African in America

by Wenceslaus Muenyi

  The end of the school year meant the entire class would be celebrating our victory, our “graduation”; the class was scheduled to go on a camping trip up in northern Minnesota. The trip would last a week and it cost a little over $90 for those on the free and reduced school lunch programs, which, for our community, included most of the students, counting myself. But, for me, even the lowered price was too high for my mom’s budget. We are scraping by as it is, she said. I was sorely disappointed; I didn’t want to miss out on the fun or, worse, be ridiculed because I didn’t go on the trip. But, just when I needed it, another stroke of luck hit me and I was suddenly able to go. The trip was a great time overall—we did lots of activities and got to be outside almost all day—but, sadly, I had a little problem there, too.

  At camp each student was required to serve food to the other students at least once during the trip. My class consisted mostly of black kids, the rest of the camp was not—we were definitely the minority. When it was my class’ turn to serve food to a line of kids, one white student came up to us and said, “Serve me my food, niggers!” He said it in front of his friends and they all thought it was funny, so they laughed and walked away. The ironic thing about the situation was that the kid said it straight to the guy in our class (one of my so-called “friends”) who didn’t mind getting in trouble, didn’t mind a good fight, and was always happier when someone else started the trouble. The kid who did the taunting had unknowingly sent out his own death wish to my classmate. After the comment was made, my friend smiled, served the kid his food, and, at the same time, told the kid “we” (our class) would find him after we were done. I didn’t go along with my “friend” and his plans but some of my other classmates did. It turned out that the kid who called us ‘niggers’ got a very bad beating. To drive the point home even further, my friends waited until the kid and his group were out doing something. They then went to their cabin and stole all their snacks and junk food. When I walked into our room later I saw all my black classmates sitting on their beds, eating junk food like nothing had happened. Later they explained to me what they had done. I truly felt bad for the other kids. Even though what he said was very wrong, I knew that beating him up for it wouldn’t help to change his mind about black people. It was my first true experience with the violence associated with racial discrimination.

  When I returned home from camp I looked as dark as night. As my mom was picking me up from the school parking lot, where the bus dropped us off, she immediately commented on how dark I looked and about the weight I’d lost in only five days. I told her I hadn’t eaten much; I hated the food there, I said, and had spent a lot of time outside. Before we started for home, she left me at the car and went to talk with Mr. Palmer. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but found out later that she was thanking him: he was the reason I was able to go on the trip. Apparently, Mr. Palmer really wanted me to go with them up north—he thought it would be a great experience for me. Knowing we couldn’t fully afford the ticket price, he had offered to pay for half of it. I was able to go on that trip because of his generosity. It was an act of kindness that I’ve never forgotten.

  Sixth grade flew by for me. I ended it a different person than I had started out as. My time at Longfellow was short, and the American summers I’d enjoyed so far had been educational, if not interesting. Those years held for me humiliating and depressing memories, memories and humiliations from which I have learned and grown. I’d been made fun of by my peers, bullied by my friends, knowingly changed my personality, found out my body was against me, and learned the nature of hatefulness and the brutality that differences can sometimes cause to rise up within people. Still, despite the hardships, I feel like I learned what I was supposed to learn and saw what I was meant to see. I left that school the way I should have left it: changed.

  Playing with a cell phone, and my friend playing PlayStation in sixth grade year.

  Me and “Elvis” when he came to Lakeside.

  CHAPTER 10:

  Middle School.

  “Being young, your mind is limitless.

  But, as you get older, the limits begin growing on you.”

  Seventh grade meant middle school, an opportunity to refresh my image and restart myself. My first day there I felt like a new man. The school was Murray Junior High, located in Saint Paul, and was well known for being a safe campus and having great teachers—two things I found firsthand to be precisely true. My brother had attended Murray and had nothing but good things to say about his experiences there; I was excited to be able to follow in his footsteps, to be a big man, and to leave the hardships of elementary school behind me.

  Moving from room to room throughout the day and getting adjusted to the responsibilities of my own timekeeping and the logistics of handling a locker all seemed pretty simple to me. I lucked out with Mrs. Crowley as the bright and shining light of every morning in homeroom. I couldn’t have asked for a better place to start and prep my mind for the next two years of my educational career. Our first day, Mrs. Crowley went around the room from student to student—there were only a few of us—wanting to know a little about us, and wanting us to get to know each other. I remember that first homeroom group being composed of a rainbow of students who didn’t seem very similar at all; I had my subtle doubts about how things would go. But, much to my pleasure and amazement, by the end of our two years together at Murray we would all be great friends; we would follow each other into high school, continuing to share our experiences and the pains of growing up into and beyond high school graduation.

  Homeroom, like any classroom does, had the clown (Carter B.), the ghetto stars (whose names I can’t recall), the one girl who had a talent for motivating (Cyrie), and the guy who was always trying to be a part of the excitement (me).

