Editor’s Note: Basil Okocha, a Nigerian journalist and the albino son of black parents, came to America as an immigrant six days before Sept. 11, 2001. After a series of problems, he eventually wound up in the Hoboken homeless shelter. We asked him to share his compelling story.
At 29, heir to property and a thriving business, I left Nigeria. As a young albino man born to black parents, I was often subject to discrimination growing up. Finally, I reckoned it was time to move on to another life where civilization and education had separated people from superstition.
On Sept. 5, 2001, I boarded a New York-bound jetliner with dreams of greatness and fame, but above all, hopes for a great life. After 11 hours of a turbulence-filled flight, we touched down at JFK at 6 a.m. on Sept. 6.
Customs turned my bag inside out, and then I went on to the INS. They inspected my passport and Visa over and over, desperately looking for a reason to fault me. I had to smile to myself, as my black Nike bag held only clothes and book manuscripts that I hoped would launch a literary career for me in America.
My smile seemed to have gotten on the nerves of one of the two Customs officers.
“What the hell are you laughing at?” said the first one. “Listen, buddy, this is serious business.” After one more check of my bag, he said, “Go.”
I figured this was his own little way of welcoming someone who obviously was an immigrant to America.
Death of the one who was to shelter me
I was so full of hope and excitement as I walked outside the arrival lounge at JFK. I looked forward to meeting two relatives, one in the Bronx, the other in Maryland, whom I had informed of my arrival date. Both had agreed to meet me at the airport by 6:30 a.m. that day.
As minutes turned into hours – one hour, two, three – it was 10 a.m., and those two familiar faces I looked forward to seeing still had not appeared.
Naturally an alarm went off in me as it would in anybody in my situation, and, as hard as I tried not to let it show, it was glaring after a while. A security officer obviously sensed my immediate state of loss and confusion – perhaps from my body language (I was so agitated I could hardly stand still). He walked over to me and said, “Sir, how may I help you?”
I was glad this guy asked. Earlier, I had seen him but had been reluctant to talk to him. I didn’t want to give away information such as the fact that I had just arrived from Africa. People get taken advantage of.
“I am waiting for somebody,” I told him, “to come pick me up here. I am new to the country.”
He suggested that I go to the Bronx to look for this person. I quickly accepted this idea, boarded a yellow taxi, told the driver my destination – which was an address written on a piece of paper – and was on my way.
This experience thrilled me. Apart from seeing mostly Caucasians everywhere I looked, another jolt of realization that I was actually in the United States was the yellow taxi, which I had so often seen in movies back home.
Everywhere and everything was so strange and different to me – everybody seemed to be in a hurry as we traveled along the very busy highways. Buildings were tall, and all the cars and trucks were unlike the beat-up automobiles back home in Africa.
As I sat in the back of the taxi, aware that I had neither control nor knowledge of what fate had in store for me, a strange mixture of disappointment, fear and anticipation forced me into hard thinking.
I thought, “Perhaps they forgot that today is September 6th.” I thought, “Maybe something came up that was very important.” All sorts of other thoughts crossed my mind too, thoughts like, “Hey, I’m in America” or “I’m soon going to be rich.”
On getting to the Bronx address, I was soon to discover that I was not welcome. The person I thought would harbor me during the infant stages of my stay in the new world had died. His wife, who opened the door after I knocked on it, who I recognized from back home, who I was sure recognized me too – reluctantly let me into the one-bedroom apartment inhabited by herself and her three little children. In the house I met a fearsome man who kept referring to me as “Yo” even after I had introduced myself as Basil.
The man was African-American and he had gravity-defying dreads on his head. We got to talking. I said I would start looking for a job the next day. He replied, “Yo…yo…ain’t no space here!” He went on to use more critical words in making me understand that the apartment which housed him, her, and three kids could not accommodate a sixth person.
My relative had died, a lover had moved in, and there was no place for me. In a wordless protest I placed a gaze on my in-law’s face, but she carefully avoided returning my look. That was it. I stood up, grabbed my bag, muttered some inaudible words that were choked by emotion, and left. I had stayed there less than 10 minutes.
Once outside on the streets and filled with spite for Bronx, I boarded another taxi and headed for Manhattan. I didn’t look particularly rich, so when I told the cabbie to take me to a hotel, he duly warned that New York hotels are expensive.
“The cheapest,” I told him.
The 30-minute drive through the streets of Manhattan in search for a cheap hotel cost me $62. Finally, I arrived at the Skyline Hotel on Tenth Avenue – the first roof over my head in the United States. It was $150 for the night.
