What actually kept the slaves motivated to be patient while they were enslaved? Was it belief that they would be saved one day by a higher power or was it because they knew if they worked hard and patiently, they would make it out of their hard times some day?

My mother used to live with her mother in a small village in West Africa where she didn’t attend school but by the age of 14, she moved to the city to live with her father. Every morning while she was home sweeping and cleaning, other kids where attending school. One day she asked my grandfather if he could register her in a school because she really wanted to learn, but my grandfather said “no” because she was too old at this point to go to school. Later on by the age of 18 my mother moved to Cote D’Ivoire to live with her aunt. While living there, she was forced to become a house maid: she cooked, cleaned and washed all of the laundry by hand. She was beaten and even had to carry bags of tomatoes to sell around town while my aunt’s daughters went to school. She could have left and gone back to the village with my grandmother but she didn’t because she knew there was no future there for her. Soon her time came, she met my father, had me. When I was 10 years old, I came to the United States. One of my mother’s friends in Italy helped her to go to Italy to stay with her because her friend knew and understood the hardships that my mother was going through. Though not knowing how to speak English is a down side for her, she knows how to speak French and many African languages; she even speaks Italian, has a job and she is trying to gather money to open her own business in Africa.

As a mother, you would do anything possible to keep your child from going through the hardships that you faced, even though they have made you stronger. If you could prevent your child from having to go through hard times, you would. That’s what my mother thought she was doing for me. She knew there was available good quality and free education in the United States, so after she and my father broke up, she stated that all she wanted was for him to bring me to the United States and make sure I got a good education. Here in the United States I live with my father and my stepmother in Massachusetts.

My first year in Massachusetts I attended an elementary school. I was a bit nervous and excited. The school was great in itself, they had really good teachers and a good education system to help new students from different countries, but they lacked awareness and diversity and so did the students. So many people bullied me. Any poster that would be put up of kids from Africa that needed help, the students would ask if I knew the kids on the poster or say that I look like the kids on the poster.

Being bullied is something that lots of kids go through, sadly, but it became too much to handle when I was constantly at war with my stepmother. She hated me with so much passion and I had no idea why and I still don’t understand why. On occasion she would smile and take me out but most of the times it seems as if we are enemies rather than mother and daughter. At the age of 10, I was given a list of things to do whenever she was going out and I was responsible for her two children, ages 2 and 4. I was to clean the entire house, cook, wash laundry and take care of the kids. One day I was locked in our basement where the washer and dryer were to wash all the laundry while my step mom and her family went swimming.


Things seemed to get worst, as I got older. The fight for my father’s attention also made everything worse. The relationship between my father and my stepmother was deteriorating, so I tried to be there for my dad. He was the only one I could actually talk to and he talked to me about everything and my stepmother envied that. She would start and argument with my dad and then yell at me to go and do laundry when it was extremely late and when I asked her if I could do it the next day because I would like to sleep, she would say that if I was tired I wouldn’t be up talking to my dad. The worst things were when she embarrassed me in front of my friends and in public.

You may be wondering where my dad was all these times. My dad is a pretty quiet and doesn’t like to argue and doesn’t want to seem like he’s picking sides but sometimes he chooses her side because he states that she is an adult and if she says anything bad to me I should just respect her because she’s older than I. That seems to get harder and harder as I get older and that gets my dad every upset with me.

As Africans my family practices ageism. This becomes very difficult for me to practice because in my new American culture, I am taught to speak my mind and stand up for myself while being respectful. Living between two cultures makes things hard because if I do one thing that I think is right, it seems to be wrong in the other culture. For instance, when I express how I feel to my dad and step-mom and let them know how their problems affect me, it is a good thing to do in the American culture but in the African culture it’s wrong.

Having to choose between my family and school is one of the hardest things that I have had to do in my life. I know if I do well in school it will get me out of the house and give me a good future but if I choose not to help my family and choose school over them, they would look down on me and call me selfish. So many times I was itching to call my mother and tell her about the stress that I’m going through but I couldn’t possibly do that! After all that she has given to make sure I don’t get abused or go through the same things she had gone through, it would kill her to see that she didn’t succeed. I think to myself all the time that if she went through the same as I’m going through and managed to become a successful person without an education, imagine what I am capable of doing with an education.

Having to wake up every morning to take care of kids, clean the house, wash laundry and cook dinner and sometimes even take care of my sick step mother seems like a lot but I have been doing it for 8 years now. To me it just seems like another day. Each day I’m one step closer, a step closer to being free, a step closer to a successful future and I would honestly not have asked for a better life. The hardships I go through are more than what words can express. Having been slapped in public, and people walking by asking of all these 3 kids are mine at the age of 12 has made me who I am. It has made me strong. I think to myself, at least now when I grow up, I will be a good wife and great mother, because I know how to take care of a household. But even though it has made me a well- rounded person, I think things might have been much easier for me if I’d had the support and the love I needed at home.

The feeling of being trapped, speechless, unappreciated, misunderstood and feeling like I don’t fit in anywhere even in my own home is how I feel most of the time but I don’t let that hold me back. My words that seem not to be important at home are used and expressed in school for good community projects and work. This has taught me that though some people might not want to hear what you have to say, there are always others who want to hear you speak and in sharing my voice, I’ve learned that what I’ve got to say is IMPORTANT!