Imagine winning the lottery...and receiving a country

Let me set the scene for you, in 2006 my parents were young adults with considerably successful lives, close friends and family, and young me! Like many other people they were wistful and yearned to shift their entire lifestyle to the rhythm of an uncommon beat in a land that promised opportunity.

My dad was a French, English and Swahili interpreter getting to travel all around the world to countries like Burundi, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, Angola, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and France. My mom worked at the World Bank in Nairobi. A lot was going on but my dad would take many trips to the Cybercafe (one of the only places with wifi in the early 2000s) to apply for the visa lottery, a few blocks away from our Beya Beya flat along Langata road in Nairobi, Kenya.

The American visa lottery, also known as the DV Program (Diversity Visa Program), occurs annually and there is a certain window, usually October-November, in which people across the world can apply for a visa in hopes of becoming green card holders (permanent resident cardholders). Every country is given a certain number of slots that they can fill depending on their population and their existing population in the U.S.

In October of 2004, my dad was advised by a worker at the Cybercafe to fill out applications, which are quite extensive, for the three of us even though I was under a year old at the time. This would increase our chances of getting selected as only one of us needed to be selected for the whole family to get visas. 6 months later in May of 2005, we found out that we had won the lottery and the one person selected was...drum roll, please... my mom!

That was just the beginning. From there, we had to start the vetting process: fill forms, have medical tests done, provide birth and marriage certificates, and more. The whole process took 2 years and by that time, my parents were expecting my brother, Abba. My mom gave birth to him before one of the last interviews of the process. This meant that they would have to push the interview date and start filling out forms for him too. Thankfully this did not derail the process and we all got visas in August of 2006.

Shortly after getting the lottery results, my mom found out that she had thyroid cancer. This shook my parents and their future seemed wholly unclear. She had a hemithyroidectomy (removal of half of the thyroid gland) then had a total thyroidectomy (complete removal of thyroid gland) soon after because the tumor was found to be malignant. As part of her treatment post-surgery, she had to be given nuclear medicine and isolated from all human contact for 6 days in the hospital. She remembers this time as being the loneliest and darkest period of her life. All she could think of were the two little children she had at home and the uncertainty of whether she would survive or not. She was also told that she would have to take a tablet of thyroxine every day for the rest of her life to account for her missing thyroid gland.

Thankfully she finished her treatment successfully just 6 days before we boarded a plane to the U.S on December 16, 2006. Our trip through immigration at the airport, however, did not go as smoothly as hoped. Every time my mom would pass a cop, their nuclear radiation detectors would start buzzing and they all looked around in fear of a terrorist. Just the month before, in November of 2006, a British naturalized Russian defector called Alexander Litvinenko had been poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 because he had spoken out against Putin. This sparked global concern that terrorists would now switch to ingesting radioactive/nuclear substances instead of strapping themselves with bombs.

It didn’t hit my mom at first, but once she understood what was going on she went up to a cop. “I think I’m radiating,” she told him to which he confusedly called for his boss. Two cops escorted her to the front of the line and took her to a room far away from other travelers. One cop held a nuclear detector towards her from a distance and, to her shock, read out the exact name of the medicine she had taken and the percentage in her system. After a while, he looked up in her eyes, smiled, chuckled and jokingly told her, “You’re not a terrorist, welcome to America!”

My mom gasped in relief, her fears of deportation fell away and she rejoined her husband and children. She tells me this is how she knew that she was meant to come to the U.S and that it truly was her refuge. She had quite literally closed the chapter of cancer behind her in Kenya and had been given, “a new lease of life.”

When you have a green card, you are eligible to reside in the U.S and only leave for up to 6 months at a time or else your visa is canceled. So, my parent's initial plan was to live in the U.S for 1 month to activate their visa then return to Kenya and continue to come back to the U.S every 6 months. But... plans changed.

An immigration officer at the airport told my parents, "Your green cards will be mailed within 9 months. You don't need to call us to check on the status.” My parents eyes locked and no words were exchanged. In a split second, they were forced to come to the realization that the U.S was our new home. They now had to tell their friends who had agreed to host them for 1 month that they would actually be staying for much longer. After the first month ended, my dad flew back to Kenya to sell all our belongings from the apartment we had left untouched.

A new chapter began for the Agolas. At that time, no one knew that the next time we would return as a whole family would be in 7 years. My parents would soon come to terms with intense culture shock and appreciation for the opportunities in store.

#Kenya #AmericanDream #culture #immigrant