My New World Journey

Nola Kambanda

Nola Kambanda was born in Burundi, a country in Eastern Africa, to Rwandese parents who had left their home country in the early 1960s to escape genocide. Eventually, Kambanda immigrated to the United States. She lived with a family in Los Angeles as she attended college at California State University, majoring in electrical engineering. She then took a job with Boeing Reusable Space Systems. This narrative, published in the collection Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Women (2000), focuses on the first few years of Kambanda’s life as an immigrant in America.

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The anticipation of coming to this great country and all of its physical, social, and economic capacity was overwhelming. It made me feel like a toddler in a toy store, unable to decide which adventure to tackle first. Coming to California from Burundi — a place that I had come to call home, a place that was so very different in every aspect from the United States — I was in complete awe. The first thing that hit me was the speed with which everything was going. It seemed too fast paced. The movement of the people was rushed, and no one was looking anywhere else except where they were going; the cars moved too fast; there were too many lights, too many buttons to press, too many escalators. I was suddenly asking myself if these people ever stopped talking to one another. The longing to be back home suddenly came upon me. The need for some kind of familiarity was so strong and yet I had just stepped off the plane.

In many ways, I have lived my life as an immigrant of one sort or another. I was born in Burundi to Rwandese parents who had each left the country in the early ’60s as a political refugee to escape the ethnic cleansing which was going on. Despite the fact that they met, married, created a home, and had all seven of their children in Burundi, my parents never considered themselves anything other than Rwandese. There was no such thing as assimilation, as becoming a citizen of Burundi. As such, they raised their children to identify themselves as Rwandese. So I grew up with the understanding that where you were born has little, if any, bearing on who you are, let alone what you will become. You will always be followed by the shadow of your heritage and of ancestry.

All refugees grow up with this understanding. You grow up knowing that you do not automatically belong, that you always have to prove yourself, earn your place in the society which has so graciously allowed you the freedom of life. In my household, it was just assumed that we would do well in school. There was no room for failure, for being anything other than the best. I, like all my siblings, excelled in my academics. I left Bujumbura, the capital city, to complete my secondary education at an all-girls boarding school in Kiganda, a small countryside town.

I had always wanted to be in a boarding school. My friends and the various acquaintances I met who had attended and/or graduated from boarding school told me about the lifelong bonds that were developed by the girls, about how it was an experience that had forever changed their sense of who they were as women. Though relatively unexciting, my first year at school in Kiganda was pleasant enough. My second year, however, was another story. A story that my parents, having left the violence of their homeland behind, had hoped I would never be able to tell.

5 Not so unlike the rival gang warfare I have grown accustomed to hearing about in Los Angeles, the territory of Central Africa where I am from is marred by tribal warfare. The two main tribes in both Burundi and Rwanda are the Hutus and the Tutsis. The hatred and rivalry between the tribes has existed from the beginning of this century’s colonial occupation of these two countries. Even though most of the world has recently appealed to both the Tutsi and the Hutu tribes to put an end to the genocide, it will most likely continue into the next millenium. It is hard to change when you know no other way of life.

I suppose that this was the case with the young Hutu student at the boarding school who was plotting to have me, a Tutsi, killed. Actually, she and a small group of her Hutu friends were planning to extinguish all the Tutsi students. I just happened to be at the top of the list — literally. Mine was the first name on a list of over thirty names that the administration discovered. After the girls were found out and threatened with expulsion, they quickly abandoned their murderous plans. But for me, it was a serious reminder that I was a refugee and that meant I was never safe, always susceptible. I was never truly home. When I told my parents what had happened, their reaction only cemented this. “This is what you have to live with, Nola,” they said. “This is who you are.”

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So there I was, at the Los Angeles International Airport, just one short taxi ride away from meeting the family with whom I’d be living. My aunt and cousin from Swaziland, where I had been living for most of the previous year, accompanied me on this, my first trip to America. More specifically, to what would be my new home — at least while I was attending school. While I was standing there outside the airport watching cars and buses of all shapes and sizes drive by, I thought about how I had reached this point in my life. I realized the sacrifice that not only my parents but also my siblings were making to send me out here. I was the first one of all seven of my parents’ children to move so far away from Burundi. I should have felt privileged. I should have been excited and on top of the world about coming to America — the country I had been made to believe was the richest and most technologically advanced of them all.

But a sense of guilt was washing over me, one which became more pronounced as I kept thinking of the economic burden it would place on my father. An economic burden which I felt was too large for him to bear in older to accommodate just one child. The guilt and the realization that stemmed from it brought on a tremendous sense of responsibility for me. Even more so than in Burundi, failure was unacceptable. I could not fail here in America. I was going to have to be the best. I was going to have to do extremely well in school so that I could go on to get a decent job so that I would be able to contribute financially to my family’s well-being.

