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The Trump my mother shared with me

For many Americans, the 2016 election period, as well as its aftermath, was a very emotionally turbulent affair, casting into doubt everything they thought they knew about themselves, their neighbors, and their country at that time. However, they were not alone on these tenterhooks; the non-American part of the world waited with interest, and for many families, their main sources of information were the relatives they had in the United States, who were mostly either studying or working, sojourners in a foreign land.

I was such, a student from Ghana, and at least once every few days, my mother would call me, worry evident in her voice, to ask whether I was okay, whether I needed anything, whether I needed to come back home. As the election drew closer, her phone calls grew in frequency and apprehension. One of them vividly comes to mind.

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After exchanging traditional pleasantries:

Mum: Are you sure you’re fine?

Me: Yes, Mummy, it’s Princeton. Nothing happens here. I’m safe.

Mum: If you say so. Just don’t go out late, don’t wear a hoodie, and don’t discuss the elections with anyone. You’re not an American; you’re from Ghana. You just went there to study. Let them do their thing, and mind your own business.

It goes on and on after that (she is a typical mum in that respect), but the gist was this: that my unique identity, as a Ghanaian studying abroad, meant that I had to take special precautions. In more nuanced terms, it was not the identity I had brought from Ghana in 2015 that had changed. Instead, it was the location within which my identity was operating that had changed the circumstances. In this situation, it determined that I stay clear of the matter, since to her, my “non-Americanness” meant I had no stake or say in an American issue.

This, mind you, did not stop her from discussing her opinions on it with me. There is a four-hour time difference between Ghana and the United States — five, when daylight savings comes into effect — and my mum often stayed up late at night watching CNN and called me anytime something radical about Donald Trump was said. Even though she was worried for me, she was more amused when speaking directly about him and his shenanigans.

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Ghanaians have this manner of speaking about something that is shocking, in a tone that is affected with amusement stemming from disbelief, and sometimes it was hard parsing whether she was genuinely amused or simply stunned. African politicians — not all of them, but enough that they are not outliers — employ or have employed many of the tactics that Trump has introduced into American politics. Maybe she was amused to see it happen here too, or she was just shocked that America, the shining city on the hill, was after all prone to such inanity.

In any case, the elections came, and they went, and soon, we’ll have a President Trump. In Ghana, we have a saying: Nana reba oo, nana reba oo, nana aba (“The king is coming, the king is coming, the king has come”). My mum’s phone calls have tapered off to the regular once every two or so weeks, and we barely talk about the election. The king has come; the matter is dead. I’m not American; neither is she. To her, I should not care. To me, a black young man in a Trump America, the luxury of nonchalance is not affordable. For now, a luta continua.

Blaykyi Kenyah is a sophomore from Sekondi, Ghana. He can be reached at bkenyah@princeton.edu.

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