Oral History Program Joan Effiong Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 4 April 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Joan Effiong Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 4 April 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Effiong, Joan, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 4 April 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Joan Effiong 4 April 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Joan Effiong, conducted on April 4, 2019, at Weber State University, by Lorrie Rands. Joan discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Michael Thompson, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: So today is April 4, 2019. We are in the Stewart Library with Joan Effiong for the Women 2020 project here at Weber State University. I am Lorrie Rands conducting the interview and Michael Thompson is here with me, and it’s about two o’clock in the afternoon. Joan thank you so much for your willingness to be here, let’s just jump in with where and when were you born? JE: I was born in Calabar, Nigeria. LR: Is that with a ‘K’ or a ‘C?’ JE: ‘C.’ C-A-L-A-B-A-R. LR: Okay, and when was that? JE: Many years ago. I was born in Calabar, Nigeria in July 4, 1954. LR: Okay, where exactly is that on the continent? JE: Calabar, Nigeria is on the West coast of Africa, and Calabar is on the Southeast side of the country, see it on a map so on the South side of it. LR: Alright, what were your parents’ names? JE: My father’s name is Ekpenyong, E-K-P-E-N-Y-O-N-G. So that is his first name, my last name is Ayi. LR: A-Y-I, okay. With an ‘E?’ JE: No, that is pronounced Ai-yee. 2 LR: Ayi, okay. I’m sorry. I will learn something today. JE: Yeah, you will. LR: And then your mother’s name? JE: My mother’s name was Cecelia. C-E-C-E-L-I-A. LR: Okay. JE: Her middle name was Bull and then Ayi because she got married. LR: Were they both from Nigeria? JE: Yes. LR: What did your father do? JE: My father first started as a teacher, he was a teacher and then went to become a health person. He became a health inspector, so he was in the health field. LR: Okay, and your mother? JE: My mother teacher, teacher all the way till her death. LR: What are some of your earliest memories of growing up in Nigeria? JE: Very fun, very, very fun. I come from a family of six, five boys and I’m the only girl. So you could see how that is. Sometimes I’m a tomboy, sometimes I’m a princess, depending on how the boys feel. Then I had a very close knit with my grandparents, my maternal and paternal grandparents. My maternal grandparent was very impactful in my life, she made sure that I was raised well and with some good values and all that. I went to school. When I went to school those were my formative/middle years was in Calabar, Nigeria for my preschool all the way to my high school. When I was in high school I played net ball. We used to call it net ball, which now I see it as basketball. We ran track you know there was some 3 competition, and we sang so there were choir competition. Nigeria was a British colonized and so we spoke English in school in addition to our vernacular, so English is what I’ve known through school. Then I grow up with a bunch of cousins, our homes were always the welcoming one everybody come and that gives me opportunity to be very diverse and welcoming and kind to people because people were in and out. My dad, we would consider him the neighborhood father. All my brothers’ friends would come, they’d play soccer in our compound and he helped mentor those boys as well, and there were a few of my girlfriends who would show up also. After my high school, I worked in a bank in Nigeria for a little bit, couple years before I migrated to here. MT: You mentioned you learned English in school, was English what you spoke at home or was there another language? JE: Oh no there’s another language we spoke at home. It is Efik, which is E-F-I-K, Efik language, so I’m bilingual. LR: So how many different dialects are there? JE: Oh man, there are a lot of different dialects. The country itself has about a hundred and fifty languages, and then I would say thousands of dialects. I think that’s why the British, when they came, they didn’t want to learn all those languages so they made it that we learn their mono-language which is English. LR: Interesting. What are some of your memories of going to school in Nigeria? JE: The same thing, when we went to school, we had to mind our teacher. We were spanked in school if you didn’t know our mathematics, you didn’t know your times 4 table, or you didn’t obey and all that. You have no way of coming back to say to your parents that you were spanked because you would be spanked more for not minding your teachers and turning in your homework and things like that. Then of course as I was mentioning earlier since it was a British colonize and also missionaries, schools were divided into Private, Protestants, Catholic and Public schools and you had a chance to go to one or either. For middle and high school level, there’s an option of living in a boarding school so you left home, go live with other people, learn how to live with roommates and learn other