Growing up, I had never had much experience with different cultures. My family, comprised of my mom, dad, and two older brothers, never traveled out of the country, and most of our vacations only took us as far as the beaches in Florida. However, things began to change as I entered the eighth grade.
A few years prior, my parents had announced a big change happening within our family—they were adopting a young girl from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Africa. I was finally going to have a sister.
Due to political issues in the DRC, it took longer than expected for the newest member of our family, named Claire, to make it home to the U.S. After years of waiting, my parents were ecstatic to announce that Claire was finally coming home. On April 8th, 2016, we packed up our car and headed to the Cincinnati airport to meet her.
We waited in the airport for what felt like hours before we finally saw the adoption agency officials approaching. That’s when we got our first glimpse of Claire.
To this day, my first memory of meeting Claire is as follows: she slowly shuffled up to our family, shyly looked up at us with those brown eyes, and pointed directly at me and said, “Ali?”
From the day we brought her home, Claire and I were inseparable. I, for one, was incredibly excited to finally have a sister. And I think Claire was, too. For the first few months of Claire being home, we battled both a language and a culture barrier. (My family only spoke English, and Claire only spoke Lingala (a Bantu language that wasn’t even on Google Translate at the time.)
Despite this difference in language, we still found ways to ‘talk.’ With pictures, sounds, and what felt like games of charades, we learned how to communicate with each other and bonded.
The most noticeable aspect of this new culture that Claire introduced my family to was her love of song and dance. Though she couldn’t speak English, she loved to sing all of her favorite songs from Africa (many of which were in English or a combination of languages.) She also loved to dance and would often try to get us to join in with her.
At her young age, she also loved playing games and traditional ‘nursery rhymes’ that she had learned in Africa. She began to teach these to me, and we would often play together. On one occasion, she was teaching me a new game that we hadn’t played before. As I repeated the phrases after her, we reached the end and she abruptly slapped me across the face!
After the initial shock wore off, I realized that this was part of the game. Then, Claire encouraged me to repeat the game and, this time, slap her across the face. Still, this was not my favorite game that she taught me, and I don’t remember playing it very much after that.
Another aspect of her culture that Claire brought to America with her was the food. My father was a good cook, and he wanted to do his best to recreate some of her favorite foods from Africa. One of them being fufu (a starchy, dough-like dish) with chicken. Using your hands, you were supposed to rip off chunks of the fufu and dip it in the chicken sauce.
This was unlike any food I’ve ever eaten in America, but my family loved getting to try something new and share in some of Claire’s experiences.
For a family that wasn’t very familiar with other cultures or languages, finally bringing Claire home was an adventure for us all. We ‘talked’, laughed, danced, sang, played, and ate together as my family’s perspectives about culture and language were widened. That year, our two cultures began to meld together, and we all rejoiced as our family grew a little bit bigger.
- A Family Addition – by Alison Lemmons - April 6, 2024