My Immigrant Family Experience

Having nine siblings has always been a big conversation starter for me my whole entire life. However, it’s slightly different from your average large family. You may also have many siblings but are the majority of your siblings not from the same country as you? Well, for me the majority of my whole family is African while I am from America. Now you may be wondering what it must be like to have family from another part of the world. Let me tell you about my experience with being a part of an immigrant family.

Like I mentioned previously, I have a pretty large family. Four older sisters and five older brothers to be exact. Out of the nine, one of them is from America as well. First, let me tell you about what my experience is with having siblings from another country. You might think that it would be weird but, it’s not at all. When my family moved here my siblings were still young so it didn’t really have much effect. However, not all of my family moved. The eldest child stayed as well as three of my other siblings who were around the age of 18 at the time. Two of them eventually moved to the U.S. but that happened later. To this day I have never met my two oldest siblings in person. The family members I grew up around have all forgotten our native tongue which they spoke with ease. On the other hand, two of them still partially have an accent.


I will also tell you about what it is like to have a taste of two different cultures. You may think that because we are no longer in Africa, we don’t participate in that culture anymore. For me, that is a false statement. In fact, we have our own African community that we are part of. We have the celebrations that we hold, as well as different activities. I like to call them African parties because it’s not your average party. Most of the events that happen are weddings so I will use that as an example. These weddings aren’t exactly your “typical” weddings. During the ceremony, when the bride’s maids and groom’s men are walking down the aisle there is dance choreography and a lot of cheering. The same thing happens when the bride and groom walk. At the reception, you show up at least an hour late if your running on, what I like to call, “African time”. There are many performances by kids in the community as well as the bride and the groom’s party. It’s an event that is filled with joy, laughter, and lots and lots of food prepared by the women in the community. These events tend to end at any time from 12 am to 3 am. Keep in mind that most of them start around 7 pm. There are also other series of events such as mourning a loved one which lasts for several days.

Lastly, I will share with you what we call the adults/parents in our community. When talking to older women you would say “mama” and then their first name. When talking to older men you would say “papa” and then their first name. For example, if someone were to call my parents they would say “mama Annie” or “ papa Jean” (pronounced like John). In the African community, if you are from the same tribe you are automatically related. So it’s of saying, aunty or uncle. However, if you’re a parent speaking to a peer you would say it as if you were talking to a brother or sister.

Many of the things that I have mentioned above are positive things. I have the tendency to neglect the negatives when I am talking about the subjects because I like to be optimistic. For me, there has always been a language barrier. Since I was born and raised in the U.S., I grew up mainly around English. My parents didn’t really speak to me in French or Swahili so I never really picked up on it. I currently take a French class in hopes of being able to communicate with family that doesn’t speak English. Although I may not be able to speak the same language as them, it’s still my culture and I will continue to love and embrace it throughout the many journeys that life will take me on. The reason why is because my culture is my culture.