While many international students at Langston University come from the Bahamas, the campus diversity extends even further. One student was born in Tanzania, East Africa, adding to the rich cultural mix represented here at Langston University. Her name is Irakoze Amida. She is a 22-year-old graduating senior, majoring in business finance, aiming to become a financial analyst.
Amida is actively involved on campus through several clubs and organizations, including Women of Purpose and TRIO, a student support service. She is also a dedicated member of the women’s track and field team and proudly represents Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.
Although she was born thousands of miles away in Tanzania, East Africa, her family decided to move to the United States when she was just 4 or 5 years old.
In 2007, due to the growing threat of a nearby war, her father signed their family up for relocation to America in search of safety and opportunity. Irakoze has spent nearly all her life living in Colorado with seven other siblings. Since she was so young at the time, she doesn’t remember much about life back in Tanzania; only that the move played a significant role in shaping who she is today.
Something that nobody knows about her is that she was born with six fingers on her right hand. “My mom chopped it off when I was a baby, so I don’t look weird.” She also shared that as a baby, she had chickenpox, passed out, and woke up two hours later completely fine.
The hardest part about her family moving to America was adapting to English. “We didn’t know English, so, like, when y’all were speaking English, we didn’t know that. It was gibberish. Like, this is scary. This is so weird, and we never saw snow.” Seeing snow for the first time made her family a little concerned and scared to go to school.
Even though Amida moved from Tanzania as a child, she takes pride in her roots and loves being from the Motherland. She speaks English fluently and her native language, Kurdish. While she can understand some Swahili, she isn’t able to translate it fully.
What Amida enjoys most about college life is the convenience of having all classes within walking distance, along with the variety of events happening right on campus. When Amida told her mother that she had joined Sigma Gamma Rho, her mother was supportive, saying that if it made her daughter happy, she was okay with it. However, she doesn’t fully understand the concept of HBCU life or Greek life in college.
What drew Amida to Langston University was its affordability and the school’s consistent support since her junior year of high school. That level of dedication meant a lot to her and played a big role in her decision.
She loves how family-oriented Langston University is. It reassures her that if she’s ever struggling with something, there’s always a helping hand nearby. Her experiences so far have helped her break out of her shyness and grow into the confident, open leader she always knew she could be.
What drives her through college is the pride she sees in her family’s eyes. As a first-generation college student, she carries not just her own dreams, but the hopes of her family, where most never had the chance to finish high school. With only one of her brothers earning a diploma, she asked herself, “Why not continue education right?” For her, earning a college degree isn’t just a personal achievement; it’s a way to honor her roots, break generational barriers, and inspire those who come after her.
Whenever she tells people she’s from Africa, their first reaction is often excitement; they think it’s “cool” and sometimes ask her to say curse words in her native language. She always politely refuses, knowing her culture deserves more respect than being reduced to a joke.
If she were to have children one day, she would give them names that reflect both her African heritage and American upbringing, something unique and meaningful that celebrates where she comes from while embracing where she is.
One thing she believes Americans should reconsider is their relationship with food. In her view, the typical American diet contributes to widespread health issues, including obesity and chronic illnesses.
She shared a personal example: her mother was healthy while living in Africa and eating foods that were passed to her like fufu, but after moving to the U.S., she developed diabetes, something she believes was largely influenced by the processed and sugary foods more common in the American lifestyle. To her, it’s a clear reminder of how deeply food choices can impact long-term health.
When celebrating her culture, her family has a big feast, dances, and listens to their traditional music. She’s the only one who celebrates holidays due to the fact that her family is Muslim.
What she wants others to take away from being both American and Tanzanian is to understand that while the cultures are different, at the core, we’re all black, and there’s no need for comparison. Instead, it’s about embracing and uplifting one another. She acknowledges that some Africans hold negative stereotypes about African Americans, seeing them all as “gangsters,” but she knows that’s not true.
“So just be more open to understanding other people’s culture and where they came from, that not everybody’s bad,” Amida said.
Amida has never returned to Tanzania since moving to Colorado when she was a child, but she often wonders what her life might have been like if a war had never happened and her family had stayed. “I always think that because American culture is just so different. Living there, you’re going to view stuff differently than living in America.” What Amida does know for certain is that she’d still be running track even if she’d never left her birth home.
Kylah Goff
Kylah Goff is a senior broadcast journalism major
