Like many Africans, I have been thinking about Javits Frimpong.

I have lived in America for over twelve years, and somewhere along the way, I have quietly come to realize many things.

I came here full of dreams. America, in my naïve imagination, was a living, breathing paradise. A place where possibilities were endless, where hard work could take you anywhere, where the circumstances of your birth did not necessarily determine the limits of your life. I will never deny the opportunities this country has afforded me. Opportunities that might not have existed for me in Nigeria. Perhaps would never exist.

Case in point: sitting in a room with C-suite executives of a billion-dollar healthcare organization, contributing to conversations and decisions that shape the direction of an institution. In Nigeria, or at least in the Nigeria I knew, those spaces often seemed reserved for the one percent of the one percent. Being in those rooms does something to your mind, like a quiet confirmation that you are on your way.

For the most part, those moments have brought me satisfaction. Many times, they have also brought me something else: deep sadness. It is profoundly unsettling to achieve things you once considered extraordinary while still meeting people who question the most ordinary things about your humanity.

I remember February 2014.

We had just arrived in America and were staying with an aunt in Washington Heights, Harlem. Her son was about eight years old. He asked my sister and I whether we wore shoes in Africa and if we lived in huts?

My sister looked at him and said, “But you’ve been to Nigeria. Did you sleep in huts? Did you walk barefoot?”

I did not remember this conversation until my sister, and I spoke about Javits this morning. It is why I picked up my computer to start writing. My sister would go on to say he probably was asked that in school too.

I remember the looks, oh the looks. The questions about where we had gotten our winter jackets, since there was no winter in Africa or so they thought.

We had arrived from a country where we had homes, schools, televisions, cars, shopping malls, universities, and lives as ordinary and complex as anyone else’s. Yet somehow, being in America had reduced us, in people’s imaginations, to something almost primitive.

At the time, I did not have the language for what I was experiencing. I simply knew in the way the body reacts when something is wrong.

My sister was fifteen when we arrived. She had just completed her West African examinations, and the aunt we stayed with insisted that she should return to high school for a year to perhaps fit in and understand the American educational system. I remember accompanying her to this public high school in Harlem, and I remember the counselor who intervened.

If she has her transcripts and has completed the necessary requirements, the counselor asked, why should she return to high school? She could just go to college.

I will forever be grateful to that woman.

Reading Javits’s story, I shivered. I cannot imagine what my sister might have faced in that environment, or what it might have done to a frightened, naïve fifteen-year-old girl who had just arrived in a country she barely understood. I know now how vulnerable a young person is when the world insists on seeing them through a distorted lens, and how much of an immigrant’s life can be shaped by the kindness, judgment, or ignorance of another person.

Through the years, I have experienced the loudness and quietness of microaggressions.

I remember starting my career on the front lines of healthcare as a certified nursing assistant. I was extremely quiet then. I remember black american coworkers mimicking my voice, exaggerating my accent, making me sound as though I could barely speak English. I would respond, irritated, “I do not talk like that.”

I experienced milder versions of this from others, who would sometimes say, “I don’t understand what you just said.”

I did not understand it. I did not understand America.

I keep remembering something my uncle had told me when we first arrived.

“Learn the system.”

And I remember asking him, “What system?”

I understand that differently today.

Because there is being an immigrant in this country. There is being Black. And then there is being African. These identities overlap, but they are not interchangeable. Sometimes, the people you imagined would understand you are the very people who ridicule you.

I remember bringing my food to work.

Efo, vegetables, and rice were among my favorite meals. I would microwave my food and watch the subtle reactions around me. The noses moving, the expressions changing, the occasional comments. Someone said at a time, “Eww, what is that smell?” I remember feeling embarrassed, even though I was unsure why.

Eventually, I stopped bringing those meals to work altogether. I ate them at home.

It seems like such a small thing, doesn’t it?

Food.

I think about how many small things we quietly surrender. How we begin to anticipate other people’s discomfort before they have even expressed it. How we learn to make ourselves less visible, less audible, less foreign. Not because we are ashamed of where we come from, but because we grow tired of having to defend it.

