Hello,My name is Anaïse Ikama. I am from Brazzaville, Congo but was born in the northern part of the Republic of Congo, precisely in a City called Mossaka

October 4 of 1981 must have been an emotional and exciting day for Job and Christine, my parents, who experienced the joy and happiness of giving birth to a little girl in Mossaka, a small city in the northern part of the Republic of  Congo , a country of about 3 million people in Central Africa.

In October of 2001, there was some light at the end of my tunnel. I finally got a visa to the USA and arrived in New York City on November 9th. Although I was excited to be next to my father, his wife Debra (who has been a good mother to me) and my lovely siblings Stephie and Alex, learning a new language was a huge challenge I had to overcome. Not to mention that English was not my favorite language back home. I acknowledged that my success in this new environment would depend mainly upon my ability to speak and write in this language fluently.In January of 2002, I enrolled in the English as a Second Language program at LaGuardia Community College . During my first two months in the ESL program things were overwhelming. Outside home, people had a hard time understanding and keeping up with my French accent, which was really not easy for me to overcome. Starting a dialogue was difficult for me. To avoid people’s confusion and frustration, I stayed away from conversation, unless, someone had questioned me directly.After a while, I persuaded that being shy would not solve my problem.

I persisted to work hard on my pronunciation by listening to tapes and talking more. Approximately six months later, I started to feel comfortable with the English language; therefore, in September I joined the Adult Learning Center to prepare for my GED. I had to study hard and focus on my reading and writing, which accounted for about 75% of the GED. Writing essays, reading books, newspapers and even watching television became my daily tasks. Besides that, there was my first GED professor, Andrea who taught me better techniques of writing by avoiding word for word translation, from French to English, rather, using expressions. Then, my second professor, Caron introduced me to American slang when we studied a book by August Wilson titled “Fences”. This was very interesting, although, I struggled to keep up with the story because of what I called “street dialogue”. Finally, my last GED professor, Charles not only helped me with my English, but also taught me the American Constitution and so many more on American history. With tremendous help and attention from those professors, I successfully passed my GED exam in July 2004. What a joy! Plus the timing was perfect to start working on my application as a freshman for the fall of 2004. During the summer, I studied hard for the ACT test, which I successfully passed as well.

    All in all, living in Astoria with my new family has taken my pain away and made me forgive those who mistreated me. I also have a special person (Aymard Oyouba) in my life, who I hope will be my future husband. Hence, I am very satisfied in my life and always make sure that I enjoy every second of it. Knowing that there might be people going through this same situation, I envision helping, to the best of my abilities, kids who physically and emotionally suffer in my native Congo.