The family that I was going to be living with in Los Angeles were strangers. They were well acquainted with my uncle and aunt who had come to vacation in the States each year. But I had never met them before. I wondered how awkward it would be to live with people I had never met before. When I walked into their house they greeted me very warmly. The sound of their voices calling me by name was not strange but, rather, familiar. It eased the pain of separation that I had been feeling from the moment our plane landed at the airport. I felt at home in their home.

10 Even still, I found myself growing ever-conscious of the way I spoke. This was the beginning of what would be my lengthy battle to translate myself in a language not my own, to communicate in English — not just any English, but American English. It seemed like I would never be able to speak as fast and as well as these people. I would never be able to say and remember their names, names I was not used to, as easily as they seemed to be able to say and remember mine. I wondered if they were, in meeting me, as aware of our differences as I was in meeting them. How did I seem to them? Did I seem too soft? Too slow? Too self-conscious? I must not have, because my new family — a Jewish-American social activist, a Jamaican-American actress-cum-writer and their pre-pubescent daughter — were very caring and hospitable. They never made me feel like I didn’t fit in just right. I felt, in their eyes and in their home, like myself, like an individual, not a representative of Burundi, Rwanda, or Africa at large.

This was not the case with other people I met. I couldn’t believe the questions that were posed to me. Questions about my country and about Africa — although in many cases there was no real distinction because so many people think that Africa is just one big country, not a continent with many, many countries in it. People would ask me if I spoke “African,” if I could speak a little “African” for them to hear. One day while I was visiting the elementary school that the family’s daughter was attending, one student asked me — with genuine sincerity — if we rode on elephants in Africa as a means of transportation. That blew me away.

When I went to apply for my Social Security card, the clerk looked at my passport, pointed to the printed name of my country, and asked, “Where is that?” Upon being told by me that I had recently arrived from Burundi, by way of Swaziland, a young man asked, “How did you get here from there?” The thought that I could have flown in a commercial airplane from there to here did not seem to ever cross his curious mind. At times, I received these questions with humor. At times, I received them with confusion and took great offense. Why didn’t these people know anything about Africa and its people, its geography? Why was there such a deep pit of ignorance? Where was the knowledge and wisdom and greatness I imagined everyone in America would have?

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Surprisingly, most Americans I met in Los Angeles had no concept of African modernity. They still thought of Africans as people who lived in a jungle, people who had no access to airplanes, cars, televisions, telephones, CD players, or any of the other household appliances and urban facilities that I grew up enjoying in Burundi. The fact that these Americans were not aware of African modernity was not as surprising as my discovery of the fact that they also knew very little about American history. In Burundi, geography, history, and anthropology were a critical part of our educational curriculum. And not just our geography, our history, and the study of our culture. We learned about the entire world. By the time I finished secondary school, I knew all the significant details of all the countries in all the continents. I knew the capitals of all the states in America, I knew who the presidents of the country were. Living in the glamour of Los Angeles and not knowing what a Tutsi or a Hutu is, not knowing where Burundi or Rwanda is can somehow be rationalized. Not knowing who Andrew Jackson was or where the capital of California is, cannot. This is how my romanticized idea of America died and the recognition of my journey into a new world — not the New World — began to take form.

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. . .

The world I eventually came to embrace in America, in Los Angeles, and in the home where I was living was both comfortable and complicated. Even though my new family made it as painless as possible for me to emerge into their way of life, there were many things I had to learn. The differences in our cultures and lifestyles continued to display themselves as the days went by. Everything was rushed, was too this or too that, was always being pushed to the extreme. There just seemed to be a ton of information to recall. Where had all the simple things gone?

15 I had used a telephone plenty of times before and I had always thought of it as a pretty basic unit. You pick up the phone, you dial who you’re calling, they answer it and you talk. No interruptions, no complexities. Until I learned that there was such thing as call waiting. And then three-way calling. And call forwarding. And single telephone units with multiple lines. What was all this? Was it all really necessary?

I wondered about the level of sophistication toward which everything seemed to be aspiring. It was a sophistication intended to facilitate, to make life simpler. But how is it possible to be simple and sophisticated at the same time? Take, for instance, the washing machine. I had neither seen nor used one before. You put your dirty clothes and some soap into a machine, close the lid, press a button and within minutes your clothes were done — clean and ready to be placed in yet another machine to be dried!?! Back at home, in Burundi, we would put our dirty clothes in a basin, soak them a bit, hand wash them with soap, and then hang them up to line dry. I will admit that the American way is definitely more convenient. But it lacks a certain ritual of intimacy. There is a care that I like to put into the cleaning of my clothes, those things that cover and protect my body, so I still invariably find myself hand washing.