I checked into room 302, needing help with the card key, which I’d never seen before. I showered and tried sleeping. But having put the disappointment of Bronx behind me, sleep wouldn’t come.
“Who wants to stay in the Bronx anyway?” I said to myself. “I prefer New York City anytime. Very dirty place!” This was my own little way of getting back at the Bronx. I, however, knew what the truth was.
The next day came, and with it the expiration of my hotel bill. I had gone out to look for job at a job agency – there I was told I needed something called a Social Security Number before I could get a decent job.
When I returned to the Skyline Hotel from my visit to the employment agency, I had already been locked out and was allowed a two-minute pass into the room to retrieve my bag, or they would call the cops.
Outside the Skyline, I stopped a young Asian man and asked him if he knew where I could find a really, really cheap hotel.
“You don’t find them in New York,” he said. “Go to Jersey City. That’s where I live. You can find some pretty cheap motels there.”
You can imagine my relief. I was awash with gratitude to this young Chinese man. I was beginning to run out of “big money.” This guy put me on a taxi that brought me to New Jersey.
As I left New York City, I convinced myself it wasn’t the best place to settle after all. It was to overcrowded, too noisy, too unsuitable for me to want to begin a new life in.
I struck up a short conversation with the driver.
“People who have no house of their own, where do they stay?” I asked.
“On the streets,” was his prompt reply.
This reply unsettled me very badly.
In Jersey City, I checked into room 24 of a motel. Seventy five dollars was the bill.
The next day, my bill expired and the concierge or whoever he was knocked loudly on my door indicating it was time to move out. At this point I had started losing grip of things happening to me. I just had no idea what was to happen to me next.
The man at the front desk called a taxi on the phone, and noticing I was running out of money, suggested I take buses instead of taxis to help me conserve cash. So following his advice, “Bus station” was my reply when the taxi driver asked where I was going.
Journal Square
The bus station was Journal Square. And it was here that I sat for hours that seemed to stretch unendingly – not knowing what to do next, having nowhere to go, unable to think clearly. I just sat there on one of the huge glass partitions and watched as buses arrived, dropping off people and ferrying others to various destinations. I simply sat there and watched time fly. Meanwhile I began to deteriorate emotionally.
A few days before I had left, I had talked with my father for two hours, and he had taken that opportunity to tell me this: “When you get to America,” he said, “Life is going to be difficult for you. Pray.”
Then he added, “If it gets to the point where you begin to find life unbearable – please come back.” In his eyes I saw the sadness of a man watching his son leaving home for a distant land.
So I prayed: “God, please help me.”
God answered that prayer almost immediately, because a minute later, NJ transit bus 87 arrived, and on it was a female passenger who would eventually take me to where I was to stay for many months to come.
Not knowing where the bus was going and so utterly drained of mental energy to ask, I boarded with a few other passengers and sat quietly on my seat. I must have dropped off to sleep, because I was badly jolted when I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I looked up, it was a woman who went on to tell me she had seen fear on my face and wondered what the problem might be.
I told her I was new to the country and had nowhere to stay.
“Oh…” she said quickly “I know where you could stay.”
That was how I ended up in the Clergy Coalition Shelter for the homeless in Hoboken. Renee, this kind woman, took me to the shelter and helped get checked in. There are no shelters in Nigeria. (Even the poorest person can find land on which to build himself a shack there.)
Sept. 8, 2001
It was Sept. 8, 2001.
From my very first day at the shelter, until only just recently, life has been unbearably difficult. But sometimes God comes to you and me in the form of human beings, even though we do not recognize it.
In my case, I did. God came to me in the forms of Sister Norberta Hunnewinkel of The Clergy Coalition Shelter for the Homeless and Sister Maria Cordis of House of Faith Outreach for the Homeless.
I had spent only a few days in the shelter when the terrorists struck the World Trade Center. I was on a train to Newark to visit the INS offices when someone said that the “Twin Towers” had been attacked, but I did not know that he meant the World Trade Center.
After the attack, I could not find a job. Nobody was willing to hire someone without work authorization – not even for the most meaningless of tasks. I did try consistently to get a job, but was unsuccessful so I resigned to fate. Moreover, I was seen as a foreigner at that time, so the anger of all other American guests at the shelter was leveled at me.
I am a very careful, reserved person. I like to pride myself as being sure of my actions. I, however, know pretty well that I have not survived all these months because I am careful, or clever or sure of my actions – but simply because Sister Norberta recognized my predicament and simply decided to help.
She said to me one day, “Basil, I will let you stay until you get working papers, save up money and rent your own place.” She kept that promise.