things from other people. Or you could go from home, which was a day-school you go from home, and we had uniforms. In my mind that takes away all dress up competition so you focus on the business of learning and doing the best that you can. There was always a test at the end of the school year, a comprehensive kind of a test to see that you’ve mastered and retained the subject matter and if you didn’t master the subject matter then you would have to repeat the class. It did not matter how old you are, it was about mastery. At this current time we might look at repeating a class as shaming but then we didn’t look at it like that. At the end of the year or at the end of every school year there will be an assembly. In that assembly they would read the first three top students and the last three who didn’t make it. You did not want to be the last three. My father was a very humorous person. One time I took tenth position in the class, maybe it was thirty people or whatever and I took the tenth position, went home with my progress card and showed to my parents. The blue would show that you’re doing well, the red would show that you’re in danger, you are not passing the class. So, 5 when you turn these over to your parents, especially my grandma who was not educated but made sure all of her children were educated, she knew that the red and blue was a significance, so she would always caution us if we were getting red. Anyway this one year I took ninth position in class and so I went and told my dad and he said, “Oh my poor daughter, my only daughter that I have, you carried a whole eight people on your head. Your neck must be stiff!” So I said, “Okay, next time I’ll do better and improve on my standing, I’m probably going for fifth position.” This was a way to encourage me to do better and move up the scale, and that always stay with me. LR: What were some of the women that you looked up to as a young girl? JE: It would be my grandmother. Number one, because like I said she wasn’t highly educated but she had a wealth of commonsense and all of that, and she trained us to be proper women and know our values and worth. Then it would be my mother and my aunts that I grow up with. Like I mentioned, the only girl in the family so they make sure that they train me well on what my role would be as a woman. LR: Your grandmother, was this your maternal or paternal? JE: My maternal one. LR: Okay. What was her name? JE: Her name was Ansa, A-N-S-A. LR: Okay. I appreciate the fact that you’re spelling them out for me. You said that your grandmother wasn’t educated but she just gave you a lot, what was one of the best pieces of wisdom that she gave you that you still look back on today? 6 JE: She taught us and me to be kind to people, to not misuse the opportunity of being kind to people or getting to know people. She would always say, “You can have a lot of money, but your money is not going to do things for you. It’s people who would do things for you. Therefore you need to be kind to people or know people.” That stays with me ‘cause people come in a variety of shapes, forms, and all that and people come with different talent. You never know. Then she would say, “Learn to do your work well, or learn whatever is in front of you. So if somebody bluffs you, you’re able to get in there and do that.” I think that prepares me to whenever I have a job or something to do I’m kind of hands on first; you’ve got to know what you have, before I delegate to somebody, in case that somebody decide to tell me, “Go fly a kite,” then I would not be hanging at least I’d know the basics. LR: Thank you for sharing that. You said you went all the way through high school, worked at a bank, when did you immigrate to the United States? How old were you? JE: So I was twenty-three. LR: And why did you immigrate to the United States? JE: Well, when I was working in the bank I met my husband then. We worked together in the bank and so he had opportunity because he worked on the foreign exchange side of the bank, he had opportunity to meet a bunch of expatriate or foreigners and couple of them were from Utah. He was searching to come to United States to study and I was searching to move maybe to U.K. to study, but he was able to get the admission to Weber State College and so he 7 put a challenge out to me to come to United States or to go to U.K. for my studies and so I took that challenge and I met him here in Utah. Well I did search also to go to school in U.S.A and I had admission to study telecommunication in Hollywood, California, but he was already here and a couple of my brothers’ friends were also here at Weber State so on my way to California they ask me to stop at Weber, and I did and so here we are at Weber State. We came to school at Weber State, so we were foreign students at Weber State. Education is the purpose that I migrated to here. LR: So, were you married before you came? JE: We were fiancés. LR: So, you took his challenge and, “Alright, let’s go,” what was it about this area that made you want to stay? Because you said you were just passing through. JE: Well it’s him, that’s the reason. Then when I came in Weber State was good. The fees then were reasonable for