Thousands of miles away in Nigeria, the rooster is still perched on that rough and ragged fence; it still crows as the sun rises; pieces of clothing still swing from that long, rangy rope by the fence as they dry in the sun; by our neighbor’s gate, the “beware of dogs” sign still hangs crookedly from the lamp post.

My old life was miles away now. I, like most foreign students, had traveled to America in search of a college education.

My story began in the Murtala Mohamed Airport in Lagos, Nigeria. As the plane took off, it left in its wake friends that I would never see again, family that knew and understood me, and a world which I would come to see in a new perspective. The plane landed in Des Moines and then I drove to Ames.

As the road finally curved to a narrow end in front of my dorm, the journey to America drew to a close, but in many ways the journey had only just begun. It had begun on a road which wasn’t flooded with lights, like the roads in Vegas. It had started at a dorm called Linden that looked unlike the sky scrapers and high rises of Houston.

All of my life, I had been groomed by television and movies to think of America in a certain way. Now, amid the corn fields and flat lands of Iowa, I had come to a different realization.

What if all I had seen of America were the ghettos of Chicago and New York? What if all I had heard of America were gun shots in the alleys of D.C? Would I have thought differently about America?

We have all been groomed by our environment to think of certain things in certain ways. Many Americans associate Africa with violence, poverty and illiteracy because the only newsworthy stories are people dying in Sudan or similar tragic stories of violence and poverty.

America has been independent for more than two centuries. It’s inevitable that countries that have only been independent for less than half a century would have problems, but what about the positive stories?

What if all Americans had seen of Africa were joyful festivities in the villages of Mombassa? What if all Americans had heard of Africa were children screaming joyously as they rode on roller coasters in Lagos? Would they think differently of us?

Many international students travel thousands of miles, only to find ourselves all alone in America. We find ourselves in oblivion in our cultures and our beliefs, in oblivion in things we like to do for fun, and in oblivion in our ideas and the way we like to tackle problems.

The pressure is definitely on to fit into a group that is known, accepted and understood within American culture. Conform or else be subject to ridicule or suspicion. I know of international students who lie that they are originally from America because that is their way to avoid potential ridicule. After all, they have been here long enough that their accent has changed. Who could tell the difference between them and a native-born American?

In many ways, my story is similar to that of many international students. Drawn from different places by the common goal of getting a college education, we have come to realize that the world we dreamed of is unlike the dream, and comes with its challenges that we, in our ignorant bliss, never imagined.

Back at home, thousands of miles away, a child still picks up a book and dreams; a child still bounces a basketball on the rugged courts at Lagos stadium, and many pick up pens and write.

Thousands of people have role models in people that have come here from Nigeria and said that their accent, or where they are from wouldn’t stop them from achieving as much as they are capable of achieving.

After all, if Hakeem “The Dream” Olajuwon, one of the 50 greatest basketball players, can do it, why not you? If Wole Soyinka, a world-renowned playwright, can do it, why not you? If the thousands of Nigerian doctors and engineers here in the United States can do it, why not you?