Even though Sister Norberta runs a good shelter devoid of crime, drugs and violence with every ounce of strength in her and relentlessly helps the poor, the needy and the homeless without bias and partiality, doing her best to protect the weak, I still have gone through extreme difficulties there this past year. I have had to deal with all sorts of negative attitudes, behaviors from other guests at the shelter, fueled by their frustration, their anger at failure at everything in their individual lives. I was always the one to be incessantly picked on by Tom, Dick and Harry.
With the passage of time, I finally grew used to their unwarranted ill-founded mockery, gossip and lies against me which has persisted, but had no lasting effect on my person, chiefly because I devised two survival strategies which included living a solitary life in their midst. By this I mean, I steadfastly refused to get sucked into conversations simply because they might lead to arguments and then to fights which in turn could jeopardize my continued stay there. The other was that I diligently did the chores that I was given in the shelter without fuss or fury or complaints, mainly with reverence and respect and gratitude to Sister Norberta for letting me stay all the while. Chores included pushing the bread cart along Washington Street en route to Park Pastries to pick up food.
When I moved into the shelter, I wrote to my in-law in the Bronx with the shelter address, hoping she might let me move in with them at least until I had both feet on the ground. But rather than reply, she forwarded my shelter address to the relative in Maryland. I have received several mailings from him; however on each occasion his street address has been carefully omitted so that I might not suddenly appear before his door requesting to use his abode.
The truth is, I might have, as I continued living through prolonged difficulty, but thank goodness I didn’t. I would have ended up being a burden to someone for one year.
Most of this year has seen me spend so many sad times under the dome in the park on the Hudson River waterfront, where each morning I observe young hobos, elderly ones too, males and females – Caucasians, Negroes, and Hispanics – working out, and from the way they would look at me, some with expressions of curiosity, others with outright disdain on their faces, I could tell they didn’t know why I was always there out in the cold.
This was the toughest of periods for me, having to wait endlessly month to month for employment authorization from the INS.
Another wonderful person who has been of tremendous help beyond my wildest dreams was Sister Maria Cordis, who was instrumental in getting the CCS Immigration Assistance. Americans have no idea how fortunate they are to not have to go through the INS protocol. The INS did give asylum, as I am different from every other person where I come from.
Sister Cordis also contributed directly to my getting the INS work permit and paid my health bills when I got sick and had no money and had not gotten insurance at that time. She even paid my tuition fees for a computer-related course of study.
These two nuns single-handedly made what would otherwise have been an intolerable life for me, the migrant, so easy that I feel truly blessed. They have not asked for it and are not likely to ask for it, but I owe them a debt which I don’t know if I will ever be able to pay.
I have indeed made progress because here I am today, finally beginning a new life with my working papers and a Social Security Number which I received only a few weeks ago from the INS and the Social Security Administration.
I have since started working for a growing food distribution company run by a man named Joe Hayes and have begun saving my money. I have started meeting some interesting people in the towns where we go to deliver cakes.
Joe Hayes, sometimes in the company of his wife, has taken me to some really expensive exotic restaurants for meals. I do enjoy these meals.
Working for Joe has given me the opportunity to see other parts of the USA.
I think America has been good to me. I have fully adjusted to the food, the weather, to the lifestyles and to the people here. I have started Americanizing little by little. I have also started looking forward to life outside of the shelter – where I am going to pursue a mostly independent lifestyle from which I hope to achieve greatness in this one lifetime.
I came to this country with great dreams in me and I know that every thought I think, every move I make, everything I do will be to make them come true one day.
Having left family and friends and a familiar way of life behind and so suddenly on my own to begin a new life in a strange land, the one choice left facing me is to push ahead against all odds, because it was my decision to migrate in the first place.
I have had my faith in God strengthened through this experience. I go to every morning prayer if I can. However, as a homeless person, I have had to put up with insults from every angle, including right inside the church and from the clergy. I was once told in the church where I attended the service that “as a homeless person, being spoken to is a privilege” merely because I said “Hi” to someone. I was made to understand that I might not be allowed in for morning prayers, and might be forced to leave the shelter, just because I said “Hi.”
But I know that if I am removed from the shelter and cannot have another roof over my head, the almighty God will come to live with me on the streets and give me warmth when it is cold.
Is there really a place for homeless people in the American society – the supposed land of the free where all men are created equal?
When all of this started, I promised myself not to lose sight of the future, to work hard when the opportunity came, and to strive to achieve greatness like others have done in the past. That opportunity has finally come. And somehow I have this feeling: That one day it will be well, and that one day you will hear my name.