Sophia Onwane

Lagos

Nime Choka

My school was big on ensuring that every student had the Pan-African experience, and I was also very excited to immerse myself into all the different cultures that I would come across on campus. But my social anxiety came out immediately when I stepped into the school bus. I couldn’t help but notice the famous Rwandan forehead or the South-African accents I could hear, or the annoying dark-skinned Kenyan whose voice was too loud for me. I was so distracted by my observation that I didn’t realize when my friend Tomi, who was also Nigerian, decided to tell everyone in the bus that I could rap. All I remember when I snapped back into reality was everyone chanting, “Sophia, rap for us!” I was obviously hesitant at first, but eventually I gave in. After delivering a thirty-second freestyle, the annoying Kenyan asked for my number, so she could send the video she recorded while I was rapping. Cindy -as I later got to know her name- was a Kenyan in her second year who came from the Luo tribe. She introduced me to a pretty boy called Tshepiso (pronounced “Te-pi-so”), who was also in his second year. He was from Botswana, and was proud to say it was a norm to eat elephants in his home country.

The rush and thrill of learning about these different people and cultures was indescribable, but by the end of the day I was so exhausted as my brain tried to keep up with all the information I was loading into it. “How do you say ‘I am tired’ in Kiswahili?,” I asked Cindy. She replied: “NimeChoka.”