foreign students to pay or even in-state students or something like that, and it was quiet. Weber wasn’t as big, not even Ogden, but yeah it was smaller with less distraction so you could focus on what you want to do. You knew your professors. But life goes on after that, and we’ve done a research, that usually where you graduate from you tend to stay in that area. We graduated, then I got a job, then kids came so Utah become our home, my second home from my original home. LR: Were you encouraged to pursue an education as you were growing up? JE: Yes. Like I mention, my parents and my aunt were all educated people, teachers, and health professionals and so yes I was encouraged. My brothers of course 8 were all in school so the only girl, yeah, I was encouraged to go to school. I have a Masters in Communications from BYU and graduated in 1986. I did that while working, being a wife, and a mother. Currently, I work part-time for Utah Transit Authority and have established JENAR Foundation, a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization to assist poor people in Calabar, Nigeria since 2006. LR: So when you came here to Weber State, what was your main focus, what was your major? JE: My major was in Communication. So my undergrad is in Communication, emphasis in Broadcasting. LR: Okay. JE: Also, during our time here at Weber State, we organized the international student program so that we could teach our other fellow friends from school our own culture, dance, and heritage. LR: Now did you help create that? JE: Well yeah, I would say that we were the first group to do a dance and cook food and all that, to show case our culture and tradition and I was involved in that as well. LR: Okay, did it have a name? JE: Well we called it International Student Day, and we helped did the dance and create food from Nigeria and then other students did their own. LR: What is it called now, do you know? JE: I think they still call it International Student Day. LR: Did having that help you stay connected... 9 JE: Yes, and we stayed connected with our families at home. At the time I think it wasn’t a telephone that you could just call like now, but we had letters from home, telegrams, and all that so you stayed connected. We stayed connected with my cousins and friends who live outside of Utah or somewhere so that helps us stay connected and maintain heritage and culture so we don’t forget. LR: So how long were you a student here at Weber State? JE: So I arrive December 1977 so I started 1978 and I completed my four-years in 1981. LR: Okay, when in that did you get married? JE: We were already married coming here by my tradition. But I got married here in 1981 at my First United Methodist Church in Ogden. LR: Okay, you said in your tradition you were already married, can you explain that? JE: Yeah ‘cause you know when we said “fiancé” you had the engagement, your parents know that and also you know there’re some rituals that you have to kind of do. Then when we get here we did the white wedding in 1981 after I finished my education. LR: Okay, so in your culture you were already married? JE: Yes, this is like announcing an engagement, and telling people. Your parents know that marriage is underway. LR: Okay, that’s interesting. So when you graduated what did you do? JE: So back to the academic section I want to also give a shout out to the International Student official that was in my time. His name is Tony Spanos. He 10 was very helpful and understanding the needs of the international students. So I don’t know how you call that now, International Student Director or whatever. MT: Director of International Studies. JE: I would also want to thank Professor Raj Kumar from the Communication Department, the late English Professor Neila Seshachari, and Dr. Miya for their mentorship. Yeah, so yeah Tony was the one when I came on and he did good. Anyway, when I was in school I worked as a nurse’s aide in one of the facilities, I wouldn’t know now, in South Ogden. I worked as a housekeeper, and then nurse’s aide. But then I left that in 1982 after I graduated, and in November worked at Clearfield Job Corps. So I worked at Clearfield Job Corps for seventeen years and I started as a Residential Advisor, climbed my way to Counseling Manager to Group Life Director and so forth. So there again I have to deal with youth ages sixteen to twenty-three and they were blessing in my life. They taught me some things that school probably didn’t, so that was good yes. LR: So were you working mostly with youth? What were some of your responsibilities? JE: Well Residential Advisor we took care of the dorms, students in the dorms. Make sure they did their chores, before they left for their vocational, academic and work, and when they came back from school they followed the dorm rules. Then counseling, you counsel students with their personal/ interpersonal relationship, their emotional or whatever and school work. Then I moved into the management level, which is the Counseling Manager and Group Life Director, which dorm life, 11 recreation, orientation, placement, and all those departments fell under my jurisdiction. The support system for a student was under my job