Only recently did I realize that the majority of these cultural contrasts stemmed from the same root, the concept of time. Americans have a way of wanting to accomplish as much as possible in as little time as possible. Even something as sacred as eating. Fast food. It was amazing how many fast-food restaurants there were in Los Angeles, even in just our small neighborhood. Everyone ate at fast-food restaurants. I noticed how many ate while driving or being driven. I had not seen anything like this in my country. We ate three meals a day — breakfast, lunch, and dinner; and this was rarely done outside of either your own home or someone else’s home. Eating out was a very formal affair. People didn’t go out to eat by themselves. It was what you did in large numbers, something the whole family did together. Regardless of whether it was done in the home or out, dining required time. Food was never fast.

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It didn’t take long for me to catch on, for me to grab a hold of America. Especially after I had started doing what I came here to do — go to school. Once I started going to school and working a part-time job, I knew the meaning of busy. I knew why people ate and talked on the phone while driving from one place to another. Before long I started doing it myself. I’d never gone to school and worked at the same time. I don’t think I’d ever known anyone in my life, certainly not in Burundi, who was working and going to school at the same time. School was your job. You were obligated to study and do well until you were finished because only then would you be qualified for employment. That was our incentive. Nobody wanted to hold a job for which you didn’t need qualifications. Those petty positions were for the uneducated, for those who couldn’t finish secondary school or university. Education was something that was taken seriously in Burundi. If you failed a class, you were not only castigated and harshly punished for it, you would also have to repeat the entire year of school before being allowed to move on to the next grade level. Out of fear for authority and all elders in society, we gave our professors the ultimate respect.

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When I began attending Los Angeles City College, I was completely thrown off by the casual relationships between professors and students. The students appeared confident of their circumstances, unafraid of any consequences. The school was overflowing with options and choices. You could decide what classes you wanted to take, how many, and when you wanted to take them. You could miss a class and still make up for it. You could miss a class and never make up for it and still graduate.

20 Working and going to school was grueling, but I managed to do it because that was why I had come to America to begin with. I had to prove myself. There would be no reason to return to Burundi without a degree. Any of the students back home would have killed to be in my shoes. So why not use them to carry me someplace, somewhere of significance? After I completed my studies at the community college, I transferred to California State University–Los Angeles. I declared electrical engineering as my major. It did not go by unnoticed — by me or anyone else — that I happened to be the only black person, not to mention black woman, sitting in most of my classes. My strong accent made every verbal answer I gave a staring session for the rest of my classmates as they tried to figure out my words. The same is true of my present coworkers.

After receiving my degree, I was immediately offered the opportunity to begin my career. I took a position at Boeing Reusable Space Systems, where I am, again, one of a small few. It seems that I have always stood out. In Burundi. In America. My parents were right when they urged me to become used to the fact that I would always be the “other.” Everywhere I go I come back to their words. “This is what you have to live with, Nola. This is who you are.”

No doubt I am not American. I am a Rwandese Tutsi refugee who is becoming more and more understanding and appreciative of America each day I am here. The appreciativeness and understanding creates an awareness that makes me unique in every circle I could possibly travel in. It keeps me on my toes. If I was still in Burundi, I would also be busy, but not in the same way I am in America. I would probably be married with a couple of children. I would be busy with the kids, busy tending to the housework, busy taking care of my extended family and local community, busy helping my husband with his career and his dreams. I would be busy being a typical Rwandese housewife.

Sometimes I do think about going home. I think about the rewards of having an extended family and a local community that depends and insists upon my involvement. I think about finding a mate, that person I have not yet been able to find in the United States, the one who will be able to accept and relate to all aspects of my background and my culture. I think about the food, about the cassava leaves and the fried green bananas. I miss what I used to have, and what I used to want, who I thought I would become. Then again, I don’t.

Sometimes I am not sure whether home is behind me or in front of me. I am not so sure this longing is really recognizable. I might just be attaching it to those things that are familiar to me. Home might very well be a place that I have not yet discovered, that I have not yet created. Or it might not be a place at all. After all, Rwanda, that place that I have called home all my life, is a place I have visited for only one month. I don’t know its rivers, its mountains, intimately. All I know of Rwanda is its people, my family. So home might be family, and nothing more. It might be the people who make me feel. The people who define and occupy and receive my emotions, the people who reciprocate, who give me the most sought after, most valuable and intangible gifts — acceptance, trust, laughter, comfort, love. In that case, Burundi is home. And so is Swaziland. And so is America.