Tolu's Story

My mom and my dad met in Japan. They had me. My dad at the same time was dating another woman who is Japanese and he decided to stay with her. And my mom was basically forced to go back to Nigeria and she had me and she was pretty lonely like throughout her pregnancy. Like when she tells me about it, it sounds like a pretty miserable experience.

Before we moved, my mom dropped me off from my grandma in Beijing, which is probably like one of my favorite parts of childhood because I just really loved living with my grandma. She was a really, really, interesting lady. She was like one of the first women in her family to actually get to own her own business. But I lived with my grandma for a couple of years in elementary school.

We had this health like yearly health checkup. A doctor came in and told me and my mom that I had a heart murmur. So a heart murmur is basically just like; I had a little hole in my heart from like a valve that improperly closed, so that, combined with being robbed at gunpoint once in our house. My mom had her purse snatched like on a bridge, I think twice or so. Literally on our way to the embassy to get our visas to come to the U.S., a guy walked up to the driver's side and just pointed a gun at my mom and was like, give me your phone. I think my mom was starting to realize that Nigeria wasn't really super safe. She basically forced my dad to bring me over to coming to the U.S., otherwise he'd seem pretty dead sound leaving her there.

I first landed in California in Norwalk, which was about an hour away, I think from where my dad and his family lived. In fourth or fifth grade, I think that was like the first time I ever really got bullied, I guess, like in Nigeria, I was pretty small. I was like my mom used to say, I was super witty or whatever, but I couldn't really do that in the U.S., because I had my accent attached to my comebacks and the accent was pretty laughable to kids, I guess. So I kind of strung in on myself. I think that was the first time I ever really had a hard time making friends. But I did make one friend, Maria, who is also an immigrant.

We ended up moving to Michigan, where my uncle lived and my mom started working at a group home.
I started another elementary school, but this one was slightly better just because it was Detroit. So it was mostly like black kids. And then I actually started to like, I guess, come out of my shell and try to make friends because I was like, oh, everybody here is like me. Like we're all black. Like when me and my mom used to talk about the course of our life in the U.S., she was like, oh, do you remember Michigan? Do you remember when you used to go with your Uncle Joe to work? And it was then that I really realized I kind of wiped a lot of what happened in Michigan from my mind. So I think just having that conversation with my mom just made me realize I like a lot. When a lot of bad stuff happens to me, I tend to just kind of push it away or just forget.
I went back to California and this time I got to live with my dad and his family, so his wife and then he has three kids, two sons and a daughter. They're all older than me. It was not fun at all. Yeah, I think this was the hardest time I had adjusting because I didn't have my mom with me at all. She stayed back in Michigan cause she had to keep working. Up until this point, I was still eating Nigerian food and maybe like some American food outside. My whole palette had to be switched to Japanese food. And I did not take to it well because my stepmom would get really angry at me if I didn't finish my food because it was seen as disrespectful. And I think this was the first time I really lost faith in my dad as a person because I kind of expected him to stick up for me every once in a while. The older son, especially, really seemed to hate me. And I think it was then I kind of realized, this is not how a father is supposed to act.

I want to hear what you think, but when I listen to you it feels like all of these really hard things made you a stronger person.

I think so. I think I don't react to certain things the way I guess other people who had normal lives would. Yeah, I think it's definitely made me stronger. And certain ways, um like I don't get scared super easily. Something that I do think was like a really good take away from this was just figuring out how to cope with whatever is going on with you. I guess some people might be going through something similar where there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah. It gets better eventually.

So just try to stay calm. This is something that I didn't have, like a solid support system. But if you do have one, just try to reach out, talk to people. Like, don't be scared to disclose how you're feeling. Because that's something that I realized I did throughout all of, like, I wouldn't explicitly tell anyone how I felt. And sometimes I think it might have made things worse. But yeah, I think, I think that's the biggest take away from me from this.