Editor’s note: This is third in a five-part series about African students’ experiences in the United States.

Ask Abraham Tarbey, senior in electrical engineering, about his racial experiences and he will tell you a story that begins in a classroom at Iowa State.

“There was a group project we were doing in my English 314 class,” Tarbey said.

“We were a group of four, and we were supposed to give ideas. And every time I raised an idea, this guy just brushed it over. Every time I get in a group it’s the same thing. It might have had to do with race or it might have had to do with the fact that I come from Africa, but for some reason, this guy had made up his mind or come to the conclusion that I didn’t know what was going on.”

Growing up in Nairobi, Kenya, race was something he took for granted, but he said now he thinks about it everyday. Tarbey said the secondary school he attended in Nairobi was 25 percent white.

“Before I came here, I had never experienced any problem with any race,” Tarbey said. “I didn’t know. It’s amazing. I came into this country and I started to feel this difference. I tend to believe, maybe it’s something which has been here for a while. Because I am thinking, in my school [in Kenya] we had so many white people. And I even went to an international school where we had people from different backgrounds, from different countries. We never cared about, ‘Hey white people are different,’ but that really matters here.”

He said the relationship between races in America is something that has affected his own relationships.

“I feel like many Americans have difficulties interacting with me, as much as I do have difficulties interacting with them,” he said.

“Maybe it’s the history of relationship of race in this country. And most people who have stayed here know that relationship hasn’t been so good.”

Andrew Ighedo, senior in industrial engineering, said some of those difficulties might also stem from the way Africans are portrayed in the media.

“If you were a little kid, and every time you saw a red light, you got smacked in the head, and that happened ’til you were 20, what do you think you would think about red lights?” Ighedo said.

That red light of ignorance, Ighedo said, has been blinking incessantly for decades in the media.

“Tune in to BET on any given Sunday morning. What do you see?” Ighedo asked.

“‘These kids haven’t eaten for 20 days. Send them money.’ Have you ever turned on the TV and seen Victoria Island in Lagos on the news? Yes, there is suffering in Africa, but do they ever show the good side of it?”

Questions such as this have become the staple that binds many Africans’ experiences back home to their experiences in the United States.

“I didn’t expect that it will be so different,” Tarbey said.

“You suddenly come to realize this is different. In my country, I will be quite comfortable with everybody around. Sometimes when you are here, you don’t really know what to expect. I don’t really know how to explain it.”

He said before he came here he took social relationships for granted.

“My uncle went to school here, and he told me how good it is,” Tarbey said.

“Today, I don’t see the goodness in what he was explaining to me, because in his terms the goodness might be good buildings, might have been good roads, good vehicles.”

He said that those types of things don’t matter much when interpersonal experiences are not as good.

“It’s nice to have those things. It might be better than what I have in my country,” Tarbey said. “But socially do I get along so well with people? Do I get to mix with people freely the way I used to do in my country? People have cliques and groups, and it is not easy for people to mix up the way we do in my country. That was the main thing that really hit me in the face.”

He said the American culture is more individualistic than African culture.

“I am not saying I don’t have friends,” Tarbey said. “But they are not as close as the ones I had back home. It’s on a superficial level.”

Tarbey said he is not sure what he wants to do after graduation.

“When I think about my future, all I can see is that the best that can happen to me is to get hired as an engineer,” he said. “So what’s going to happen? Just be an engineer and get lost in all the people in this country?”

Tarbey said this is because of a desire he never feels he will be able to satisfy, because of the race relations in the United States.

“First of all, being someone from another country, you can’t get into the political process,” he said.

“Job-wise, with the kind of history that has existed here, it’s not just enough for me to work for 30 years and then become a manager someday. I do feel like, maybe if I went back I would have a better shot. I could more easily get into a position of policy-making. I could more easily get into a position where I can change things.”

He sums up the questions he asks himself being an African in the United States simply as: “How much can a man do in this country?”

His answer is also simple: “So much,” he said. “So much.”