Home Was Twenty-Five Minutes Away

When I decided in my Nigerian high school that I was going to travel across the world to the United States, specifically New York for school, I didn't quite comprehend how different things would be.

The only thing at the forefront of my mind was how fun everything was going to be. I thought about the concerts I would attend, the haunted houses and escape rooms, the nightlife. I thought about how it would feel like to be finally independent.

When I received my acceptance letter to go to school in New York, I experienced a myriad of emotions. I jumped, I danced, I cried.

When I landed in New York four months later with my family, everything was so big and bright and exciting. I was so happy. It was all coming true.

Two weeks later after I'd settled into school, my family got on a flight and went back to Nigeria. For the first time since arriving in America, I felt alone. Truly alone. Nobody was five minutes away from me, they were literally 5,530 miles away.

My university did an amazing job of putting my mind at ease. All the orientation programs they put in play left no room for me to think too much about how alone I was. Those thoughts came at night, when I was alone.

During orientation I made some friends, two of which were African as well - Kenyan. I had friends, I had classes, I had a routine and on the surface everything was fine.

The reality though was that I was crying almost every night in my bed. Nobody told me how different the language, the humor, the food, the people would be. It was a total change and I needed some way to feel an attachment to my home, to Nigeria.

So I started watching a lot of Nigerian movies and listening to more Nigerian music than I'd listened to when I was in Nigeria. It helped, but not as much as I thought it would.

One day while talking to my friend Rose about how home-sick I was, she told me that what helped her with her homesickness was making Kenyan food and eating it while watching Kenyan movies.

That was a fantastic plan, the only problem was that I was a terrible cook and didn't know how to make any Nigerian food. I didn't even know where to find ingredients. The campus store sold beef patties which Rose told me were similar to meatpies we have in Nigeria. While it's true that they were similar (both meat inside crusty shells), it wasn't the same.

Finally, Rose told me about an event she went for which served African food. She told me there was Nigerian food present and it was catered by a restaurant called Taste of Africa.

I looked it up. Taste of Africa was located in Deer Park, New York, about thirty minutes from my campus. With a grumbling in my stomach and an address in my hand, I put on my jacket the next day and ordered an Uber to Deer Park. After about twenty-five minutes, I was standing outside this mystery restaurant, Taste of Africa.

When I went in, I kid you not, I almost cried! There on display was meatpie. Nigerian meatpie!

I looked through the menu and they had everything I'd been craving for - jollof rice, plantains, soups, pounded yam - they had everything!

In my excitement, I went on a shopping frenzy. I bought a lot more food than I needed or could humanly finish. The owner of the place I guess noticed my excitement to be in his store and was kind enough to engage me in conversation.

We talked for a really long time. He told me his name was Ike, told me how he too was Nigerian and completely understood every emotion I was feeling. We talked about a lot of stuff that on the surface seemed trivial - Nigerian food, music, the humor, the people. To me, that conversation was everything! It was familiar, a taste of home.

After I was done eating, he helped me pack up the leftovers I had and because I'd told him how much I'd loved and missed meatpies, he put an extra one in my bag at no additional cost.

Needless to say, Ike saw a lot more of me throughout my time in New York. As time went on, I made more friends in school. I joined the African Student Association and met a lot of other Nigerians. When asked if I knew any good African spots I could take them to, I eagerly told them about Taste of Africa. It became a staple of my ASA friend group. We celebrated birthdays there, we ordered takeout from there, they catered every single event we ever threw on campus. Taste of Africa became our spot!

The day before graduation, my friends and I took one last trip to Taste of Africa. We ordered food, talked, laughed, and reminisced about the high points of our college experience. At the end of the night, we all gave Ike a very long group hug, thanked him for being such an uncle to us, and left him a very big tip.

It's been three years since I've been to Taste of Africa but every time I remember it, I remember it fondly. It was my home away from home during my time in New York. Whenever I felt low or homesick, I knew that home was twenty-five minutes away.

I want to use this opportunity to thank Ike and Taste of Africa for being such a haven. I hope you keep being a home to so many other home-sick African kids the way you were to me. I love you!