duties. I use to fly around to do training in cultural awareness, which now has migrated to diversity and inclusiveness. I would also do training when my company would bid the work from DOL, Department of Labor, and get the contract to start another job corps, take over another job corps. I was lucky to be one of those they sent to do training on the support system, residential, counseling. Diversity training is now called diversity and inclusiveness but it was called cultural awareness in those days. LR: So how did you balance your responsibilities between home and the workplace? JE: Let me add here. After job corps I work at Ogden Applied Technology for about eight or nine years again on the support system section, supervising these departments: Career Services, Counseling, Enrollment, Financial Aid, Placement. So I was the director for that support system for students as well. Now how did I balance that? I think that I am very lucky. I had a good partnership with my husband and my two oldest children, we worked as a team. My husband would work in the morning. He finished his education at Weber and then he went to Southern University in Illinois, he also worked at a bank here called First Security Bank in Ogden. Anyways after education he came back to Weber State and he was the Director of Financial Aid and so he would work in the morning and I would work in the afternoon. That way then there’d be somebody to pick up the kids from the daycare or school, so that worked out very well. 12 MT: You mentioned your husband was the Director of Financial Aid, how long was he in that position? JE: He was in that position for about twenty-two years. LR: Oh wow. What is his name? JE: His name is Richard. LR: How many children do you have? JE: Five. We raised five young ladies in this place. LR: They’re all girls? JE: They are all girls, and they’ve all moved to other states, except for one who lives in Salt Lake City. I am a grandmother and currently have nine grandchildren and a grand-dog. So anyways five girls. Ogden has been good. LR: Awesome, so you’ve been involved with a charity foundation for quite some time called JENAR? What does that stand for? JE: Well JENAR is a compilation of alphabets from our first names when puts together forms JENAR which means “spreading blessings.” LR: Okay, and what inspired you to start JENAR? JE: I believe is the kind of blessings that we have received from home until here, we’ve been blessed, and “Our cup runneth over,” so we figure what do we do with the overflow of the blessings? So we decided that we would do that, to form that non-profit to be able to give back to the people in Calabar, Nigeria who gave us life and mentor us and all that. Suffering, children, women, elderly that don’t have access to many things. When we were there, we were fortunate, we had access to those things. We were not lacking in health, if we were sick you were 13 able to go and see a doctor. Then I have opportunity to arrive in another country which blessed us, and people were kind and so forth and so we figured that we give back. So that’s our passion, that kindness and that compassion that my grandma and mother taught me. Grandma said, “You need to be kind to people, people that surrounds you.” So, we wanted to give that back. LR: When you say “we,” you said it’s a compilation of your names. JE: “We” meaning my husband and I started the foundation. That’s why I say “we,” because we came here. We were lucky, we were in Nigeria, we were able to come here, and our blessings overflow and all that. We have good kids, they’re all educated, doing well. So, we figured, “They say when your cup overflows, what do I do with the overflow?” So, we turn that over flow to passing it on to somebody else. LR: So, you’ve kind of talked of why you created JENAR, what does JENAR do? JE: JENAR has three missions. We focus on providing medical access, education and agriculture to women, children, elderly, and the poor. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and very well-educated, but still we have people suffering, and so we’ve taken this capitalistic idea, you know, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle-class people are still struggling. The poor folks and those middle-class, poor working middle-class still today cannot access medical, with all the money we have and all the educated people we still cannot help the poor. So, if us in advanced country is struggling right now you can imagine what the people in poorer country struggle. We decided to do that to help. So, we help in education, helping people to get access to school. When I 14 was there you have to pay for boarding and there were fees attached to it and there are still fees attached to it even though it’s semi-public. So, there are still some people who cannot afford pencils, loose-leaf papers and things like that. We went home in 2006, and we had a discussion with the Elders of the village and asked them in the three things that we do: education, agriculture, and medical, “What would you like us to focus on?” They chose the medical, and so we’ve been focusing on medical. We had a partnership with an old medical clinic there to renovate that so the poor