  Starting off, I pulled out a few tricks from my experiences in elementary school which, I hoped, would help me fit in. First, I took to heart the advice from my old gym teacher and made sure to douse myself daily in deodorant. I hoped the stuff would solve most of my problems; I knew smelling bad wouldn’t be a great start for trying to make friends, much less for spurring conversation with girls. Sadly, the deodorant I had purchased didn’t work well with my body type and I ended up still giving off an odor that other kids found unpleasant. During that era of my life, jeans and baggy clothes were the going style and, luckily, my brother and my mom’s best friend’s son had a few pairs of old jeans they were willing to donate to my cause. I didn’t mind hand-me-downs and made do with what I had, even though the shirts I wore were not even close to my size and, on top of that, had inconspicuous rips and holes in them. Still, they weren’t shabby and I was better off wearing them than facing the consequences of not following fashion protocol at all. I found that as long as I didn’t fuss, nobody seemed to notice, so I did my best not to care.

  Shoes were a whole other issue. Like many pre-teen boys my age I was growing fast and my selection of footwear was constantly trying to keep up. My mother, I knew, couldn’t afford to get me new shoes all the time, so I would either gratefully accept my older brother’s unused pairs when he got the notion to gift them to me, covertly borrow his shoes without asking, or purchase pairs of my own at nearby discount and thrift stores. At the end of the day, though I was not the best dressed kid in school with my hand-me-down clothes and my variegated (and often borrowed) footwear collection, I was happy to at least have some choices at my disposal.

  Even four years after coming from Africa, I hadn’t yet adjusted to the heavy grease that hung heavily in my stomach from the American foods served at public schools. Everything still tasted greasy and hung heavily in my stomach. I had a really hard time adapting to the American diet. In Cameroon, most of our foods were locally grown, carefully prepared, and extremely healthy (with the exception of desserts). Our meals were composed mostly of greens and vegetables with a minimal portion of meat thrown in, which is why my family had such strong immune systems when we first arrived in the States. In Amer
ica, the foods weren’t anything like that. The first time I ate pizza I threw up. Cereal, though, was one of the best things ever invented (ice cream, peanuts, and popcorn being the others). Those foods weren’t entirely new to me; Cameroon had those luxuries, too, but, because they were so rare, it was a nice change that America had them available to eat whenever I wished.

  Candy was one of my big addictions. I loved candy, even in Cameroon, and when I came here the delightful little sweets were so much more accessible and a lot cheaper—a winning situation. The year I arrived in America my mother took me to a dentist, my second dental visit in all my life. I had eighteen cavities. Americans don’t really seem to appreciate good dentistry; they don’t understand that dental care is a service not readily available in many countries, including Africa. My first dental visit in Cameroon involved an extraction; I had a cavity so bad that having it filled wasn’t even an option. I remember the removal process being so painful, that I went home whimpering and spitting out blood along the way. Now, in America, with eighteen cavities on my hands, I was jolted into a frightful stupor; the traumatizing memory of the pain from my Cameroonian dentist paralyzed me. Thankfully my mom—who was always by my side—suffered with me and held my hand through a fit of procedures which, in the end, brought my teeth back from the brink of disaster.

  School-served breakfasts and lunches were, simply put, buffets of bad choices. Though the school district was attended mostly by children of families with drastically limited incomes and, therefore, the children were on either free or reduced-cost lunch programs, I still couldn’t believe what the kids were willingly eating, what the schools were serving us. The chicken patties looked nothing like chicken; the hamburgers were dark, off-colored discs wedged between two flavorless pieces of bread, and I can’t even begin to describe the vision that was what they called ‘meatloaf’. It was the worst food I’d ever seen. I was and still am under the impression that we were served food meant for criminals and inmates in the prison system. Perhaps the food was meant to motivate us to strive for better.

  Aside from Mrs. Crowley, the teachers at Murray were all pretty cool and friendly while still demanding the best from us. I had two teachers who never gave me slack at all, but they ended up earning my admiration and respect and being my favorites, two of the ones who drew out of me the best that I could be. Those two were my English Language Learners (ELL) teachers. They knew from experience that their students could learn English; they believed we could do better than we thought we could. There was no room for pity or laziness; they pushed us and taught us with the conviction that we were just as smart and as capable as any other student. At first I hated them because they weren’t easy (kids always like things easy) and they reminded me of my hard-nosed teachers in Cameroon (minus the beatings) who were relentless in their methods. They were hard, they were demanding, and they didn’t let us forget it. I finally began to appreciate their drive for perfection when I achieved a great score on a test—best in class—and the teacher made sure to congratulate me. Before then, I hadn’t realized how bright I was, and I learned a lot in the two years of ELL I had. I wouldn’t have realized my scholastic abilities had they not pushed me and believed in me the way they did. And, for that, I am forever indebted.

  Social life at Murray Junior High was not much easier than it had been in elementary school. Due to my inescapable circumstances—dress and hygiene; ultimately, money—I couldn’t position myself at the social status I had hoped for. I had people I could talk to, but, like in elementary school, my network of companions found it more entertaining to tease me when we were around others and then befriend me when we were alone. But, despite the maliciousness of some of my companions, I did have fortune enough to meet three of my longest lasting friends: Zack, a small, funny Asian kid who wasn’t shy about talking to me on the bus; his older brother, Bobbi, who was aloof at first, yet kind and brotherly to me in the end; and, lastly, a fellow named Fred.

