The Light - An Alumni Publication Winter 2014/2015 | Page 8

ON THE BACK
OF A LION

When Aisha Waziri (above) from Kaduna,
Nigeria was awarded a Kennedy-Lugar Youth
Exchange and Study (YES) scholarship in 2011, she
was faced with an immediate roadblock. “When I
was first selected, there was a little problem because
some people in my family were like ‘no, you cannot
go on this exchange program, you’re a girl and you
cannot travel 1,000 miles away from home.”
When she arrived in New York, she was faced
with another reality: ignorance. “When I came
to America, in school people asked me a lot of
questions because all they see on TV is that Africa is
very poor and they said ‘Oh, do you live in trees?
Do you ride a lion to school? Are you starving in
Africa?’ Everybody believed that Africa is a country,
not a continent. They never said ‘Aisha is from
Nigeria.’ It hurt me.”
Waziri was chosen for the competitive YES
scholarship because of her resilience and desire to
breakdown stereotypes. She admits that she, too,
held certain views about the United States. “We
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