people can be able to go down there and access simple things like when kids have diarrhea or things like that. We’ve done some medical mission where we take medicine down and donate it to an orphanage and then we did one where we did rollback Malaria; we took some mosquito nets to people in the village because Malaria is one illness that every two or three minutes somebody is killed by Malaria. That doesn’t make a whole lot of news because it’s not an area of illness that impacts the world and then they have HIV there and all that, so those are the kind of things JENAR Foundation does. With HIV, there is still the stigma so people are underground they are not coming out to go be tested. The Elders told us that they would like us to do the medical first and one of them said, “You cannot teach a sick or hungry child. There is no teacher out in the world who will do that. So, we like you to be able to heal us and then send us to school.” So that’s where we are. LR: Okay, so you’ve had opportunities to go back to Nigeria? JE: Yes. So far, we did medical in 2006, 2009, 2011, and I’m working on doing one this November or early next year. We thank the people of the Northern Utah that 15 are aware of JENAR’s work and the kind individuals who have donated, and my church organization is wonderful, they are one of the stronghold donors. I have a few individuals here in the Northern Utah that has donated. I just need to be more out there, talking about it. My intention was to come back to Weber State and work with one of the organizations or the department or something and see who would want to help, since we are in the construction to renovate the old medical clinic, but I haven’t gotten there yet. MT: Is it just Nigeria that you’ve served or have you thought about reaching out to neighboring countries as well? JE: I’ve thought about that but like they say, “Charity begins at home,” and it’s been a long, tedious thing, especially when you are asking people for money. I don’t have a third party because I do it face-to-face and I like to come back to my sponsors and report what’s going on so that takes away the blast that you have other people put on TV or something like that, I don’t have that kind of funds to do that. I’m focusing on Nigeria and Nigeria is very big, it’s the size of maybe Texas with a little bit more. So no I haven’t ventured out and I appreciate those counterparts of mine who have taken the interest to go to other countries like Mali, Ghana, whatever. Now Ghana seems to be the hotspot of where everybody goes, and people going I think here at Weber they’re even doing something for Uganda, but no I’m focusing on the West Coast and Nigeria for now. MT: Okay. Have you thought about bringing Weber State students to Nigeria to help? JE: Yes, I’ve thought about that but I don’t know which department I want to go to because I’m focusing on renovating that old medical clinic. I know that Ms. 16 Trijullio from the Respiratory Department goes to Ghana all the time and one of the gentlemen, a former student from Ghana that I knew that spoke with me about that introduced Ms. Trijullio to going to Ghana. She has been going to Ghana for ten years now. Yeah, I’ve thought about that but I don’t know yet, I have to do some research about which department I should reach out to before I approach them. I have people who wants to donate medical things, medical supply like bags or whatever. But we’re not ready yet, we have to have the building. So, if you have an idea about which department I should reach out to help me, do some promotion or something, or fundraiser or could write a grant, I’m game. LR: Okay, so when have you felt empowered as a woman? JE: I guess every day. The role of being a woman, a wife, a mother is empowering. But I’ve also been blessed to have some other women that encourages. I’ve had women in the community when I first arrive here that took me under the wing. She was from my church, First United Methodist Church, and she’s deceased now, Mrs. Helen Young. I’ve had Ms. Dovey Goodwin in the community, she’s deceased now. Late Dr. Neila Seshachari at Weber State introduced me to American Association of University Women. I used to be a member of American Association of University Women and I held a title of the presidency for several years for the Ogden Branch, we handed that branch over to Weber State. They figure that students at Weber would want to do that as a club. So all those women contributed and empowered me. For AAUW, which is American Association of University Women, were the first one who were talking about 17 STEM, and having women being able to get into science and all that, so I think that the organization empowers me. I heard the stories of women in those days where they were not fully appreciated for their thoughts, their contributions, and they kind of get together and all these educated women, “What can we do?” They form that so they could at least be with people who think alike and do something and try to move some things forward. I’ve been empowered by those women. I use to also belong to one that’s called Business Women. Yeah, you look at how women deal, moving, shaking every day, but they don’t give up, and