  While I learned the art of blame at Longfellow, middle school cleared the path for me to find, understand, and work at what I loved: technology. It was a time when cellular phones were really becoming a huge part of everyday life. I began looking more and more into cell phones with the help of my sister, who loved me so much that she funded most of my passion for cell phones for the first part of my middle school career. I remember having the coolest phone in school, an old Motorola with a QWERTY keyboard you could slide open. It was the first time since being in America that I felt uniquely special; everyone was asking me about the phone and my social status suddenly elevated. I was finally cool. Having the Motorola phone led me to another which I had to work really hard to afford: a Nokia N95 8GB with Symbian technology. At the time, that model was still up there in rank and the coolest out on the market, but it was priced highly at $600 so I had a lot of work to do to earn to the money to purchase it. No help from big sister this time. It took me two months to save up enough cash, but I finally was able to buy the N95. With WiFi, 8 gigabytes of memory, and a dual-directional sliding cover, man, was it state of the art! With that piece of technology in my hands, I was most definitely the coolest guy in school, or at least felt like it. People wanted to have a look at my expensive technological handset. From that instant, cell phones became a somewhat easily accessible passion and hobby which eventually developed into something much more.

  Middle school was a season of sports, of which my favorite was soccer. I loved playing soccer. In Africa I had watched with awe as other kids played and now—finally!—I was big and fast enough to join in the fun. My team was called the Black Hawks; we were really good and won almost every game. Playing for the Black Hawks was not cheap, though, what with the cost of uniforms, cleats, transportation to games, and (not to mention) the time involved, but, as always, my mom wanted me to be happy and she worked hard to make sure I could participate. At the end of that period in my life, the cost of me playing soccer totaled in the thousands of dollars. The game was difficult but I learned to enjoy sports, where once I had shied away from them due to my size. My athleticism from that period has followed me into adulthood and, once again, I have my mother to thank for it.

  The Black Hawks always had great practices and great games, but always had an even better time just hanging out together. The team was really close, like brothers almost; we had a lot of fun messing around, going out to eat, and, at the end of the year, having a party at a friend’s house to celebrate the season. Playing soccer in America was the epitome of fun, but within those fun times was one of the very few instances at Murray where I experienced racial discrimination directed specifically at me.

  The incident occurred after we won a match. While we were meeting with the other team on the field to thank them for the good game, one kid suddenly came up to me. He spat on his hand, grabbed mine, and shook it forcefully. I was too grossed out to think much of it; I wasn’t really sure what he was trying to tell me by doing something like that. I was the only black person on the team, and when I told my mom about what that boy had done during the handshakes she was very upset. She was angry that the one sport that should be the least discriminatory sport in the world because it was so popular worldwide would have those types of attitudes in it. She made her anger known to the Black Hawks coach. Our team ended up having to sit through lessons on diversity and racial sensitivity. I griped a little about the class, but my mom told me that if no one complained the problem would never stop, so I learned to accept my suffering and move on

  The last big thing that happened in middle school was when my mom gave me “the talk.” Now, most people, depending on their ethnicity, will think of different things when I say “the talk.” For some teens “the talk” is about relationships or growing older or sex or any of the above. But, as an African in America, the talk is nothing less than complicated. “The talk” is about watching your back. It is about protecting yourself. It is this: never aggravate anyone; if you are walking out of a store, walk out alone so if something is stole
n you do not get arrested; do not talk back or fight with a cop, always answer respectfully; do not be too trusting, especially to non-blacks; and people will stab you in the back to get ahead. This talk gets much worse and more depressing than this, but those were the points which have really stuck with me over the years.

  With the excitement of my new technological gains, being a Black Hawk, and having a slight increase in my “cool” factor, the two years of middle school went quick by as a flash. The glow and glory of high school was on the horizon and, as I was getting ready to leave my eighth grade classes for the final time, I reflected on the things I had learned while at Murray. There were many experiences which impacted me—from my homeroom teacher to my new friends to my newfound love of technology—but, above all, the most important lesson I learned was from that unfortunate incident at soccer practice. I walked away from the soccer field understanding that I shouldn’t be shocked when something racist happens to me; it happens to everyone and I shouldn’t make a big deal out of it. This is one major point my mom and I will disagree on. I am very subtle in the way I handle situations; I do not believe getting mad and making a fuss will solve the problem. I feel like if you act like it does not bother you, then people will stop. They’re looking for a reaction and, by reacting, a person can only drive on the anger and unfounded hate.

  Despite the hard lessons, I was growing up. Nothing could stop that. I was done with middle school. I was ready to move on to the big leagues: high school. I started at Murray Junior High as a lost, socially awkward boy, and felt I was, for the most part, coming out exactly the same way (with only a couple of improvements). How hard could high school be, anyway?