I spent a good portion of my formative years wondering why the hell Vanessa and Brandon get neatly cut peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch while my siblings and I had to lug in a flasks of jollof rice and fried plantains to school. Don't let me even start on pounded yam and soup Wednesdays.

Growing up in rural North Carolina as the only black immigrant family in a white neighborhood and then subsequently, in New England in an all black neighborhood has its challenging moments. Add to it inevitable teenage angst, unrelenting acne, and raging hormones in a socially conservative Christian Nigerian home, it's a wonder how I made it to my twenties with my sanity intact.

But I did, and I figure since I survived - I'd tell the story. Funny enough, after I got through my decades long "woe is me" phase, I found out that, (gasp!) there are other first generation Nigerians out there - just like me. First generation Igbos, Yorubas - hmpf, very few Hausas - first generation Ghanaian, Togolese, Ethiopian, Rwandan, south Sudanese - and the list goes on and on.

Africans born in America.
Americans born to Africans.
The new African Americans.

And we're getting noticed - a bit. But I think it's about time we take a page from Dora Akunyili's playbook and actively seek to rebrand ourselves. For far too long, we've been placed in boxes that may not necessarily reflect our reality of dual citizenship - whether legally documented or not. We're English speaking and some. We proudly sport our trads on Sunday, while mouthing the words to Bruno Mars on Monday. And we're not a monolith - either. Our experiences are diverse and our identities fluid.

And this blog is not only about the first generationers out there - but also about all others of the black (particularly female) diaspora whose lives fail to comfortably fit into set definitions of what it means to be of African descent. It's time to project ourselves positively to the world, borrowing Akunyili's phrasing. Let me start with myself, and this blog, as an answer to the next person who asks me - "so, where are you really from?"

Oh, and a bit about myself. I've blogged before, though the name I use here is a pseudonym - Echidiime, which means tomorrow is pregnant. I have always liked that name, and considering that I do not have a middle name, I once told my mother that I would like to adopt it as such. She frowned on it, stating that nobody would want to marry me with a name like that. Oh well, it suffices as a fake name. I have a number of younger siblings, I'm female, in my twenties, rock dreads, and currently I am trying to stay afloat in medical school. I have a thing for blogs, French West African accents, and fried fish.