so I think that’s part of the empowerment for not giving up. LR: If there was one piece of advice that you could give to young women today, what would it be? JE: Well because I have women, I have five girls, I’ve always told them, and “Any man who looks at you who does not fully accept you from your brain to your physical is not the one for you.” That’s what I tell young ladies, “Go to school, do your best, and yeah we’re going to be challenged with all those hormones kind of a thing,” vice versa. I now have boys as grandkids and I’m telling them the same thing, “You have to be who you are. You have to be kind to yourself, love yourself, understand yourself, and do the best you could do each day, because that’s the opportunity you have. We might think, okay and we can goof around and do all that, but you only have one life and so you have to take care of yourself health-wise, academically, physically, financially. You can kind of teach women how to manage their money or whatever, but at the same time you have to be humble.” So that’s what I told my girls when they were growing up, because 18 I worked with the young people. Girls were either timid or shy, if they knew something in class they didn’t want to raise their hand to say that they know it because they were afraid if the boy they were checking out was going to think they’re too nerdy. I said, “Well, please say something. You have something to say, say something,” and this goes for all, “It could be good, it could be bad, but if you don’t say something, we would not know what you’re thinking. So to help us not assume that you’re either not alright or you’re okay, or you’re not smart or you’re too smart, we won’t know that until it’s on the table.” Communication is one that I say to people, young women as well. Learn to communicate and learn where you want the boundaries to be for you, and that again is what my grandmother told me, “As a woman, you set the boundaries about what you want to happen to you.” Wasn’t she smart? She didn’t get a degree in academic but she was a well-rounded commonsense woman. LR: Kind of going back a long way, what are some of the traditions that you grew up with in Nigeria that you tried to maintain here in the United States? JE: Well one of those traditions would be family dinner. My parents were working people and all of that and we were all in different kinds of activities, but they made sure that we have family dinner. At least on Sundays or something like that. Church was also important; you go to church. The culture, the language, the dance, the food are traditions I try to pass on. When my kids were here, we tried to go to the park, do some things, have a family dinner that’s when I get to hear what’s going on, what we need help from, so we tried to do that. MT: Any other traditions? Like did you try to teach your kids Efik? 19 JE: Yes, I tried to. I speak to them in Efik, they understand but they don’t speak well. Which also was a blessing for me because they knew when I was upset, I would switch into that immediately. When we go out to some outings, when I didn’t want them to do something, one of the other traditions was looking at my eyes. My parents did that, when you go out you look at your parent’s eye. The eye will tell you if you should be in that place or not that place, or if you should behave that way or not, so they would look at my eye and then I would make my sound or something and they would understand that. I wish that they would speak fluently but now they’re learning it because there’s a movement to put that on an app or something like that, I even put it on somewhere for them to learn. We’ve maintained the language, the food, the culture. These days there’s a conference every year that brings the Efik parents and Efik born Americans into that conference so that kids get to see their culture, eat their food, learn the language and things like that. Even here in Salt Lake City we have Nigerian Association Day, and that’s usually in October after the LDS conference the second week. So Nigerians and parents of Nigerian children born in USA meet there so we can do the dancing, eat the food fufu, joff rice, plantain, and all of those so the kids don’t forget their heritage. We sometimes have children laugh at us because they think we have an accent so they try to mimic and speak like us, they would say “My parents say it this way.” LR: You said, you were talking about describing some of the food and you said fufu. What is fufu? 20 JE: Yes. So fufu would be like making mashing potatoes and turning it into a ball form. But it is a different kind of flour that we use in making it, and then it would be like a dough and then you would eat it with a soup. There are different kinds of soup, and then there’s rice and stew where you boil rice and you mix stew with chicken or fish or shrimp or whatever. LR: Interesting. This is an off-the-ball question, a high school student mentioned this to me and I loved it so I’m going to ask you. JE: Okay. LR: As you look back, what was your most impactful year? The year that just meant the most to you. Was there one year that just stands out for you? JE: Oh I have to go back and think about that. For