Noleen's Story

So I will be telling the story of my migration from Ghana to the United States. So from what I remember, it was just a random day. I was in either second or third grade, and my parents pulled me out of school, my siblings and I out of school, to go and take passport pictures. My parents were going through the paperwork process and just getting everything together. I remember that after third grade, my dad was like, "Okay, so we're gonna take a trip to the United States.” And we're like, we were so excited. We left Ghana, like I wanna say, a month after school had ended. We, you know, took a trip here. Everything was so smooth. We got here, it was, it was a totally different world from what I was used to seeing.

We had a blast. We lived here for, I wanna say, about two months. And then, um, my parents had at some point decided that they didn't wanna live in Massachusetts. My dad decided that it was best that my mom should live in the US and move somewhere else. And then my dad would take my siblings and I back to Ghana to continue schooling until my mom, you know, was settled down. Cause he didn't feel like it was best for all of us to move together to start a new life somewhere else, where we didn't really have anyone. So she moved to Chicago, and we went back to Ghana. Um, but when I got to school, school had already started. So it was like a, maybe like three weeks, three weeks or a month into school, and I just got there, and everyone was like, “Oh my god, where were you?” And you know, with African tradition, people usually don't like to say what they're doing unless things are actually set in stone. So my parents like, you know, keep things a secret, like don't tell them, like, any details, don't tell anyone, anything.

Then my mom decided that she didn't wanna live in Chicago cause she felt like it was not the best fit for us. So she got into contact with her friend, and she moved to Texas, and she lived in Texas, she felt like, you know, life there was very different. She liked it, but she still didn't feel like it was the best decision. And then she eventually wanted to actually come back to Ghana. Now things get a little chaotic here. My dad was like, you know, to keep our status active, we would need to live in the United States. So my mom had to make up her mind. Then my mom moved back to Massachusetts.

We took another trip to the US, and we lived here for, I wanna say, like a month, and then, um, we went back to Ghana after that because things were still not settled. We went back to school. I started fifth grade, and I think this time, though, I did get to fifth grade when it started, and I knew that this was probably going to be the school year that would be my final school year in Ghana. Um, I still had to keep everything a secret. And then now things are really, really set in stone as time went on. My dad would pull us out of school to go through the immigration process, um, take us to do paperwork. Now we're doing immunizations, gathering all our belongings so we would move to the United States.

Near the end of the school year, my dad had written a letter to the school telling them that we were not going to come back anymore, but this was just with the administration, like this was when no one else. I remember the last day of school, I was really sad. I felt like I had no proper closure with people that were around me because I, again, was told to keep this private, so no one knew what was going on. But I decided to tell a few of my friends. I told about one or two people that I actually was moving to the United States and was never going to come back or at least not return as a student to the school anymore. And I remember I was just really trying to savor all my last moments with my friends because I knew within like a month we would be gone.

So now school ends. Um, now we started, like, you know, packing, finalizing everything, and then the day came where my dad, my two brothers and I, we moved to the US. And I will say it wasn't really like a hard difference because first of all, we lived here for a few months, so we kind of expected, you know, what was going to happen. Like it wasn't anything totally new experience, because in our little short moments during our trips here, we did, you know, move around, we did explore stuff, so we knew what to expect. So it wasn't really like a hard transition for us at all.

Um, I remember I lived in a really big apartment, so a lot of people that were young were my age. And that's how I started meeting connections here. I wanna say maybe like a month before sixth grade began, they took us to do paperwork with the, I forgot what it was called, but they took us through the paperwork to begin school. And then I was like, oh my god, wow, like things are actually, you know, starting. And then during the summertime, I had a blast. I was making memories with people that I kind of still know today. And it's been, honestly, a blessing.