Another case in point, Christmas in Nigeria was communal. We cooked in batches. We shared, moved from house to house, eating, laughing, and celebrating. Food was not simply something you consumed. It was something you offered. A gesture of affection, of hospitality, of togetherness. Even today, food is one of the ways I show love.

And so, that Christmas, I did what I knew. I made Nigerian jollof rice and chicken. About twenty-four plates.

See, I had worked the night prior and stayed awake preparing everything because I wanted to celebrate christmas how I had always known. I arrived at work happy, eager to share. I remember the mixed reactions.

“Oh, what’s that?” Some picked at the food. Most barely touched it. I remember feeling foolish.

But I also remember the African security guards who came and took several plates. They thanked me so warmly, telling me it reminded them of home.

I have never forgotten that. And I never did this gesture again.

I remember a nurse manager I worked with, Ghanaian, beautiful, brilliant, kind, and exceptionally hardworking. She had lived in America for over thirty years.

I remember how some of the nurses and doctors spoke about her: the complaints about her accent, about how difficult she supposedly was to understand. It bothered me that a woman who had spent decades living and working in this country could still have her competence questioned. Staffing the unit was a constant challenge, as it often is in healthcare, and many of the people who were at the job as aides were Africans. She interviewed them, and when they met the requirements, she hired them. It did not take long before the narrative became that she hired only Africans.

Her response was always the same: she hired people who applied, and demonstrated that they could do the job. But the accusations continued.

Eventually, she was let go.

I cannot claim to know every consideration behind that decision, but I remember the hostility towards her, the resentment of her authority, and how often her identity and hiring decisions were discussed. She was a woman in authority, an immigrant, and an African who expected people to do their jobs. At the time, I sensed that being African was part of what made her vulnerable in that place, but I did not fully understand what I was witnessing.

I do now.

I think about how many Africans spend decades building careers, gaining qualifications, leading teams, and contributing meaningfully to institutions, only to discover that professional competence does not always equal the dignity they imagined it would.

My sister has her own stories.

She has experienced significant workplace trauma in the fields she has wanted to enter, particularly fashion and art galleries.

I remember her saying to me, “These spaces do not exist for us unless you build your own.”

It saddens me because we were raised to believe that hard work, diligence, and excellence mattered. Do your work. Do it well. Be respectful. Be honest. Be excellent. Be kind.

And the world we imagined would recognize those things has presented itself differently.

I think about my name.

Yemisi.

A simple name, or so I have always thought. Pronounced almost exactly as it is written. Yet I have spent years hearing it mispronounced, shortened, mis-spelt or approached with unnecessary hesitation. I remember facilitating meetings, joining calls, contributing to conversations, and being told, “Your English is so good.”

“Do they speak English in Africa?”

And every part of me has had to restrain my face. Because what I really want to say is, “Can you please get your stupid ignorance out of my face?” Instead, I respond politely, in the carefully measured language of corporate America.

Sometimes I explain that Nigeria is an English-speaking country. Sometimes I smile. Sometimes I say nothing. It is exhausting to keep proving that you have what other people are simply assumed to have: intelligence, education, competence, sophistication, language.

And it does not necessarily disappear when you advance professionally.

Then I think about my mother.

I did not want my mother to live and work in this country. One day, she came home after taking the bus, her face did not carry the same glow. She told me the bus driver had given her a look and that people on the bus did not want to sit beside her.

I hugged her and told her to ignore them. But my heart was tearing itself into shreds. Because by then, I understood enough about this country to recognize what she was describing, and I realized that the same survival strategies I had learned for myself were now the ones I was offering my mother.

Ignore them. Don’t let it bother you. Keep going. Do not give them the satisfaction.

We say these things because we have to find a way to continue living. But I wonder what happens to all the hurt we ask ourselves to ignore.

Where does it go?

I often say that the first time I knew I was Black was when I tried to open a Chase bank account in Harlem and was asked to select my race. The category that applied to me was Black or African American. I had not grown up understanding myself through any racial classifications.

I was Nigerian. Yoruba. African. I had a name, a family, a language, a culture, and an entire world of reference that existed before I ever arrived here.