me I don’t know, I’ve had some impactful years. I don’t know maybe if you’re going to look at it positively or negatively, I don’t know. LR: I’m beginning to realize that’s a hard question. JE: Well I could say an impactful year for me would be 1993. In 1993, I lost my brother and I was here, the other one would be my father in 1981, and I had a good relationship with my father and so that was impactful. If you look at that one, and then all the years have been, yeah impactful in a sense. The year I graduated from here, the year when I had my first baby here, I don’t know what your high schooler’s trying to say. LR: It was just a question that I thought was interesting, and you’re the first person I’ve asked and now I understand that maybe it’s not the right question I thought it 21 was. It’s hard to answer that type of a question. I’ve learned something today, and I appreciate that. Is there any other stories that… JE: It could be the year I became a citizen,that was impactful too. LR: Okay, what year was that? JE: What year was that? 1999. LR: Okay, were you always thinking about becoming a citizen? JE: Yeah, and also Nigeria accepts dual-citizenship. So, it makes sense for me to get into doing that. LR: Was that the main reason why you did that, was because Nigeria would accept that? JE: Yeah. LR: If Nigeria didn’t, would you have still become a citizen? JE: I don’t know, I don’t know because I love my Nigeria. I like the fact that I could be both. I could be an American and I could be a Nigerian. I like that, so I’m very happy that they do that, so if they didn’t like other countries, I don’t know what I would’ve done, probably I would still become a citizen here. But then that means I’d have to have a visa going into Nigeria. It would work, still okay. LR: Now see that actually led to a really good thing, so do you have any other questions that you’d like to ask? MT: I do, but I don’t know how to word it properly. JE: Well, go ahead. We will round it out and see where you’re going. 22 MT: I’m wondering if you’ve ever run into problems as far as being a woman and also being black. Like if you noticed a difference between you and your husband, the way you were treated because you were female? JE: Yes. For me being black, and being a foreign black poses some things. Being black, number one, of course is that perception that all blacks are loud or intimidating or whatever. For being a female, I had an occasion where people will tell me, “Well I was intimidated by you” or something like that. I have a time where somebody who don’t want to do something, they said because I have an accent and they could not understand the instruction. I used to be upset but then I figured that’s a moment of opportunity to educate somebody and vice versa. And I still have that even today, some people will tell me, “Oh where’re you from?” I say, “I’m from Ogden, after living here this long.” “No, I want to know where you’re really from.” Why does that matter? I figure, “Now I’m taking this as a moment to do some education,” especially if I’m having a non-profit foundation that goes back to Nigeria so I think, “Ooh this is a good opportunity to try to turn it around.” Also, when people make assumptions about your intelligence academically because of your country of origin, and in work environment withholds information from you and excludes you in decision-making over the departments that you are responsible for. When you observe that your counterparts are groomed for the next positions by preparing them and giving them information to excel over you, then the playing field is not levelled and is discriminatory. And you’ve come to a position where because you’re a female, 23 the glass ceiling is kind of high for any female and then to be a black female, some position you qualify you have to work double for that position. That’s another thing which was a culture-shock for me when I came here, because the tribe that I’m from women are very well listened to, they like to hear women’s opinion and all that. I come into this environment, where in those days' women were told not to go to school or just have babies, which just drives me nuts with that. I would see eighteen years old, seventeen, having a baby. “You already have a baby; you haven’t even found yourself!” So that was another passion of mine to tell all girls, “You don’t want a baby,” but the source from the community telling them it’s good to have baby first. I told my kids, “There is no baby here until you finish school.” LR: Good for you. MT: Yes. JE: Yes, and I’ve experienced that as well but it’s okay, at the end of the day I will just find out if I didn’t know something then it would be good for you to teach me and give me an opportunity to know, but just to do that isn’t okay. So yeah there’s a difference. AAUW was instrumental to me and give me access to learn to be strong and believe in my worth. Ms. Susan Madsen from UVU got a grant from the state to find out why women were not going to school or finishing school. A continuation/expansion of, the American Association of University Women work to encourage women to go to school, stay in school, and so forth. She still has that project, and is called Utah Women & Leadership Project once in a while I’ll get an email on conferences dealing with different women topics. 