunity to work and make a living, but in my country they don’t have that kind of work,” he said. “They don’t have a good college and here they have justice.” Although Guinea is a democracy, it is not a true form, he added.

In Queens
But life in America can be surprising, even in your sleep. After a long day at school, Diallo took the subway home and fell asleep. When he woke up, not only was he far past his stop, but he found that his shoes had been stolen off of his feet and his hat robbed from his head.

But he is still full of ambition and dreams for a better life in Queens and in America. “I have a dream to start my own business in this country and travel back and forth to my country and here to see my family,” he said.

He also dreams of becoming a systems analyst, but he is helping make many people’s dreams, even small ones, come true as a full-time employee at the Organization for African Unity in Manhattan.

“It’s early to consider myself an American, but so far I am on the right track to living the American dream,” said Diallo. “From what I know now, America has the best opportunities, if you fight for them.”
- By Michael Rehak

Nigeria

Name: Alex Kabba
Years in America: 9
In the national headquarters for African Abroad USA, a basement office inside a white house in Jamaica, founder, publisher and editor in chief Alex Kabba explained that it was his writing that led him to leave his native Nigeria almost a decade ago.

Leaving the Homeland
“I was very critical of the new government at the time,” said Kabba. “I accused them of malfeasance. They [the military government] knew its right. They didn’t want it out.” After three years of his stories, Kabba said, “I was driven out of the country at gunpoint.”

Kabba’s location has changed, but not his writing. His bi-weekly publication still keeps an eye on the Nigerian government, now run by civilians. His vision though has expanded. Africa Abroad USA covers the continent for those who, like the paper’s founder, are living in America.

Nigerians here fall into two categories, said Kabba: “Those escaping dangers, [and] others seeking fortunes.”
Of the estimated 10,000 Nigerians in New York City, “many come here without documents,” said Kabba, a green card holder himself. Despite their immigration status, Kabba reaches out to African immigrants by writing about “the challenges they face, like most immigrants: how to get settled here; how to get a good job. Some end up as a cab driver even though some have PhD’s.”

In Queens
Kabba explained that back home, Queens’ reputation is both an allure and a trap. “Most of them [Nigerians back home] know about Queens because of ‘Coming to America,’” and other movies, said Kabba. “They have different perception of America: They think money grows on trees.” That, he said, creates “a lot of pressure to send money home,” once Nigerians arrive here.

With English as the official language of Nigeria, and a civilian government coming into its sixth year of power, Nigerians are well groomed for life in America. Kabba said as the country’s democratic and economic structures develop, Nigerians “Nigerians are really going to make things felt, and have a big affect on their adoptive countries.”
Kabba personally can attest to that. He plans to launch a second publication, tentatively titled The Nigerian Bubble, exclusively for his fellow countrymen who, either through fear, fortune, or a mixture of both, are now calling America home.
- By Azi Paybarah

South Africa

Name: Charl Malan
Age: 34
Years in America: 5
Charl Malan came to visit his sister in New York and was entrapped by the excitement of the city. Malan decided to try to find a job while still living in South Africa. He gave himself a year to find a job and is happy he did now.

Leaving the Homeland
In February 1999, Malan started his search and his company in South Africa even knew that he was looking to leave. “They were very supportive,” said Malan. “They wrote me references and everything.” After almost a full year of trying, Malan was offered a job as a senior analyst with JP Morgan Chase and he took it. “If you are in the financial world, working on Wall Street is like being a movie star and living in Hollywood,” he said.

In Queens
South African businesses can only invest in South Africa businesses, Malan said; working at an international financial institution like JP Morgan has taught Malan invaluable skills needed for his career. “Your sense of perception is completely changed,” he said. “In South Africa you are very limited to what you can see.”

Malan obtained a visa through his job with a time limit on how long he can stay- six years. With three years left to go on his current visa, Malan is not yet ready to go back to South Africa. He wants to stay to further his career even more so, something he says he cannot do as well as he can in New York City.

“I am very patriotic,” he said. Staying true to his rugby fanaticism, Malan, along with some of his South African friends, goes to bed early on weekend nights and wakes up around midnight to watch his favorite game on in downtown Manhattan sports bars.

At home, he eats all kinds of traditionally South African cuisine, from boerewors, a type of sausage, to biltong, a filet of beef much like the consistency of beef jerky. But he is not isolating himself in his culture. “I decided I could either isolate myself or explore other people’s views and ideas,” Malan said. “And that’s exactly where I am at now.”
- By Lisa Spinelli

Zimbabwe

Name: Shakespear Boka
Age: 26
Years in America: 4
Shakespear Boka came to America with the dreams of many others looking to advance their education. He has completed the first step in his higher education and is ready to make his next one.

Leaving the Homeland
Zimbabwe may be a land of wondrous beauty, but the educational system could not compare to the education he could receive in the United States, Boka said. He decided to move to New York because that is all he heard about America - complete media influence. But he does not regret his decision.

“I wanted to get a degree internationally recognized,” he said. “It was more convenient to do it over here than there.”
It was a pretty hard to adjust to the American way of life without any of his family here with him to support him. But learning the language was the hardest adjustment for Boka. “Some people just don’t understand my accent,” he said. “But talking with friends, communicating with friends has helped.”

In Queens
Many of Boka’s friends are not from Zimbabwe, but from all over the world. And this has been one of his most favorite aspects of Queens - the diversity.

“I like Queens,” he said. “It is completely different than back home. In Zimbabwe there are a lot of black people, Zimbabwe people or British/white farmers but not so much as far as diversity.”

Boka is also very happy to have such things like a public library so close by and a transportation to take him anywhere he wants to go.

Boka finished his electrical engineering degree from Queensborough Community College and is now doing pre-med at Queens College.

The aspiring doctor, however, does not consider himself American, and doubts he ever will. “I will always be from Zimbabwe,” he said. “I don’t ever try to change myself.”
- By Lisa Spinelli