The loneliness of being African in America is something I do not think we discuss enough. It is one reason many of us remain close to our communities. There is relief in speaking your language without explanation. In eating your food without embarrassment. In hearing familiar laughter, familiar jokes, familiar expressions. In being among people who do not need a history lesson to understand the most ordinary things about you.

But even that is complicated.

I have experienced the unspoken violence that can exist within our own communities and familial relationships. I have learned, sometimes painfully, that shared culture does not automatically guarantee kindness, reciprocity, or belonging. This is an essay for another time.

My friends are scattered across the world, many of them in the United Kingdom. We speak often. We remain deeply connected. But I know what we are being deprived of. The everyday intimacy of community. The spontaneous visits. The shared meals. The familiarity of people who know you beyond your profession, your accomplishments, or your usefulness.

I know what it means to build a life in a country of extraordinary opportunity while the way I was raised to live slowly fades. And I know that America is not devoid of community, just as Nigeria is not free from loneliness or cruelty. But migration carries its own particular kind of isolation.

You can have a job, a home, an education, a career, and a life that looks successful by every visible measure and still feel that something fundamental has been lost.

Your identity is questioned, verbally and nonverbally, so frequently that eventually you stop reacting to every instance.

You learn when to explain, when to smile, when to challenge, and when to walk away.

You learn which parts of yourself are welcomed and which parts are merely tolerated.

You learn to soften your accent in certain rooms, adjust your expressions, anticipate assumptions, and make calculations so quickly that they become second nature.

It becomes something you wear beneath your skin.

You melt. You reshape yourself according to what the country reflects to you. And when you refuse to calcify, you are always at the edge of anger.

To those who respond to conversations like this with “Then leave our country,”

I have no interest in arguing.

I do not believe a country belongs only to whichever group happens to dominate its institutions or cultural imagination. Nor do I believe that naming the indignities of living somewhere cancels one’s right to belong there.

But more importantly, I reject the suggestion that gratitude requires silence. I can acknowledge the opportunities America has given me and still speak about the things that have wounded me here.

Ten truths can coexist.

It is one reason Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will always remain an icon to me. When I read Americanah, I felt seen. I recognized the absurdities, the adjustments, the negotiations, the peculiar experience of arriving in America and discovering that you must learn not only about a new country, but also a new way of understanding yourself.

And it is why I say representation matters.

Not merely representation in the familiar language of embracing Black hair, celebrating skin color, or teaching children to love how they look. Those things matter, certainly, but I am talking about something more fundamental.

The right to exist without your humanity being treated as a question.

The right to have your work respected.

The right to be competent without being regarded as an exception.

The right to speak with an accent without having your intelligence diminished.

The right to bring your food to work without being made to feel uncivilized.

The right to be an aide, a home health aide, a certified nursing assistant, a cleaner, a healthcare support worker, a taxi driver, or a security guard, and still be treated with dignity.

Because not every immigrant will sit in a boardroom. Not every African will become a doctor, an executive, an engineer, or an entrepreneur. And they should not have to. We should not become more recognizable simply because we have accumulated credentials or entered prestigious spaces.

I think often about how the children of wealthy African families sometimes have the option of returning home. Not all of them do, of course, but having the financial freedom to leave, to move between countries, or to build a life where one’s identity is more understood is a privilege.

For many of us, the opportunities we came here seeking are also the reasons we must stay. We have built lives here. We have responsibilities. Families. Careers. Financial obligations. Dreams that are still unfolding.

And so, we remain.

We make something of our honest lives. We work. We study. We advance. We send money home. We raise children. We build businesses. We contribute to the very institutions and communities in which we sometimes struggle to feel fully accepted. And the cost, however invisible, can be greater than anyone realizes.

For many Africans, the story of migration is told almost exclusively through the language of opportunity and success. We speak of what we gained. We speak less often of what we had to suppress, negotiate, endure, or quietly surrender along the way. Perhaps because we are grateful. Perhaps because we are exhausted. Perhaps because we have become so used to these experiences that we no longer recognize how much they have shaped us. Or perhaps because, for a long time, we did not know what to do with the sadness.

All of it belongs to the same story.

More than twelve years in, I have learned that it never really ends. It is the tension we live in, however invisible, however masked.

Javits’s story has brought many of these thoughts back to my mind, and my dear boy, I am forever sorry….