Being African

  I always thought that going to school in a third world country with African descent I won't have to be faced with ignorant questions and looked down on with pity. But alas, I thought wrong.
 As classes began and I started asking and answering questions in my classes, I was always asked the same question by my teachers " did you school in the UK or US?". They were surprised that an African like myself could be so knowledgeable and speak standard English. On one of the many days after class, I was sitting with one of the Caribbean girls I had just met and we began to talk. She asked me if I had to learn English because I knew I was leaving my country Nigeria. The first instinct that came to my mind was to lash out on her, but I decided not to and calmly explained to her that English was our first language. People kept on asking me "oh you're from Africa you must know "A" she is from Africa as well". "A" usually was from Botswana or Kenya or some other African country. I took it as my  duty to educate them, so I explained to them it  was just like me asking them if they knew a fellow classmate from Jamaica or Antigua.
 These questions became more outrageous as I had encounters with more people. I was having a conversation with my friends and we were all talking about our countries and then one of them said she wanted to visit Africa and asked me how long the flight from there to Africa was and what the African airport was called. At first I looked at  her puzzled and confused, but she was really serious. I told her that there were 54 countries in Africa and I couldn't possibly know the name of all the airports. I made her understand that one country in Africa was ten times bigger than a Caribbean country and had numerous airports.
  What amazed me the most was that I wasn't being asked this ridiculous questions by the Americans but by the Caribbeans. I was often looked down upon like a charity case, like I depended on the money they donated to Africa to pay my fees. So I decided to show some of my friends pictures of Lagos and they were surprised that it wasn't just trees and wild animal roaming about the streets but actual infrastructures, skyscrapers, buildings they didn't even have.I recall one of them saying, "I'm never donating money to Africa again, they have all these buildings and amazing houses". I just stood there smiling. I'm not trying to say there isn't poverty in Africa but its not like the media portrays it, like we Africans are just stack illiterates playing with lions and hopping on trees like monkeys. I was glad I was able to make them see Africa from a different angle.
I was questioned why I wasn't wearing my African attire and if my father was a King. They believed that only the royals in Africa got to get an education and travel out. Till this day I'm still asked such questions.
I have come to understand that there will always be that stereotype associated with being African.

This is my city Lagos, Nigeria