24 LR: Okay, so I have one final question that I’m going to ask but I’m just so grateful before I do. I mean this has been amazing and I’m just really appreciative. Hearing your stories have been fantastic. My final question is this, how do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? JE: Historically, I think that’s a wonderful thing, it opens the door for the women to be included into the fact that they could think, they have a thought to share and they could have a place at the table. I thought that was a good thing not to make somebody feel like they’re second class or property or whatever. Historically, I think that brought women to the front that they’re not property, that they have the same freedom to think, to go to school, to be able to vote their thought on what they see, what they think, solutions, what we think can be better., When I used to do training I would say, “We thank the men for giving us the opportunity to be at the workplace,” because I think it kind of mellow things down a bit sometimes. I know we may have our drama, like men would say we have our drama, but I think that brought a little bit of balance so you’re not too tense or not too wimpy. As my brothers would say to me, “See I don’t know everything, if you have a problem tell us because we don’t have time to be watching your mood.” That’s what men at a workplace would say, “Oh God you gals are so moody.” and that moodiness brings some balance, in workplace. Okay so that historically, now the other one in the community. LR: Yeah the other is your community. What I’m finding, it’s like it just occurred to me like what you just said in your tribe women were listened to and had a voice, but 25 you came here and women didn’t really have a voice. How do you think women receiving the right to vote changed the community that you live in now, the community of Ogden? JE: It changed that because like I said now women can voice their opinion. When I came, we were told you had to be at home and raise kids and all that, but now we have a voice, and we have a voice and is listened to. You can go to work you could do that, so yeah it helps to change the community. I did say to you, “In my tribe,” because it’s not all Nigerians that allow their women to have a voice but in my particular tribe we were treated respectfully, you could have a voice whether they took it into consideration or not. But what we all kind of forget is that women is the backbone of any family. They’ve got all these organizational skills and communication, and I think it was just insecurity. So, I think our community now is a little better. We’re asking women to go to school, we’re finding out the state is offering a grant to find out what we could do to have women complete their education, so being able to vote has changed our community and looking for a voice, another voice, on how we could balance, work things together, and move forward. Personally, I am very grateful because I was already one who have to speak my mind and it would have been like a thing for me to not be able to voice my opinion on what I’m seeing or what I’m feeling. I would be in prison and I’d be screaming loud or whatever so I thank them for allowing that to happen so you could get a chance to know me and hear me. Allowing women to vote is a great 26 thing and we thank those women who stayed the course, who said, “We need this.” They have been one of those who have empowered me as well. LR: Okay, awesome. Thank you. JE: Well, I hope that helps. LR: Oh heavens yes, thank you so much. This has just been wonderful, and I really appreciate your time and your willingness. JE: I wanted to add one thing that I do in the community and that is I’m a community advocate and a storyteller. I’ve been telling stories, I partner with Weber State, Weber State Story Festival, Story Cross Road, Living Traditions. I’m a member of Nubian Storytellers of Utah Leadership and an affiliate member of National Association of Black Storytellers. MT: The Storytelling Festival? JE: I’ve been telling stories, and I’ve just now published my stories that I have been telling around the states, so I’m an author and my book “Efik Moonlight Tales” is currently on Amazon. LR: How long have you been doing the Storytelling Festival? JE: Storytelling? Fifteen years or something. I just didn’t tell this year at the WSU Festival because one of my daughters had her first baby in February so I had to go. As a community advocate, I was part of Power in You Project under First Lady Huntsman, a Multicultural Advisory Committee member under Mayor Godfrey, served on the State Black Advisory Committee under Governor Leavitt, a board member for Maria Montessori Academy School in North Ogden and have participated with my church choir at many community functions. 27 LR: That’s important. JE: Yeah, I had to go and help her navigate that. Now she would understand what a role of motherhood is about. One of the women empowerments. LR: Yes, well I’m so grateful, so thank you. JE: Thank you, thank you. Tell your boss thank you for reaching out to me.